On Fishing. Brian Clarke

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СКАЧАТЬ fish is. This is hunting, one on one.

      Now! I let go the fly, flick the line into a low, controlled backcast and flick it forward again. It straightens – and the trout does an astonishing thing. It bolts. It bolts, just like that, leaving a little puff of silt drifting down on the current, as if to prove it had been there, once. I’m stunned. How could it? How could it have known? What had I done – or left undone?

      I’m also not surprised. This is the way this fishing is. It’s the difficulty that’s the great attraction. I smile, say ‘well done, fish’ out loud and without embarrassment and move on.

      The morning dissolves. Other patches of gravel, other sepia shades, other sudden boltings and compact dispersals. One fish, pricked and lost. More than two hours gone in a kind of limbo. I’ve come 250 yards, have maybe 50 more to go before the sedges and the rushes make progress impossible. Now I’m looking at another fish, the one that looks like a tear-drop because I’m right behind it, looking along its fuselage tail-edge on. He’s in the gap between the upstream edge of the first weed bed and the tail-end of the one just above. He’s a couple of feet down and just three rod-lengths away.

      Time for another change. I’ve been ringing the changes all morning, constantly switching the size and weight of the nymph according to the fish and its depth and the speed of the current. I’ve been shortening and lengthening the leader according to how exposed I am to the wind and the place in the water where I have to put the fly down and yes, I can see I need another change, now. I take off the size 14 pheasant-tail, rummage through the fly-box and take out a size 12 shrimp, one of those tied with pale green silk, my colour-code for three turns of lead wire under the dressing.

      The buzzards are back again. So are the crows. A squadron of swifts is on its way back to Africa. The high grasses thresh and the reed-mace waggles.

      Being sheltered here, chest-deep behind this huge bed of starwort is like standing in an aquarium. The surface is as still as glass and the leader’s drooped across it. I can see the surface tension curving in along the nylon, exaggerating its width. It’s putting a crack in the mirror. Beneath it, far down in the deep, green cave, first two minnows, then a few, then maybe a dozen come out of the weed-wall on one side and sidle across to the other, right in front of my waders, showing no sense of my presence. It’s a God-moment, looking down like this. Such tiny, other-lived lives. They’re so separate and contained, close and towered-over, so vulnerable and unaware. So watched. Is something up there, watching me?

      No need to cast. I let the shrimp fall into the water, wriggle a couple of yards of line out through the top ring and let the current to my right carry them downstream behind me. Then I bring the rod forward, the leader straightens over the fish – and the wind blasts it to one side.

      The trout does nothing. I flick the shrimp again and the same thing happens, but this time the trout turns a fraction towards it before resuming its line. It may have seen the fly, the leader going down, a herringbone of drag, I don’t know what. But it certainly saw something. I change pattern, put on a little black-hackled beetle with a little more lead in it. The lead, if I get the cast right and the wind plays the game, will help the leader straighten and give me the entry I want. I pause for a while, waiting for a break between the gusts. My leader puts a crack in the mirror again. Another troupe of minnows. The buzzards and the rooks are back. Again, somewhere, the coot creaks. Creak on, coot.

      This time as I cast, I check the line as the leader straightens and the momentum of the weighted nymph loops it suddenly forward and down. The little fly makes a hole in the water and it sinks at once, taking a foot of leader straight down with it. Perfect. A fast sink entry, right for line, right for depth. As the fly’s about to pass the fish I move the rod six inches and the nymph rises as though alive and trying to get away.

      Again, the inexplicable. The moment I move the nymph the trout hurls itself forward, smacking the fly so hard that the fish comes clean through the surface. I glimpse its head clearly, glimpse its open mouth and its eye, see the leader stab and I tighten. No contact. Nothing at all. How? How? More questions. No more answers than before. Take my weight on my left foot, lift my right, push against the weight of the weed and the water. Move on.

      Move on some more. Now I’m 20 yards from the end of the fishable water, the place where it becomes too deep to wade and where the sedges crowd in and make casting impossible. I’m also standing on a hump on the stream bed, which gives me more height and alters the angle of my view. I can see further from here.

      Upstream a couple of bushes and a tree are cutting out the surface glare and there, to the right, there’s a long patch of open water, really long, the biggest clear area I’ve seen all morning. It’s maybe eight or 10 yards long and a couple wide. A shaft of sunlight, the first of the day, lights it up as if an inspiration.

      Half way up, a shadow’s sidling sideways over the bottom. That’s a fish. So is that sepia brush-stroke to the right of it. Further over still, near the ranunculus, there’s a steady throb and pulse. A trout’s tail. Three fish together. Riches.

      The closest fish is the biggest, maybe a pounder and he’s in a crease on the bottom, a fast little run. I’ll aim to put the fly two or three yards beyond him and on his line. First, I’ll let it sink and trundle loosely back along the bottom. If he ignores that I’ll cast again and try inducement.

      I snip off the little beetle, knot on a size 12 shrimp tied with orange silk – my colour-code for eight turns of lead under the dressing – look up at the fish, look back at the shrimp and re-read the current. Hmmm. I snip the fly off again, fish a spool of nylon out and add two more feet to the leader. Now it’s maybe 11 feet long. Eight or nine have been tricky enough so far, but instinct and experience tell me this is what I need.

      Left foot planted and comfortable, right foot likewise. Stay still. Don’t take my eyes off the fish. Wait for a pause in the wind. Wait. Wait. The old world creeps up again, the forest’s silence enfolds. Any second now. Now! I slow the line as it zips through my left hand and the leader begins to unfurl. The heavy nymph straightens it, dives vertically over and goes in cleanly, right again for line, right again for depth.

      The trout scarcely moves. One moment he’s riding the water like a slim, tethered kite, the next he’s drifting marginally to one side, the next he’s back on line. It’s a subtle movement, scarcely perceptible, but I’m not fooled. I’ve seen that a thousand times. I didn’t see his mouth open but I know he has it, I know he has to have it and I tighten. The rod goes down, there’s a moment’s thrashing and splashing then he’s charging upstream, doubling back downstream and lodged deep in the weed to my right.

      Damn. It all happened in a flash. The only fish of the day and I could lose him in seconds. I wind down, lock tight and the little rod hoops. The weed surges and heaves but he won’t come clear.

      An old trick. I edge a little nearer, wind in as I go – and then let everything go slack. Sometimes, if you let everything go slack on a weeded fish, it will start to make its own way out. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes and then, suddenly, from directly behind him, I put maximum pressure on again. The rod jags, jags again, the starwort surges and he’s out, weed on the leader, weed over his head and eyes. He stops struggling, drifts towards me on the current, heavy and limp the way an unsighted fish always does. I bend, slip my hand under him and turn him upside down as I lift. Another old trick. He lies perfectly still the moment he’s belly-up, again as they so often do. Then I peel away the weed, slip out the barbless hook and look at him.

      He’s the colour of light honey and pure-white bellied. Red spots and black spots freckle his sides. Each fin is clean-edged and sun-shot and perfect. His pectoral fins are as big as paddles. His tail, for his size, is huge.

      What a privilege. Here I am alone in this wild, СКАЧАТЬ