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The con - Part 14

Started by otter, March 22, 2013, 01:41:04 PM

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otter

Not an inch forward did he move, making one cast after another, feeling the flex of the rod, watching the fly line unfurl. Soon enough he felt a rhythm beginning to develop. Only then did he start to fan out his casts, the flies landing more or less where he intended them to go. Right he thought, James P, you are ready to hunt. He was positioned at the tail of the pool, on his side shallows ran right up to the neck some one hundred yards ahead, on the far side deeper faster water.

Many anglers would immediately turn to the more productive water out in the stream, not he, he probed the shallows with carefully placed casts, dead drifting but occasionally leading the flies, pausing at the end of each drift allowing the flies to rise as he slowly raised the rod into the next cast. The flies were never more than three rod lengths away from him. He had settled on this distance long ago, believing that it was optimum for control for this type of water. In very fast water he often reduced this to one rod length.. Off course paramount to his method was stealth, one bad cast or careless wading and any trout within range would be spooked.

Wading slowly out into the stream, he searched the edge of the faster water, watching the point where the leader entered the water. He struggled to see what he wanted to see, confirming his fear that his eyesight would not be good enough. He realised that he had two choices, laser eye surgery or a large dry above the nymphs. He tied on a new dropper three foot above the top nymph and taking the bushy dry from the cap he tied it on. He liked this setup later in the season when the trout had every reason to feed high in the water column, but for deep nymphs he would not have the same control.

He stripped off another few yards of fly line and began casting, immediately mending line as the flies entered the water, tracking the bobbing dry fly, watching its every movement, ensuring that the flies drifted as naturally as possible. Just ahead he knew to be a good spot in the shallows, a small trough a foot deeper than the surrounding water. He inched forward, focusing all his concentration on this one place, visualising the cast that he would make.

Getting into position some five yards in stream of the lie, he was crouching as low as he could and delivered the dry and nymphs three yards upstream of it. A small upstream mend and the dry drifted with little drag. He retrieved the slack line, tracking back with the rod tip, the take must surely come. It did, the dry paused and even before it had fully dipped under he had lifted into the trout. He was more than surprised to find that his net was less than adequate and had to lead the trout into the shallows and beached it.

At this point you should be reading a wonderful narrative, a poetic description of a speckled brown trout of about three pounds weight, deceived and outwitted by a perfect imitation of a nymph. Instead we turn to the servant of God, a mighty wordsmith.

'Bloody Stockie, drooping belly,
tattered fins, off little beauty,
sterile clown, unwelcome freeloader,
in my stream how dare you swim.

Squatter trout, you took my fly,
nose to tattered tail I'll not bother measure.
If no more I catch, this God given day,
a blank, my fishing diary shall display.

Squatter trout, of un-natural flesh,
I dispatch you now, so take your rest,
To Mick Casey's pig pen, next you go,
to swim in pig muck, where no rivers flow.

When Egan next, a rasher eats,
I pray to God, he gasps in pain,
a squatters fish bone, his tongue impaled.
Stupid Egan with your stupid Bees,
by season end, I'll bring you to your knees, Amen.

A further three stocked trout came to hand and all three were dispatched and treated with the same disdain. Replacing the heavy nymph with a much lighter one, he fished only the shallows. Just before he came to the neck of the pool the dry was taken and without any fuss a wild trout of eight inches came to a wetted hand and carefully returned. He watched it slowly vanish into the stream.

He stopped at Casey's before going home, handed Mick a bagful of heathen trout and told him to feed them to the pigs.
Now, that he fully understood the gravity of the situation, the more stubborn he became. His thirst for revenge on Jimmy Egan was now unquenchable.

to be continued

scotgillespie

There was a young man called Egan,
Who thought he'd chuck bows in a burn,
But by the time he got there,
A Father was there,
Making sure be begot what he began...

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