RECOLLECTIONS

Thought provoking words – Memories are a major part of fishing. Their pleasures reach back through years to favorite rivers and familiar pools. The mind is a rich assemblage of recollections, planning tactics for the future and remembering the companions of other seasons. Some of those companions will no longer join us for the fly-hatches of the coming spring, and the continuing life of the river is a reminder of our own mortality. – Remembrances of the Past ….. Ernst Schwiebert

His words stirred my own recollections from a number of years ago and one in particular – 

The weather turned foul and there was little prospect for fishing. We passed most of the day and evening in a deep valley below the towering escarpment, hunkered around the fire in conversation and drinking copious amounts of coffee. A sense of connection crept into my awareness and a realisation that exploring our place in the wilderness is an extremely powerful and essential human instinct. Unlike the complexities of living in the city, to survive in these wild places daily routines take on a simplicity of basic needs; finding shelter from the elements, collecting water and wood, food preparation. It is in all of us, a fundamental relationship with the natural world.

 

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SEASONS

Nine a.m. – it’s already 25*C outside and predicted to reach 31*C by 2 p.m. An hour up the road it’ll reach 36*C or thereabouts and we are still in spring mode, summer could be hell.

The beginning of this season had all the right signs for a better one than the previous 5 or 6.  The rivers and streams were flowing better than was expected in early spring. But, since then there has been nothing but some patchy rainfall, very little in the catchments where it counts. The forecasted heavy snowfall in September was a damp squib. I have fished a few times this season, but have despite the urge to get out there, decided to wait now until, hopefully, the weather gods will relent and bring the much needed rain. For now the rivers and streams are desperate for a good flush to clear the winter build up of algae and slime. I may be opening the proverbial can of worms, but it’s my view that it is unfair to add to the trout’s stress in the poor conditions by fishing for them at the moment – low, warm water, depleted oxygen, little or no natural aeration. I can wait and the fish aren’t going anywhere soon.

My thoughts turned to the weather and the seasons and how much their changing patterns affect all things, not the least of which, our fishing lives.

I recall walking upstream earlier this year on one of those mornings when the rising sun cast a golden light over the high peaks. The landscape was already dressed in the warm hues of autumn, out in the west the sky was inky black – a cold front was coming in. Soon the old browns would be in the last sideways shuffles over the redds in the thin, clear waters, cold from winters snow. And, as I always remembered it, with lengthening daylight, the first rains of spring would come, bringing freshness to the landscape, the smell of damp earth and the celebration of new life bursting everywhere. Then, almost imperceptibly spring would always slide into the dog days of summer, wide blue skies, soaring temperatures and the atmospheric crack and spit of storms rumbling across the land like some meteorological indigestion building up for a great event – before softening once again into that magical time, the sweet of the year, autumn. These changing cycles are part of the greater pattern – the rhythms of life, a fishing life.

All images and copy in this post are copyright Peter Brigg © 2018. All rights reserved

 

9 a.m. Coffee Thoughts – Knowledge

Knowledge involves understanding, comprehension, and mastery. It’s about acquiring, sustaining, growing, sharing, and applying information. If learning is the recipe, then knowledge is the cake—the way to build expertise. Fly fishing is just one small slice of the cake. It can other than the obvious benefits for the fishing, contribute significantly to our lives generally – patience, observation, understanding, appreciation, respect, inspiration, creativity and so much more.

In my case I have found that fishing small streams there is always an insatiable hunger for more knowledge. It leads to a better understanding and skill from the early fumbling attempts at casting and presentation to fooling even the most difficult of trout. How many, even apparently insignificant questions, but telling ones, have led from then to now – and, what a fun journey it has been, a logical, natural progression from not knowing to knowing. But, it doesn’t end there and part of growth is learning how to learn – to assimilate, to modify and to adapt – it is a never-ending process.

All images and copy in this post are copyright Peter Brigg © 2018. All rights reserved

9 a.m. Coffee Thoughts – Friendship

Despite having known Jay Smit of the Jvice fame and being friends for quite a few years now, we fished together for the first time yesterday. It was on a section of the middle Mooi River, not one of the upland freestone streams I almost always gravitate towards, but rather a slow moving, high grassy banked river that meanders through pastoral surrounding – a cow dung and mielie stretch where we encountered potentially manhood robbing barbed wire fences and flesh shredding bramble patches. However, despite low water levels and temperatures far from ideal, the browns were relatively obliging, chasing our deeply sunk nymphs as if they were the real deal.

But, it was the day spent with Jay, his good company and barrister quality freshly ground coffee that got me thinking this morning about “friendship”. I recalled from way back to the present the many people that, through fly fishing in particular, have enriched my life in so many ways.

Jay brewing another coffee with his Kelly Kettle

I once read a quote about friendship. It went something like – “Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and then, others at first speak are old friends.”

This is true of flyfishers, there is almost always an instant connection, – you don’t have to work at it, it is a kind of natural fellowship. So much in fly fishing is about the people you meet along the way, sometimes it’s a casual acquaintance, sometimes it becomes a life-long journey – a companionship amongst like-minded souls, unselfish sharing, spiritual enrichment and lasting memories.

All images and copy in this post are copyright Peter Brigg © 2018. All rights reserved

 

CREATURES OF HABIT

The smell of freshly ground coffee permeates the house, it must be 9 am. It’s a daily habit that got me thinking about the many self-inflicted rituals and traditions that we invariably follow, none less so than flyfishers and their idiosyncrasies.

I speak from my experiences – My trips to Rhodes always involve a stop either on the Kraai River bridge or at the top of Naudes Pass to toast our arrival in wild trout country. Then, there are the rituals ahead of a day’s fishing on my home waters – sorting tackle, checking leaders and replacing old tippets, boiling eggs, making my favourite sandwiches and stashing it all at the front door in readiness for an early start. There are the fuel top-up stops, the usual bad garage shop coffees and on the way home, the must-have-pie at the Windmill diner on the outskirts of Nottingham Road. And, after extended camping trips and before saying our farewells as we return to our respective corners of the country, there is without failure a visit to a nearby hotel where we always order their large speciality burger and chips washed down with a Guinness or two – believe me it’s needed after a few days of camp food.

At least once during each fishing season on rivers and streams, stillwaters and along the coast, in remote camps, cottages and lodges, old friends, some not so old, get together in familiar places at familiar times to connect, well, with just about everything. Some of us have been doing it for more years than we can recall, some in the group are regulars  others join for a season or two and then move on. 

In my case it is no more evident than in the annual camping trips to hidden places in the mountains. It starts with the usual emails among the core group detailing plans, dates, travel, gear, food, all pretty much the same year after year – the familiar. We use the same camp sites each season, the tents are pitched in the same positions, guy ropes pegged and attached to the same trees and wet clothing is draped over the same branches. The kitchen is set up where it has been for years. We even have our fixed seating places, we always cook the same meals and enjoy a few pan fried fresh trout on the third evening. We have our own pool and rock in the stream where we bath, well, rather more of a splash-n-dash in the frigid water. We drink a bit in the evenings. If truth be told, usually more whisky than we should.  We relate many of the same stories, embellished a little from previous years, we laugh at the same jokes and a few new ones and marvel at the endless idiocies of modern existence. After breaking camp there is always a group photo and the ceremony of spearing our most successful fly into the trunk of a tree on the edge of the stream.

H

That is more or less is how these annual events play out and a few of the traditions and rituals are repeated year after year. Many flyfishers today travel the globe fishing new and exotic places, perusing new species on fly, meeting new people, revelling in new experiences and endlessly searching for, well, something. But, at least once a year we gather with our core group of friends, head for the same familiar places, strictly follow the same script, less in our heads than in our hearts.

A brief break from the endless humdrum of our daily routines, jobs and city life, to places where the fish make fun of us and our friends try their best to do so too.

We ARE creatures of habit.

All images and copy in this post are copyright Peter Brigg © 2018. All rights reserved

STORYTELLING

The sandstone rim across the stream cuts a dark edge against the silver sky. I crawl out of my sleeping bag to start the coffee water. My boots and socks are still wet from yesterday’s adventures. I pad barefoot to the kitchen against the big boulder. I kneel and pump the stove, it ignites, I grind fresh coffee. Moments after the hum, sun transmutes the dark rim to a warm glow. The zipper from the other tent further undoing the stillness. A dishevelled apparition emerges, a reminder of a long night of storytelling and too many whiskeys.

Chores in hand I hobble down the rough path to the stream. I choose a perfect spot to splash my face, two sole-friendly stones a hearts width apart and dry. Across the stream, pink light unfurls above the haze of trees, ancient roots curl from the undercut bank and drift on the purling water. I splash my face with cold water, good morning, morning. 

My companions join me, three of us lined up as motionless and attentive herons along a fish whispering riffle – morning flowing through us, all motion, all stillness, numb feet and rose-coloured eyeballs, an ear full of bird chatter, breath of trees and peppermint toothpaste. Oh, and the coffee. 

I head back to the camp. Bunched in a pool of filtered sunshine, my companions hold out their cups, smiling. On this third morning in wilderness, we seemed to have arrived.

A new day, new stories to make.

I have always chosen my companions carefully, sage advice from an old friend long since freed from his mortal coil. I learned that someone’s value to a extended trip can be determined by their storytelling skills – lingering on the details, timing, describing and interpreting the setting, a touch of embellishment, waiting as long as possible before saying the obvious – skills that are not frivolous.

Storytelling is part of the culture.

All images and copy in this post are copyright Peter Brigg © 2018. All rights reserved

STOCKING BOXES

I closed the back cover of the book gifted to me by Tom Sutcliffe a year or so ago, The Dettes. A Catskill Legend by Eric Leiser.  A fascinating read and an insight into not just the personal life of this family, but their unique vantage point and significant contributions to fly tying techniques – a charming history of a legendary family and the Catskills.

I slipped it back into its place in the bookcase next my collection of others on the Catskills, my thoughts drifted to the fact that the new river season is upon us. Aside from withdrawal symptoms from a long closed season and the anticipation of the tug of cold currents and wild trout, a surge of mild anguish burst the bubble of euphoria – there are flies to tie before opening day, just a few days away.

The quiet before the storm.

Looking into my fly box, there are vast stretches of unpopulated foam, where Zaks, Pheasant Tail nymphs, GRHEs and others lived, all burned through last season or lost to hook thieving vegetation and nimble-fingered fishing companions. There is a forlorn survivor of a once immense swarm of Para-RABs, it’s post out of shape and hackle spiraling outwards, lone Hoppers and Wolf Spiders in compartments. Tucked into a corner behind a row of semi-colon sized midge pupae, expectantly tied, but never used, is a sole surviving #16 DDD, it’s once beautifully manicured deer-hair body chewed raw and what’s left of its hackle, bedraggled and matted with dried fish slim.

Leftovers from last season, battered and beaten.

I know because it’s happened before after a layoff at the tying desk, the reflexes for minute intricate movements and dexterity of fingers are rusty, even the thread of patterns need refreshing. I fumble with beads, threads break under tension or tails and wings skew under not enough. Anger surfaces at discovering that moths have out-evolved the protective halo of eponymous balls and the platinum grade hackle has been turned into a wasteland of naked quills and lung choking powder.

 

A journal entry from a few years back suggests it will improve – “ I tied my first flies today. They went from unacceptable to acceptable after the first 6. By number 12 they were ‘not bad’, ‘much better’ by 18, ‘good’ around 24 and by 36 I had delusions of expertise – I even convinced myself that I was technically accomplished, artistic and moderately creative.”

I see anticipation in all the flies for another fishing season, for times spent on streams and rivers, alone or with old companions of past seasons and expectantly, new ones.

All images and copy in this post are copyright Peter Brigg © 2018. All rights reserved