On Fishing

Coarse Fish on the Move (#ulink_fd88e09a-f485-5355-9af2-efd653115268)

OOFFICIALLY it is the salmon and the sea trout that are the ‘migratory fish’ – the fish that begin their lives in rivers and that go to sea before coming back, in turn, to spawn. The rest – eels excepted – are the ‘non-migratory’ species: the stay-at-homes and the moochers-about; the sidlers from this side of the river to that; the fish that limit their forays to a trip to the shallows downstream from time to time, or just occasionally to the deeps around the bend.

That, anyway, is the official view and, as it happens, the view of many anglers. The reality, though, is more complex – and surprising.

BIOLOGISTS have known for years that coarse fish, for all their stick-around reputations, are given to travelling astonishing distances – often at astonishing speeds. It is just that somehow the results of their researches rarely reach the riverbank and even long-established facts will come as news to most on it.

Like, for example, the fact that barbel can range tens of kilometres upstream and downstream in a single season. Like, for example, the fact that bream can leave their daytime swim at dusk, roam several kilometres during the night – and be back where they started off by next morning, leaving the local anglers no wiser.

Research into behaviour like this is highlighted from time to time at fisheries management conferences and when biologists get together, but not on many other occasions. In fact, an Aquatic Animal Research Group at Durham University has been studying fish movements for years. Scientists there have tagged and tracked barbel, chub, dace, bream, roach and a range of other species on the Nidd, the Ouse and the Derwent in Yorkshire, and on other rivers and lakes further south.

Much of this work has been undertaken in an attempt to understand the effects on river life of man-made interventions – from the building of weirs and fish passes to flood prevention works and significant water abstraction. It is the insights into fish behaviour coming out of it all that will fascinate anglers most.

Barbel have been tagged and tracked five and even ten kilometres upstream and down again in a single season, with individual fish undertaking round-trips of 60 kilometres to find suitable spawning gravels. Chub heading upstream for places to spawn have been found to make repeated attempts to use fish passes built for sea trout and salmon – one memorable fish on the Derwent entering a pass seven times in seven nights before finally giving up.

A study of bream on the River Trent revealed that individual shoals covered beats of up to six kilometres long in the course of a season. Within a shoal, different fish would behave differently as dusk approached. Some would leave the ‘home’ reach occupied during the day and move several hundred metres upstream and down in the course of a night. Others would range three and even four kilometres afield and still be back before morning. The extent to which a given reach meets the needs of the fish in it is likely to dictate when, how far and how often fish will travel.

Studies have thrown up other fascinating insights – like the disadvantage of being released into the wild after being bred in captivity. Stocked coarse fish, it seems, can travel at the wrong times. Whereas native fish lie doggo while the sun is up and travel under the cover of darkness, farm-bred fish will shift location in broad daylight.

‘Presumably there is an advantage in native fish moving at night – they may be less susceptible then to predation by birds, pike and otters’, one of the study team has suggested. ‘The movements of reared fish – if they’re looking for food – may reflect the times of day when they’ve been fed in captivity and that could prove a disadvantage.’

It is not only the extent to which fish move and when that is surprising, but also the speeds at which they move. Twelve-hour round-trips of six and eight kilometres by bream are startling enough, but the speeds of other fish – and especially the speeds of small fish relative to the speeds of large – can leave the portly bream standing.

Whereas a metre-long adult salmon can swim at better than two metres a second for hours and days on end – a formidable feat of strength and endurance – tracking has shown that salmon smolts a sixth of that length can sustain close on half a metre a second without difficulty. River lampreys have been recorded travelling 10 kilometres a night upstream, against a steady current – a distance and speed many would find surprising in a fully grown sea-trout.

What does it all amount to for the angler on the bank? In the case of swimming speeds, probably not much, other than to cause him or her to marvel yet again at the wonders of nature. In the case of in-river migration, it will be to cause anglers to see coarse fish in a new way – and to encourage them to be more adventurous in their choices of swim as daylight fades and each season progresses.

Fish movements also throw two of angling’s most commonly heard statements into a new light. The fact that a fishless day for one angler is followed by a night of frenzied action for another in the same place might not be simply because ‘fish come on at night’ – a well-known saw – but because a hitherto fishless swim has had travelling fish come into it.

And the heartfelt ‘there are no bloody fish in this bloody swim’ might sometimes not only be an excuse of a kind but that rarest commodity in angling – the truth.

Buying Tackle (#ulink_4a650174-8cbc-5eff-9e8b-39c9a5db08ea)

I AGONISED over my first fly-rod. I was a wholly self-taught fisherman and, when I became interested in the sport, I had no-one to guide me. So, like countless others, I went to a tackle shop to seek advice. This was not a local tackle shop, because I did not have one. This was a big, posh tackle shop in a big city.

The staff saw me coming. I ended up paying far more than I should have for a big-name rod that in the event, was an indifferent performer. It is a trap that newcomers especially can fall into. Every beginner would benefit from independent advice on what rod, reel and line to buy. Here is some.

A FEW years ago I went to buy a new fly-rod. I did not need a new rod – I have accumulated more rods than you could shake a wading stick at – but I had convinced myself I needed one. All anglers, I know, will have sympathy with this sensation. Perceived Tackle Deficit Disorder (PTDD) is a kind of medical condition and tackle shops are the places where it is treated.

I went to a well-known store and told the dealer what I wanted – a fast-actioned, 9ft five-weight. He listened sympathetically and made soothing noises. Then he turned to a glass case behind him, opened it with a key and lifted out a 9ft wand. Naturally, this was not any old fast-actioned, 9ft five-weight, he explained. This was the Dollar-Sign Flabbergast fast-actioned, 9ft five-weight. It looked fabulous. It was made of deep-green carbon fibre and was wonderfully varnished. It had lots of gilt lettering on the butt and the kind of maker’s name that evokes candles and incense.

The Dollar-sign Flabbergast – the dealer turned and angled it so that it flashed in the light – was made of the latest High-Modulus, High-Five Technology. It provided faster back-loading of the thingy than any rod before it. In tests, five spindles of torque had been achieved. This rod was practically guaranteed to improve my casting distance by 50 per cent and my Accuracy Quotient Factor (AQF) by very nearly the same.

How much did it cost and where could I try it, I asked? Naturally, the dealer inferred, a rod like the Dollar-Sign Flabbergast did not come cheap but I was clearly a man who not only appreciated the best but would positively demand it.

Yes, but the price? The figure he mentioned sounded like the distance to Mars. Outside, the rod cast like a piece of wet string. Caveat emptor can be as good advice in the fishing business as it is in the motor trade – especially at the start of a new season. Then, spring is in the air, cuckoos are on the wing and the air is filled with the song of tackle-dealers pushing wheelbarrows to their banks.

When choosing tackle it is essential to keep function in mind, above all. The principal job of rods, reels, lines and the rest are to help an angler put his fly where he wants it and to handle effectively any fish hooked as a result. Many an angler buys tackle for other reasons – for example, assumed status – but among the sensible the ability to do the job required, comes first. The truth is that many a lowly priced outfit will do that as well as some top-priced kit, though the actual rods may appear much the same.

A fly fisherman on small streams will want a rod in the 7ft to 8ft range, carrying maybe a 4-weight line. An angler tackling larger rivers and many stillwaters will want something between 8ft and 9ft 6ins, carrying 5-weight to 7-weight lines. For some lake fishing and angling for sea trout, rods of up to 10ft or a little more carrying lines up to 8-weight or so, will be useful.

Large numbers of rods for all these purposes are priced at astronomical levels while entire and wholly serviceable outfits – rods, reels, lines, leaders and flies together – can be bought for a third of their price. The two rods I use for virtually all my own stream and lake fishing cost £120 apiece in 1990 – a fraction of top prices, even then – yet they have had the users of rods costing four times as much gasp at the silken ease with which each puts out a line. My favourite loch-style rod cost me £25 second-hand and its original owner £70 new. When, in the mid-1990s I wanted a salmon 15-footer, I sought advice from a hugely experienced, money-no-object salmon angler. What did he recommend out of all the rods available, most of which he had tried? Why, the same rod he used himself – a product costing less than half many on the market. That is the rod I bought – second-hand, again – and it performs like a dream.

The reality is that few rods and anglers are born for one another. Often enough we buy a rod that feels good in the hand and that gives the impression of being up to the job we want doing. If, having bought it, the rod shows a less-than-fatal quirk we often fish on and find we adjust to it. More often than not, the rod we fish with ends up becoming the rod we know and learn to love. When the time comes for a change, use of the old rod will likely have made the next new rod feel strange – and we repeat the cycle.

It is much the same with fly reels. Plenty of fly reels now cost hundreds of pounds. I have never spent more than £50 on a fly reel and the two of that price I do own both incorporate superb disc drags. Some of my expert friends are wedded to reels that cost between £20 and £40 apiece. The reel I use on my 7ft 3-weight cost £14 in 2003 and does everything I ask of it, which is not much.

On the high-priced reel options, this or that gizmo justifies a little extra cost and hype delivers the rest. Statements like ‘the days are long gone when a reel was regarded largely as a place to store line’ are now heard repeatedly – and are wrong. The prime function of a reel will always be to store and, of course, dispense and recover line. The essential qualities – lightness, reliability and an exposed rim – cost very little in themselves.

In truth, the rod has not yet been priced that will turn an indifferent caster into a good caster and no rod-reel-line outfit has been assembled that will make up for a lack of fishing skills. Unless the angler behind the rod knows the value of a cautious approach to the water, can read the currents when he gets there, knows where a fish is likely to lie and can present the right fly in such a way that it comes to his quarry’s attention naturally, every penny spent on gear will be money down the drain.

This is not to say that much expensive tackle is not superb or that good tackle will not give a good fisherman an edge: simply that expensive tackle will not necessarily be good tackle and that quite superb gear can be had at a very modest price. Telling the difference in the shop or from the products in the catalogue is, of course, the problem.

For the angler who can be persuaded that he needs the most expensive in anything and can afford it – or who just wants the top names regardless – the issue is neither here nor there. For many more – and especially gullible newcomers confronted by honey-tongued salesmen – the issue is often central.

My advice to anyone inexperienced who wants new gear is to seek independent, experienced advice if he or she can and to spend any money saved on instruction.

Dry Fly, Wet Fly, Nymph (#ulink_637fee76-faff-55e8-b65d-f7061f7a80ae)

FISHERY managers love rules. On some trout waters, the list is as long as your rod. There are rules about fly sizes, net and mesh sizes, the distance one angler must stay from another on the bank, the distance boat anglers must stay from the shore. There are size limits and bag limits, guidance on how fish should be returned and when not to return them; directions on when fishing may start and must stop and all else.

One of the most common rules, applied almost exclusively on rivers, is whether a water is dry-fly only or whether nymphs may be used. Naturally, this invites definitions of what exactly an artificial nymph is and what exactly constitutes a dry fly.

Quite rightly, everyone has a view.

MY OLD English master might well have shed a tear. Cyril Pybus was not only one of the great influences on my life but the man who named two kinds of question, frequently raised in his classes, after me.

One was the ‘Clarke’s Worrif ’, as in – when he was putting forward some proposition or other – ‘Sir, worrif this or worrif that?’ He would sometimes use the other to cut short a classmate, as in ‘Bloggs, this is beginning to sound suspiciously like a Clarke’s Worrabout’.

Both questions were hijacked on a fly-fishing web site I once dipped into. Someone foolishly asked ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’ Or, in angling-speak, they asked ‘exactly how do you define a dry fly?’ The hair-splitters and devil’s advocates, the leg-pullers and the ayatollahs were out in force. The Worrifers and Worrabouters had their hands up in a flash.

Frederic Halford is to blame. Up to the late 19th century, the flies anglers used on rivers were motley collections of feathers that were mostly cast out across the current in the hope that a fish would make a grab as they swung around, below the surface.

Then, in the 1880s, Halford and his pal George Selwyn Marryat embarked on an intense study of the kinds of winged flies most often taken by trout. Two books resulted. The first, Floating Flies and How to Dress Them (1886), described how these winged, natural flies could be imitated more precisely on hooks. The second, Dry Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice (1889) described how these imitations could best be fished to individual trout that the angler could see.

The advantages of Halford’s new ‘dry fly’ strategy over the old, random, underwater ‘wet’ approach, caused a sensation. Halford found himself at the head of a ‘dry fly cult’ – a position he reinforced by eventually declaring that dry fly fishing was not only more effective than wet fly fishing, but more sporting. Before long, extensive reaches of rivers became restricted to ‘dry fly only’.

Then G.E.M. Skues bobbed up. Whereas Halford and Marryat had studied the adult, winged flies at the surface, Skues studied the underwater nymphs that the adults had hatched from – and developed wonderful imitations of several species. Like Halford, Skues cast his flies only to fish he could see and he, too, attracted a large following. The Halfordians were unmoved. They classed Skues’ underwater nymphs with the old-style wet flies, declared they were just as ‘unsporting’ – and banned them from their waters. Battle was joined between the two camps and raged for decades.

The cordite still hangs on the air. Even today, some fisheries restrict angling to the dry fly in the belief it is more sporting. Hence the short fuses on the web-site when someone asked what is and is not a ‘dry fly’ – a question complicated, of late, by the arrival of new flies designed for fishing not on the surface film or under it but actually in it, part in and part out of the water. Could emergers be fished on dry fly-only waters, as well?

Internet hackles were up in a flash. We had this response, that response, the other response, some of them extraordinarily acrid. They went on and on. The high point for me came when someone decided he could cut through it all. When is a dry fly a dry fly? No problem. You dropped your fly into a glass of water. If 50 percent of it floated above the surface, then it was dry and okay to use on dry fly-only streams. If not, it should be kept for wet-fly waters.

Cyril Pybus would have groaned. He’d have seen it coming a mile off. Worrif, someone said, a fly is 50.1 per cent above the surface in the tumbler test and 49.9 per cent below – or, if it comes to that, vice-versa. Where did these flies stand – or in the latter case, sink? Worrabout eddies and flows, another wanted to know. There were none of these in a glass but they were all over the place on rivers and these could influence the way a fly appeared. Exactly, said someone else – and worrif the glass itself influenced the thickness of the surface tension, and made it different from the surface tension in open water? That could affect a fly, too. And, and, and.

The debate went on for pages and pages, but I eventually fell asleep at my terminal. Many of the contributions – they ran well into three figures – were inordinately long and split every previously splat hair, several times over. Thousands of visitor-hits had been recorded, leaving many readers – no doubt like me – variously fascinated, appalled and amused.

My own view? In my experience, the best fisheries are those that have no rules at all and where the rods can be left to fish as much in the interests of the river and other members, as in their own results on the day. These waters tend, however, to be in the hands of small syndicates whose members are carefully selected and who get to know one another well.