Waiting

I am waiting.

Waiting for Christmas. Waiting for the new season. Waiting to win the lottery. I am waiting.

Today I have been waiting for three hours in a VW dealership in Chester as my catalytic converter has popped, right in the middle of a working trip through Shropshire and North Wales. It is very tedious!

Should I be waiting? Obviously I will have to wait here in this slough of despond until my car is cured, but generally I mean - should one wait or should one DO?

I have not the funds to shoot regularly, which is my other passtime, so if not in waiting, what should I do to make best use of my time?

Answers on a postcard please - or e-mail me with invitations at mark.flyfisherman@gmail.com !!

Chin chin

Posted with Blogsy

Don't Be A Tight Arse!

I don't mean to sound like a big head; but I am not often wrong. Well that's not strictly true; I am often wrong - but nobody knows it. What I mean is that I rarely say something "is" unless it has been previously proven to be so. I often think things that I then seek to confirm or disprove before I announce whatever it is I have to say - ergo, I am not often seen to be wrong.............(or should that be heard to be wrong?). It's a pride thing and the fact that I am not a fan of conjecture, especially when it is offered as fact.......well,  I know what I mean anyway.

I have now, though, to admit that some information I have long proffered as said fact, turns out to be no more than spurious opinion at best, and actually should be more accurately described as a load of tosh.

I have always made a point of stating that a 10ft 7wt rod that costs £50, in the right hands, can be just as effective as one that costs £500 in those same hands. In certain situations this is undoubtedly true and it is certainly true that a good angler can catch fish with a £50 rod, whereas an indifferent one might struggle with a very expensive model costing ten times as much - that would be user error in the latter case and adaptability/sound technique in the former. The trouble is though that I have never qualified the original statement, and I truly believed that I could fish a cheap 10ft 7wt rod in every situation where one is needed and get by. It would never be ideal, but just good enough to warrant not spending out on a better model (plus I have a habit of walking into fences at night and breaking the things into several bits!) and I have always caught plenty of fish with cheapies so that was that - the statement became a fact!!

I have expensive, what I would call specialist rods. I have a 10' 4wt a 9' 5wt and a 7' 3wt that cost hundreds of pounds. I have a nice salmon rod that cost a small fortune (and several really good ones that didn't because I got them second-hand, but that were very expensive when new) but I have never owned a really nice 10' 7 or 8wt, even though I use a rod of this configuration more than any other. It is a summer salmon rod, a catcher of reservoir trout and a night-time sea trout tool.

Well. The other month, September to be precise, I was invited down to fish for sea-trout at night by my chum Alistair, on the Test at Testwood. Blimey, you can imagine the excitement - then BOOM!!! It hit me like the spear of Osiris whacking the Scorpion King in his bracelet of Anubis; like a bag of spanners dropped from a height of something over 30ft, onto my head, after a night on the beer. Whack it went. It was a shadow - a shadow......of DOUBT!. Doubt in my own assertions. A doubt about the accuracy of MY fact.

This trip would be outside my comfort zone and in the company of someone who knew the beat. Would my cheap rod be up to the task? Would I look like an incompitent fool? Would, for the sake of a £400 horseshoe, the battle be lost? Well I say a shadow of doubt. It wasn't a shadow at all, not even a slight shading. It only lasted a nano-second and I soon wiped it away with a brief self chastisement and a shrug, but on the two hour drive down it resurfaced as a niggle and I could do nothing to negate it. Damn that niggle. Damn that doubt. Damn my tight arsedness.

It was 9pm when I met Alistair at the hut. It was nearly 10 by the time we got fishing as the other guest, Rob, was late (he's a great chap is Rob. A student. A fisherman. A good egg. Just.......well......late. I am never late.........). By 1am Al had caught 5 fish including a four pounder and Rob had had 3 including a 5 pounder - his personal best. I had caught nothing. Nothing. Not a fin had I touched. Why? Because I couldn't get the fly where it needed to be as quietly as it needed to get there. Good grief - I struggled.

The Test at Testwood is a pretty wide river below the bridge and a stealthy delivery is required in the dead of night. The boys, who are both good casters but normally no better than I am, were fishing expensive rods and pitching their flies in the hot spots silently and with ease whilst I began to doubt my abilities as a caster. Alistair sussed I was struggling and we swapped rods for the last half hour. He used my £50 effort and I his £800 one. He couldn't get a line out past what I would describe as normal distances for me if I were at home, and never caught another fish, whereas I was suddenly hitting the spot every cast (which required the joint from line to backing to be only a turn onto the reel) and on my first time through the pool I caught a lovely fish of 9lb, the biggest of the night.

My assertion that a £50 rod is as effective as a £500 one was, of course, based on the fact that I only ever fished within the abilities of a £50 rod, as that is the kind of rod I always fished with. I regularly caught fish on water that I know and so the 'fact' was never challenged. That night in Southampton it was and I have to say it came as a shock to me dear reader; a shock.

Obviously some cheap rods are better than others and some expensive rods are probably over priced cheap ones. There are situatons where a cheapy will perform well enough as I stated earlier and I do think that some good rods are simply too expensive and that they simply cannot warrant their price tag when compared to some others.

Did I leg it straight to Alistair's wonderful shop and part company with a wad of notes? No I did not. What I did do though was buy second hand 10ft rods in 7 and 8wt via the internet in models that I could never afford to buy, or be forgiven by the boss for buying, new. Sorry Alistair!

So here is my FACT for the day: Buy the best you can afford as PRICE REALLY DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!......................

Actually forget that. It is my OPINION for the day. I think I am giving up on facts - they only lead to trouble!!

Oh........and don't be a tight arse!!

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

I've Been Fishing..............

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY!!

 

As Mr Kipling said - err no; the popular children's author and scribe of war related poetry (1865-1936), not the chap who baked some cakes and liked Tuesdays (that's what the adverts used to imply anyway "......Tuesday wrote Mr Kipling........") - well, as I was saying, as Mr K said “Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was: O my Best Beloved...................................”

 

THE GOOD

 

I am a member of the Dulverton Angling Association. For thirty of our Earth pounds I can fish several lovely beats on the upper Exe and its tributaries and for a small daily charge some cracking salmon water on the middle river too.  Needless to say that having been so unnervingly busy of late, working diligently and without the least vestige of thanks, for the benefit of others both at home and abroad, I have had no time nor opportunity to utilise said membership.

 

I undertook to redress the balance and possibly negate the effects of such labours - hopefully making Mark somewhat less of a dull boy - by sallying forth last Tuesday onto a wonderful beat near Dulverton.

 

It had everything did this one. A hut; some fish; an Ephemera Danica or two; some crystal clear water and a retired old countryman with endless anecdotes and some handy hints! I lost no flies; I caught and safely returned three beautiful wild brown trout of between nine and eleven inches and I ate a picnic lunch of the best fodder that the deli counter at Morrison's (Tiverton branch - highly recommended!) had to offer. Bliss.

 

 

 

The aged countryman by the way was a retired keeper of game and did not fish, so his handy hints were about rearing partridges rather than catching trout.....................so not particularly helpful! He was a good old boy though.

 

For those that care, I caught my three trout on dry flies. The first on a Greenwell's Glory size 14. The second on an olive Klinkhammer size 16 and the third on a Greenwell's size 16. I was fishing leader tapering to 3lbs (copolymer) and 9ft in length and was using a 7'6" Greys Streamflex rod. There.

 

THE BAD

 

The Wednesday before "The Good" I was due to meet a friend of mine for a day afloat on Hawkridge Reservoir, between Taunton and Bridgwater in the noble county of Somerset. We were due to rendezvous at 10:00hrs. At 11:30hrs this was the scene.........................

 

 

 

And at 12:30hrs..................................

 

 

................the boat hadn't moved an inch!

 

At 11:00hrs I was not best pleased. However, and there is always a bright side, my companion's tardiness meant that I had a chance to get the boat and my tackle set up and then to calm down again so that by his arrival I was the picture of placidity. He, on the other hand, was the personification of rage, tempered only by contrition and laced with a generous dollop of embarrassment, a heady mix indeed and not one conducive to catching fish!

 

We set ourselves adrift and before long I had caught my first of the 4 rainbows that eventually found their way into my bass bag that day. That first one was like a red rag to a bull, it was the straw that fractured the 7th and 8th thoracic of this particular Camelus dromedaries, it was the reason that the whole subject of buzzer fishing, its practical applications both in theory and in practice and its effectiveness as a modern method of acquiring dinner was drawn into question. The method is flawed. It doesn't work........ and then.......I don't know what I am doing wrong. This can't be right. It's too cold. The line won't cast. WOE IS ME FOR I AM LOST!!!!

 

By my fourth fish I was starting to wither under fire and although there was a certain amount of schadenfreude to start with, this soon diminished and after four hours of continuous bombardment I reached the point of complete capitulation. 

To top it all off, in a moment of temporarily revived pleasure garnered from a particularly disastrous cast by my unremittingly cantankerous boat partner, and by way of judgment on me, I got my line caught around and then sliced up by the propeller! I barely batted an eyelid!

 

For those that care I caught all four fish on Diawl Bachs with JC or goose biot cheeks and on a floating line with 5ft intermediate polyleader and 12ft of 7lb fluorocarbon. They weighed 4lb, 3lb 4oz (x2) and 2lb 8oz.

 

THE UGLY

 

The day after "The Bad" saw myself and aforementioned boat partner afloat on Blagdon. It was the second time on Blagdon this year, the first at the beginning of the season resulting in my fingers nearly dropping off through cold, and we fared no better this time. After some lovely weather recently, this day dawned wet and cold and with a wind so strong that the boats on Chew Valley lake couldn't go out at all!

 

I will not dwell here on that day. Here is a place for joy, for tales of warmth and encouragement. Here is not for cold, for damp, for ...........................yuck!

 

Throughout the day the waves grew higher and the boat pitched and yawed ever more alarmingly. Several rowers had to be rescued and even my electric engine with all its 54lb worth of thrust and 120Ahs up its arse couldn't make much headway.

 

There was no joy to be had at this place or on this day. No mirth nor mischief. Laughter was a thing for elsewhere and for others. We had been weighed, we had been measured and we had been found, most decidedly, wanting!

For those who care we caught bugger all!!!!

So Best Beloved there you have it. The Good, The bad and the Ugly!

Chin chin.

Update and Apology

Well. Since my last post we have moved house......again. Harry is getting very mobile now and was in danger of becoming a statistic courtesy of the main road just outside our front door. The village we have moved to is not far from whence we came, but is quiet and the house is opposite an excellent school, so that's a bonus. It is, however, no closer to any decent rivers! Never mind.

I must apologise for not posting anything recently. This is partly because of the aforementioned move  and partly because I am lazy and couldn't be arsed. My apology however is sincere and my contrition knows no bounds.......!!

Plus I haven't been fishing.

Actually that's not entirely true. I went to Blagdon once about three weeks ago. My mates Alex and Rob were there. Nice lads - very keen; youthful enthusiasm I seem to recall it is called. Bless.... 

Anyway the wind was firmly in the east, the reservoir was over full, the water was only 5 degrees and the air temperature the same. All in all, therefore, ergo and in short..........a rubbish day to go fishing! Caught nothing. The fish were way out in the deeper water as the margins were still freezing and because we were casting over what would normally be where we stand, we just couldn't get out to them comfortably - not that particular day with the force 10 brain freezing, finger numbing gale going on at any rate. If it had been a calmer day then a boat could have been taken out, or at least the long cast needed from the bank would've been made easier. Still a calm day it was not and nothing was caught.

Great to be out though.

An Excellent Blog Post About Spring Fish Identification

I sometimes head north at this time of year and as the seasons change and indeed their timings as the years pass, the need to be able to identify any fish I might catch is becoming more and more relevant.

This is an excellent guide by Robert White:-

http://www.salmon-fishing-scotland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/salmon-fishing-scotland-spring-salmon.html#links

 

Posted with Blogsy

What to do?

I am trying to if not book and pay for then at least sort in my head this year's fishing.

Should I go down to the Taw on both 1st and 15th March (salmon and trout opening days respectively) or just one. Should I get an early spring day in up north? Can I afford to fish at all? Is it better to buy a cheaper spring day and a couple of summer days on prime salmon water or book one autumn day?

It is the same every year; I just never know what to do - and the danger is that I end up doing nothing.

It is very frustrating!