“Light at the end of the tunnel” has become a popular phrase among anglers as we begin to emerge from the doldrums. First the 2km limitation, now 5km, in a few weeks’ time 20km and, if all goes to plan, the lifting of the ban entirely from July 20th to allow travel to our favourite angling destinations.
While all the Covid-19 regulations still apply, the roadmap to recovery, at least, provides hope. I can’t wait to get going!
In the meantime, I continue with another quirky tale from the files of Tom Quinn’s book Fishing’s Strangest Days.
In England in 1890, an old, wise and very big trout had his headquarters opposite a clubhouse on a famous stream. Many a fly had passed over his venerable head. Long-standing club members remembered when he was hooked on a piece of bread, but quickly wound the line around a stump, extracted the hook and was rising to natural flies half an hour later.
New members would bet they would catch him. The old members took their bets and then took their money.
On one occasion a man with little experience of trout fishing joined the club. He, like the rest, said he could catch the fish using an artificial fly. The old members laughed and took his bets, as was the custom.
One sultry evening the new member arrived armed with a pea-shooter and a tin filled with bluebottles. Was he going to catch the trout with a pea-shooter? No, he was only going to begin to catch him, the operation might take some time, he explained.
He went down to the river opposite the clubhouse and put the pea-shooter to his lips, selected a juicy dead bluebottle and puffed it out of the tube. The bluebottle was big enough to shoot out across the river and land in front of the fish.
It was taken, of course, as everything edible from a trout’s point of view was taken. The fish had a rare supper that evening. Bluebottle after bluebottle shot out over his head and he sipped them down.
He fed the fish in this manner for more than a week while the others smiled and looked on. “I will catch him soon,” said the new member. “I am waiting only for wind.”
At last there came a day when a stiff breeze was blowing upstream. The new member arrived with a long slender rod, a length of light silk line and a cast of strong gut. He took his stand some distance below the fish, and began feeding him bluebottles as usual. Then he put one on his hook and allowed line and fly to be lifted and blown across the river. Good luck helped as his fly landed just a yard above the wily trout.
As the hooked bluebottle fell on the water he puffed out one last bluebottle which landed close to the hooked insect and the two drifted down towards the waiting trout.
It was an anxious moment. The loose fly was sucked in and after a long pause, up came the trout again and the fly with the hook in it vanished. A second later the big trout was thrashing and leaping across the top of the water.
He tried all his old tricks, but the big stump he’d used to escape the bread fisher had long gone. He bored deep, made long heart-stopping runs, but all to no avail. After 10 minutes the clubhouse trout was safe in the net.
The fisherman collected his winnings from the astonished members and the biggest and oldest trout ever caught from the stream found its way into a splendid glass case where it remains to this day.
Record remembered
Continuing this week with the near record equally tench of 2019 as recorded in the Irish Specimen Fish Report: James Dignam’s fish of 8.12lb (3.697kg), caught on Lough Garadice, Co Leitrim, in June. (The 1995 record stands at 8.15lb)
