Fishing Memories
- Details
- Published on Monday, 28 May 2007 14:48
- Written by John Gray
I suspect that there are more than a few of you who, like me, have developed a healthy addiction to that modern phenomenon known as “The Fishing Forum”…. a great way to spend a winter’s night when you know you should really be doing something more productive…. but still far more worthwhile, far more entertaining than watching the telly!
A curious member of one such forum recently posed the question, “What was your best ever fishing day?” Now this is the sort of forum post guaranteed to evoke an enthusiastic response, the very stuff of internet forums…. oh, alright then, fora, for those of a pedantic disposition.
I, like most of us, have a fine collection of fishing memories and I hope to find room for many more before I’m done. Even so, in asking that we should choose just one special day out of a lifetime of such special days, the questioner set a most difficult task. So, to assist in this most pleasant of exercises, I poured, as a source of inspiration, a generous glass of fine Scotch whisky…. Teacher’s Highland Cream if I recall, for those who take an interest in such things…..and set about the task in hand.
So where was I to begin? …. a mild summer night with a steady breeze and a good wave, fishing the “fly and bubble” from the shore of a Scottish loch, lighting roll-ups from the dying embers of a smoky camp fire and waking, shivering, in the cold light of dawn to a breakfast of tinned mandarin oranges and cold cream of chicken soup?…. or a warm July afternoon walk over a heather moor to a lonely west highland loch to take a fine basket of wild trout that took a fancy for a size fourteen Cinnamon and Gold …. a black August night on the River Endrick when I took four sea trout in four casts, all from the same lie, the heaviest a fish of eight pounds…. a moment on the river bank admiring the beauty of my first salmon, a grilse of five pounds or so taken on a size two gold Mepps spoon, again from the Endrick, on a falling spate…. a chance evening encounter with a shining silver sewin in a secret pool on the little River Cothi….. it registered nine pounds on Mrs Morgan’s scales the next morning…. ah yes, what other pastime could reward us with such wonderful memories!
A most pleasant way, indeed, to pass a winter’s evening….. sat by a roaring fire, a warming glass of the finest amber stuff in hand, recalling past glories. But wait, what’s this? Other memories begin to intrude, like a black cloud, on this rosy picture of the past…. twinges of disappointment, dismay, depression…. of loss. Ah yes, there’s no getting away from it, some of the most vivid of our fishing memories are of times when things didn’t go quite according to plan…. and they will come back, now and again, to haunt us. Now I, like all fishermen, have lost my fair share of fish. Every so often, against the odds, a hooked fish will win its frantic fight for freedom. Often there is little to be done to prevent such losses. The fish simply get the better of you..... a poor hook hold, a hidden snag, an acrobatic leap..... and they are gone. Those lost fish are no great cause for regret, they are just part of the game, par for the course…. you win some, you lose some. You shrug a stoic shoulder and get back to the business in hand…. well, maybe not if you have just lost a ten pound sea trout at two in the morning of your last night on the river after a hard and fishless week. Still, c’est la vie. No, it is the fish that should have been landed that are truly regrettable, the fish lost through downright negligence, the ones you can’t put down to good old misfortune, the ones that take full advantage of some unforgivable oversight, in preparation or planning, on the part of the angler and escape to fight another day, leaving the angler to curse his stupidity.
Most of us, I would guess, have some such sorry experiences indelibly etched on our angling memories. How could I, for instance, ever forget my elation, all those years ago, on hooking my first ever salmon - on a Mepps spoon on the River Leven - and, moments later, my despair on winding in a slack line with nothing but a curly bit at the end where my ineptly tied knot had untied itself at the swivel.... or the giant sea trout which long ago took my fly, fished unconventionally from the shore of a once famous loch in the fading light of a summer evening, and pulled a bit too hard against the tightly set clutch of the Mitchell 304, snapping the 5 pound Platil nylon like thread - even a careless young poacher did not deserve such a painful punishment.... or the sickening ping of the twelve pound cast as I applied an all too hasty finger to the reel rim in a panic-induced attempt to halt that double figure Endrick salmon in its headlong rush towards the face of the dam.... or the unseen leviathan which rose from the murky depths of a rocky Solway shoreline to take the mackerel strip fished from an old and long neglected reel loaded with rotten nylon. To this day, I still wonder what kind of monster that was.
So many memories! I wouldn’t change even the most painful of them. But what, you might ask, is the best of all? Well, that’s easy…. of all my fishing memories there is none more exquisite, none more indelibly etched in the memory, than that first illicit sea trout taken on a summer night forty years ago from a river which was once the best in the world.
John Gray has always been a keen angler, giving up the security of a teaching job in 1983 to open a tackle shop in Kilsyth, which he ran for twenty years.
Thoughts on game fish brown trout fishing, a pleasant recreation; salmon fishing, a bloody hard day’s work; sea trout fishing, a glorious obsession
Fondest Memory
Of a time when sea trout swam in our north western rivers and lochs.
John is now fascinated by computers and the power of the internet, and sees Fish Wild! as an example of the worldwide web at its very best. He is currently developing a new website, www.trout-salmon-fishing.com, which aims to provide information on wild brown trout, salmon and sea trout fishing opportunities in Scotland. He would be grateful for any information, which might be usefully added to the website, particularly about reasonably priced, publicly accessible fishing in Scotland. Fishing hotels, tackle shops and angling clubs are also invited to submit details for free inclusion. Readers will find contact details on the website.