Cape Cod

Went to Cape Cod at the end of June, it was a disaster, boiling hot, no fish, I mean really no fish at all!! not for me anyway, the two guys with me, Phil and Kev caught two and three respectively, so that's a total of five fish between three of us, fishing for what was many many hours. Maybe its because we were crap, especially me, but I've been there before and fished in the few hours available on a family holiday, at the wrong time and wherever I could manage rather than researched marks. I caught more than double our total catch of both Stripers and Blues, and even a couple of Fluke. I caught fish on flies and plugs and generally got excited about the place. Well I'm not excited anymore. We had a good time, and went to some great places to blank but I won't be going back, not for the fishing anyway.

“if I’m too busy to fish then I’m too busy”

I am not very good at this blogging business. No blogs for ages. Life has got in the way of fishing a bit. Even though I have been stressed up to the eyeballs by work and dealing with family strife in the shape of my mothers decline into deep depression I have managed a couple of trips and I realise they have helped me sort out what has been a difficult time. Someone once said (Tom McGuane I think) “if I’m too busy to fish then I’m too busy” and he’s right. So I headed for the West Dart on a blustery wet Saturday. I am not good at this type of fly-fishing, actually I’m not good at any type of fly-fishing but I am worst at this type. I started at Two Bridges and walked downstream. With a stiff breeze in my face I started to fish my way back up. Really awkward fishing this and after about half an hour I gave up. I had managed to get a couple of fish to come to the fly but as usual missed the take. I headed for Hexworthy Bridge and spent the next the next five hours working my way upstream. This part of the Dart is a revelation. It’s like a secret River. So hard to get to that I’m sure it’s rarely fished. Much of the River is a boulder filled tunnel in the trees and half the fun is clambering about to get into a position to fish the little pockets and riffles that might hold fish. I had reread Anne Voss Barks “West Country Fly Fishing” recently and following that book’s advice I concentrated on fishing the likely spots rather than looking for rising fish. Again I missed take after take on an Elk Hair Caddis, fish coming from the depths of tiny pools between rocks to grab the fly but always without getting hooked. I struck fast and I struck slow, it made no difference. This was driving me mad, which considering I was nearly there anyway when I started wasn’t good. So I put on a tiny weighted nymph and hooked a fish first cast. Good fish this, about 12oz, and it came off. I was stoic, sort of. Walking back to the car I got lost and had to ford the River twice but driving back home I realised for six hours or so all I had really thought about was fishing and now I was content, I felt better.

Childhood Tench and Bad Bobbies

I am quite old now (nearly fifty) and have fished since I was twelve. I am not a”natural” angler. Any success I have is through sticking at it and very gradually learning new things. By “very gradually” I mean being totally shit at something for ages, possibly years and then, often quite suddenly, getting it and applying it successfully (a bit successfully sometimes). An example is tench fishing when I was a kid. Myself and friends used to fish a series of shallow weed choked ponds with a good number of large Tench. Standard approach developed by the “natural” anglers amongst my peers was to either freeline or use a tiny float with bread flake. Lob the thing in along with a bit of ground bait and wait for bubbles and mud to start rising up through the two feet of gin clear water. Many Tench were caught by this method though not by me. I fished that place for three years and never caught one. A few years back I returned as an adult and much more experienced angler and caught three in an afternoon.

I think I will add in bits of my personal angling history to this blog as I go along but for now that will do.

I want to relate a conversation I had with an angler at a local reservoir. I had just caught a fish on what was a uniformly tough day for fly fishing for Rainbows. By that I mean it was not just me being hopeless, hardly anyone seemed to be catching anything. He watched me unhook the fish and asked what fly I was using, “green and black booby”, “oh on a full sinker I suppose” was the reply, he went on to tell me that he did not like fishing with buoyant flies on sinking lines “I catch all my fish on a floater using small flies” he told me. I am a sensitive soul and can over interpret / invent peoples hidden meanings but this guy was definitely letting me know that using boobies on a sinker was in his opinion only one up from throwing in a stick of dynamite. I experience a flash of irritation and thought about saying “well this place is hardly the Test is it” but instead went for grinning smiling and shrugging as he floated off on a cloud of superiority. Thinking about it afterwards though it struck me that he had showed me a Dwail Bach as an example of one of his small flies. Now I tie my own flies and the Booby I was using was tied on a size ten, his Dwail Bach was on a twelve. He was using a long leader to fish the thing at some depth so I am popping up a fly to within a couple of feet of his drifting fly dangling from the surface. We were both using flies that are very general imitations of something that might be alive and good to eat from a fishy point of view. Now maybe I am missing something, but really what’s the difference? The sinker gave me more control of a very slow retrieve and the depth at which I was fishing and above all it worked!! He hadn’t caught anything! Maybe I am getting too worked up about this, I need to calm down, i’m going off to practice my breathing exercises in a darkened room.

Cheers

Jon