Fishing Words

Battles With Giant Fish ... an unorthodox ending.

Wednesday 16th October 2013 - By Graham Waterton

In 1923, FA Mitchell Hedges wrote Battles With Giant Fish.

The title neatly sums up his style...he was behind the door when they handed out the British art of understatement but his future biographer demonstrated it in spades when he wrote of him that he had 'an inclination to overstate the significance of his adventures' and had a ' propensity for transforming pedestrian exploits into epics of survival and discovery'.

Mitchell Hedges took the average fisherman's tendency to exaggerate to new heights in this boysownian, swashbuckling fishing adventure.

The book describes battle after battle as he fishes his way around The Caribbean throughout 1921 and 1922 with his companion Lady Richmond Brown, who funded the expedition, catching an extraordinary range of large fish. Here he describes the end of an hour long battle with a 300 pound stingray accompanied by his trusty local guide, Griffiths, who he describes as his 'ebony sportsman'. Oh dear.

' on this occasion it must have been considerably over an hour before I was able to get the creature to the surface, when it immediately commenced to thrash the water with its flappers or wings, lashing continually with its tail. With the utmost of care it was slowly manipulated close to the dugout, when I fired four shots from my automatic through its head. This was followed by one terrific flurry, after which it was perfectly quiet.'

I'm not surprised. By today's standards the slaughter was outrageous but this was a time when that was the norm.

He also claims to have caught a 200 pound tarpon, a 1,760 pound tiger shark and a 5,700 pound sawfish. However the photograph of a 40 pound snook looks more like 15!

An extraordinary book written in a way which is enhanced if you to read it with the voice of a 1950s BBC newsreader in your head.

It's worth tracking down a copy if only for the photographs.

Fishing for sea trout in a 'glowing stadium'

Tuesday 15th October 2013 - By Graham Waterton

I recently fished Woodmill Pool, the tide pool of the River Itchen on the edge of Southampton.  It is a surreal experience.  In the 'Suburban Sea Trout' chapter of his book, The Accidental Angler, Charles Rangeley-Wilson captures this atmosphere brilliantly.

'Headlight beams from passing traffic swing across me as I fumble with the lock. A police siren wails somewhere on the housing estate to the east. As a background rumble, deeper and softer than the noises of the city that bounce off the yellow sky, I hear the underground sound of water. The River Itchen pours under the road beneath me.

'I stand there wondering where to start and am struck by the incongruity of the fish and the setting. Light spills out of the car park and the lights opposite, and the street lamps outside, and the whole pool is bathed in a smudgy, yellow glow. Wild sea trout - creatures that have no borders, that are migratory, nomadic - are swimming through this glowing stadium.

'At Woodmill the urgent sounds of a city at night rub away any preconception of what sea trout fishing ought to be ... instead, doors slam, there is shouting, and cars pass with the muffled throb of heavy music. The air has a tang to it, especially when the tide goes out and the waterfall fills the air with a damp thrice-through-human-kidneys mist. It is never dark.

'The night is quieter. It's about twelve, or twelve thirty. The last plane passed overhead an hour ago. Most of the lights in the block of flats have gone out, the police sirens have stopped. A few minutes ago I heard two loud bangs like gunshots, but nothing afterwards.  Just the dull hum of a city falling asleep.'

Well that is just as it is, but in case that doesn't quicken your pulse, the other sounds you hear are the regular crashes of huge sea trout doing back flips. Night fishing anywhere can be unearthly if not sometimes downright creepy but this place has an atmosphere unlike anything I have experienced. I would like to catch a big sea-trout but to catch one there would be particularly memorable.

Quite something.

Do steelheaders and salmon fisherman have room temperature IQs?

Monday 14th October 2013 - By Graham Waterton

Not far under the calm, agreeable, uncontroversial skin of us nice fly fisherman, historic conflicts fester. Halford v Skues; North Country freestone streams v Southern chalkstreams; upstream wet v downstream wet etc. From The Longest Silence, Thomas McGuane recognises that until you try both sides not only won't you get it, but you don't even deserve to be in the argument.

'Angling doesn't turn on stunts. The steady movements of the habitual gatherer produce the best harvest. This of course must be in the service of some real stream knowledge. But some fishing, especially for sea run fish, rewards the robotic capacity for replicating casts, piling up the repetitions until the strike is induced. I once thought that the biggest things a steelheaders or Atlantic Salmon fisherman can have - not counting waders and a stipend - were a big arm and a room temperature IQ. Now I know better, having found out the hard way.'

McGuane learnt the benefits of experience through repetition. I guess many are repelled by the apparent repetitive nature of swinging a fly; 'its all luck' they say.  Amazing how the more you do the luckier you get. Why? Well as he found out the hard way, it isn't as repetitive as his words seem to suggest. Subtle changes of cast and mend give the fisher significant variation. Add the opportunities of size and weight of fly, leader, line and tip density and the permutations are virtually endless. That's why some people catch more salmon than others.

By the way, I like the idea of being an habitual gatherer.

In casting, has technology affected technique?

Sunday 13th October 2013 - By Graham Waterton

This extract comes from The Practical Angler written by W C Stewart in 1857. It's sub title is The Art of Trout-Fishing More Particularly Applied To Clear Water. This little book was The Fifty Shades of whatnot of it's day. It really hit a spot having two further editions reprinted in its first year and no fewer than 15 reprints, the last in 1942!

What's interesting here is the basic description of the overhead ... pick it up and put it down ... cast and is as relevant today as it was then, except for one thing.

'When the line is thoroughly soaked, take the rod in your right hand, raise it with sufficient force to make the line go to its full length behind, and then pausing for a moment till it has done so, with a circular motion of the wrist and arm urge the rod forward, rapidly at first, but gradually lessening the speed, so that when it stops no recoil of the point will take place. Care must be taken not to urge the flies forward till they have gone the full length behind, or you will be apt to crack them off.'

So what hasn't changed? He uses the word 'sufficient'. Quite right, a good cast uses the right application of power; enough to aerialise the line and effect turnover, no more no less. He also recognises timing. He knows that the line should go ' to its full length behind'. Urging it forward, as he puts it, too early can cause 'cracking'. As we know, too late and gravity takes over. So far so good.

What sounds odd is his description of 'rapidly at first, but gradually lessening the speed'. These days we look for constant and smooth acceleration to a stop; start slowly-finish fast ... the opposite sentiment to his, though he recognised the need for a stop.

Why is this? My guess is that he was casting with a very soft, through action, probably cane or greenheart rod. By modern standards, a heavy and floppy stick.  A positive stop would, as he suggests, create 'recoil' or bounce and the wagging tip would send waves down the the rod and line. His soft decelerating stop would see the rod recover with less oscillations and a smoother delivery and turnover. Modern rods with smooth and almost instant recovery, allow a more positive stop and with a shorter casting arc, create tighter loops.

So over 150 years ago WC Stewart got the best out of rod of the day but he still understood at least a couple of the five essentials.

I bet his loops were as wide as the Channel Tunnel.

Spey Casting 'The Highest Art of All'?

Saturday 12th October 2013 - By Graham Waterton

In 1895 GM Kelson wrote a major work called The Salmon Fly. A large part was on the fly itself but a significant part was on fly fishing for salmon more generally. On Spey casting he says;

'The achievement of the much coveted Spey(cast), the highest art of all, is endowed with an irresistible fascination peculiar to itself...Men who are practically conversant with all the circumstances which render the cast necessary, and with all the various ways of making it, are so far removed from the struggling rank and file as to frequently meet with the highest success on pools which, to, others, are positively unfishable'

This was written with double handed rods on the larger salmon rivers in mind but it has become increasingly widely recognised that spey casting for smaller double handed rods and single handed rods adds a new dimension to every branch of flyfishing. The fisherman with only an overhead cast in the armoury is seriously under gunned on virtually all rivers. Kelson go it right. I have to confess I have not read the whole book but I must, if nothing else, to find out if it is all written in that wonderfully pompous style.