Zamalek and Butter Beans

I was standing in a fast flowing stretch of white water, “picking the pockets”. I had rigged up an 8 foot three weight with the new Rio Creek line which my wife just bought for me.
The hopper had been working well, with many fish coming up to it. I had been hooking half of them. Then I thought of something I heard in a flyfishing podcast about how true learning comes from changing from something that is working, to something else that may not work. As they put it ”trying not to catch fish”. It’s counter intuitive. I like it.
So I put it into practice and tied on a CDC and Elk. It was an almost white one, which doesn’t look anything like the colour of the caddis we get in these parts, but as my friend Ray says, at least we can see it. It does have a dark brown body, so maybe that is the important part….the part the fish sees.
Anyway…I lashed it on with my newfound Eugene-Bend knot, which so far has served me much better than the improved clinch which I have used for so many years, and I set to work.
I was targeting the smooth spots, where white water gave way to flat surfaces. They were still very fast flowing surfaces, and this ‘dusting’ practice required a flick of the fly every few seconds. The fly would sail down the slick, and then start skittering as drag set it. I would try throw a mini mend or lift the rod tip to dangle the fly. Anything to extend the drag free drift by a half second or so.
I stepped forward to another good looking run. As I had worked up this piece, I had often looked ahead, decided it was all white water here. ‘Time to move on’ I would say to myself…then take a few steps, say ‘hang on a second’ and take the fly from the keeper again. So progress was really slow. As it turned out, we did about 600 metres of river in near four hours of fishing. (and I did a lot of talking to myself). This run was one of those. As I stepped forward I reassessed and decided it had merit. I started casting again. If you could call it that. Flicking maybe.
On about the tenth flick, I got the seem just right and the fly drifted down closer to me, drag free all the way. You know what that looks like. It’s a minor victory. As it came towards me, in the flash of an eye, a decent Brown rose towards my fly, hesitated, then turned to follow the fly as though it had now been grabbed by a conviction that it needed to clobber it, and clobber it properly! Maybe it was repairing on its earlier indecision. It came straight towards me, and opened its mouth wide enough to have swallowed a lot more that just the fly. It was consumed by a hunger. It was a bit like my mate, who just that morning had greedily emptied way more than his portion of the breakfast Zamalek quart we were sharing, while I was off opening the gate.
But suddenly the fish made direct eye contact with me. It was as though it all happened in slow motion. Its mouth wide open, closing on the innocent little caddis. Greed in its eyes, focus at 7mm off its snout. And then in the blurry backdrop it sees this bloody great fisherman looking straight into its eyes.
Unlike my fishing pal, it decided on discretion over valor, and turning hard right, I saw its broad side as it dashed across the quickening flow in the tail of the pool. It was suspended in the crystal clear slick for a lot less than a moment, and then it was gone, and I was cursing.
#
A little further on, I concluded fishing another little slick. I had given it as many drifts as it deserved, and I had caught and released a lovely little Brown.

While I was deciding whether to reel in and skip the apparently entirely white water above, I threw the fly just a little less determinedly into a tiny patch of bubbles and detritus that was caught in an aimless patch of water. It was one of those spots where the water comes racing past a big boulder and then just in behind the boulder some of the water gets spat out, and dawdles like it doesn’t know where to go next. If it were a midlands river it would have had some foam and scum and more leaf matter in it. It was one of those places where, if you threw the fly in and lifted the rod tip, the fly would swirl there indefinitely.
I did that now. I tossed the fly in, reached forward and lifted most of the line off the water in front of me to prevent the fly being pulled away. Then I just guided the rod tip this way and that, in an attempt to float the fly over a variety of spots. One quickly learns that in this fast water, with its mysterious undercurrents, moving a drift an inch to the left or right means the difference between a fish and no fish.
This time it didn’t seem to make any difference. Or so I thought. But then, like an apparition, this Brown appears very very slowly from nowhere. It just kind of slunk in there when I wasn’t looking. Which is strange, because I was looking. I was looking intently, but I didn’t see it arrive. It just got there without arriving, if you know what I mean. Then it proceeded to turn on the caddis. But this fish didn’t just get an angle on the fly, swallow and leave. Not this one. Watching it was like watching my buddy eat his after-beer breakfast beans that morning. Just like he scraped the spoon languidly around the base of the can, to secure every last butter bean, this fish did about two hundred and seventy degrees. It just seemed to keep on turning, like it had all the time in the world. I suppose it did have all the time in the world. Its butter beans were going nowhere. Unlike my share of the beer, which disappeared fast, this caddis wasn’t about to be taken from it.
I waited patiently for Mr Brown to finish his theatrics, and when he was quite done, I said “Thank you sir” very politely, and without a sneer, I lifted into him.
The fish came off.
As I changed back to the hopper, I got to thinking that this was one of the more unusual breakfasts I’d had. But then changing things up does make life interesting.
Hot fishing

Sunday dawned hotter than all the rest. Hot and still. I was up at five in the morning, and set out through the wet grass to look for rising trout, and it was warm then. The sun was shining at a low angle across the water and my eyes ached as I scanned the water and tried to track my dry fly. A fish swirled here and there. Once or twice within casting distance. I changed dry fly several times: Beetles, para RAB’s, a DDD, and a midge, damsel and Copper John on the dropper. I held my hand up to screen my eyes. Later I stood behind a small willow, merely for the relief its trunk gave me. I positioned myself directly behind the trunk, in its narrow shade, and then side cast my fly under the willow fronds, merely to escape the piercing rays. It was then that I realized I was grateful for the slender shade of the trunk, and at the same time that it was now hot. It was 6 am.

I walked back to the cottage. As I did, I noticed more swirls, and also the dimples of fleeing minnows, and the formula dawned on me. My fly box with minnows in it was back at the cottage.
Later, after a hearty breakfast, and time with our feet up, my wife and I decided to set up under a willow, with bottles of cold water and our books. I moved the deck chairs, put on sunscreen, took off my boots, and sighed at the prospects of a hot day. The three days prior had been cloudy and windy and stormy and misty: all changing and interesting, and cool. Weather as interesting as a broken landscape, and with patches of great promise between, when the trout would surely come on the rise. Periods of wind change, or calm after a cooling storm, or breezy with scudding clouds and patches of mist. Times that breathed promise and opportunity. But I had yet to hit it right. I had not connected. Sure, I had caught 2 or 3 fish: one off the front lawn in near darkness on a dry fly. One on a dragonfly nymph just after the storm, that sort of thing. But I had missed fish, had takes, been broken off twice due to poor knots, and not landed more than two in any one day. On the Saturday I put in a solid six hours and all I had to show for it was a missed follow. You know the thing where you pull the fly out of the mouth of a following fish, and watch it turn as it sees you. And you curse your stupidity for hours thereafter. And that had been it.
Now, as I put the chairs down and resigned myself to a day of waiting out the stifling still weather, I saw one or two last bulges. Last remnants surely, of the morning’s minnow gluttony. My wife was still busy inside, so I found the box with minnow imitations in it, and tied one on. She still wasn’t out of the cottage yet, so I quickly threw all my stuff into the canoe, and leaving my water bottle under the tree, and wearing an old pair of crocs, I pushed off. Just off the front lawn I dropped an anchor, and started casting a minnow imitation in the direction of one or two more swirls I had seen. The water was a pea soup of food. There were midges, and ants, and corixae and damselfly nymphs. Dragonflies darted over the water, swallows swooped, and the sun beat down mercilessly.

Nature would surely take a break any minute now and sit out the searing heat of day as I was about to do.
Then a fish grabbed the minnow strongly, and set off for open water. I raised the rod tip triumphantly, gathered the loose line, and got my mind in gear to fight a fierce fish, which was pulling line. That’s when my knot gave in.
When I had finished muttering and swearing and analysing the errors of my ways, and tying on a new minnow pattern, I looked up, and saw more fish were moving. I threw the minnow out again. I retrieved in a manner as alluring and enticing as I could conjure in the dead calm sticky conditions. I sucked the minnow back in, just under the surface, there under a burning white sun. More fish were rising now. Porpoising. I had a take on the minnow….just a tug, and then it was gone. I threw it again, but fish were porpoising everywhere now, so after a few casts I changed to a midge. That was when fish started cartwheeling into the sky. I quickly rigged the other rod with a caddis, and threw that out before retrieving the one with the midge on. The next five fish porpoised. I tied a sunk buzzer below the emerger I had on the five weight, and when three casts of the caddis drew no result, I put that back out. Now the fish were swirling. I looked at the water. There were copper beetles. I took the caddis off and threw it into the canoe, and tied on a beetle imitation. The fish were back to cartwheeling. I threw the beetle. A hundred fish swirled. Twenty porpoised. A dozen cartwheeled. I looked into the water beside the boat. Caenis; hoppers; beetles (Black and copper); one or two winged ants, midges. I put on a tiny ant imitation, throwing the buzzer and emerger in the boat. I cast. The tops of my feet were burning. I threw off the crocs and dug in my vest for sunscreen, which I rubbed on my feet. I cast the tube aside. Fish were getting airborne again. My leader was sinking. I pulled it in and coated it in silicone paste, threw the tub in the boat, put the caddis back on and cast. I readied the other rod with a larger ant. The caddis was being ignored by fish that were taking insects either side of my line. There were a lot more winged ants around now .

The fish were going nuts now. I pulled in the caddis, and started tying on ants. I needed more tippet. Fish were rising right beside the hull of the boat.I was battling to see the fine nylon, and my hands were shaking. “Andy! Look behind you”, my wife shouted from the shore. “To hell with behind me” I muttered. The fish had practically been splashing water into the canoe for the last hour. “I Know!” I said politely. “Yes, but that fish is just rolling around on the surface continually” she said. Said she had never seen anything like it. My hands shook. I finally got both ants on, tossed the tippet spools in the hull, and threw the team out. This leader was sinking. I had treated the other one. I pulled it in, and went scrambling through the junk in the boat searching for the silicone paste. Fish started porpoising again, and my ants went unnoticed. I rigged the other rod with a big black DDD, and a few minutes later I cast that, and then changed the small ant on the point to a little black emerger. Threw the ant in the boat. Pulled in the DDD . Tossed the ant team. Fish were in the air again. I stood on the sun cream. Sweat ran down my neck. My line wrapped around a discarded croc. I kicked it away and I retrieved and threw again. My feet burned. Fish rose. The sun baked.
And then it happened.
To the tune of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” , sung by a choir of a hundred maidens, and with an orchestra in grandiose accompaniment playing in my mind, a small and gracious rainbow, porpoised over my large ant in slow motion. I raised the rod in celebration, the hook set, and the knot held. My wife videoed from the shore. I took a photo.

The fish swam off. And the rise was over.
I paddled back, and tipped all the junk out of the boat to sort out later, and crawled gasping to the willow tree, croaking “water!”. The lake returned to the lifeless state of the past three days, The sun beat down hard, and I sat under the tree, took off my sweaty hat and shook my head in disbelief.

I wonder if this is what Isaak Walton had in mind when he said to “be quiet and go a angling”…