Got a knotty fly-fishing problem? Drop our agony uncle a line.
DARON PARTON
Dear Doc Tangle, I HAVE been trying to catch my first Atlantic salmon for three seasons without success, although I firmly believe that, if I keep trying, I will land one. When I do, what would be the proper way to celebrate? Tom Morris, UK
LET ME say, first, that you must keep trying. There is a reason that the Atlantic salmon is called the king of fish, but it is a reason you cannot fully understand until you are connected with one by a combination of rod, line, skill, experience and luck. The moment you lift the rod and feel the tension, everything makes sense. So keep at it.
There was a time when landing a salmon was far from being a rare event. Only a couple of decades ago it was possible to arrive on a river secure in the knowledge that the next few days would provide enough sport to fill a page in the hut book and provide the visiting angler with memories sufficient to instil dread into the hearts of family, friends, club acquaintances and pub regulars alike.
In the halcyon days, of course, when those who could would head to their Highland houses not just for a few days, but for the season, it was not even a case of fishing every day. There were stags to be stalked also and grouse, ptarmigan and blackcock to be walked up. Perhaps even a capercaillie to be pursued through the forestry. Only when the ghillies reported that the pools were populated with fresh fish would the sporting household make its collective way — after a leisurely breakfast — to the riverbank in pursuit of Salmo salar. There would be prizes then for fish of the day, the week, the season. Best fish, most fish, biggest fish. And forfeits, I dare say, for the rest: smallest fish, coloured fish, most egregiously incompetent lost fish. Best stumble, tumble, dunking and swim. And all this when the proper gear for a day on the river was an 18ft greenheart rod and a reel the size of a soup-plate with braided silk lines, puttees wound tightly over a base layer of goose fat under a kilt and over a favourite pair of stout hobnailed boots. Aye, them were days!
Salmon tend to become active suddenly and briefly for reasons we don't yet understand, but if they're hot and you're hot, it's best not to waste a moment
I have heard stories from some ghillies, mostly retired but not all, of ladies who would join the menfolk on the water after a respectable interlude, “catch themselves a couple o' three fish” before returning to the house to oversee preparations for luncheon.
In these days of precious time on the river snatched from diaries crammed with commitments, both business and social, time is perhaps the greatest luxury of all and protracted celebrations on the bank are less appropriate than once they were. Accordingly, my advice would be to get back into the water as soon as you have your breath back. “Where there's one, there may be another!” is a proper mantra for today's angler. Salmon tend to become active suddenly and briefly for reasons we don't yet understand, but if they're hot and you're hot, it's best not to waste a moment.
I'm not advocating an unseemly rush, but after seeing your first safely back into the current — and following a few moments of quiet contemplation of the good Lord's manifest blessings and Nature's bountiful harvest — I'd get back at it; and no one will think any the less of you for that. Especially if you bank a second only minutes later.
It would be a rum do, though, if later in the day you weren't able to sit on the bank at the scene of your triumph with a mug of something suitable to toast the occasion. Momentous events used to be celebrated also with a cigar and, if that is to your taste, there is no better moment to fire up a panatella while you relive your success moment by moment either by yourself or in company.
It's what memories are made for — and from.
Dear Doc Tangle, GROWING UP, I spent many fond days fishing with my younger brother. However, three years ago, he obtained a vegan girlfriend and has since followed her dietary choices. As such, he no longer feels that catching fish is something he can do. We haven't fished together for years. Is there anything I can do to convince him to give it another try?
Henry Miller, US
ISN’T IT odd how often love, in all its brilliant and transcendent glory, manages, somehow, to cut as many ties as it uses to bind? “A many splendoured thing!” as the Oscar-winning song from the 1955 movie has it; although Puccini — or his librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa — were clearly thinking along the same lines in Madame Butterfly half-a-century before, and yet how often does love not break the heart that once it filled?
“Of one that loved not wisely but too well!”, as the Bard himself advises us in Othello (Act V, Sc. II) just before the tragic Moor tops himself.
Aye, it's a winding road, to be sure.
Personally, I can think of nothing that promotes the appreciation of Nature in all its miraculous forms more than exploring exquisite streams with a pole and a pin and a slightly diffuse sense of purpose. Nor, for that matter, can I think of a circumstance more likely to lure a lentil lover from their chosen path than a brace of brook trout crisping over a campfire.
But I'm an angler.
He doesn't have to fish, after all, though I venture that it tests the patience of a veritable pantheon of saints not to have a bit of a cast at some point
The difficulty — actually, a difficulty, for there is more than one — with those committed to many contemporary progressive attitudes is their shocking intolerance of those who have elected to follow a different social, political, spiritual or dietary path. Some of us think that our interactions with nature nourish us both mentally and physically and make us generally better human beings. We don't insist that everyone fishes and we don't expect everyone to eat fish.
It may be too much to hope that the girlfriend in question could be persuaded to participate, but is it beyond the realms of possibility to suggest that your brother might join you once more on the bank to share again the nourishing qualities of sibling familiarity and the spiritual replenishment that flows from a scintillating river and its sparkling inhabitants?
He doesn't have to fish, after all, though I venture that it tests the patience of a veritable pantheon of saints not to have a bit of a cast at some point.
And if one, then perhaps another? And would that be the end of the world?
Doc Tangle would like to answer your questions. Title them Dear Doc Tangle and send to: thetake@looptackle.se
