Country Fair. Max Hastings
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might take 35 per cent more fish than a bad one, casting for the same number of hours. Angus thought that was about right. Contrast this with trout fishing, where a really poor caster is likely to catch nothing at all except maybe in poor light on an evening rise. That guesstimate about salmon fishing also takes account of the vagaries of playing fish which one has been fortunate enough to hook. Of course, someone who instinctively does the right things is more likely to land his catch than one who lets the line go slack, drops his rod point or whatever. But even the finest fishermen lose their share of fish, especially grilse, when these are taking short.
There seems no correlation between the quality of the man or woman behind the rod and the manner in which fish get hooked, and stay that way – with smaller fish anyway. As many gillies will assert that a salmon has got off because it was played too soft, as played too hard. Unless the fisher makes a fundamental error, once again luck seems the principal influence upon the outcome of the contest, though unsurprisingly the bigger the fish, the more likely is a bungler to mess up the landing of it.
A further interesting twist to the argument concerns the matter of morning or afternoon fishing. A gillie whom I respect said the other day: ‘Three-quarters of fish are taken in the morning. If the truth be known, you’re wasting your time casting a fly between one and six.’ Angus said that he himself, when he fishes, only goes out between 6 and 9 a.m. As he catches seventy salmon a year to his rod, which is a lot in Britain these days, I found myself brooding a good deal about what he said.
My gamebook represents the most efficient aspect of my sporting activities, sustained with morbid precision since I was nine. I have been looking back through it, to see how far Angus’s opinion seems justified by my own experience. Here are rough tallies of some British salmon-fishing expeditions over the past fifteen years, from which blanks for obvious reasons are excluded: Tweed five fish a.m., five p.m.; Helmsdale six fish a.m.; Helmsdale three a.m., one p.m.; Helmsdale two a.m., three p.m.; Tweed four a.m., two p.m.; Naver five a.m., two p.m.; Naver seven a.m., four p.m.; Laxford six a.m., two p.m.; Naver six a.m., one p.m.; Laxford three a.m., three p.m.; Naver seven a.m., four p.m.
Examining the afternoon totals more carefully, two-thirds of those salmon were caught after 6 p.m., more often than not because earlier conditions were too bright for convincing fishing. Angus’s views about the merits of taking a doze on the bank after lunch start to sound plausible. It seemed to matter much less on Tweed than on the northern rivers whether one was fishing morning or afternoon. I guess – and as usual with all matters pertaining to salmon fishing, here I am simply tossing out a few ideas to have them shot down by readers from their own experience – this reflects the fact that I fish Tweed during the short late autumn days, while I have usually visited Sutherland rivers in July or August.
I like fishing alone, early on summer mornings, if I know a river well enough to find my way about. There is a special thrill about hooking and landing a salmon without assistance, in playing out a little sporting drama amid the lonely majesty of the surrounding hills. I know some houses which discourage guests from this practice on the grounds that it is anti-social, and upsets gillies who start at 9 a.m. My attitude, however, is that we are there to catch fish if we can. Left to my own devices, all meals including breakfast would be eaten on the river between casts.
Some people also offer practical objections to early fishing – that one loses two or three hours’ sleep to no great purpose, because the salmon seldom wake up much before 9 a.m. I come home from four out of five early-morning raids empty-handed, but the fifth success pays for all. On hot days, there is surely no better prospect of catching a fish than in the hours before the sun climbs high. In October and November, with relatively little time in which to fish, it is not difficult to keep casting from nine to five. My own slender afternoon scores in the summer partly reflect the fact that, more often than not, I fall asleep after lunch. Even when I am casting a fly in the torrid p.m.s, if there is little action, concentration flags. It is in the mornings that one goes at it like a tiger, fishing with deadly intent as long as there is water under the fly. Most fishermen possess an ability to convince themselves that a morning pool is virgin, that the line is touching the current for the very first time in human history. We banish our knowledge that others assaulted the same stretch with equal vigour the previous day, and perhaps night. We see ourselves as pioneers.
By the time we return to the same pools later in the day, as we usually must, that sense of freshness and adventure has gone. We still believe that we might catch a fish. But few of us can contrive to summon up at 4 p.m. the True Believing spirit we possessed at 10 a.m., that we will catch a fish. Most rods are goaded to new exertions in the evening, on rivers where rotating beats change at 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. The belief that fresh fish must have come in since dinner, and that anyway our predecessors on the beat were duffers, provides a powerful incentive. This is especially true of the Helmsdale, where each night the bottom pools of the river, those adjoining marvels the Whinnie and the Marrel, are visited by post-prandial enthusiasts, eager to catch a fish heavy with sea lice, just in off the tide. When I get my own turn down there, I would camp overnight on the bank if I thought I could get away with it. On my final evening of salmon fishing last season, we had people to dinner at the lodge. After they went home, I reflected: at 8 p.m., we had inherited one of the most unpromising beats on the river. Ninety minutes remained until closing time. Everybody else thought I was mad, but I couldn’t resist a cast. Not a fish moved, and the brief darkness was descending. I could scarcely glimpse my fly landing under the far bank. I came home empty-handed, and I am sure I was wasting my time. Angus the gillie would think it kindest to have me committed to some kind of home. Rationally, I am sure he is right. If one confined one’s summer fishing to a few hours every morning, most of us could catch at least 70 per cent of the numbers we land after casting almost around the clock.
Yet it is different for him, because he lives on the river. For those of us restricted to occasional pilgrimages, the only way we know of fishing is to keep alive that glimmer of hope, and a fly on the water, even in the doggiest hours of the summer day. Here is my own favourite thesis about the whole business: over a period, as distinct from the chance of a single day or week, the man or woman who catches most fish will be he or she who has their rod on the water longest in good conditions. What counts most is not that the fisher should be a wizard, but that fish should be present and willing. Unfair, isn’t it?
WE ALL EMBRACE the red-letter days when, miraculously, everything goes right for us. When I am feeling down about sport, I lift my spirits by recalling an idyllic August outing a couple of years back. I shot quite straight. You may say: so what? That is because you shoot straight all the time. But for those of us who spend much of the season throwing lead about the sky with the promiscuity of a bridesmaid broadcasting confetti, an outing on which things really work is cause for trumpets, champagne and rejoicing within the bosom of the family as well in the gamebook.
That day, on a marvellous moor in the north of England, everything went right from the start. First, there was no rain. Anyone who wears spectacles knows that on a seriously wet day, he is doomed. For non-spectacle-wearers who wonder what the experience is like, try driving down the M4 in a thunderstorm without benefit of windscreen wipers. On this occasion, in perfect visibility I hit the first grouse that crossed me – always the start one wants. There was a wind just sharp enough to push the birds along a bit, without making them impossible. A bird flashed past my neighbour, who missed. I killed it behind. After that, a steady succession of grouse came at all angles. I hit some and missed some, but after a couple of drives I knew that I was shooting in a fashion that might not impress Percys or Strakers, but golly, it impressed me.
I made good practice at single birds and small coveys, even quite far out. I did much less well at packs. Try as one will, it is so hard to concentrate on one grouse among forty, to the exclusion of all the others. I recited aloud the familiar mantra ‘Pick your bird, pick your bird,’ every time I watched a cloud of brown bullets lifting over the heather towards me. Yet time after time, I fluffed them when they arrived. One sometimes came down, but seldom two. I killed a lot on my right in front, where I usually miss. Why? Because early in August I went to see