28 April News/Editorial
“Not a touch; 4 at Junction one of 34lbs” said the lunchtime text on Saturday. If early accounts are true, fresh but unable to survive its capture, the 34 lber had swallowed the lure, a Flying C.
Ah! Until that last bit, for me, it was unreservedly good news. Would I want to catch a 34lb sea liced springer? Er, yes! On a Flying C? Er, no. I then thought what an ignoble end for such a magnificent fish. I imagine many others will have similar thoughts.
Now, none of us can help having immediate thoughts and reactions to events, it is the way we are. Of course, mine will be unwelcome both for the Junction boatmen, without question Tweed’s finest, and for the lucky angler. To them it will seem like sour grapes. But even on reflection, I haven’t changed my mind. I attach no blame to anyone; it is the boatman’s job to catch fish, it is up to others to set the rules.
And it could have happened here, and then some element of personal guilt would have been added to the mix of emotions.
Two further thoughts; first, water and weather on Saturday were perfect fly conditions, the gales of earlier in the week gone. Secondly, Flying Cs are too easy for fish to swallow when everything has to go back.
Maybe they had tried fly first before the Flying C took to the water.
My hands are not clean either, in my view too much spinning went on here last week, ok it was intolerably windy and having mainly one bank, casting a fly was next to impossible for a few days, but even so.
For there is something soulless and depressingly mechanical about it, skill almost entirely absent, the immediate contact is flat/dull, not electric like the pull on a fly, and the fight is poor, like winching in an animate log. You think I don’t know what I am talking about? Look at my fishing book, I did a lot of it in my youth.
There is also something curiously illogical about allowing spinning in the spring for fish we must preserve and have to release, and not in the autumn when you can kill whatever you like so long as it is not gravid or “unclean”.
My critics will say such things as “elitist”, “it is all the same to the fish, it doesn’t care if it is a spinner or a fly in its mouth” and “just as many fish swallow a fly as a spinner”, and even “it is easier for children to fish with a spinner” (I have some sympathy with this last one), and we could argue on those lines all day long.
My solution? No longer shackled by the need for consensus among the Tweed Commissioners, I would ban spinning altogether. Like 100% catch and release, it is the same for everyone and it will be accepted. Will it happen? No. The boatmen are almost universally against any further (prawns and worms have already gone) spinning restriction, and the argument will go from proprietors and agents that it will adversely affect lettings. The latter was trotted out by those who opposed 100% catch and release, they were incorrect then as they would be for a spinning ban. I have more sympathy with the boatman, for it is their job to catch their clients fish.
If we did not already have fly only from 15th September, would “fly only” from that date get through a popular vote now? No, my guess is the boatmen would be against it and proprietors and agents would say it would affect lettings…………
I could, of course, impose a sort of UDI here, but not easy when the opposition are lobbing bombs in and our rods asking “why can they spin, when we can’t?”
But there really is less need for spinning now that fly kit, weight forwards, shooting heads and all that jazz both get down to where the fish are in all conditions and, by casting in moderately competent hands, the line takes off towards the far bank like an Exocet missile on heat.
Let me quote from Luke Jennings’ excellent book “Blood Knots” about fishing with Robert Nairac, infamously killed by the IRA . ”I understand now why Robert was absolutist in his method, and why he spoke of honour and the dry fly in the same sentence. Because the rules we impose on ourselves are everything. It’s not a question of making things harder, but of a purity of approach without which success has no meaning….. and that the fiercest joy is to be a spectator of your own conduct and find no cause for complaint.”
The Flying C is off the scale, the wrong way, in meeting that code of conduct; no “purity of approach” there, unless winches are your thing!
But then maybe the early accounts of the 34 lber’s capture are not true; I hope so. Perhaps, after all, it was caught on a No 6 Blue charm and a sink tip; somehow that would make all the difference.
Last week Malcolm persuaded one of our rods to try a floater with a skimmer/hitch, despite quite a big and cold water. Half way down the Cauld there was a watery sucking sound, a sort of slurp, as the skimmer disappeared and a springer subsequently landed and released.
Now that is something. Even Robert Nairac would have approved.
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