Distractions

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.
" It’s as if I’ve discovered – blimey, I can do other things in life, other than fish!  It’s exciting."
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.

Wannabe

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 Ladies Fishing, asked the editor of a very well known British Magazine when they would feature women on the front cover. Here was his response:

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Going 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.

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.

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 the Master.

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.

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.

Now, us fly fisherfolk can be terrible snobs. I count myself as one of the best and have been very dismissive of coarse fishing 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.

The Night Fisher by John Mcnaught (This brilliant image is borrowed from the amazing website http://caughtbytheriver.net/ 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. )

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.
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.