Fishing Blind

Every cast is a question, every drift is an answer. And Toni Marks is in a questioning mood as his sinking line lands, the river takes hold, folding it into the current, and the journey downstream begins once more.

The 80-year-old revels in the hypnotic repetition of wetlining. The pulsing and pulling of his line as it follows the flow, swinging across broad currents in deliberate arcs, the fly trailing below, probing a path through shadowed runs, where maybe, just maybe…

His exclusive love of wetlining is borne out of necessity. Most anglers of advancing years have increasing trouble threading hook eyes, spotting soft sipping dry fly takes, or making out the telltale spin, twitch or bob of an indicator. But Toni hasn’t even seen an indicator, or anything else for that matter, in half a century. He is blind.

THE TUG IS THE DRUG

We are standing together waist deep in the Tongariro’s cool clear waters, on New Zealand’s famed Central Plateau, as the sun creeps from behind a cloud illuminating the sky. Toni’s line suddenly tightens and he instinctively lifts his rod, excitement etched across his face before, equally quickly, it slackens and he exhales with a laugh. ‘Just a snag.’

That thrill of the take though, the adrenalin flush as long periods of inactivity are broken by a strike and ‘all hell lets loose’, keeps him coming back for more. ‘It’s marvellous when it’s a fish, but I can get that same feeling from a submerged rock or branch,’ adds this affable character.

Many of us have ‘stick fish’ stories but few compare with Toni’s. Not long after taking up fly fishing, four decades ago, he was fishing the Tongariro’s Hydro Pool when he unknowingly overcooked a cast and came up fast to a willow tree on the far bank.

‘It’s just about impossible with your eyes shut to tell if you’ve got a willow tree or a fish, well it was for me back then,’ he says. ‘I was way out in the river and had no idea I was casting so close to the bank. I had a reasonable amount of line out, hooked up to this thing and, what with the main flow of the river pulling and dragging the line, I thought I had a heck of a fish on. I was giving it hell and it would bend and give and then pull back. I would’ve been a good 20 minutes before realising. Must’ve been quite a show for anyone watching,’ he adds chuckling.

Not all ‘takes’ end this way and it was in the same spot we’re standing now, at the edge of one of his favourite pools, that 12 months ago he landed a stunning fresh-run 8½lb hen rainbow. It’s a capture he dismisses with typical humility.

‘It was a wonderful piece of flukery really. It was raining, there was a southerly wind, the river was rising and colouring, and in fact within half an hour was unfishable. I’d lost two fish just beforehand, one of which was a nice one, but then this really big fish obligingly hooked itself. It was in the fast water for a start but I put my rod on its side and managed to guide her out of there thankfully. I corrected my mistakes from the previous losses and I had a beautiful bit of sloping gravel to land it on. Everything fell into place.’

He was ecstatic.

‘I’m surprised they didn’t hear me in Tauranga,’ he says with a beaming smile, evidently reliving the capture. ‘My brother-in-law was upstream and saw me on my hands and knees with this fish and he probably thought I was having a medical event or something. But I was just doing salaams to the trout on the gravel.’

LISTEN AND LEARN

An intelligent and politely spoken man, Toni is easy company and standing here, with the sounds of the river and the rhythmical swishing of the rod and line as another cast goes out, it’s easy to forget that he can’t see a damn thing. So how does he do it? Any of it? Getting to the water, tackling up, wading, positioning himself safely, casting, hooking and landing fish, the list goes on.

Orientation comes from listening for the location of the white water, Toni reveals. This indicates where the top and bottom of a pool are and from that, added to the feel of the flow around him, he works out his casting angle. Wading has never been an issue, having been blessed with good balance, although he did take a tumble close-in once and filled his waders as a result.

Regularly fishing favoured spots has also helped build up muscle memory for casting distances but, if he needs help, he’ll ask a fishing companion where his fly is landing. That information is logged, as is the number of strips required per cast, and then repeated each time. Beaching fish is the preferred landing method, but if not practical, his ‘offsiders are happy to provide some assistance with netting’.

The octogenarian’s line goes taut again, followed by a quick inhale/exhale of realisation, but this time the snag is more stubborn and refuses to give up its prize. The break off does, however, offer a convenient opportunity for a knot-tying demonstration, Toni Marks style.

‘I use my tongue, it magnifies things immensely and gives you so much information, it’s wonderful. It’s a pretty straightforward technique,’ explains Toni laying the end of the tippet on his tongue before resting the hook eye next to it. ‘It’s really quite easy to thread it through and tie it on from there,’ he adds before adroitly doing just that.

LIVING WITH BLINDNESS

Born in Geraldine in 1944, Anthony Brian Marks grew up in Whanganui, the only child of Maurice and Thelma Marks. Having finished school he undertook a medical degree at Otago University, and did postgraduate studies in New South Wales before becoming a psychiatrist at Wellington Hospital.

Toni was born with retinitis pigmentosa, a degeneration and death of cells in the retina, but had no idea as a child. He struggled with a lack of night and peripheral vision but only discovered he was losing his eyesight aged 22. The inexorable slide towards blindness continued for 10 more years before a bout of pneumonia brought a sudden conclusion. ‘I could read at the start of the week and couldn’t by the end of it.’ He was 32.

An old-school gentleman, Toni is not quick to accept praise and deflects any attempts to do so. He insists his blindness experience has been a privileged one.

‘If there’s an easy version of it, I’ve had it,’ says the father-of-four and grandfather-of-thirteen. ‘I had a good upbringing, good education, great job, good income and I’m a baby boomer so I had the best of all worlds. That’s made it easier for me to be blind. As a psychiatrist I spent my days talking to people or into a Dictaphone, it didn’t matter that I was blind. And from the late 90s onwards the technology has just got better and better, which makes things easier.

‘People often say what I do is amazing but I really don’t think that’s true, I just like to get the most out of life and do things that I enjoy. I think a lot of people, if they were put in a similar situation, would do the same as I do.

‘It’s really not so difficult,’ he says as he lifts the line from the water with his Orvis 7wt and a couple of false casts later, punches his favourite green Woolly Bugger towards the far bank.

FLY FISHING FEVER

Toni took up fly fishing in the 1980s, having been introduced to it by an old flatmate from his medical student days. It was slow going initially and several years before he caught his first fish, but he wasn’t discouraged. It’s become a huge part of his life, with the places it has taken him fostering that love.

Beautiful spots visited across the length and breadth of Aotearoa include Waikaremoana, the Whaka-papa and Whanganui river valleys, the Ruamahanga River, Tekapo and the Canterbury lakes to name but a few. The annual Tongariro trips, in the company of friends and family, have been ongoing for 38 years, as has the associated eating, drinking, and telling of stories, ‘some of which might even be true.’ They have resulted in lifelong, and cherished, memories.

One of the family members who has been a regular in more recent years is here today, Toni’s daughter Lucy. She took up fly fishing when her dad gifted her a Sage 6wt fly rod for her 40th birthday and has been hooked ever since. The woman he affectionately refers to as his ghillie is fishing a pool further upstream and we walk up to meet her with the day drawing to a close.

Ambling across the stony beach, Wellingtonian Toni describes his blindness experience to me as being akin to a blank TV screen on which he can experience light and colour. He will often reconstruct his own shadowy version of events in his mind — something only possible because he was previously sighted. Specific colours are sometimes associated with specific experiences. ‘For example, I know I’m drinking an expensive cabernet if I get purple,’ laughs the ardent wine-lover.

The track back to the truck skirts a favourite stretch of water for the father-daughter pairing and, passing each pool, they reminisce about experiences shared and enjoyed like the time, three years ago, when the fish were so thick in the river that they were swimming around their feet.

SENSORY AWARENESS

As we continue up the trail, a fantail flits from branch to branch beside us, tracking our progress as the late afternoon sun pierces the trees. Along familiar stretches like this, and others such as the Major Jones Pool, Toni is able to place himself by the sound of the river coming up through gaps in the bush.

It was a skill demonstrated emphatically five years ago when a friend lost his wading stick on the path bordering the Major Jones. Having searched unsuccessfully for it in the darkness he was beginning to accept defeat. Toni though, recalling where his friend had left the track to enter the pool went back down, locating the spot by sound alone. He ran his cane along the bushes and found the wading stick immediately.

Toni is using audio now for another purpose, getting a course direction from the sound of Lucy and I talking up ahead. The only assistance needed then is the occasional warning call of ‘big tree root’ or ‘low branch’. The rest is down to his cane, known as ‘the wand’.

The wand is a light hiking stick, 52 inches long, with a cork handle fashioned by his craftsman brother-in-law, Jim Philps, and finished with a bent section of 3/8 aluminium tube on the tip. This tip acts like the front of a toboggan, skating over terrain without sticking, and simultaneously giving Toni the ability to navigate the path ahead by window-wiping the wand back-and-forth.

APPROACH TO LIFE

I’m struck by the pace which Toni maintains, as he squelches and splashes his way through a boggy section. There’s no polite dawdling required here, nor would he want there to be. Legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood has some advice about the key to positive ageing: ‘Don’t let the old man in.’ Toni, who also has rheumatoid arthritis in both hands, doesn’t let the old, or blind, man in.

I had earlier offered to carry Toni’s rod, an offer politely declined. ‘He doesn’t let anyone carry his rod,’ Lucy confides. ‘He doesn’t want to act like he’s disabled. He’ll do absolutely everything he can for himself.’

This fiercely independent man lives alone now. His first wife, Jane, died of multiple sclerosis in her 50s and his second wife, Naomi, was admitted to a care-home two years ago with a neurological disorder and dementia.

‘Dad has two characteristics which make him really good at handling his life; patience and stubbornness,’ continues mother-of-four Lucy. ‘Patience with himself, not to get frustrated with his disability, and stubbornness in that he will just keep going and going until he accomplishes something.

‘Our kids hugely admire him. Because he’s so determined to make the most of everything, he demands that of them as well. He’s constantly pushing and encouraging them in a good grandpa way. He’s trying to talk my youngest into becoming an astronaut at the moment,’ she laughs.

The pair are close, and it’s clear that fly fishing has had a wonderfully bonding effect on their relationship.

‘It gives us time, which is a precious commodity these days. Time to chat and fall into conversations you might not otherwise have. Dad’s great company and it’s a privilege spending time with him. He’s really curious about life and loves people, and that helps keep him young,’ adds the Primary Care Nurse Practitioner. ‘I’ve got 70-year-old patients who are much older than him, and that’s a mindset. Gotta think young, act young and keep going.’

Toni, who ran his own private psychiatry practice before retiring in 2013, admits to always having had a positive outlook on life; a trait inherited from his parents.

‘I have a couple of basic principles. Live for now, don’t leave it for later, and, say yes to opportunities which present themselves. If you don’t, you miss out on experiences, time passes you by, and let’s not have regrets. I simply try to enjoy my life.’

The fish have defeated us today but that doesn’t bother Toni. As we near the truck we pass a break in the bushline. The ground beyond represents a 10ft bum-slide down a steep bank, a hop across a small creek, and then some scrub bashing before making it to the river on the other side.

‘We’ll maybe try there tomorrow Dad,’ says Lucy. ‘It’s a bit of a scramble though.’

‘Sounds good.’