Thoughts from Friday 2nd March

Okay, so it’s not night time yet; in fact it’s only early afternoon, but today is one of those occasions when you can, as David Coleman might have said, “Literally cut the tension with a knife”.

Not that days like that are uncommon in a household with a demanding family and a wife whose idea of being supportive of my obsession with fly fishing is to say “Well you went earlier in the year didn’t you?” No, todays tension is all of my own creation, and I’m revelling in it. You see March 3rd is opening day for brown trout in these parts and therefore all of my faculties and my vital life processes are focussed on this occasion.

The forecast from Metcheck has been followed throughout the week with the angst and anticipation more usually reserved for following English cricket teams touring the southern hemisphere. You know that it is almost certain to end in bitter disappointment, but then come moments which offer glimmers of hope and your whole demeanour changes, fists are subtley clenched, you smile at people you love and you allow yourself to believe. Thus relaxed you are so very vulnerable, and just as Australian bowlers are apt to turn the most promising of English innings into abject failure, so the weathermen wait their turn to visit the same outcome on the innocent fisherman.

But thinking positively is all important. The rods have been cleaned and then stared at on the kitchen table, often from a low crouching position, as if one were inspecting a spirit level. The reel has been polished lovingly then stripped of it’s line and then rewound at least three times; and the line itself scoured, scraped and coated in every available domestic cleaning product that might just enhance it’s floatbility and slickness. All this, serves in the imbecile mind of the frustrated fisherman - mine - as the preparatory ritual for that first cast of the new season. That purest of moments when in the tree diffused light of a mid morning sun, muscle, sinew and synapse combine in poetic synergy. Arcane physical law fused perfectly with the artist’s intent as a line is painted out across the river to float a delicate little dry within the gaze of a beautiful spring trout, lying just where fate decreed it so. Oh God! Please let it be so.

Of course you have doubts… the lovingly cleaned line and reel combination are likely to flash across the water with the lethal brilliance of the Obi Wan’s light sabre, dispersing trout and blinding onlookers. You knew this when you were polishing them this morning yet still you carried on; carried on buffing and enjoyed it, felt it to be worthwhile, which it was. You now suspect the folly of such action. The fly line too… stripped and cleansed it may be, but will it float and cast any better? In fact, will it be safe to cast on the water at all? Impregnated as it now is with countless household chemicals, or will it merely serve as some kind of highly toxic flagellant, delivering poisoned, painful death to all trout luckless enough to remain within thrashing distance after the light sabre has passed within their midst.

Perhaps too many doubts? But doubt is our friend! Fly fishing is a festival of uncertainty where the greatest prize is won by those who least expect it, the most heartfelt satisfaction felt where hope seemed dimmest. Tomorrow, my friends, tomorrow!