20 December 2014
When I was a child, my bedroom lead off a small study in our rather strangely designed house. That study was like a staging post between two long passages. One passage lead to the rest of the bedrooms, and the other to the lounge , dining room and kitchen. In that study was a great big desk, at which my mother sat, with her “Facit” adding machine and did the farm accounts. She wound the handle vigorously, ran the lever across with gusto, and punched in numbers until the machine obliged with a delightful little ping, and she could write
The fishing club that I belong to has a very efficient web based booking system. It is all very slick. You log on with a password, tick little boxes, and when you are done it sends you an automated e-mail. Very functional. But back in the day, we had to deal with people! One club had a truly dear lady, whom one phoned at set times in the evening. She chatted away, and got to know each of the regular club members, at least in an “over the phone” kind of way. As a high school kid, my car owning
In Thomas McGuane’s wonderful book of the same name he writes “For the ardent fisherman, progress is toward the kinds of fishing that are never productive in the sense of the blood riots of the hunting-and-fishing periodicals.” That is a deep thought, and one that makes me feel a little better. Clearly I am progressing, because I am not catching a whole pile of fish! Of course I would like to catch some better sized fish, or a few more of them, but I will bow graciously to this “progress” that has been bestowed on me. The truth be told,
These things have started getting up my nose again. [vimeo 105912879 w=500 h=281] Anglers curse from Andrew Fowler on Vimeo.
We think our Great Dane rather dim, and more than a little quirky, when the only way he will cross the dining room, is in reverse with my daughter’s shirt in his mouth. But that is nothing. Let me tell you some crazy stuff about us fly-fishermen! I quite recently listened with care and respect, while a hatchery man told me that he doesn’t breed Brown Trout, because the Rainbow alevins, just gobble up all the Brown alevins within days of hatching. I have also heard it said, (More than once) that a float tube has an advantage over a
On Sunday I had one of those quiet days at home. After week-end, upon week-end of a days fishing plus a day of some other activity, I needed to re-group, and sort out my fishing tackle. Fly reels were turning up in cool-boxes in the kitchen, leaders in my briefcase, fly floatant smeared on my drivers license, that sort of thing. It was time to sort it all out. I also needed to empty the fly-patch, since I am sure I have been dropping flies off of there into bankside vegetation all over the province. So I emptied what was
As we steered across the vlei and ascended the slight rise on the Western side of the valley floor, the strong yellow rays of the sun lit the hill, and at its base the coruscating blue water came into view in a narrow strip. The light was brilliant in its clarity, but gentle in its insidious arrival, and soft in hue. The cold, on the other hand, was brutal and harsh. The puddles were iced on the way in and, but for the fact that there was no moisture in the air, there would have been a frost as severe
I often find that a thermometer is a poor measure of temperature, in terms of our experience of the fishing day. Leaving aside the wind chill factor, which we all know well, a thermometer reading tells very little about what it feels like to be out. Just the other morning, it was 13 degrees when I got up. On a winter’s morning, that is a very high overnight temperature, and one that on the face of it, should have the global warming guys saying “You see!”. But strangely it didn’t feel that warm at all. The thing is, that as