I don't have that many fishing books, perhaps a hundred or so, perhaps a few more, I've never really counted. Some of them I have not read; unwanted presents from well meaning relatives but some I have read many times. They never disappoint and real favourites are tattooed with notes, underlinings, highlights and margin scribbles, sacrilege to the bibliophile but a quick way to find old friends that constantly delight. I do so admire those who conjure with words. Here are extracts from some of my favourites.
Fishing Words
By Graham Waterton
Is it luck?
- By Graham Waterton
Why is it that some people catch more fish and some people catch big fish and some catch both? Just luck or that moment when experience and doing all the small things right collides with opportunity?
It's more than just serendipity and I like the way John Gierach describes it in Standing in a River Waving a Stick.
'Down at the core of every fisherman's heart is the belief that on any day something wonderful and unlikely could be made to happen, and that if you're careful and patient it could happen to you.
And although catching a great fish can sometimes look like simple luck, every fisherman knows it's more than that: something like intelligent curiosity combined with cagey, skilful persistence, more like luck at poker than on a slot machine. Whatever you call it, I think a lot of us fish day after day as much for what could happen as for what actually does happen.'
Well put...I certainly do.
Entomology
- By Graham Waterton
I was grayling fishing on one of the delicious Itchen headwaters in early December, cold and still, about midday. Fish rose for about an hour, to olives. Did I need to know which olive?
It is an over simplification to classify fly fisherman as being in either the presentation or imitation camps but do you need to be able to identify specifically and imitate precisely every food source to catch trout? I rather like Thomas McGuanes sentiment in The Longest Silence.
"My fly box is mainly Adamses in about eight different sizes. In the future I mean to be a fine stream side entomologist. I'm going to start on that when I am much too old to do any of the two thousand things I can think of that are more fun than screening insects in cold running water"
McGuane speaks, of course, with forked tongue ... in other words he has it in both cheeks! As a serious fisherman he knows the importance of being broadly able to identify and imitate, but knows you don't need the encyclopaedic entomological knowledge that so many strive for. As ever there's a balance.
Personally I used to be just inclined towards imitation, now it's tipped the other way for me.
Anyway ... #16 Para Adams worked. No need for a precise identification, my olives could have been little else at that time of the year, small/medium size, grey wings, short hatch ... Pale Wateries.
The Guides Dilemma
- By Graham Waterton
During the Second World War, Major RD Baird received a letter from his brother who was incarcerated in a prisoner of war camp. The letter implored him to write about his fishing experiences on the upper beats of the River Itchen. He started writing his memoirs, entitled A Trout Rose, well after the war by which time he had fished the river, mainly above Winchester, for about 40 years.
This wonderful wild fishery, is now known as The Grange and is where the Itchen, Candover Brook and Arle all meet
'so the three, having found one another journeyed together down to the sea'
It was then owned by Bairds cousin and their river keeper, Walter, lived in Itchen Stoke
'the dearest and fairest of all Itchen Valley villages'
In those days river keepers often acted as guides for their employers guests and as a guide myself I particularly liked this passage about Walter ... I'm sure all guides will recognise this:
'How Walter managed sometimes to control his feelings used to be a source of amazement to me, for, to the good fisherman the most infuriating of all possible things is to see a fish hopelessly bungled and put down through ineptitude and real bad fishing; in such circumstances he cannot help but long to snatch the rod and get busy with it himself. Walter, expert fisherman as he was, often had to watch this happen, yet never once did he betray what he must have been feeling. Rather would he encourage the bungler to do better next time, help him in every possible way to catch a fish, which he knew would mean so much'.
He couldn't possibly have been thinking about his tip, could he?
It's a charming little book
Nothing as fragile as a fishermans confidence
- By Graham Waterton
A long time ago when I was in my early twenties I fished a tiny stream on the Devon/Cornwall border, my first experience of West Country brown trout fishing. I arrived mentally and physically equipped for the chalkstreams. Oodles of chalkstream overconfidence. How difficult can this be? Rod too long and too heavy; wrong flies, wrong nylon; wrong attitude, no idea. I left to calm down after two hours utterly belittled by this silly little stream.
In his book The Accidental Angler, Charles Rangeley-Wilson describes a day on a bonefish flat...
' Dickie is spotting fish I can't see and soon I begin to feel useless. Rich is anxious for me to have a good time. We pole from one spot to the next, the water a curtain of grey into which only Dickie can see. I don't catch or properly see a fish all morning. When I think about it I hate bone fishing from a boat. Fishing is largely about getting into the natural world on your own, and the more in touch you are the better. The insulation and social cauldron of a boat is a second grade version of the sport. Plus Rich's anxiety - which may or may not be in my imagination - is making me tense. My casting is crap. I can't see the fish. After a few hours I can only think about the flat and the fish I missed yesterday. I'm itching to get back there. Overhead the sky is an unbroken field of grey.'
When I first read this I new I had been there, to be honest more than once. I entirely recognised the steadily mounting frustration as normally reliable skills crumble faced with apparently simple new challenges. Nothing is going right. Deep pessimism is setting in. His mood much the same colour as the sky.
Nothing as fragile as a fisherman's confidence.
I still fish Devon streams, now a bit better. The season down there starts this weekend and I just can't wait.
After the floods, how long to recover?
- By Graham Waterton
Frank Sawyer was many things: innovative river keeper, inventor of classic trout flies and fishing writer to name but a few. All of these, I believe, came from his acute observation of the river he spent so much time tending and loved so deeply. With the news so dominated by flooding I remembered this extract from Keeper of the Stream:
'It distresses me to see the flooding of a valley for with it sometimes comes tragedy, not so much perhaps for the aquatic creatures which live in the river and streams but for the thousand others which are part of the valley life. I think sudden flooding is a thing for which nature did not prepare all her family, and a quick rising and overflowing of the river finds some of them at a disadvantage.'
He goes on to describe one particularly significant flash flood which spread down the valley
'It all happened so suddenly. Water swept over the river banks of reach after reach, and flowed out across the meadows like a tidal wave. As the vegetation of the valley was covered, so the surface of the water became alive with panic-stricken, struggling creatures. Moles, shrews and field mice swam side by side, moving from one dry patch of land to another amidst hordes of insects of many descriptions that were milling about and drowning.'
Nature has admirable powers of recovery but what are the short term effects of this significant loss of life? Let's not forget that some water meadows have been underwater for nearly two months. It must have an effect on the food chain of the river valley and how long will it take to recover? I suspect, and hope, surprisingly quickly.
