For Finlay...

“Are you any good at swimming?”
“Yes, I’m very good”
“Hmm, I’m not bad.  Will you be my best friend?”

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. 
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.
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.  

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.
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.
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.
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.  
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.
It’s not like that at all, obviously. I love Yorkshire and am forever mesmerised by is greenness, its bleakness and overwhelming charm.
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.
 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.
“There won’t be any killing will there Polly?” She is clearly still troubled by my father’s well meant bludgeoning.
“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”.
“No”.
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.  
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. 
“We shall call him Reginald” Vicky announced as I released him back into the water with a flick.

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. 

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. 
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”.

Accomodation

I’ll always remember the summers of 2010 and 2011 as stagioni mirabili. 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. Polly Putnam: The Rock n Roll Years.

York Garden

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.
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 The Archers on tap.
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.
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.*
 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.

*This is a bad physics joke referring to types of quark

50 Shades of Grayling

Right now, grayling are the species du jour.  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 De Stijl, 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;

“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”.

Charles Ritz,  A Flyfisher's Life

1st Shade
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.

2nd Shade
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.

3rd Shade
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.

The Other Shades
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.

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.