tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62436104494398101142024-03-13T13:00:18.709+00:00A Flyfisherlady's LifeStumbling through life whilst daydreaming about fishing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-34325161413608268542017-12-11T22:05:00.003+00:002017-12-11T22:18:59.871+00:00Salmo Sororibus<div class="MsoNormal">
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2017 has been a good year. Admittedly, my fishing season got
off to slow start. Thanks to a silly thing called HSP my legs were covered in
ulcers. The biggest, deepest, sorest one had to occur just at the top of my
wading boot, so I couldn’t wade for half the season. My father’s new water was
a god send and their kindly attitude towards rod sharing meant that I had good
access to great, well-managed chalk for most of the season. <o:p></o:p></div>
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People can be a bit sniffy about bank fishing, or maybe the
current social media trend for macho grip and grin shots of people looking <s>wanky
</s>macho in their expensive waders excludes the gentle art of fly-fishing from
the river’s side lines. However, to counter drag and avoid snags I have had to
become a more skilful angler. Roll casting, throwing curves into my line are
all things I’ve had to master this season. It’s a slower
game, territory is explored more slowly, fish considered more carefully.
Sitting and thinking is part of the game plan. I don’t feel I lost out
because those quiet moments of contemplation in its purest sense were offered
to me in abundance as I let my swollen pox-ridden legs cool in the river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> C</span>atching goodly numbers of wild trout on dry flies was the healing tonic I needed. Being constrained to the riverbank was oddly freeing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I think freedom has been a bit of a theme for my fishing year.
<a href="https://ladiesfishing.co.uk/">Anne Woodcock</a> did the kindest thing and invited me to the Tweed to salmon fish
on one of her ladies days. My legs were healed enough to don waders so I zoomed
up the M1 and beyond lugging the finest 1990s salmon tackle. I struggled in so
many ways, I hadn’t used my double-handed rod for twenty-one years, I had
forgotten how to spey cast. In fairness, the brilliant ghillies struggled to
turn over the ancient stiff line. I had a bite from a salmon and I struck like
a woman who had been fishing dry fly for trout all season like a bloody idiot. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What amazed me was my reaction to these many fishing faux pas. I felt no shame, I
didn’t mind that my casting was a bit crap and that I didn't really know what I was doing. Normally when fishing in groups I have felt compelled to fish well.
This time I felt no pressure to do anything but have fun.<br />
<br />
On the long drive back to England, I realised what the difference was.
I was fishing with women. My audience of ladies didn’t care one jot about my
performance or my casting skills; they were there to have jolly good time.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ipEQ_QesQ7c/Wi79I-VPzoI/AAAAAAAAFYA/wv_kCObhAd8dpOJCfux2Ed1TD23WUSoOQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-12-11%2Bat%2B21.47.59.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="939" height="408" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ipEQ_QesQ7c/Wi79I-VPzoI/AAAAAAAAFYA/wv_kCObhAd8dpOJCfux2Ed1TD23WUSoOQCLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-12-11%2Bat%2B21.47.59.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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I don’t think the
men I fish with care either but when I fish with men I do. I care a lot. I’m
often the first woman they’ve fished with, or even seen hold a fishing rod. They often make a point
of telling me this fascinating fact about themselves. Suddenly, I feel like I must fish very well. I must cast
beautifully, exercise perfect line control and catch fish. I feel an intense
pressure to ‘not let the side down’ to prove that women can fish, and fish
well. I feel pressured to be extra jolly and extra lovely so that they don’t
feel I am encroaching on ‘their’ territory. I fish like I am fighting for a
woman’s right to fish, to belong in their world. This is nonsense of course.<br />
<br />
However, little things like walking into tackle shops and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/10/sports/fly-fishing-women.html">being looked at like I was lost</a>, always being asked if this is the first time I have been fishing
give me the impression that as a female angler I am a weirdo. This kind
of thing doesn’t always piss me off but it is always tiring. When I fished with those fantastic women on the Tweed that pressure disappeared. That weekend I wasn’t an outsider, I was one of the gang. Unburdened from having to be a paradigm of women's angling, I could relax and I could learn. I learned so much, that when I went
fishing with my father in Wales this August, when that salmon bit my fly
and I felt that deep and definite pull, I didn’t panic. I leaned into the tug
and caught my first salmon. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Check out <a href="https://ladiesfishing.co.uk/">Ladies Fishing </a>for awesome events on top waters with top people. This is not a paid endorsement. I never advertise or review anything. This is a free blog in every sense.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-30717910280666197892017-03-18T17:24:00.002+00:002017-03-18T17:24:35.671+00:00The Art of Angling<br />
<br />
For the past couple of months I have been holed up in my shed, grappling with writing a journal article. I am pretty rubbish at writing such things basically because it is super boring. Formatting footnotes and writing wanky phrases that please reviewers like "the evidence presented here" "close examination of the text reveals" has managed to suck the joy out of any research. This confirms my choice to not apply to do a PhD. A wise move by a twenty-one year old.<br />
I was checking a reference the other day when I came across <i>The Art of Angling </i>by R.Brookes, written in 1721 and published in 1789. You can download a version of it <a href="https://archive.org/details/artanglingintwo00broogoog">here.</a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4ic-ZfvQ5FI/WM1sKzO3kLI/AAAAAAAADhQ/jWgfBwbLSicL2bshimjSeqEzujk5JR5tACLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-03-18%2Bat%2B17.19.05.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4ic-ZfvQ5FI/WM1sKzO3kLI/AAAAAAAADhQ/jWgfBwbLSicL2bshimjSeqEzujk5JR5tACLcB/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-03-18%2Bat%2B17.19.05.png" width="390" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fronticepiece</td></tr>
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The book goes through all sorts of weird and wonderful ways of catching all sorts of weird and wonderful fish. I found the endless pages of equipment needed for making artificial flies unnervingly familiar. The author spends two pages listing materials, then concludes, 'When the Angler is furnished with all these materials, he may make any sort of Artificial flies' before listing yet more pages of 'essential' equipment. My filing cabinet full of sorts of fly tying tat is testament to the universal truth that the fly dresser is never fully equipped.<br />
Recent sunny days remind me that the trout season in England will be starting soon and the sooner that I finish with this wretched piece of writing, the sooner I can fish however, my mind can't stop wandering 'To verdant Banks of Crystal streams'.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-5176447958207109402017-01-31T17:00:00.000+00:002017-01-31T17:00:16.862+00:00Sophia Banks's Trade Card<br />
Sophia Banks was the sister of the famous naturalist and all round polymath Jospeh Banks.<br />
She would make astute observations of the natural world and many of her ideas found a place in her brother's writings. She is perhaps best remembered for her large collections of ephemera which are now housed in the British Museum. The thousands of visit-cards, trade notices and prints are the detritus of an elite gentlewoman's life. It's particularly pleasing therefore to find this rather fabulous trade card, one of three from Iverson and Sons in her collections.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Trade Card of Iverson and Stone </i>(c.1792) Collection of Sophia Banks<br />Copyright: The Trustees of the British Museum. Museum Number: D,2.2084</td></tr>
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<br />In Georgian England, angling was a gentle art, enjoyed equally by both men and women. Rivers and lakes became dotted with dinky little houses, furnished with comfortable chairs for ladies to pursue this art in comfort, with servants to do disgusting things like baiting hooks. It would be wrong to conclude that such comfort replaced an angler's obsession and enthusiasm for the sport. Look at Lady Mary Coke's account of fishing with Princess Amelia in 1768,<br />
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<i>The Princess order'd me to attend her to the Great Water to fish: </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>in two hours I catched three score; two large carpe & above twenty considerable perch;</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>the rest small. The Princess catched about forty, but none so large as mine, to the great </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>mortification of the page who attended her. He seem'd to think it a reproach that the </i></div>
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<i>Princess shou'd catch less fish than mine: his distress made me Laugh.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Op.cit. Kate Felus <i>The Secret Life of the Georgian Garden, </i>pg. 84.</span></b></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-73499828051829660512017-01-13T17:35:00.001+00:002017-01-13T17:38:57.921+00:00Small Things. Quiet Achievements. <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Enforced rest caused by a frightful pox upon my legs and kidneys is good for me, though I'm not sure I can keep this up for much longer. I'm listless and lethargic, wondering if I am tired because I am not quite well or tired because I haven't done much. I'm not used to this. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">My Head of Research has told me to get well and strong doing all the things I enjoy. "What do you like to do Polly?" I like to be outside, quietly and vigorously expending energy in order to truly relish something warm and hearty and stodgy. I like the feeling of my cold, chubby cheeks turning red, warmed by log fires and laughter. I like this to have been preceded by a sense of quiet achievement. A day tramping about chasing pheasants would do the trick as would d</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">igging in some manure into frost crusted beds.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> I was looking forward to stalking pike in the frost. From my bed right now, I can almost feel my cold, chapped lips crack with a smile earned from a good catch.</span><span class="m_617305102795956004Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> All to much for me to cope with right now although I know I'd feel better straight away for having a good, log walk in the cold, fresh air. Hopefully I'll be stomping round again before spring. Instead, today, I experimented with tying paraloop flies. I also mopped the floor and made a lasagne. Small things, quiet achievements.</span><span class="m_617305102795956004Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="m_617305102795956004Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-11492661512974474522016-06-20T18:23:00.002+01:002016-06-20T18:23:39.373+01:00Ephemeral Anguish<div class="MsoNormal">
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I think if we fishermen are honest with ourselves we spend
the first couple of months of the season waiting. Throwing weighty nymphs and
speculative casts are all well and good but it’s never truly
satisfying. </div>
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So, for the early parts of the season we watch and wait for
hatches of march browns and clouds of grannom but nothing captivates us like
the mayfly. Their life cycle means crazed fish and fishermen. There’s an
intense sense of getting to the river “first” at my club at the moment. Members
are determined to grab the best beats as they hunt for fish and the mayfly. For
many, this is the only time of year they fish. I’d like to say I’m immune but
there is nothing quite like watching a river change and go into a frenzy as
angry looking trout gobble up lace-like and fragile mayfly. Or indeed my
favourite spectacle of all, watching little ducklings strain their necks to
snap at them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Last season enormous hatches blessed my daily cycle along
the Thames. They seemed to be everywhere, dancing above the brambles or
fluttering into my face. Every evening as I crossed the bridge at Hampton
court, there were always a few resting in the stone bridge. Normally, the
webs, which span the fine, baroque ironwork at the palace are peppered with
mayfly corpses. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I enjoyed listening to
squeals of horror as they invaded the garden of my local pub. For me, a resting
mayfly on a cool pint glass is a welcome companion. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This year, my cycle rides are spent straining my neck to see
traces of mayfly in cobwebs, or their shucks floating on the slower, gloomier
parts of the river. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy34hhYCHd7KosEaxt_0jIEaTU38ZsWgigHG4CMtfPzXHmPO79TggPA4kJwbm6e_-U4vjTKKrXbs6tcwAG1Cg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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I’ve become fascinated by scavenging seagulls, dipping and diving for elusive insects over the barges. I question the custody team at work about them, and none have become imprisoned in the Tijou. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xKFVXMTnQkc/V2gmD8Q1v6I/AAAAAAAABdo/wnLgyLA23TIP4RKdiXvz5LMD2PFyBoneACLcB/s1600/Hampton-Court-Palace_Tijou-Screen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xKFVXMTnQkc/V2gmD8Q1v6I/AAAAAAAABdo/wnLgyLA23TIP4RKdiXvz5LMD2PFyBoneACLcB/s400/Hampton-Court-Palace_Tijou-Screen.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tijou Screen Hampton Court Palace.</td></tr>
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<span id="goog_675422045"></span><span id="goog_675422046"></span><br /></div>
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I’m getting desperate. Where are they? I angered
a speedy lycra-clad cyclist by dithering on the banks as I searched for signs of mayfly presence. He shouted “fucking knob” at me and I shouted back “Don’t you care about nature
you sweaty bastard?” At first I questioned my aggression but I was anxious. Anxious over the whereabouts of an ephemeral insect. <o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-31086860659585558442015-07-13T00:42:00.001+01:002015-07-13T00:42:30.331+01:00On Marginalia...<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br />
My mother said I should never write in books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sorry Ma, but I’ve always ignored you on that
one. School set-texts were vigorously highlighted and annotated, I even colour
coded my scribbles. My museum training tells me that these books are now
forever ruined and conservators make me fear biro being both indelible and acidic. My school copy of Pride and Prejudice will probably fizzle and
crumble away but for now my teenage scribbles of “ooh er Mr Darcy”,“Go Lizzy!” and
“yawn, yawn, yawn” make me smile and have recorded my first impressions of
reading that great novel. Incidentally, I don’t actually like the book that much but I did enjoy the BBC seres, you know, the one where Colin Firth jumps in a lake.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I found genuine joy as a student reading the well-thumbed
Bodleian copies of the standard texts. In true Oxford pretentious fashion,
there would be long commentaries by individual students, arguing in the
margins, academic, arrogant posturing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Other scribbles were more helpful. I am forever thankful to the student
who wrote ‘this is bollocks, read Brian Davies instead’. It saved me a lot of time on the run up to a tight deadline. Indeed, I think I remember
adding an illicit “thanks” in the margin. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Best of all though, is when you see a scribble in a book that was given as a present and memories of that person and that past flood back. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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There’s a long history of margin scribbling. One of my
favourite museum objects ever is Liebniz’s copy of Newton’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Principia Mathematica, </i>in the Bodmer
museum in Geneva.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>It’s annotated all over;
the hatchings and blots are the reasons behind their longstanding and famous
battle for scientific supremacy in the eyes of the establishment. In my own
studies, the daily menus of King George I list pies, eels, and boiled beef in
the main, but the margins have hasty additions of things like liverwurst and
pretzels- evidence of a German monarch longing for home. There’s a word for
these bonus pieces of text- marginalia. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As someone who regularly trawls through the
archives, finding an inky, blotchy scribble in the side-lines is always
exciting. They point out errors, bring a little context, or just add a welcome
human distraction in the endless pages of accounts and bureaucracy I'm often reading. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The skill of fishing chalk-streams is really the ability to
skirt your fly close to the reeds, under trees and in the edges. It’s an
exercise in reading marginalia, for in these snug spots lie the biggest and
most wily of trout. Some fishermen are numbers men, happy to drag nymphs in the main current through shoals of grayling or torture baby trout that rise for anything.
Personally, I’d rather endure more Jane Austen; it’s a bore unhooking grayling
and they make my hands smell. So, unless it’s a specimen size, these days
catching a grayling is a disappointment. I’m not after pewter; I’m chasing gold.
So clear troughs of gravel are best ignored.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve had some good trout this season. In April, when it can
be a bit cold and dire my father and I spotted a snug spot, where tree roots
had made a pretty ring, almost like bathing pool. Although nothing had risen and the river had not
yet cleared enough to see through, I plopped a nymph to its edge and winkled
out a tubby trout. It was particularly pleasing as I'd tied it myself to my own experimental design using lots of peacock, green dubbing, and copper. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In early June I had a fantastic and rare, free afternoon
following a successful bid at Christies for work. I hopped into my car changed
out of a suit and into scruffy stuff in a motorway service station. After a
slow afternoon, I was treated to a spate of mayfly. I watched a steady riser on
the edge of a flowering flowing stretch of reed. I wanted to speed towards it,
but that never works, so I had an agonising slow walk, casting and catching
irrelevant small fish along the way. I arrived in casting range, steeled myself,
cast and caught the reeds then cast and caught the reeds again. Luckily they
were so thick, nothing was disturbed, but I was taking a chance. On the third
cast, when by some godly grace my fly landed well and could trace the line of
weed, I got her; a plump and pretty fish worth waiting for: mission
accomplished.<br />
<br /></div>
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With time to spare, I took three steps forward and saw a lovely,
dark inlet. Again, I willed my fly to kiss the reeds because the spot looked
likely. It was. I don’t often boast or brag but this was a good three-pound
cock fish, it was also really, bloody, ugly. It had a kype and a generally rather
bruised and dark appearance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, this
“outsider” of a trout serves as an extreme example of the rewards of fishing on
the edges. A wise fisherman told me once, “that if I haven’t lost at least three
flies, I’m not trying hard enough”. That can only be because he knows the
wisest thing to do is to ignore the mainstream and hunt in the margins. <o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-49923023859500445452015-05-08T00:17:00.000+01:002015-05-08T09:33:37.466+01:00Waxing Time<br />
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If fly-fishing is a pointless activity, fly-tying is
possibly an even bigger waste of time. Unless you are particularly nimble
fingered, it’s going to be a slow process. I could buy thousands of flies in
the thirty seconds it takes me press assuredly on my Ipad. Instead, thirty
minutes of nervous fumbling will get me two flies. It’s an entirely false
economy. My kit, my beads, my feathers and my hooks probably make each fly I
tie fly worth about £5. On an average fishing trip I expect to lose one or two
flies, I probably lose three or four. I might as well be lobbing bottles of
Pouilly Fume into the river.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then again, that’s price. Fly tying is value. I think I can
tie a more ethical fly. I can ensure that all my hooks are barbless, I avoid
exotic materials. I do wish the welfare of the chickens by suppliers of my
saddle feathers were better. It is hypocritical of me to buy free range eggs
and buy factory farm feathers. So I’ve stopped buying any new saddles until I
can find a better source. More importantly, I know who has tied it. My working
conditions are great. This is my shed/office space.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uPu39xtP8Jo/VUvvFq8u4mI/AAAAAAAAA6w/I-B53Z1Aoe0/s1600/IMG_0012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uPu39xtP8Jo/VUvvFq8u4mI/AAAAAAAAA6w/I-B53Z1Aoe0/s400/IMG_0012.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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I am pretty sure that many
cheap flies are tied by underpaid people in horrible conditions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The real value though is in the enjoyment. It’s a truly
mindless activity, which makes it mindful. <i><span style="background: white; color: #555555; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://oxfordmindfulness.org/about-mindfulness/" target="_blank">Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in thepresent moment, with compassion, and open-hearted curiosity</a>. </span></span></i></div>
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As I concentrate on the feel of thread and feather on my
fingers, or even a sharp prick from careless hook handling, I am taken away
from my daily woes, or lingering problems. This sort of activity is meant to be
good for you. The true joy of fly-tying is found through a warm embrace of the ridiculous. Trying to
create something beautiful with precision from the detritus of dead things is
silly. Surely no sane person should buy a filing cabinet to house nothing else
but a motley collection of squirrel tails and dried up rabbit faces? Crazier
still, I’m really proud of my neat system for carcass storage.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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I had great fun this week trying to imitate Gwilym Hughes’s
famous <a href="http://www.gwilymhughes.com/THE_GH_CUL_DE_CANON.asp" target="_blank">Cul de Canon</a>. It requires cobbler’s wax to add colour and sheen to
yellow thread. This is difficult to source and it really is a needless expense
at a time when I am trying to buy windows, carpets and kitchens. Therefore, I
did a mad thing and decided to make my own. I sacrificed a block of fly tying
wax given to me by the magisterial Michael Pattinson of Leeds Fly Dresser’s
Guild with much kindness and, perhaps a little disdain, that I wasn’t properly
equipped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t bear to melt my
lovely block of pure beeswax made by <a href="http://sallypointer.moonfruit.com/" target="_blank">Sally Pointer </a>and her own bees.</div>
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Against all sound advice, I melted it in the microwave. My
saucepans are far too posh to get covered in wax. It worked and a stirred in a
tiny amounts of brown shoe polish using a satay stick. A cleaned up Nespresso
Capsule served as a mould. I then had to wait patiently for the wax to set
before it could be cut free from its metal shell. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The
r</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">esult was pleasingly disappointing in appearance. For my efforts, I made a
small turd that smells of coffee. </span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bb7rgrKsimw/VUvviCmE2eI/AAAAAAAAA7A/28TLt-f9Un8/s1600/IMG_0119.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bb7rgrKsimw/VUvviCmE2eI/AAAAAAAAA7A/28TLt-f9Un8/s400/IMG_0119.JPG" width="300" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It’s a
great tying wax though. The shoe polish has made it very tacky, which will be
useful for sticking fur to it. I’m really pleased with the bodies of my first Cul de Canon efforts. The bodies are dull and shiny, a good imitation of </span>a hatching olive. Two hours of mindfully
wasted time. Brilliant.</span><!--EndFragment--><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AgQ7C-T0iR8/VUvxklFEeEI/AAAAAAAAA7M/9bmOf3ONR7M/s1600/cdcanon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="307" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AgQ7C-T0iR8/VUvxklFEeEI/AAAAAAAAA7M/9bmOf3ONR7M/s400/cdcanon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-8513817976628283502015-04-20T23:59:00.001+01:002015-04-20T23:59:04.613+01:00Dipteran Dreams or Cycling to Work along the Thames Towpath<div class="MsoNormal">
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The truth of the matter is that buying and owning houses is
not conducive to fishing or writing. Most weekends last season were spent
traipsing through beige houses with beige carpets and bedspreads that were
probably owned by beige people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People
of Surrey, you should know that you can buy things from places other than John
Lewis- liberate yourselves! Yes, we’ve moved to Surrey. As a Cricklewood girl,
leaving Zone 2 breaks my heart but moving to Surrey has meant I’m near to work and we
have more than one bedroom and a fair chunk of garden. We bought the only house
that wasn’t beige but that means it's a bit of a wreck- it’s full of potential though. Indeed it’s nothing but
potential. Our minty green bathroom is downstairs and is bigger than our
nicotine yellow kitchen. Nothing is insulated and our ceilings are weak. When we moved in every possible surface was covered in excrement both
human and animal and everything else was covered in grime. Nature surrounds and invades us. We are still blessed frequently by the presence of false widow spiders but the
two snails eating the dried piss behind the bidet were bid a crunchy farewell.
It’s now clean but we have years of work ahead.Apart from its absence of beige, I love this silly terraced
cottage because it’s near the river. It strikes me that I’ve often settled for
living in places where the river defines the town. In York, the Ouse dominated
the city; it was a wild river. My evening walks were punctuated by the sounds
of pike gobbling things, its dark waters barely tamed.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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I now own a bicycle and the bright evenings and mornings
mean I now cycle to work along the river towpath to Hampton Court Palace where
I work. I’m very spoiled. I’m not speedy; the shower situation in my Tudor
office is a bit dire; so I strive to achieve nothing more than a lady’s glow
rather than a horse’s sweat. It’s a pleasant enough four and half miles of
river. The Thames is not a beautiful river. It lacks the stunning elegance of
chalk streams. Chalk streams are the lazy Hollywood starlets of English rivers.
The Thames by contrast is a working river, the actress’s cabbie. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cazCM8a1is8/VTWD3UihtdI/AAAAAAAAA6M/Pjlw8s7qDyQ/s1600/IMG_1342.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cazCM8a1is8/VTWD3UihtdI/AAAAAAAAA6M/Pjlw8s7qDyQ/s1600/IMG_1342.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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For millennia the Thames has been carrying things, precious
cargo, royal princes to their palaces and a heck of a lot of sewage. Even here,
in Surrey, warehouses and factories protrude from the banks. The weirs and
locks scream of industry, the river’s flow made even more workmanlike by steel
and concrete interventions. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--7Lk44mvKqQ/VTWDVxNWiwI/AAAAAAAAA50/nWSuVjgka30/s1600/IMG_1359.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--7Lk44mvKqQ/VTWDVxNWiwI/AAAAAAAAA50/nWSuVjgka30/s1600/IMG_1359.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Reservoirs tower over my commuter stretch of river,
they are both threatening and comforting. One day, when my garden is filled
with poppies and salvia it will need water and if there is ever an earthquake,
I will probably drown. <br />
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The sounds of splashing oars, rowlocks, sliding seats,
officious coxes and grunting humans greet me daily when I cycle to work along
the Thames to Hampton Court. My stretch of the Thames is littered with boat-houses.
I’m filled with happy memories of pimms, champagne, the Bodleian and boys in lycra. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nOSnQPw61kw/VTWDjM4_wHI/AAAAAAAAA58/W2L4AhiFHh4/s1600/IMG_1349.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nOSnQPw61kw/VTWDjM4_wHI/AAAAAAAAA58/W2L4AhiFHh4/s1600/IMG_1349.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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It’s an idyllic commute and I’m enjoying the achy stiffening
of my chubby legs, they will get stronger and hopefully a little leaner. I’m
enjoying seeing blossom and wilting daffodils and streaky patches of young
bluebells. What I’m not enjoying is cycling through clouds of itchy midges. I
keep swallowing them as I trundle along the towpath. This is rather horrid, and
as I spit out the small and pathetic corpses of dead dipterae I am reminded
that on other rivers there are flies hatching and trout rising and I`m not
there. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-56130499106143158862014-06-22T23:04:00.000+01:002014-06-22T23:04:30.165+01:00On Sea Trout<br />
Sea trout have always seemed like a magic fish to me. Their whole life stories are a mystery
because there is apparently no real difference between their silver loveliness
and a chubby, brown river trout.
Apparently, a bog standard trout will suddenly get a wanderlust and for
no particular reason, head out to sea. Some years later, on a whim, the trout will
return, prodigal-like to their birthplace to breed. Yes, the sea trout is the mystic of the river,
the aquatic equivalent of the moon-gazing hare.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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My father told me true fairytales of sea trout fishing in
Ireland, where all nights were a success because every night, like clock work,
he would be accompanied by a furry faced otter. The first time my father took
me with him was in Northumberland; I can’t have been much more than 12 years
old. I was entranced by the flitting birds and confused by my hurting ears. My
father mentioned slowly that they were bats and that the pulsing, repetitive
stinging in my ears was their echo locating clicks. The whole evening was
eerie. I could only think of vampires in the darkness. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The second time we went to a famous pool on the River Itchen.
Monks from a different age excavated it as a pit to net salmon and sea trout. It
forms a perfect circle reminiscent of standing-stones. I was an older and
possibly surlier teenager and I think I was just about to start at University.
I thought I was so damned smart. I read Hugh Falkus cover to cover sucking
information from it. Needless to say, in that freezing cold night that poured
with rain we caught bugger all. Falkus had told us that in those conditions
it would be the case and so it was. Mr Falkus had, however, neglected to include any
help or hints of any kind as to what to do when nearly two hundred swans (I counted) cover every inch of
the pool and treat it like a cheap hotel in Benidorm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no room to swing a cat and
certainly, my duffer skills of an inept student didn’t allow me to cast
anywhere with any success. It was as if the trout had conspired and cast some
dark magic spell to smother the water with white birds. Their hissing and
aggressive, magnificent wing-flapping gave the swans an air of guardianship.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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All in all I was pleased to return there this year. I felt I
had unfinished business with swan lake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
conditions were kinder, the weather was good, the tide was right. My father,
our friend and I were so excited. I felt edgy and clammy and our conversation
almost turned to shouting with all the nervous energy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We set to fishing, excitedly assembling our
gear and casting into the inky pool full of hope. <o:p></o:p></div>
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That pool, for all its mysticism is intimidatingly urban.
You fish under the glare of streetlights overlooked by a Brutalist tower
block.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Police sirens and the wail of
ambulances accompany the hoots and tweets of birdlife.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were joyfully swan free. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, to be honest, I still don’t know what
I am doing and neither really did any of us. As the hours passed our chum who
wears dodgy waders hooked in to a silver beauty. As a band of amateurs, landing
and killing the trout in the dark became a team affair. I made artless lunges
in the dark with the net. Once netted our friend walked 20 yards away from the
river in order to claim his prize and avoid it spilling back into the water. My
father made the deathblow. He and I spent the rest of the evening green with
envy, sour-faced and fish-less. However, by morning I think I understood more
about how to catch sea trout; how your line and the tide and the currents need
to be forced to conspire together to snare a moon trout.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the sun rose, we bundled ourselves into the
car and I was dropped back at work. I was able to snatch two hours of sleep on
the sofa in my office. I wrapped myself up in discarded silk damask from the
Haunted Gallery and close my eyes. My sleepy mind clouded with desperate
longing to return and catch a sea trout, the spookiest of fish. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wAVRuU37K-o/U6dSbjCM1LI/AAAAAAAAArQ/hsK2obRLRh0/s1600/IMG_0642.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wAVRuU37K-o/U6dSbjCM1LI/AAAAAAAAArQ/hsK2obRLRh0/s1600/IMG_0642.jpg" height="640" width="480" /></a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-24604725476973772262014-05-20T22:35:00.000+01:002014-05-20T22:35:39.884+01:00England<div class="MsoNormal">
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It’s that time of year again. It’s easy when it’s cold and
drizzly and miserable to charge through your inbox and manically type out
reports. It’s not so easy to type when the sun streams in through your window
and there’s a pleasing combination of freshness and mugginess to the air. Any
fisherman knows that on the river right now flies will be surfacing and
dropping and trout will be rising. It’s agony but it’s also blissful because I
am reminded why I love England so much.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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The physicist is now a Tier 2 Migrant Worker. It sounds so
dodgy doesn’t it. Despite being an American with a shared language and history
he is navigating the nuances of this country. In England, you are instantly
pigeon holed by your accent, your dress and indeed by what supermarket you go
to. People in England are even judged by their carrier bags. God help you if
you are seen with a Lidl or Aldi bag, indeed you are judged if you have any
carrier bags. I know that our jute bag with the name of a vegetarian restaurant
in Brighton instantly screams “sodding, vegan, yoghurt-slurping hippie”.
Equally, my Jockey Club canvas tote bag marks me out as a toff. I also admit
that I enjoy going on the number 16 bus carrying a Christies carrier bag
pilfered from work. I like the thought that people might think that I actually
shop there. I wonder also whether this marks me out as a target for thieves. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What I am saying is that the English are frightful snobs. So
it is entirely unsurprising that when my husband and I went fishing together recently,
we would get into trouble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am a girl
and therefore a rare and weird occurrence on the river, I also never wear nasty over
priced fishing gear. My husband, new to the sport, doesn’t own any. So, as it
was threatening to rain, he sensibly wore his warm, black leather jacket. We must
have been a sight, as my husband is rather tall and very blonde. The lovely
bailiffs mistook us for a pair of Eastern European poachers and came charging
up to check us out. It also didn’t help that I filled out the book wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was soon sorted out and I admit, I felt
like saying, “Don’t you know who I am! Don’t you read my blog?” Then I realised
that I haven’t written for so long that I am now anonymous in the fishing
world. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z4o7Zz7s5Wo/U3vJ82Sj1CI/AAAAAAAAAqU/wE6UqacG0CI/s1600/photo+(2).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z4o7Zz7s5Wo/U3vJ82Sj1CI/AAAAAAAAAqU/wE6UqacG0CI/s1600/photo+(2).JPG" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
It would be easy to get grumpy. However, this weekend we
went to our fishing club’s open day. My husband tried out three shirts and wore
his tweed jacket to establish himself as a decent country gent. I helped on the
tea stall and baked cakes to show just how perfect an English housewife I am. I
also learned that a mere teaspoon of insecticide leeched out into the water can
destroy all fly life in the river for thirty miles. Our rivers are so precious
and delicate and the bailiffs were really just looking out to protect the
waters they have been charged with guarding. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
There is an election on Thursday and the main talk is about
immigration and each party is claiming to be more patriotic than the next. Some
talk about preserving England from foreigners. I have to say though that
preserving England has less to do with preventing a few more languages creeping
in on my commute. England is green, dotted with fluffy lollipop trees, scored
with clear rivers filled with trout and bouncing with flies. That tiny teaspoon
of poison and the frightening amount of phosphates leaking into our rivers is a
far more dangerous threat.<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-79426430892069014042013-08-18T21:18:00.002+01:002013-08-18T22:53:44.119+01:00Looking Back Beyond the Smoke<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Getting married was ace. It rained. I put on my Barbour and took it
off again for the ten minutes when the sun came out. There are now several
misleadingly bright photographs of everyone eating ice cream. This is why you
can't rely on visual evidence alone. Friday, 24 May 2013 was freezing cold. I
didn't and don't care one jot though. I've just married the most superb person
ever. Lucky me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><img height="426" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/947136_10151775948081019_1893405912_n.jpg" width="640" /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Emerging from the “pre-math” and aftermath of getting married has
meant that writing anything has been low on the priority list. Quite frankly,
after writing eighty thank you letters can you blame me for not wanting to
write much more? However, a stern word from my <a href="http://www.lucyworsley.com/" target="_blank">Boss</a> has forced me to take
action.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">My husband has admitted to me that most things terrify him. Flying,
missing deadlines and not knowing which tube stop to change at are make him
edgy and sometimes a little sweaty. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I fear very little. Cows, snapping my fishing rod and high places on
windy days scare me. I frequently wade in
water as high as my waders (neck height) and up until recently I smoked. It's
not that I am particularly devil may care but I accept the consequences of my
actions. I enjoyed the sense that with every cancer making suck, I was
making a point about freedom of choice and expression; my two fingered gesture
to the goody-goodies. It's also just lovely. However, without putting any
pressure on me, I could sense my husband's fear of my death. Having a smoking
wife would have been an uncontrollable variable in his data set. I couldn't
do that to him. So, I'm doing my best to stop and haven't smoked since my
wedding day. It was also getting a little expensive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">However, here a four fags to remember, because I miss them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt; text-indent: -36pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">1) <b>
</b><!--[endif]--><b>May 2000</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s
5 o'clock in the morning of my history exam. I'm nervous. So many dates to
remember. I'm trudging across the hockey pitches. There is a yellowed path
along the grass from the sixth form block; the result of teenagers trudging
towards the pavilion for an illicit fag. There was a line of trees and
rhododendrons behind the pavilion, which was really a large rotting shed. I settled myself down on a stump with my revision cards spreading them out over my lap. I lit up and looked ahead to the
meadows. My sight-line was obstructed by swaying branches. The sun was still
rising. It’s golden light barely reaching the top of the tall meadow grasses
which a trio of small deer were nibbling at. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt; text-indent: -36pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">2) <b>
</b><!--[endif]--><b>October 2000</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We
sat in a beige and wooden room with a disgusting carpet. Lines of crooked photos
of former students drew my eye to a messy notice board. It was our first afternoon of our first day at
University. We were waiting for something I've no idea what. We said nothing to
each other. The blonde girl grinned and drew out a packet of cigarettes. “I can’t
be fooked with this” and she started smoking. I smiled and drew out my packet
of Camels from my disgusting but in those days, painfully cool cardigan. The
pale-faced dark haired boy then asked me in the strongest Essex accent in the
world, “Can I ponce a fag off you?” We were firm friends from that day forward.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt; text-indent: -36pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">3) <b>
</b><!--[endif]--><b>May 2006</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s
my final exam ever it’s on Aquinas for my Masters. It’s in the Exam Schools, Oxford It’s a strange building designed by Inigo Jones a scarily important
architectural den. Two hours have passed
and I'm two essays down with one hour to go. I raise my hand and ask to go the
loo. I need to wash my face, focus and gather my thoughts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I
stare in the mirror. A Russian voice comes out of nowhere. “Do you smoke?” It’s
an aggressive whisper. I feel compelled to answer. “Umm, well, yes I do”. I say
this in the quietest voice possible. It’s not allowed to speak in exams, right.
She then throws a packet of cigarettes at me. “Here! Take Cigarette! Smoke!” It
was an order, not a request but I'm scared. We could get caught and actually, I
was sort of quite busy. “What the fuck are they going to do! Throw us out! Just
smoke!” She then marches towards me with a lighter. Suddenly, I'm smoking, I'm smoking during an exam! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt; text-indent: -36pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">4) <b>
<!--[endif]-->July 2008<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm fishing alone, my parents have headed downstream for some coffee and cake. Suddenly
the river is bubbling, there’s a rise on. I cast to the general area and I'm in. The take is soft, so, soft. Nothing seems to happen, there’s no splashing.
Suddenly there’s a pull. It’s a big pull heading straight downwards It becomes
clear, this fish is big and it knows what it is doing. When it shakes its head
it feels heavy and slow in my hand. It’s a slow fight, I don’t want to lose it
I want to put it back and make sure it’s well recovered. I actually will need
help to net it. The bank is quite steep. No one hears me. I'm alone. After a
time, the fish tires and I have struggle bringing it to the net, controlling a
rod and net and fish whilst lying on one’s belly is tricky. I get him, remove
the fly and hold the fish in my hands, cuddling him with my fingers allowing
him to recover. Only in this quiet moment do I realise that my trout is easily
four pounds. This was a stocked river but this fish had been in a fair while,
you don’t become this big overnight. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I
settle down on my bank and I try to light my cigarette but it’s really
difficult. My hands are shaking.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-61544072224256624122013-05-23T20:27:00.001+01:002013-05-23T20:27:54.110+01:00Single..For one night moreSo from tomorrow afternoon this Flyfisherlady will have her man. Better than a fall of mayfly. I mean it, it is. Thank you all for reading my silly words and especially for your donations. Pollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175138664728100826noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-88562261816912402542013-05-14T23:04:00.001+01:002013-05-15T11:01:48.871+01:00Fishing Trips VI: Monnow Chums <br/><br/><div class="separator"style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2mgjkLtMkX0/UZNc_d4Ge-I/AAAAAAAAAIo/VChzvnhUHeg/s640/blogger-image-1702336738.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2mgjkLtMkX0/UZNc_d4Ge-I/AAAAAAAAAIo/VChzvnhUHeg/s640/blogger-image-1702336738.jpg" /></a></div>Pollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175138664728100826noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-51069959962920806562013-04-21T23:50:00.000+01:002013-04-21T23:50:40.020+01:00Why<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Fishing is a stupid thing to do. Fly fishing is a particularly
stupid thing to do. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hours of elaborate
preparation go into doing something that is inherently pointless.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Money as well is poured into pursuing a
purposeless past time. I spent the same on a pair of ill fitting, ugly waders
as I could have spent on a timeless, beautiful Diane Von Furstenberg dress.
Seriously, manufacturers of fishing apparel should really sort this. It’s
annoying.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Fishing is frustrating; especially on a really cold windy
day. Fingers numb, lines get caught in
trees and feet are rendered into slightly painful frozen stumps. Why on earth
would anyone plop themselves into a river on a cold day?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Indeed, I sometimes wonder why I put myself through the
indignity of trying to go to the loo in a semi-public place surrounded by nettles. I often feel like Houdini carrying out an
escape act from waders and many pairs of thermals and leggings. Flyfisher ladies of the world I salute you, we
all deserve a round of applause. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We go through this because going fishing puts us in some of
the most precious and beautiful places in the world. We get to immerse
ourselves in our surroundings, tuning ourselves to nature’s frequency. The
birds, insects, ripples and splashes are even better than radio four and less repetitive.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">By and large the fish we catch are gorgeous. Today, I cast
into a pool opposite a pub and pulled out a fish that shone like a piece of tin
foil crackling out over a roasting dish. I caught a small, newly-run sea trout.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">After a day’s fishing, my face is always slightly burnt, my
hands are dried out and my hair has gone wild. However, I feel more refreshed
than I ever could at a day spa. Going fishing is my human
equivalent of de-fragmenting a hard drive then pressing the restart button. This feeling of peace and refreshment is why
we go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm<span style="font-family: inherit;"> getting married on May the 24<sup>th</sup>. That’s in a
month’s time. I seem to have a constant
stream of little jobs to do and things to think about. When the wedding is all
over, I’ll want to go fishing, push the restart button and start my life again
with the best man in the world at my side.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I think that you will all agree that fishing and the
habitats we fish in are important and something we desperately need to preserve
because they are delicate and need protecting. So, in some ways as this blog is
where the Physicist and I began, I’d like to point out our <a href="http://www.justgiving.com/pollyandseth" target="_blank">Just Giving page</a>. We
are collecting for the Wild Trout Trust who act like good parents and do so
much to look after our rivers. It’s a small way of giving back to the rivers
and of course the trout that give us so much. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FQq7noLxSzM/UXRtAtmQp9I/AAAAAAAAAjg/C-6QHET383U/s1600/photo+(9).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FQq7noLxSzM/UXRtAtmQp9I/AAAAAAAAAjg/C-6QHET383U/s400/photo+(9).JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://www.justgiving.com/pollyandseth">http://www.justgiving.com/pollyandseth</a><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-85354354397872255382013-02-26T23:56:00.001+00:002013-02-26T23:56:12.741+00:00For Finlay...<br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">“Are you any good at swimming?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">“Yes, I’m very good”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">“Hmm, I’m not bad. Will you be my best friend?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It would appear that swimming ability was how I chose my friends when I was ten. Vicky’s arrival at school was mysterious. There were stacks and stacks of Harrods boxes on a bed, but no one else was about. I found this very cool and retro somehow. I think it reminded me of Mallory Towers or whatever sickly book I was reading in preparation for boarding school. I was also somewhat impressed and curious by the sheer number of flesh coloured bras that were also strewn on the bed. Whoever this girl was she was seriously grown up. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The boxes were soon explained by the fact that her parents lived in Indonesia and so her uniform had been sent ahead. I’ll never understand quite why she needed that quantity of bras though.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Vicky tells me that when she entered the room I thrust my hand into hers. I announced myself boldly and without any sense of coyness, shame or dignity. None of these characteristics went down well with the other girls at first but Vicky was always my friend. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">She stayed with me one half-term and joined us on a family fishing trip to some stocked lakes. We had a casting lesson and I was a little annoyed that she was a bit better than me at it. I caught the first fish though.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She was with my father when she caught hers. For some reason he believes that you should always eat your first fish. In general no one in my family kills a fish very often. It’s something reserved for special occasions. I broke the rule for my vegetarian physicist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Vicky was apparently traumatised by my father bludgeoning the shiny, flapping rainbow trout. I had been administering fishy slaughter since I was a toddler so I was fine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She didn’t come with us again but I think she remembers the day fondly, she certainly has been interested in my fishing although somewhat distantly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Years later, when I got my first proper job, I was greatly comforted to learn that Vicky would also be living in Leeds. To southerners, the north can be scary. I remember London friends saying things like, “You’re moving north are you? Well I suppose it has got a lot better”. I think many southerners still believe that the north consists solely of blackened factories and mills. A bleak land inhabited with men wearing flat caps and whippets. The wee, skinny dogs somehow demonised into Satan’s beasts by the fearful southern imagination.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It’s not like that at all, obviously. I love Yorkshire and am forever mesmerised by is greenness, its bleakness and overwhelming charm.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Being of a firm fishing mindset I sought out a fishable river. Because of how I was brought up, this meant finding a chalk stream. I found one and it’s beautiful. It runs clear and has random smears of bright healthy weed which harbour many trout and huge grayling. It is however, generally far windier colder than anywhere have been in the south and the fish are hungrier. Looking upstream you can see a large factory or mill. To me this seems perfect. It’s a tougher, northern version of the Test. It’s also the first place I have fished regularly without my family and somehow it feels my own.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Vicky and I have grown very close since being isolated from our southern sisters. Bringing her to my river seems an apt confirmation of this. The trip was also significant because she was soon to be returning to the south. Vicky was there, “because I’m trying to do all the things I’ve always wanted to do before I go”. I’m touched that a day’s fishing made her list.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“There won’t be any killing will there Polly?” She is clearly still troubled by my father’s well meant bludgeoning.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No, none at all, strictly sport”. I saw her whole being relax as we trudged past cows to get to the riverbank. “Phew. Seriously, you won’t use that dodgy, killing, mallet thing”.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">“No”.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I was nervy, for me fishing with an audience is a bit like trying to pee in public, I get stage fright. After a few dodgy casts into a likely spot with a green nymph on I caught a little gleamer of a trout. I could relax as we had achieved what we had set out to do. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I sought out more esoteric sport and spotted a rising fish tucked into the opposite bank. I explained to Vicky that if I had the right fly on, and if I cast perfectly to him, I should catch it. She watched transfixed as I cast over the fish again and again with various flies. He refused my fly after a particularly lovely cast again. “The bastard!”, she said with the same vitriol I had only heard her use in reference to a certain of my ex boyfriends. I chuckled and changed my fly again. I’m used to piscatorial rejection. I wish I could be as nonchalant when it comes to men. I cast once more and it went for it like a rocket. Vicky whooped and hopped up and down on the bank with sheer excitement. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">“We shall call him Reginald” Vicky announced as I released him back into the water with a flick.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">We sat on a bench together, slurping donuts just like we did as children. We discussed, as we are now experts on all things northern, the fine nuances in West Yorkshire accents and dialects. When I arrived I couldn’t tell the difference between a Yorkshireman and a Lancastrian. I have come a long way. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I am conscious that twenty years after our first outing together, we are now women. We have proper grown up jobs. We pay the taxes and bear the scars of broken hearts. Vicky is married and has just had a gorgeous baby boy. I’m getting married this May. Nothing has really changed though. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Vicky left the river early and as she went we hugged. It suddenly struck me that this was our final time in the north together. I felt a little bereft. I cheered up instantly as she turned back towards me and said, “They have rivers in the south don’t they, let’s go again. No killing though”.</span><br />
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">
<br /></div>
<!--[endif]-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-2692873970923941392013-01-23T23:39:00.001+00:002013-01-23T23:39:11.186+00:00Accomodation<br />
<br />
I’ll always remember the summers of 2010 and 2011 as <i>stagioni mirabili</i>. They were pretty much carefree. I went fishing once or twice a week. If I wasn't fishing, I was in my garden, growing things. <i>Polly Putnam: The Rock n Roll Years</i>.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="300" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/271168_10150305235852107_7058109_n.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">York Garden</td></tr>
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I had an attic room, with a fly tying desk. It was my little sanctuary. My house-mate was a vegan, animal-rights activist, gay man from the Basque country. We got on very well. Well, we did until I mentioned mink and how they are horrid, foreign, vermin that deserve slow, painful deaths. Things changed a little after that. Differences aside, he was a top chap and a good house-mate.<br />
Climbing up the narrow, rickety stairs was an adventure and an escape to fly fishing heaven without the river. Chopping up bits of deer hair and scraping the face of a dead hare was my small rebellion against mink lovers. I loved that space, cluttered with scissors and bottles of varnish. Vases filled with feathers and tins of hooks fought for space amongst empty mugs of forgotten tea. There was also a little sofa which was strewn with fishing books and magazines. I even had a good set of speakers and thanks to the wonder that is BBC IPlayer I had T<i>he Archers</i> on tap.<br />
A year or so on, I’ve left York and moved to London. The terraced house near the river, the attic, the garden and the vast array of weird and wonderful housemates are gone. I’m in a flat in Cricklewood, such is the north south divide.<br />
My fly tying desk remains, though now it’s shoved unsatisfactorily against a wall in the bedroom. My pliers and vice are gathering dust. Work, weddings and weather prevent me from fishing. A physicist now has pride of place in every room. Statue still, he stares at a screen covered in code surrounding himself with columns of symbols and numbers. He is more mysterious than a strange quark. He is also charming and beautiful.*<br />
A lot of what he owns is encased in clear plastic bags. Dollars, Euros, Sterling and Swiss Francs bang against each other and the endless bottles of painkillers and cables. It’s like a G8 summit in a fairground goldfish bag. Big, blue bottles of man shampoo are making friends with Caroline Worthington and John Frieda. My dresses and his shirts hang side by side. I like to think they hold hands when I close the wardrobe door. My shoes, which take over the bottom of the wardrobe breed like mice in the darkness. It's all a sign that I’m getting married. I’ll fish less, I’ll tie less flies. I’ll inevitably have to call rentokill and cull some shoes and boots. It’s okay though, more than okay. Besides, I still have a shelf for my waders, rod and reel.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*This is a bad physics joke referring to types of quark</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-43614543478424599022012-10-29T22:42:00.001+00:002012-10-29T22:56:50.574+00:0050 Shades of Grayling<br />
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Right now, grayling are the <i>species du jour</i>. However, during my childhood, grayling were considered to be a pest, taking up resources for trout. I’ve always thought that they were beautiful creatures with their <i>De Stijl</i>, colouring: slate grey flanks with a large black and red fin. Nowadays, ever eclectic fishermen are constantly on the hunt for truly wild fish. These pretty creatures, which have never been stocked, fit the bill perfectly. As ever ahead of his time, they were also Charles Ritz’s favourite fish and considered them most difficult to catch;<br />
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<i>“If I had to classify fly fishermen, I should place the grayling fisherman in the first rank, then the trout fishermen of the chalk streams and, finally, the trout fishermen of other rivers”.</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Charles Ritz, <i>A Flyfisher's Life</i></span></div>
<b>1st Shade</b><br />
The first fish I ever caught was a grayling. I was maybe four, five, six or seven years old. I remember it well. My father had placed me on a wooden footbridge on the River Itchen. I was using the same rod he used as a boy and I had been told to be careful with it. He had tied on a Butcher for me; it’s an old fashioned sea trout fly tied with silver, black and red. I let my line float down stream and watched it glint amongst the emerald floating blankets of weed. I felt the fish take the hook. I remember my parents telling me to keep my rod up as I played it. I remember feeling really pleased with myself when my father netted it. It was my fish. My first fish and I had to eat ti and so it was duly despatched and barbecued the next day.<br />
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<b>2nd Shade</b><br />
I caught a really big grayling this season. I’m not normally one for boasting because I struggle sometimes with people who do because I don’t often believe them. I’ve broken all my own rules as I have been telling everyone I know how big it was. I don’t expect you to believe me. For all its size it was an easy fish to catch. After a gentle take and a hard, long fight in a fast current my father was able to net it into my inadequately sized scoop net. He also measured it. It was 21” long.<br />
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<b>3rd Shade</b><br />
Another big grayling. I caught this on the Eden with Mr Chips and NCA. It was a hard earned fish on a difficult and hugely wet day. In this instance, I remember the fish less and the fishing more. I had been guided skilfully all weekend and had failed to catch a fish. In the fading light NCA and I spotted the fins and tails of an active fish in a steadily rising river. I sneaked a cast up to it and uncharacteristically didn’t bottle it and miss the rise. Strangely, this grayling felt like a big trout it felt shakier on the line than it should. When I caught it, I could have have been a little disappointed, I was after one of the famously vicious Eden trout. I couldn’t have been more pleased and neither could have my companions. It had really been a team effort to get this rather shoddy fisherwoman to catch something.<br />
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<b>The Other Shades</b><br />
I admit that I have been known to target grayling with the express purpose of removing them (but not killing them) so that I can get at a prized trout. It rarely works. On the whole I don’t like catching grayling, they feel too precious somehow. When they are young, they feel so skittish and flap so much it’s a bit like catching a pretty moth and trying to release it outdoors without crushing its wings. When grayling get large and old, they shoal up together like war veterans in a rest home. I can’t help but think they deserve their peace. I’ve been trying to express how odd grayling are. They are wild and precious but can be annoying getting in the way of catching their flashier, blonder cousin the trout. To look at they appear to be at once ridiculously delicate but also solid and steady. Grayling have many shades, they are hard to explain or understand. Perhaps, this is why, piscatorial gentlemen of yore called them ladies.<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>The title of this post was courtesy of Philip Miles. Top photograph and grayling caught and photographed by Dave Smith. Bottom Photograph by Matt Eastham. All hold copyright of their words and images. </i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-71230824034782402472012-08-21T23:35:00.001+01:002012-08-23T22:41:58.499+01:00On Perfection<div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;">
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Wikipedia defines perfection as,<i>“a state of completeness and flawlessness”</i>. I think this has something to do with Pi and circles and maths. </div>
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When most of us think of perfection, I think we think of perfectionists. You know, the fastidious types whose desks are tidy and whose pencils are sharp and who run their lives by Excel spreadsheet. I am rarely like that. I have my moments though. I am hypercritical of bad grammar in others; I know my blog is littered with mistakes but grammar matters. I wish I could apply such a critical eye over my own writings. I also am really fussy about saucepans and plates in cupboards. Everything has its proper place. I am fussy about hanging pictures, the fonts on labels and tea pots in display cases. It’s my job to be this way. I am a curator, being fussy about detail is what we are good at. I bring my work home sometimes; once I made my housemate re-hang all of his pictures in his bedroom. This is the pursuit of flawlessness. However, a correct sentence, a straight picture and a beautifully placed teapot, though flawless in execution, lack a certain completeness on their own.</div>
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To explain further, imagine this scenario. It's a true story. Place yourself on a warm, cloudy day on the banks of a southern chalkstream. Gin clear water filled with feeding fish. Gin clear water containing the biggest trout you have seen for years. It’s at least 6lbs, it’s probably 8lbs. It shouldn’t be in that castable spot. You look ahead and realise its proper home is tucked into the near bank, under a bush, impossible to get to. It’s on a holiday, the one day a year where she will expose herself to some sun. Fat Mrs Haversham leaves the attic. You walk past, you come back and watch her. She’s eating nymphs very near the surface but not quite on it. You tie on your scruffy version of a Wyatts DHE. When you grease it, you feel a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Predator”, psyching yourself up preparing your weapons for the big guy. It’s tense.You begin. One gentle cast behind it to get your judgement right. You go for the money cast. They never work first time. Well, not for me. For once, it works. The fly falls gloriously, floppily and with deadly accuracy. You watch the fly, you watch her. Her mouth opens, it’s about the size of a saucer. Her mouth opens for me, for my fly. You flinch in surprise, the fly moves. You hear a “sploosh” like someone dropping a champagne bottle in a bathtub, confirming its size like a slap in the face. She’s gone back down, without your fly. So, flawlessness without completeness. </div>
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Whilst I participated in this indulgence, my mother was teaching my Physicist how to cast. He is brilliant. Somehow, he seemed instinctively to get the "pause". The "pause" which all fly fisherman know, is an essential part of casting. The "pause" following a back cast, is the difference between a staright line and a nasty tangle. He talked physics at me, explaining the theory of casting, he used the word "synchronicity" which I liked, whilst executing a series of pretty decent casts. I have never felt more proud. He’s a long way off flawless, but the fact he caught a fish, played many and has mastered the theory of casting makes me feel like I am on the path to completeness.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-1467004417809204892012-06-11T00:52:00.001+01:002012-06-11T02:42:05.123+01:00Fluvial Lesbianism and Performance Anxiety<br />
I’ve been having an affair with a woman, well a female. I’ve been sneaking out furtively when I can. Packing up special outfits and equipment and leaving work quickly. I’ve taken to texting the Physicist with excuses as well. “I’ll talk later”. “I’m out, not sure when I’ll be back”. “Don’t call me, I’ll call you”. Before we panic, I’m talking about the Pretty Ditch, my club water.<br />
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She hasn’t been kind to me. I’m just not used to her. I’m trying to get to know her, what she likes and what she needs. She’s just fickle and ever changing.<br />
Her high sided banks are either overcrowded with trees or thick with nettles and flowers. I find myself grabbing on to over-hanging branches; straddling them as I try to scramble up muddy banks to avoid a dark, deep hole. She runs slowly, then, turn a corner and she is riffling quickly over rocks. Her bed is sometimes silty and sometimes gravelsome. On rare occasions it is lush and covered with weed. Her fluctuating nature, is my excuse, my reason for having so far managed to catch only a grayling and roach all season. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AF3yP_vAF-w/T9Uxnev-yzI/AAAAAAAAAgc/yjhoohz1PQA/s1600/547806_10150974613197107_1308121495_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AF3yP_vAF-w/T9Uxnev-yzI/AAAAAAAAAgc/yjhoohz1PQA/s400/547806_10150974613197107_1308121495_n.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: black;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">I wish I could say that I was more successful and more pleasing to trout on other rivers. I blanked on the Eden and blanked on Driffield Beck. Admittedly one day it was scorching hot, the other day is was bucketing down with rain and blowing a gale. At Driffield, I fared better and was rather proud to have risen about six fish in difficult conditions. I also lost one good trout when I tied a knot badly. It was the end of the day and my fingers were bloody cold. I seemed to have suffered from a sort of fly fishing premature ejaculation. I was nervous and striking too quickly; beginnings without ends and excitement without orgasm. I'm worried I’ve lost my fishing mojo. Luckily this poor performance didn't put off my man of dishonour (male maid of honour) who joined me fishing for the first time. Bizarrely, he was riveted by the experience and vows to join me again but wearing a waterproof and wellies. I am afraid he spent the trip damp and hungry. Seemingly, unlike females, men are easy to please.</div><br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-9041808707225683222012-05-13T23:46:00.000+01:002012-05-14T00:08:29.924+01:00Words on WaterI've wanted a home river for ages now. I've been a peripatetic day ticket fisherman all my life. I am now a member of an angling club and have all the access I need to the Pretty Ditch, when it isn't filled to the brim.<br />
Today I had lunch with close friends like I have done many times over the years. A little baby has recently joined our elite set of thinkers and jokers. Her gurgling and screaming made me feel like I was in the midst of my Yorkshire family. I waddled, gammon and chocolate-filled to my little rented terrace along the river, the Ouse in York. Its burst banks had recently subsided leaving a muddy film smeared all over its walkways.<br />
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For much of the year it is a benign and pleasant distraction on my walk into town. Its banks are crowded by tourists, cyclists, smug runners and dishevelled intoxicated students. The concrete, brick and gravel taming it into a wide water feature.<br />
Today I was reminded of its wildness. I nearly trod on the chewed remains of a pike. A few steps further and I saw the final resting place of a large bream. <br />
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The strange, rapid rise and fall were too quick for these poor creatures. Further on and a large branch has alighted itself on the park bench, an odd juxtaposition worthy of Andy Goldsworthy.<span style="text-align: center;">The viewing dock is wrapped in yet more branches and a television.</span><br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ICJ7YgA1oZg/T7AyD9_v3-I/AAAAAAAAAfk/hj5XTo6ulE8/s1600/photo+%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ICJ7YgA1oZg/T7AyD9_v3-I/AAAAAAAAAfk/hj5XTo6ulE8/s320/photo+%25281%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a>I’ve never fished the Ouse. It’s not really occurred to me to. I have to admit that I am a little put off by the lonely men yanking out roach as they smoke roll-ups and the likely lads spinning violently for pike. Because I have never fished it I had ruled it out as my home river. <br />
The debris, the dead fish and the slippery mud knocked sense into me. A hundred yards from my house and some steps take me to its banks. This river is home. I’ve walked up and down it countless times. When I walk it now I always think of the endlessly repetitive conversations I've shared with ex-house-mate, colleague and man of honour, about Masterchef, London and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. There is also a certain spot, where, after a jolly afternoon sinking impromptu cocktails he found relief. I still giggle each time I pass it.<br />
The street lights and the sight of a modern, multi-coloured bridge have guided me home at times when it really would be more appropriate to take a cab. I am drawn to the Ouse. It offers a safe haven away from the night time, horrendous customers of kebab shops and the Wetherspoons following a day at York Racecourse. One evening I saw a huge pike loll and roll on its flanks under a bush on the opposite bank. I like to imagine it had just swallowed a coot.<br />
I’ll always remember watching the minnows jump and shimmy away from another large pike under the orange glare by Brownie Dyke Lane. In this instance it wasn’t because I’m an angler and I like these things. It’s because I was with my Physicist on a balmy July evening. He talked about the Manhattan Project and I realised then that he would never bore me. So I kissed him.<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">* I bought <i>Caught by the River: A Collection of Words on Water</i> three years ago and became immersed in its tales of other people's rivers. Pretty soon afterwards I decided to start this blog in the dream of perhaps, when pigs have flown be able to write like those guys. I write this post today in homage to<a href="http://caughtbytheriver.net/2009/05/caught-by-the-river-a-collection-of-words-on-water/"> that book and accompanying website.</a></span></span><br />
<br />Pollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175138664728100826noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-79662545350748050672012-05-06T18:29:00.001+01:002012-05-06T18:46:09.032+01:00Thus I, faltering forward....<br />
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It was time to go. I've been cooped up inside far too long. I’ve been living on my own for the last month. I've enjoyed the space and the knowledge that any hair I find in the bathroom is mine and mine alone. However, time and space can lead to a cluttered mind. I needed a room without walls with water flowing right through it. Time to head outside.<br />
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So last night I packed up, sorted through reams of rotted reels of line and scrambled together a fly assortment of sorts. I bought Scotch-eggs and filled the thermoses. Yes, for the first time this year I was going fishing.<br />
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I’d been dying to try out the Pretty Ditch all season, work and rain and Swiss-based-husbands-to-be have prevented me so far. The Pretty Ditch is my club water and I’ve been looking forward to working with her all year. She was looking rather scruffy, like a deranged woman returned from drinking. She had clearly almost flooded and the flow through her reminded me of the might River Eden. After an hour trudging through her and up her, I learned so much. Today she was cloudy but she is always high-sided and crowded with trees. You can’t cast far, so controlling the drag on a sole nymph through a raging stream was difficult. I added a dropper and put a klink on, hopefully helping me see. This is a nod to allowing the dry fly fish more naturally. I am unused to duos, I am unused to casting with trees and bank everywhere and so very soon I got very used to ghastly tangles.<br />
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I switched to using a progressive New Zealand style. Here you tie the dry and then attach the nymph to the bend of a hook. Using this method, your dry fly really is little more than an indicator.<br />
I needed it today, I couldn’t read the pull of my line fast enough in the water and this way the fly and nymph tangle up a lot, lot less. If I had more space I would prefer to use a dropper but it was helping me get used to the weight of two flies.<br />
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Catching my first fish of the season was glorious. I paused when I spotted some flitting olives knowing that a rise couldn’t be far away. I snipped off the foreign klink and dink set up and put on a dry. Two dodgy casts and one perfect one gave me a small and gorgeous grayling.<br />
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I ploughed on upstream and the Pretty Ditch gave me a big surprise in the form of a big drop into a deep hole. I nearly lost me and I certainly lost my net which ended my delayed season’s first trip prematurely. <br />
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Today was a start, not the one I hoped for but there’s plenty of time to make up for it. Next weekend I return to my Pretty Ditch.<br />
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-3356633991084720972012-04-23T21:25:00.000+01:002012-04-23T21:55:00.066+01:00Distractions<br />
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People, I have tied a total of three flies since January and I haven't been fishing yet. Something is up. I can blame a lot of it on work being quite busy but fun. However, it's something different, something new. It's not like trying coarse fishing. It's more familiar, yet different, maybe like nymphing. No,more glamorous, salt-water flyfishing. Not even like that, it's more of an adventure, more comfortable more joy making. Yes more joyful, glorious even. It's better than a generous sprinkling of may flies on damp day. The master river scribe Chris Yates has come closest to describing how I feel.<br />
" It’s as if I’ve discovered – blimey, I can do other things in life, other than fish! It’s exciting."<br />
All evidence points to the fact that there is more to life than fishing, it's called physics, or at the very least a certain Physicist. Sod, it. Let's call it love.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uVrZ5bLB0bQ/T5W6dbxqWYI/AAAAAAAAAdI/RqLua92CmnY/s1600/524275_824822177610_2901330_35931579_791328704_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uVrZ5bLB0bQ/T5W6dbxqWYI/AAAAAAAAAdI/RqLua92CmnY/s640/524275_824822177610_2901330_35931579_791328704_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-86359803444789441712012-02-18T00:17:00.001+00:002012-02-20T23:05:12.953+00:00Wannabe<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh dear. I’m here again ranting about wimmin and fishin’ again. It’s very boring, and this is no way to start a posting. My lovely friend, who runs the brilliant <a href="http://ladiesfishing.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ladies Fishing</a>, asked the editor of a very well known British Magazine when they would feature women on the front cover. Here was his response:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><i>Tried it once, back in 1996. Pretty brunette, long, bare arms in a fishing waistcoat... remember it well. Thought: "with a huge male readership, this issue's sales are going to be sky high". So, can anyone tell me why it was the worst seller ever?</i></span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I suppose I had better answer his question. I think I have to think about what men were like in 1996. I like to think that all men were either mourning the split up of the Stone Roses and participating in lager fuelled Oasis V Blur debates. If they were in Edinburgh, they were clearly shooting up heroine and seeing babies crawl along ceilings and getting lost in the toilet and shouting “lager, lager, lager, shouting”. .. Were they indeed feeling guilty about living in a house, a very big house in the country and buying animals floating in formaldehyde? Did they take girls to the supermarket? Not knowing why but having to start it somewhere, so they started it. There. Did they wear three lions on their shirts only to tear them off again condemning them forever to mixed feelings about Gareth Southgate? A possible answer could be that they had other things on their mind like Kate Moss in Calvin Klein adverts and Louise Wener.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o_4E68Lcito/Tz7qxdgImmI/AAAAAAAAAbo/OjpMAzQBQe4/s1600/kate-moss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o_4E68Lcito/Tz7qxdgImmI/AAAAAAAAAbo/OjpMAzQBQe4/s1600/kate-moss.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">I was 14 in 1996 and buying the NME every single week. It was a ritual a sacrifice to music that was starting to dominate my life. My best friend and I decorated our room with images of Jarvis Cocker and pretentiously left copies of The Face strewn over our boarding school bunk beds. I would listen to John Peel every night and I felt like the coolest girl on earth. Come to think of it, buying The Face at 14 was pretty cool. However, I don’t think either of us really knew what on earth we were reading our minds were probably a little bit too addled by Tim Wheeler of Ash and that lad from the Bluetones.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TqA1oD92IyY/Tz7tB_BGNpI/AAAAAAAAAcI/HofmpRk1GNo/s1600/britpop.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="321" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TqA1oD92IyY/Tz7tB_BGNpI/AAAAAAAAAcI/HofmpRk1GNo/s640/britpop.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">My long-winded, nostalgia ridden point is this: 1996 was rather a while ago; John Major was Prime Minister, O.J Simpson went on trial. Times have changed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">More women have taken up fly fishing and its popularity is growing. We weren’t all killed by BSE, the Stone Roses have reformed. Oasis won. Dear Mr Editor, please roll with it, move with the times or I’ll have to draw upon something called Girl Power, invented in 1996 by the Spice Girls.</span></span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9_GM8wrTNlk/Tz7rk8s_GVI/AAAAAAAAAcA/d3WOMa5D1dE/s1600/SpiceDM2606_468x290.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="246" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9_GM8wrTNlk/Tz7rk8s_GVI/AAAAAAAAAcA/d3WOMa5D1dE/s400/SpiceDM2606_468x290.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-74535104525698840382012-01-11T23:06:00.000+00:002012-01-12T07:51:28.389+00:00Going Coarse....I think my little world is changing and going fishing this Sunday has made it clear. Things are moving on nicely with the Physicist. I took him home for Christmas and we are still together so I view this as successful. The family seem to like him; my aunt would even like his babies, apparently. <br />
<div>I found myself this weekend in the odd position of having an "'im indoors". It's like an 'er indoors but with testicles. I have been tidied up after, shopped for and have been very well cared for all week whilst at work. Somehow, I racked up enough "brownie points" (men always seemed to need these) and I was allowed out for the day leaving the Physicist waiting patiently at home.</div><div>I was off out winter grayling fishing. Now this is something I don't do. Civilised people don't wade in rivers oop North in January. However, you don't turn down an offer from<a href="http://flyfisherlady.blogspot.com/2011/05/secret-river.html" target="_blank"> the Master. </a></div><div>So, the ever patient Physicist was lured to Marks and Spencer to go shopping for negligee. Thermal leggings, socks, vest and a gilet were purchased. </div><div>I met the Master in a market town in North Yorkshire on the auspices of joining in a competition. I was stiff from lack of sleep and five layers of clothing. We were given our beat and off we went. I was told very firmly (again, you don't disagree with the Master) that my fly rod was spare and today we were using a centre pin.</div><div>Now, us fly fisherfolk can be terrible snobs. I count myself as one of the best and have been<a href="http://flyfisherlady.blogspot.com/2010/07/casting-practice.html" target="_blank"> very dismissive of coarse fishing</a> in the past. To me, coarse fishing was all maggots, boilies, bait alarms and cratefuls of gear. I take it back. There is something very lovely about drawing line down a rod and off the reel with two fingers. I loved the lob type casts; the heft of the float and shot plopping into position was a bit like a baby seal flopping towards its mother. Difficult and inelegant but satisfying. Floating a worm downstream on the free running line of the centrpin was like tapping into the blood flow of the river.With constant, gentle adjustments, it was like feeling the pulse of the river using my thumb on the circle-shaped reel. The reel turns gently paying out line as the float drifts. I could have watched that float drift for ever. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://caughtbytheriver.net/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Night-Fisher-copy-550x317.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="368" src="http://caughtbytheriver.net/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Night-Fisher-copy-550x317.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Night Fisher by John Mcnaught (This brilliant image is borrowed from the amazing website <a href="http://caughtbytheriver.net/">http://caughtbytheriver.net/</a> Their selections of short stories are amazing and are the reason I started writing this blog. I am about to email the artist if I can use the image. The moral rights of living artists is very important and something I believe in very strongly. This image may well disappear. )</td></tr></tbody></table><br />
I shall add that I caught nothing on my own, I lacked skill knowledge and experience. True to form, the master held the rod twice and caught two off season trout. Beautiful, firm and wild.<br />
To return to my first sentence, things have changed. I'm being cared for and have someone to abandon whilst I fish (a situation I do not like at all and hope to change). I think also, that this child of the chalk might well dabble a bit further into the world of coarse fishing. I shall keep my blog title, though A Coarse lady's life sounds far more interestsing. </div>Pollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175138664728100826noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243610449439810114.post-27103384172282494602012-01-05T21:33:00.001+00:002012-01-06T18:00:35.494+00:00Dazzle!Fisherfolk must know a thing or two. We spend all day near or on the water not doing much which gives us time to think, possibly too much time. This should explain why there are so many experts in fishing, so many people offering advice and the benefits of their wisdom. The cosy inertia of the river bank affording the space needed to provide reasons, or excuses for one's success or failure. The long, cold winter giving the time to write it all up as blogs or articles in Trout and Salmon. I hope that sometimes all that thinking time can spawn something useful.<br />
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I hate fly fishing art on the whole, it's impossibly naff at times but most commendably, often worthy of a place in the Daily Mail's "Not the Turner Prize". There is possibly no genre more worrying than hyper realism. All that copying is just a little unhealthy. Fishing art is more often than not just naff and twee.<br />
Today I came across this cracking painting which has changed my mind about fishing art.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T5iJh7Oa8xY/TwThCmmUbnI/AAAAAAAAAaw/e4HE9mW6voQ/s1600/wilkinson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="295" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T5iJh7Oa8xY/TwThCmmUbnI/AAAAAAAAAaw/e4HE9mW6voQ/s400/wilkinson.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><i style="font-size: small;"> Sedges, </i> <span style="font-size: x-small;">Norman Wilkinson </span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(1878-1971)</span> <i style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It manages to be realistic without being kitsch and I can almost cast to those rises. It was painted by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Wilkinson_(artist)">Norman Wilkinson</a> who, as it happens, was an early camoufleur; a gorgeous word for a practioner of camouflage. Already recognised as a pretty decent artist, during WWI he was in the Navy. During that time, he persuaded the Admiralty to adorn their battleships with his "Dazzle" patterns with the aim of making the outline more difficult to trace and hopefully confusing German U-boats.</span></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IQMvF94wkx0/TwTjZBDTVJI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/fNqw7D-kmDE/s1600/DAZZLE2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IQMvF94wkx0/TwTjZBDTVJI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/fNqw7D-kmDE/s400/DAZZLE2.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Dazzled Ships at Night, </i>(1918) Norman Wilkinson Image copyright of the <a href="http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/search?query=norman%20wilkinson">Imperial War Museum</a></span></div><br />
After the Wars, he turned his attention to providing awesomely groovy images for government posters.<br />
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I like to imagine that he came up with the idea of dazzle during an evening with trout bursting to the surface as the sunlight casts strong shapes over a river's ripples. The overall effect causing him blinking confusion as to where to place his fly; or at least that was his excusing for missing the rise.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com