9 October 2016 News/Editorial
What follows is quite long, and whether you agree with me on the issue of spinning or not, I hope you can take 5 minutes of your time to read it.
At least then, even if you still disagree with me, you may at least begin to understand why.
Following the admitted rant against spinning in these pages of a few weeks ago, and now the formation of Tweed Flyfishing Preferred (TFP) and a letter asking the 40 main Tweed stem beats to join an association which will limit spinning, it is maybe worth an attempt at explaining, in less rant-like language, why I ,and so many others like me, will only fish for salmon with a fly, dislike spinning, do not own a spinning rod, and would rather not fish at all, than resort to spinning.
High risk, but here goes.
It is not good enough just to point at the obvious deficiencies of the only other (non fly) legal method, spinning, viz it is mechanical, requiring minimal physical input from the fisherman, a flick of the wrist sends the lure far on its way; it lacks any element of skill; the rod is stubby and unresponsive, meaning that the initial contact with a salmon is dull and unexciting, and the subsequent tussle is akin to using a winch for a reel and a shortish unyielding stick for a rod; the lures are large pieces of metal, wood or plastic with charmless names such as rapala, flying condom, toby spoon etc.
In personal terms, from those far off days when I used to spin, I never caught a salmon I can either recall or was proud to have caught, by spinning. There was no sense of achievement, of having fairly outwitted a noble foe, in marked contrast to those I now try to catch on a fly.
And what of the fish, the salmon, which has journeyed 60 miles downstream, as a smolt, to the sea, after spending one, two or three years in the river as a juvenile? It then travels 1,000s of miles into the North Atlantic, feeding all the while, building up its strength and its size for what is, most probably, its last adventure, again after one, two or three years, back to where the river flows into the sea, then up the river, past nets and rods trying to catch it, to its native spawning ground.
Some of those who would catch this magnificent, noble survivor, for not many survive, would do so with a flying condom or a rapala with a method requiring no skill whatever. It is an ignoble way for such a magnificent animal to be dragged to the bank.
Every salmon deserves more than that.
They “spun for fun” in bygone days, especially in late February and March, before switching to greased lines and small flies in April. But that is no excuse for modern spinners; they didn’t have the kit in those days, today’s fly rods, lines, flies etc being of a wholly different order of usability as compared to those heavy duty cane and greenhart monsters of old. They only had one fly line, which they greased in the summer and ungreased in the autumn and early spring.
They also fished to kill, some to eat but mainly to sell, they killed all but 100% of what they caught. Whereas we now release over 80% of what we catch, we fish for sport and very little else, and that, most would say, puts an onus on us to be more “sporting”, because there is nothing remotely “hunting” about it i.e. our own survival or profit, resulting either from eating or selling what we catch, is just about the last thing on our minds when we go fishing.
Enough, for now, of the case against spinning.
For the case must be made, in addition, based on the positives of fishing with a fly, not simply the deficiencies of, and comparisons with, spinning.
That there is skill in fly fishing cannot be doubted. Although anyone can, on a good day, catch a salmon by fly if the salmon are really on, not only will the good fly fisherman catch more, he/she will catch them when the unskilled angler will not. The expert will cast further, will mend the line or not depending on how he/she reads the water, the depth, the temperature, the speed of the water all having a bearing on how any particular pool is fished.
Nowadays, he/she will have myriad flies, lines allowing easy access to whatever depth the fly is deemed to be best fished, and wonderful carbon fibre rods, weighing less than nothing, for every occasion. Nor is expense an excuse, for you can buy salmon fly rods, reels, lines, flies etc for the cost of a few tickets for games at Old Trafford or Ibrox. Some would make the “fly only” thing elitist, as if spinning is the last refuge of the common man. This is tosh, not only because fly kit is very affordable (e.g. good second hand carbon rods cost almost nothing) but also because the spinner’s beloved flying condom is not exactly cheap and invariably ends up on the bottom of the river, then requiring an immediate expensive re-load.
Salmon flies have magical names, if modern versions not quite as magical as the old Silver Wilkinsons, Blue Charms, Yellow Garrys and Green Highlanders of old, and salmon rods and reels, even the carbon and more silent versions respectively, are things of beauty, especially when playing a salmon, the wonderful curve of a 15ft rod and the tip very visibly reacting to every move of the salmon, still fighting in the depths.
And then there is the initial contact, the electric shock of the pull, of a different order to the sterile and sudden emotionless jerk which is all you get when spinning.
Whether it is the long slow pull, seemingly lasting for seconds, of a big cock fish on a sunk line in cold water, or the gentle draw away of the line at a No 10 Cascade on a floating line in summer, or the slurp, barely visible, of the riffle hitch as it is sucked down from the surface, or the slashing take of the aggression at a Sunray Shadow…...they are all pulsatingly exciting and the memory of them is what keeps us all coming back.
To experience them again.
But above all, fly fishing is difficult, just casting into a gale, or even a breeze, is no easy matter, the sheer physical effort of it all a crucial part of investing so much of yourself in just making contact with that unseen creature lurking in the depths.
There is real artistry in watching a good fly fisherman working his/her way down a pool; by contrast, not only is spinning not remotely artistic, it is almost perfunctory, no more than workmanlike in casting action, and positively brutal in employing weaponry commonly described by those on the receiving end, often on the other bank, as being “bombarded”, as the metal sploshes into the water.
And when it works, when you actually succeed in catching a salmon on a fly, the essential element is that there is satisfaction, of a job well done, of a noble foe outwitted in a fair contest.
For it has to be difficult, it has to be “fair”, whatever that means, but somehow most of us know instinctively what is and is not “fair”. If it fails the difficult and “fair” tests, then there is no lasting value in it.
“Not spinning” involves being “fair” to your intended quarry, and therefore deliberately catching fewer salmon than you otherwise might, and to that extent it is a sacrifice.
Or is it?
Is there any such thing as “entitlement to catch a salmon”, for only if there is entitlement can there be any sacrifice by denying the possibility of catching something with a “non-fly” method.
I believe there is no such thing as “entitlement” to catch a salmon, no matter how much you have paid for your fishing. Catching a salmon is a privilege, not an unqualified entitlement resulting from paying money for the right to fish.
And finally...
….abject failure in trying to explain all this duly achieved, as expected at the outset, I will leave the last words to a superb passage in Luke Jennings book, “Blood Knots” and how Robert Nairac, famously killed by the IRA and whose body has still never been found, viewed fishing dry fly as the only way to fish for trout, the equivalent in every way to fishing “fly only” for salmon.
“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, especially in the face of nature. It’s not a question of wilfully making things harder, but of a purity of approach without which success has no meaning. And this, ultimately, was his lesson: that the fiercest joy is to be a spectator of your own conduct and find no cause for complaint.”
Only the purity of fly fishing for salmon gives me, and so many others, the fiercest joy.
And gives us no cause for complaint, as spectators of our own conduct.
It is why we do it and love it…….
……...and why we so dislike the, in our view, distinctly unlovely and worthless alternative.
Some will, no doubt, think all this is no more than pious humbug.
Ah well.
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