TO ME ANGLING is a gentle pursuit, having less to do with the slaughter of fish and more to do with processes of fusion. In my search for understanding of trout, their world and the space between us, I often turn to the musings of long-forgotten fisherfolk. And it would seem that our angling ancestors were possessed of remarkable vision and clarity of purpose. Not for them the waffle of modern angling semantics. No tie-in-three-hairs-from-the-nose-of-a-dwarf-albino-ptarmigan type instruction from these guys. They speak in broader terms and stick to the essentials. I deal in facts, and it is fact that the fishing rod was invented about 4000 years ago, just as it is a fact that within 800 years angling had become so common a commerce as to feature regularly in literature. Homer, in Book 24 of his Iliad, proves himself as dab a hand at angling idiom as any other. And Pliny the Elder gave over large chunks of his History of the World to discourse on angling. These are facts, like Hannibal crossing the Alps, or the 25,2 pounds of trout caught by a single angler on three successive casts. It happened like this, and the facts bear witness. Charlie Normal, the well-known angler-scribe-cum-bait-plunker and Bragger MacCann, a reputedly elegant fly-fisherman, were fishing side-by-side. Two more diverse styles could not be found. Charlie prides himself on his ability to cast half-bricks at the end of a 10-weight, but Bragger considers a 4-weight to be too crude a bludgeon. His fly box holds no hook larger than a size 10.

As might be imagined, their philosophic approaches share little in common. Yet for all that, they are friends and fish together from time to time. They argue the merits of their relative styles unceasingly, each claiming for his own approach some specific yet indefinable fish-catching magnetism. Over the years their dialogue has developed into the piscatorial equivalent of nuclear war.

“A fish likes a meal it can see,” says Charlie, heaving his half brick towards a rise. Bragger edges away, muttering about the spooking of trophy fish in the shallows.

“The only way he'll catch a fish on that rig is to score a direct hit and brain the bugger,” he says to himself, tying down to a 7X tippet.

As I have said, to me angling is a contemplative process, and often as I stand at the water's edge reflecting on the words of some long-dead angling sage or other, I feel their spirits in the air around me. Their combined wisdom has proven more sure than my Orvis Otter, and that rod is a favourite. The fact is, we had Pliny the Elder with us as we fished that day. Well, not actually Pliny, sort of more his ghost, which, with him being dead and gone these long years, has become quite faint and hard to see. His voice, too, has lost its timbre under the weight of centuries and sounds very like the sighing of the wind through dry reeds. Yet, still, his wit is sharp and his manner is forthright. The better to glean some benefit therefrom, I moved away from the squabbling friends at the waterside. As I moved, a geyser plumed skyward. Charlie's cast head-crashed into a channel where fish had been rising freely.

“You got to chuck it in his window,” he said sagely as the water went quiet.

Now Charlie is a well-traveled angler. He has fished for marlin and maasbanker, tope and tarpon, Nile perch and three-spot pompano, tigers, trout, bass and bream. He even fishes for carp and vundu barbel, having much to say in their defence. He has been broken up so often by large barbel that it has affected his approach to leader construction. What he calls tippet would serve to stay a tent. When Charlie hooks a trout, it stays hooked. And that's a fact.

The only fly in this particular ointment, was, however, that we were fishing on this day for wild-spawned rainbows, not your usual hatchery-reared stockie, and Charles was not having much success. Bragger was battling as well. Though picking fish up regularly, his 7X tippet could not hold them through the weed beds, and he dropped four fish in quick succession. He remained calm and tied up to 5X, much to Charlie's amusement, who was fishing a pattern remarkably similar in shape and size to a pied kingfisher. The wind breathed through the reeds beside me and I turned to listen.

“'Thou then, whilst thine innocence is pure, flee swiftly, nor presume to set thy lure, respect these fishes for their friends are great. And in the water, empty all thy bait.'” It was Pliny, for sure, you can tell his style. He loves to quote from antiquity and has an endless supply of obscure reference with which to underscore his often oblique points.

“Come again?” I asked reverently.

“Martial,” he said. “First century scribe. Wrote pig Latin and ruined the fishing wherever he went. Something like your friend there,” he said, sighing to where Charlie was lashing himself and the water into a froth. “When Martial felt for a bit of fish he took the direct route. Requisitioned a phalanx or two of legionnaires and drained the whole goddam lake. Spoilt the fishing clear through from Carthage to Constantinople.” Bragger could bear the spectacle no longer. He put his rod down and went over to Charlie and took his 10-weight from him.

“This is a very fine rod,” he said. “Good for barbel, Charlie. Nice tarpon rig, but not entirely suitable for trout, Mr. Normal, which appreciate a spot of finesse.” He offered to let Charlie use his 4-weight Western, pointing out patiently that trout possess the rudiments of a brain, unlike those who fish for them with 15-pound fluorescent bass line. Charlie took a good look at Bragger's braided-butt leader, running the tippet through his fingers till he held the little olive nymph in his hand.

“Don't be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “This will never catch a fish. You may hook one but you'll never land it. And the fly, it's so small, why bother?” He went back to wielding his nice, new 10-weight.

“'Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?'” sighed Pliny in the reeds.

Brevity demands that I say no more than that both Bragger and I, fishing 4X and 5X tippets, caught and released as fair a mess of fish as a rod has a right to. Towards evening we tired of the sport, put our rods down and wandered over to where Charlie doggedly fished. He had changed patterns. No longer did his kingfisher whirr through the air. He had exchanged it for what looked like a pterodactyl.

Poor Charles has a reputation to maintain, and as his friend it grieves me to carry this burden of unalterable fact, but we came upon Charlie in a deep gully, up to his neck almost in water. He was stretched to the full limit of his rod, while just beyond reach floated a very dead 4-pound trout. Charlie was trying for all his worth to snag its gills with his huge arrangement of feathers. Somehow, even this dead fish eluded him. Bragger and I sat quietly on the bank behind him and watched as the drama unfolded. Unaware that he was under scrutiny, the man shook out a goodish length of thick fast-sinking line and attempted to cast it over the trophy bobbing just beyond reach. Three or four times the line flopped over the carcass, which seemed to twist away, as if even in death knowing better than to have anything to do with such crude tackle. It is common knowledge that Charlie — at least as much as and perhaps more than writers in general — is known to be, well, temperamental. As he tried to snag that poor dead fish, his lack of success provoked him to challenge it verbally. “I hate trout fishing,”' he said pointedly to the fish.

“'Yet fish there be, that neither hook nor line, nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine,'” intoned Pliny in his sepulchral way, as a whisper of wind caressed the water.

“How do you mean?” I boldly asked, hoping to draw out old Plinius.

“John Bunyan,” he replied crustily. “From Pilgrim's Progress. A rollicking screed that you really should read.” “These are ignorant times,” I reminded him, “and I am not familiar with the text.”

“'They must be grop'd for, and tickled too, or they'll not be caught, whate'er you do,' he continued crossly. 'To what sorry pass has this world come, where art is lost and idiots flail the day away at water's edge?'”

Bragger could contain himself no longer and called out to old Charlie, “Harpoon the mother and have done with it.”

Charlie looked kind of sheepish as he came sloshing back out.

Continue Reading "Piscator Non Solum Piscatur"     1   2