The Apprentice
- Details
- Published on Thursday, 03 January 2008 05:15
- Written by Ian Cramman
It’s a number of years now since Tam moved to fish the 'big waters in another place’. Occasionally though when on the water and in reflective mood I still think of him and my early fly fishing apprenticeship.
I grew up around the sea and boats. The old man was a skipper and once a year his firm would organise a fishing day for all the families on one of the boats. That was where I met big bad Tam for the first time. I was a ten-year-old, busy fishing away trying to win the junior competition sweepstakes (worth about a fiver if I remember correctly). I was doing quite well, taking the odd codling or flattie and well ahead of my nearest competition. And Tam? Well Tam was for’ard, toe to toe with one the boat's crew members; drunk, bloodied, belligerent and trying to punch the aforementioned Joe’s head clean off.
It was later that day that my old man agreed with a, by now cleaned up, Tam that he would take me off flyfishing some time. Being mad keen on fishing and new to the fly fishing side I readily agreed – I would have gone off with Count Dracula himself if he knew some good waters and had a car! Now this may all seem strange but you’ve got to remember that this was the same parent that used to hand me and my younger brother over each summer to the skipper of the boat that was heading off for the longest time the furthest away from port. The fact that our boats were often steaming to the Hebrides full of Royal Marines, SBS or some other bunch of paid killers on manoeuvres illustrates my point. In this I’m reminded of another seafaring parent, Commander Walker, and his famous telegram about his ‘sprogs’ at the start of the children’s book “Swallows and Amazons” - "Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown." In fact, the old man’s a shrewd judge of character and had known Tam many years. Despite all evidence to the contrary he knew that Tam would reliably return with ‘son number one’ intact from any such excursion.
So, soon after I started my apprenticeship under the beady and unforgiving gaze of Tam and his inseparable fishing side-kick Jim. Over the next few years (until that whole girls, booze and face full of zits thing started to flare-up) there’d be the occasional terse call which went something along the following lines:-
“Is that you Ian?”
“Yes. Hello Tam”
“Right. Fishing Saturday morning. Be outside the house at six.” [click of phone being put down]
You were then either there at six on the dot to go to somewhere you hadn’t a clue about or you didn’t go. When you went on the magical mystery tour it could be as close as a local moorland lochan or river, over to Loch Leven (always a favourite) or some far-away Highland river or Loch.
Being the apprentice around this pair was not the easiest of things as there was little quarter allowed for callow youth or inexperience. I well remember my first trip to ‘The Loch’; It had been a slow day but Jim caught a real beauty of a Loch Leven trout mid-morning. It was somewhere between 3 to 4 pounds of the kind of silvery perfection in trout form that only Leven could produce. That made and finished Jim’s day and he immediately sat down, set his rod aside, brought a bottle of the good stuff out of his bag and proceeded to get gloriously and quietly drunk – day over! Tam and me had just a fish each and Tam was reasonably happy as his was larger at a pound and a half to mine of just under the pound. Then, close to the end of the day I hooked something BIG on my bob fly just off one of the smaller islands. This was a seriously large fish and I was playing it for what seemed like an age before I could get it anywhere near the boat. I was sure that it would have beaten Jim’s earlier beauty by miles and now Tam wasn’t happy. He was always more than a wee bit competitive and the thought of me and Jim going home with a big fish each to his more modest effort was obviously gnawing away at him something chronic! Anyway, the monster was tiring and I finally had it on the surface drawing it towards Tam’s waiting net when it gave a final kick and the hook-hold gave way. I ended up with a load of flyline, nylon and flies round my head while the fish slowly (excruciatingly) slipped into the depths just out of net-reach. Nearly thirty years later I still have cold-sweat nightmares about that moment but back then all I could hear was Tam raucous laughter. He laughed until he almost cried and then whistled all the way back to the jetty and all because an 11 year old had lost the fish of a lifetime. No, it wasn’t always an easy apprenticeship! 
But he did teach me a lot. He took me river fishing for the first time, showing me how to read a river and the lies. Controlling and fishing from a drifting boat was another of the ‘black arts’ he indoctrinated me into. Then there were his secret Highland lochans full of big trout which he’d describe in great detail but never name and we never seemed to get round to fishing! His style of fishing was often rigid and old fashioned yet still amazingly effective; He fished with the same old style traditional patterns year after year and my ‘new’ style buzzers, nymphs and odd things with foam and deer hair were met with snorts of derision. His river fishing was always wet-fly down and across and distance casting entailed laying the line down on the water between shoots instead of false casts. But he caught fish and plenty of them and seemed to have an intuitive connection with them and the style, depth and speed of retrieve they required on any given day.
Tam had his demons though and I’d sometimes overhear my folks saying that he had gone on another three-day bender, that his missus was going mad with worry not knowing where he was or that he’d turned up somewhere in a real state. These were the times when you didn’t go fishing with him much and things clearly weren’t so good with Tam. In this too I guess I learned from him – but more in the ‘what not to do’ kind of way.
After a few years of fishing on and off with Tam and Jim I started to drift away from fishing - like I say with the call of other interests. I did, however, get to fish one more time with him, some years after the ‘apprenticeship’ and not so long before he passed on. It was mid winter and I was back at home for a short visit. Tam was going spare in the closed season and somehow we decided that a day after stocked rainbows was justified. We had a good day on an Ayrshire water in bright but very cold conditions with the fishing just difficult enough to make it rewarding. The photo here is from that day and is, I think, the only one I have of Tam. He’s fishing into the setting sun wading in the frigid waters while the banks are already starting to frost up. It kind of sums him up – he always fished hard from the first minute until the last whatever the conditions. Always uncompromising.
Cheers Tam –I learned a lot.
Ian Cramman was born in Helensburgh in 1970 and first picked up a fishing rod shortly thereafter. His interest in fly fishing started as a child living in Kyle of Lochalsh and shows little signs of diminishing after nearly thirty years of obsession bordering on mania. Mainly based overseas these days, Ian tries to get back to the North West Highlands as regularly as he can. However, he can often be found wandering the shorelines of muddy lakes and rivers in strange out of the way parts of the world, fly-rod in hand, vainly pretending to be in Assynt to the bemusement of any passing locals!