Sunday 10 June 2018

Fly Fishing Introduction




I have been fly fishing since around the age of 10.  I was given an old Shakespeare Alpha trout rod with a reel and a line, given some basic instruction on how to get the line out in the middle of a car parking area and that was basically it.  No one really taught me how to fish fly.  I was basically left to work it our for myself and I have really enjoyed the journey since!

I really enjoyed the warm summer evenings as a boy in the streams of my local River Faughan, catching small brown trout on Black Spiders and Black Pennels. Of course I really wanted to be catching salmon.

Other anglers grew up being taught how to fish by their fathers, grandfathers or someone else that they knew.  I was trying to learn it all on my own.  God love my father, he had the patience of a saint.  He would take me to various parts of the river throughout the season and spend time with me until I got bored and had to get home.  He had no interest in fishing himself but would be there with me, in sometimes awful weather, and bring me hooks or worms or other bits and pieces on his way home from work.  I really can't thank him enough for all he did.

I fished with all the legal methods allowed on the river, worm, spinning and fly, but had never caught a salmon. That finally changed on a summer's evening in low water.  I came home from school and, of course, couldn't wait to get to the river.  "Don't be long, your dinner will be ready", my mum was shouting.  I remember the river being low and clear.  I had a wee spinning rod with a size '0' mepps type spinner on the line.  I was casting out and watching small brown trout, maybe 6 or 7 at a time, follow the spinner in as I wound. I thought this was brilliant.  They were quite difficult to see in the streamy water so I though I'd try one of the calm pools downstream a bit.  When I got there, it was completely shaded by the trees so it was even harder to see.  I'll give it a throw anyway.

I cast out and was winding in again when I saw a flash in the water, it didn't really register with me at that second until the line went tight and the line was screaming off the reel.  I had just hooked my first salmon.  What do you do now???  I really hadn't a clue.  I was so used to hooking brown trout that you just wound on in but this thing was taking line off the reel.  I'd better tighten the tension.  What if I tightened it too much and the line breaks or I pull the hook???  What if I pull too much and the rod breaks???  I hadn't even got welly boots on.  I was only out for a cast before my dinner and only had a pair of trainers on.  How am I going to get this over the back if I do get it into the side.

After what seemed like an eternity, the fish eventually tired and I got it round into the side.  I slid down the bank onto a small patch of sand, through thick patches of stingy nettles.  I managed to grab the fish and get it threw up onto the bank.  You may think this was a monster from my fear of breaking the rod and stuff, but it was only a small grilse of about 4lb weight.  It didn't matter to me though.  I'd caught my first salmon.  I got some stinging from those nettles trying to get back out of the river again.  I had blisters and blotches all over me as I got stung from head to toe but I didn't care about that either.  I did some parading around with that fish that evening.  I almost knocked on every neighbours door to show off my catch.  I cringe now thinking about it but those are the things you do when you are young.

It would be a good few years after that, or so it seemed anyway, before I managed to land one on the fly.

I still had the old Shakespeare trout rod but if I was going to be catching salmon then I'd have to buy a salmon rod. Right?  My first salmon rod cost me the pricely sum of £20.  I bought it off a neighbour at the time.  An ABU Salmo 5810.  12ft Hollow glass with nice gold eye whippings.  I still have the rod. Looking online since, they were first introduced in the late 1960's.  An old catalogue that I have found online describes the rod as "An ultralight, farcasting and very powerful 2 handed rod".  I wonder what they were comparing 'ultralight' to back then?

I had to learn casting all over again.  There was a lot of water thrashed to a foam, many (many) flies hung on bushes and a lot of aches and pains in my shoulders and my back before I got the thing casting anyway decent at all.

One Saturday afternoon then in September I think it was, I was fishing in good water in a stream near my house.  I was basically going through the motions of getting the fly to the far bank and allowing the current to bring it to my bank.  There was a stump of a tree that sat out into the stream slightly on my side.  As the line came round towards the tree something strange happened.  The rod seemed heavy.  It was the weirdest sensation I'd ever encountered while fishing.  My immediate thought was, "I've hooked the roots of this tree stump and that'll be another fly lost". Then the reel started going the opposite direction than I was used too.  What is going on.  It still hasn't registered in my naive little brain.  I grabbed the reel to stop it going in the wrong direction when I look up and there's a fish going ballistic, thrashing on the surface.  I thought I was in the Twilight Zone or something.  The fish stopped thrashing on the surface and the rod went back to how it was meant to be.  It was literally only a few seconds but it felt like ages.  I'd just hooked my first fish and hadn't realised until it was over!

That really got me determined.  If I could hook one, I'm bound to be able to hook another, eventually?  It did happen again.  A few weeks later in the month of October.  At the tail of a small pool with a good run of water through it, the rod went heavy again but I knew this time what it was.  I played the fish as I would have on my spinning rod, allowing it to take line when it wanted to run and keep the pressure on it as much as possible and I was able to land it.  A cock fish of around 8lb.  What made it extra special was that I'd got my first ever fly caught salmon on a fly that I had tied myself.  I felt 10 feet tall.

That was probably 1997 I think as it's the only salmon I ever landed on that rod.  In 1998 I was 18 years old and had bought my first brand new fly rod.  A 14ft Daiwa Whisker Fly.  That was when I really started to get interested in fly fishing and fly tying.

I've learned an awful lot since then and am still learning every season and long may it continue.


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