12 February 2017 News/Editorial
I normally avoid tales of fish captures, but what follows is an example of why we all continue to fish. Despite its endless disappointments, just occasionally something extraordinary happens…….even in February.
It was last week, Tuesday 7th February 2017.
Jane saw Graham walking down to fish at 11 am. The next time he was seen was around 12.30 at the fishing hut, shaking visibly, having walked the 10 minutes back from the Glide. Malcolm and Paul had been rowing the other rods for the morning in the Learmouth and Cauld Streams respectively
Graham had 5 casts in the Glide in that 1 ½ hours.
On the 5th, just where you would expect a pull, opposite the point on the other side, his line stopped, followed by 10 minutes of nothing much, except something solid, immoveable and unmoving, attached to his fly.
His fly was Willie Gunn-like, with a touch more shrimp fly in it, tied for Graham by Colin Pringle, a medium sized tube with a treble hook attached. The line, described to me by Graham, but too complex for my feeble brain, was equivalent to a Wetcel 2. His nylon 15lb Ultragreen Maxima. The water temperature was 38F, the height on our guage 2ft, perfect, but with more water on the way for the afternoon
Graham is a Yorkshireman, ascetic in appearance, immaculately dressed, a quiet, unassuming, unfailingly polite and charming man. He is a fly fisherman through and through, and very good at it. Above all, a measure of the man, he will be embarrassed at me writing this.
After the 10 minute stalemate, Graham’s fish moved downstream, into the tail of the Glide where the water quickens as it falls away into the next pool, Cornhill Bend. Danger lurks there in the form of rapids and submerged rocks, so he fought to stop it, twice he thought it would go down when both times it decided against. He saw the tail three times. He knew he was attached to something unusual.
He lost all track of time as the fight continued, trying to be tough on it but not too tough, and as he began to win, the gently sloping gravel/shingle became the problem. An easy place to beach normal fish, with something so large, every time he brought it in, it touched the bottom, turned sideways and then, with the current acting on the whole flank, meant that he had to let it go, and try all over again to beach it.
Heart-stopping minutes followed, so near to success, but so far.
Eventually, he had the huge fish on its side, in the water, where he unhooked it, and his immediate thought was for its safety. It was a magnificent sea liced cock fish. Turning it upright, he held it face on to the current until he could feel it recovering, only then thinking he must measure it. Laying it on its side, half covered in water, he laid his rod alongside it and scratched the mark on his rod opposite the fish’s nose.
He righted it, and then he allowed it to swim, quietly and sedately, as big fish do, away.
Back at the hut, Graham still shaking, Malcolm measured the distance from Graham’s rod butt to the scratched mark, after reducing it by half an inch or so to be on the prudent side.
It was 43 inches long, or 109 cm.
As Graham has said since “I know for sure how long it was, I will never know exactly what it weighed”.
Coincidentally, the only 30 lber (just over) I ever caught is preserved for posterity in our hut, beautifully done by Ronnie Glass. It was killed, weighed and measured.
It was 107cm, slightly less long than Graham’s.
By looking at it, Graham says that my 30 lber was thicker than his, on the other hand mine was not a sea-licer and slightly less long. Most would concede that a sea-liced springer will weigh more, being firmer and denser, than the precisely equivalent non sea-liced autumn fish, because the latter are softer and closer to spawning.
The Tweed chart would put a 43 inch/109cm fish at 30.2lbs, but has two crucial caveats. First, weight depends on the condition of the fish, and, secondly, accuracy of the chart is much less for fish over 40 inches.
We are torn, are we not, for wanting certainty with the size/weight of big fish in these days of catch and release….torn between wanting that absolute certainty, but not wanting to kill magnificent springers such as Graham’s, or indeed any springers, so precious are they?
The battery of Graham’s smartphone was uncharged as a result, he thinks, of the hotel cleaner having turned it off.
But would it have helped, could he have taken a decent photograph while, on his own, hanging onto such a monster, trying to unhook it safely, trying to save its life, trying to measure it?
He might, which is a shame because it would have been something for him to have, a permanent personal memento.
But a photo, as we know from photographed big fish in the past, does nothing to measure its true weight.
We have put it in the book at 30lbs, but the smart money is that it was anywhere between 28 lbs and 32 lbs.
We will never know.
It is a fishing story of epic proportions, and of course there are those sceptics who say “on his own, no pictures, not weighed…..we’ve heard it all before”.
But if they met Graham, as I have, and saw for themselves the undoubted emotion and veracity underlying his recounting of what happened last Tuesday morning, they would believe every single small detail of it.
As I do.
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