Why I Fish

There were three of us in one vehicle, and our access points were limited. It should have taken just a moment to decide where to go, and how to divide the water between us, but we prolonged the decision. Perhaps this was because planning a day on a stream is another enjoyable part of the experience.

The omens were good. The previous evening we had talked about the joy of maintaining a passion for fly fishing, even as we grow older. We weren’t claiming it as a particularly worthwhile thing — just feeling lucky that we cared about something. It’s not just the fishing either. It has been a rich source of friends at a time when too many finish busy working lives without close friends, and with even fewer reasons to get excited about anything.

The relentless winds of October had given way to a settled November. The evening was mild and still. I stepped into the dark to make a call home, and was captured by the sky. A bright cuticle of moon sat low in the west, above a line of silver birches. The crescent of light cast a pale grey glow over the rest of the moon while bright Venus was suspended directly above.

When I look at these dark Southland skies I feel on the verge of something beyond understanding and explanation, but with a hope that if I stand here long enough I might learn something of interest about my borrowed existence. Bob and JD joined me to take in the view.

It looked like a night scene by Edward Hopper. A living-room glimpsed through the silver birches, the glow of light spilling from the window, a suggestion of an event taking place out of sight, and above, dark space studded with diamonds. In the foreground an empty road, a fence, and three friends staring at the night sky thinking how lucky they are.

We finished our fishing plans over an unhurried breakfast of eggs, bacon for some, toast and strong coffee. JD was to go in below us to try a section he hadn’t fished. Bob and I were to drive through a farm upstream, with Bob to fish the water below the car, and I was to go above.

We found the farmer at the implement shed.

“Morning,” I said, “we’re hoping to go down to the stream to fish if that’s okay?”

He looked at me as he wrapped a worn hand around his lower jaw, as though he was a doctor contemplating my condition. “Sure,” he said, “I’m pleased to see you guys fishing the stream.”

“Thanks! Which is the best way down? Last week I drove down the lane to the left, and then in over the ploughed paddock.”

He rubbed his chin, looked towards our destination, and thought for an extended moment. “That paddock’s sown now,” he said. “Go right at the end of the lane, then head over to that tractor.” He pointed to a dilapidated tractor on a ridge. “If you cut diagonally over the ridge beyond that you should be fine.”

“One of these days I’ll push the lane all the way to the stream,” he continued. “Make it easier for us all.”

Bob listened to the conversation through his open window.

“I can’t believe how generous these guys are with access,” he said, as we drove over the paddocks to the stream. “Where else in the world do you find that?”

I left Bob and walked upstream for 15 minutes, staying clear of the banks. The water, which had been in flood for much of the past month, was perfect now. Its flow is only about a cumec, and it is a miracle that it hasn’t been overwhelmed by the impact of intensive farming on the soils it has deposited on this valley floor for a thousand years. The stream has survived being treated badly for decades, although I wonder how many of its lives are now left.

The air smells of freshly cut grass, cows, sheep and the earthy scent of the water. The current flows dark and slow under a grey sky that drapes the western hills with misty rain, flecks of white foam tracking its current lines. Willows crowd one bank or the other, but rarely both.

I check my watch and decide I have left Bob enough water. I ease down the grassy bank, slide into the knee-deep water and wait for the decay of the ripples left by my gentle entry. A soft bulge against the floating strands of grass a few metres above me betrays a feeding trout, and towards the centre of the stream a widely spaced dorsal and tail fin break the surface, hold for a moment, and then disappear. In a patch of light a little further upstream I see two more fish feeding, one curving onto its side to get a better angle to scoop caddis larvae from the stream bottom. The stream has a huge population of cased caddis, and I’m sure that’s what the trout will be picking from the stones.

The stream makes little noise. Along the long quiet pools there is just the sound of water being pushed against my legs — only where the water tumbles through the rocky seams at the head of the pools does its gentle energy convert to a watery murmur. Beyond, I hear the hum of bees gathering pollen from flowering willows.

I tie on one of Bob’s snowshoe hare emergers, though I see few fish rising. A nymph would catch in the algae and weed in the shallow water. It is an act of faith that the trout will take an emerger in the film.

My first cast spooks a couple I hadn’t seen in the shadowy water, and they ricochet up the pool like well-hit billiard balls, scaring others. I curse and push my back into the bank to wait for the melee to settle.

Eventually I make a short cast upstream of a feeding trout, the leader touching down in a pleasing pile of curves that will add distance to the drag-free drift. The fish rises, and because it is close I watch the fly tip gently over its lip into the mouth’s creamy interior. The hooked trout disturbs other fish in the small pool before I slide it into my net.

Time to move on, although it is difficult to move upstream without spooking others. I edge forward, stopping every few metres while I scan for feeding fish. The signs are mostly subtle shifts of the stream’s surface: an unnatural bulge, or faint ripples heading in an odd direction. Sometimes a fin will show, and once in a while a trout will rise.

By 12.30 most cloud has gone, leaving part of the stream lit with bright sun while the sections shadowed by willows look darker than ever. In the dark water I let the trout find me. The tiny emerger tilts and bounces in the rippled water while I watch for the vague opening in the surface, that fleeting disturbance into which the fly will disappear, and instinctively lift the rod in that moment of anticipated resistance, as fresh a feeling now as it was decades and thousands of fish ago.

It’s not always like this, but today the windows of light show trout in improbable numbers. They cruise slowly, often two or three within a few metres of each other, picking cased caddis from the stony bottom. The parade of fish continues as I edge upstream for the next couple of hours. I follow a trout about 30 metres as it grazes on caddis. Even in water this shallow it takes no notice of my emerger suspended in the surface film, centimetres from its head. Eventually I get the fly in front of the trout as it lifts its focus from the stony bottom, and it sucks in the fly as though it is exactly what it has been looking for. I land several before realising I need to move faster to make my rendezvous.

Close to the car, four fish are rising in a deep slow pool. They hang close to the surface in the open shafts of current that flow between dense beds of plants, trout and plants swaying with the current, moving like long grass on a breezy day. I wade waist deep to within three rod lengths and land my fly just upstream of the closest fish, the fly-line on top of the plants, leaving only my leader on the water. The pectoral fins of the trout stiffen in that moment when a bolt for cover is as likely an outcome as a rise to the fly. On this occasion the trout tilts up and takes the fly.

It’s almost a miracle to land trout in these weed-choked areas, and within a minute my rod is fully bent by both trout and plants. By the time I get it to the net the combination of weed and trout weighs close to 8 lb, with the trout contributing about half the total. I rise another which doesn’t stay connected, before I leave the stream.

We don’t have a tradition in New Zealand of being able to amble through our rural countryside. There are few opportunities to walk away from the road and take the time to observe the fine detail of the land. The chance to sit in the shade of a willow and watch the water, the insects, swallows, terns, ducks and even the odd rat, is lost to most. As I grow older this element of my fly fishing has become at least as important as catching trout. Casting a fly gives me a chance to see this world. To fly-fish well, you need to find a way to enter this natural place, not loudly at the top of the food chain, but quietly somewhere in the middle of it, connected to it by the fly attached to a leader, a fly line and rod.

These long rambles through the countryside, spending a day like a Buddhist, mind focused on this single experience, have become my therapy. My footprints will remain only until the next rain, but the imprint left on me by the stream and its surrounding environment lasts far, far longer. I’m left with a better sense of what can and can’t be bought and sold, some understanding of the complex harmony of these places, and an altered perspective as to where I stand in the scheme of things.

I didn’t understand that this would be part of the journey when I cycled to the river almost six decades ago, rod in hand, green fishing bag over my shoulder, focused only on catching trout.