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What to do When a Salmon Takes the Fly, Part 1.
For an angler, as the big Five O looms, one has to come to terms with so many issues, aching joints, the inability to yomp up to some far and craggy hill loch, the desire to be allowed to drive your car from pool to pool. Now that 50 is for me a retrospective issue, all of the above apply including the growing tendency to reminisce about things piscatorial. Such ramblings can be of interest when directed towards a fellow angler, although they are somewhat perplexing to the lady behind the counter in the local Post Office who forbears with a grin and a glazed look.
Every angler has a woeful tale of the fish that got away, and every anglers friend knows not to ask, some stories just do not improve with the retelling. Tales of what might have been, what should have been, if that darned fish hadn’t decided to go off on yet another run and the knot had been tied properly and the stupid tree stump hadn’t got in the way!
You know the kind of stories I'm talking about, and since you asked I'm going to tell you a wee tale.
Take tree stumps for example. One day in February, nineteen canteen, on the lower Dee at Banchory Devenick, just by the fish counter, at this point the river is hardly a few hundred yards up from the tidal reaches. The fish passing through could not have beeb fresher, short of extracting a thrashing one from the maw of one of several marauding estuarine grey seals lurking around Victoria Bridge on Torry.
I had just started to fish below the fish counter and I happened to look back upstream after I made my cast and saw a run of sea fresh springers dart up and through the chill waters deluging over the white boards of the wear-like surface of the fish counter. A run of fresh fish to give me hope and cause me to tremble with anticipation.
Every few casts, as my fly came round to the dangle and I started the retrieve I hooked into a darned tree stump recently washed down by the winter spate. Not so much stump, an entire willow tree in fact, twigs and all. On each occasion I managed to free the fly with a twitch of the rod which became ever more vigorous as the monotony of the occurrence increased in frequency and the observed passage of fresh fish pumped up my adrenaline levels (that was in the days when I had adrenaline to spare).
My patience wore thin, exacerbated by the studied reluctance of the fish to do their duty by my fly. The line snagged in the usual spot, I tugged vigorously and immediately, the tree stump tugged back with vim and vigour and a wide tail thrashed the surface of the river, the line went slack. You anglers out their will appreciate that now is an appropriate moment to bow your head for one minute of silence, to share the moment of loss with me. Off course I was less than silent, I went ballistic, using all sorts of Anglo - Saxon words not taught in Sunday School in my day.
I tell you this particular ramble through the brambles of my fishing experience for you to learn from my errors.
The lesson I learned was this;
While you are salmon fishing, when the line stops for what ever reason, assume it is a fish until you are otherwise informed. Do nothing, if it is a fish it will turn and with luck on your side you will set the hook. If it is a tree stump it will, in my experience, do nothing.
Off course the tree stump might turn out to be a 65 pound salmon soundly hooked but totally oblivious to that fact!
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