It is a bit blurry. I am trying to remember. To think. Did I miss the river season this much last winter, or the one before? I don’t think so. I think I have reached a new level of obsession. Perhaps.
Last week-end a mate and I fished a stillwater in the teeth of a wind that came straight off the snow. Part of the off-season scene, our lakes being open all year round. It was quite intense, but we caught fish. Strong silver bars of muscle, and all of them bigger than what we typically catch in a river.
But somehow the few days in the last week of the river season sit nearer in my memory than last week’s action.
A strange thing that. I mean, Sunday was epic, and we came back a little elated but somehow it is secondary to the river imagery in my brain. We had had a few blank days on the still waters and then Sunday was a slam dunk, but either which way, it is the rivers that still take both the hard disk space and the RAM.
Our last day on the uMngeni was a blank for both Richard and I, but it came tied to a sense of place that was and is, etched into our consciousness. Around every bend was a vista painted over last year’s on the canvas which dates back to the first time we were ever there. Every rock and reed was unconsciously (or was it consciously) compared to last time, the last flood, last season. I suppose our river trout lies are like mobile homes for Trout. They can move, sure, but its not like they move weekly, and the good spots are always taken by another Trout if one of them chooses to leave. Stillwater Trout are like the occupants of bar stools, or at best, hotel rooms. They will drift in for a beer. Stay a night perhaps, but then move on. Sunday’s hot spots, where we found the fish, have been empty on many a previous visit. Rivers aren’t like that.
Perhaps that is what gives each lie an identity. Each hole or current tongue or sliver of shaded water along a steep bank has a history of changing shape and depth and current, and each permutation is tied to a feint or wavering , or sometimes solid, memory of what fish came out of there. “Last season there was a beast in there, but it came off. The visit after than a tiny fish came hurtling out of there and smacked the fly before I could pull it out of the way”. “That one fish I got there was airborne from the moment I hooked it” and so on.
Certainly Rogan’s fish from Nuttall pool was one of those.
It was a Thursday. Mid morning. And the phone rang. It was Rogan. He was covering a conference just down the road from me. Sorry he hadn’t called ahead, but he thought it might end around 1:30pm, and he had thought to bring his fly rod along with him. Was I busy.
Of course I was busy. I had deadlines.
We arrived at the river a little after two thirty.
We walked down to the river along a track in the rank late-season grass which had been cut by the landowner with a tractor-mounted mower. Standing there in the short grass, we set about stringing rods before venturing into the sea of tall grass and black jacks, which would surely challenge our progress along the river for the next few hours. As we stood chatting, a fish rose just downstream of us. Then it rose again.
The third time, I saw its maw, and determined that this was no tiddler. Then it rose, again and again. Now, you need to understand : uMngeni Trout don’t do that. Not normally anyway. The more typical encounter, especially with a better fish, is that it will saunter out and ambush something once. Twice if you are lucky. Usually, a fish that rises repeatedly is a smaller one, and those are far from common anyway. So now you have the background, you will understand the level of excitement which came over us.
This was Nuttall’s Pool. I have caught some good Trout there in the past, but I think all of them have been on a sunk fly, cast up from the tail of the pool, where there is a spot into which you can wade to deliver a cast up the middle of the river. It is a tight spot, and with the need to aim a back cast into a narrow lane between the willow beside the angler, and the tall grass on the bank on the other side, there is only one angle of attack. As a result you can wade in and try a dozen casts and then it all seems a bit repetitive and you are forced to retreat with a feeling that you have been thwarted in your attempt to do this water justice. But this fish was in a different spot. It was higher up, and closer to our side of the river, and there was enough open bank below the spot to contemplate creeping along the steep side below us, and attempting a throw from there.
Once we had postulated this line of attack, and the fish had risen a dozen heart-stopping times more, Rogan was sent in to do his best.
“Don’t stuff it up!” I said, as he shot me a cynical smirk and disappeared into the tall vegetation to circle around into position. Rogan approached this fish like a world-class sniper, going in well downstream and in the tallest of the scrub and bushes. He inched forward as he made the first few casts, then a little more boldly as he worked out how far he could throw the fly from that angle. I recorded him with my phone, delivering a David Attenborough-like narration of his attempts. “He’s in the zone” I crooned as the fly went over the Trout’s position yet again.
Eventually the fish took the fly as we so hoped it would.
As he released it Rogan said “OK, we can go home now.” I think that speaks volumes about the impact of catching a well-stalked Brown Trout on a dry fly in a river. The man’s steps were light and in the next hour or two, he settled into a “who cares if I catch another one” mode.
On the stillwater last Sunday, the light was fading and I had caught what should have been my fill, but I was thinking to myself “Just one more”.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my stillwater fishing, but there is a nuance to the river experience which is hard to describe, but which is definitely there.
I think you could call it a river obsession.
48 days to go until opening day.
