It’s been a hot week in Cornwall. Temperatures here are the same as in Florida. The car says it’s 33 degrees so too sunny and hot for fishing but I’ve brought my rod and I’m keen to fling a few hooks at some trout on a lazy warm Cornish afternoon. I’m not a great fisherman, in fact, I’m pretty hopeless really. If I were on one of those Bear Grylls survival programmes and the team were expecting me to keep us all fed with fish we’d soon be thin indeed.
I’ve got all the gear. An 8’ rod, two reels, two lines (one floating, one sinking), boxes of various lifelike and rather less-than-lifelike (actually really wacky) flies, a retractable retrieve net (almost unused), a hat, polarised sunglasses, I’ve even got a priest and a pair of forceps for removing the hook from a fish mouth, for what good they both are. What I haven’t got is a fishing waistcoat, you know, one of those jackets with a dozen pockets on each side in which to keep your car keys and goodness-knows-what-else that sure makes you look the part, like you really know what you’re doing, showing the fish you mean business, and it would certainly be more suited to serious fishin’ than the pink and white flowery shirt I’m wearing today. Anyhow…
Not a bad cast….
As well as all the kit I’ve been trained too. I’ve actually been on a course! I’ve been taught and coached, I’ve read the books, watched the TV shows and studied countless other fisherfolk casting and catching but despite all of this, very few fish bite my fly. Nowadays I don’t even bother to take my retrieve net out of the car. I’d probably be shocked if I actually caught a fish. I think that, like the horse’s reaction when I’m riding, the fish simply know I can safely be ignored.
I can sometimes make a decent cast too. My ‘D’ is pretty good, even if I say so myself, but my distance isn’t great and more often than not, my fly doesn’t exactly land like a whisper on a still surface like a pro’s. Mine hits the surface like a fly belly-flop from 3,000 feet, followed by 12 feet of line coiling into the lake next to it, which would frighten the hell out of me if I were a fish cruising anywhere nearby when that happens. Still, I’m enthusiastic and we arrive at the beautiful three-lake fishery near the Eden Project and find there’s only one other fisherman on site (why are there never any fisherwomen at these fisheries, I wonder?) and he is, of course, wearing a waistcoat with its collars festooned with flies, like a pro. I buy a two-catch licence, the cheapest licence available but ever the optimist, from the ranger (who’s also wearing a fly-festooned waistcoat) who hands me my ticket. He says he can’t really advise what flies I should use then promptly does and he also says I should fish from the opposite bank, presumably to be up-wind of my quarry and to stay stealthy. I set up, deciding on a nuclear-coloured fly because the sun is so bright and I want to give the fish every opportunity to see it, and use a sinking line because I expect the fish will be sitting on the bottom out of the bright sunlight and the too-warm water on the surface. Sound.
Click here –> . Gone Fishin’
