The wrong flies

I don’t write too much about politics because the subject sits uneasily with fishing, even though the well-being of our fishing depends on governments a great deal. Decisions about the environment and the money to clean and sustain it come from the top. You can’t rely on citizen science or citizen action to keep our fishing in good order. You can’t even rely on fishermen, never mind politicians.

Too many wrong flies in the political ointment these days. The Americans are stuck with the Orange Muddler, in fact the whole world is stuck with this gaudy and crass fly. Fish and other wildlife don’t take well to climate change, chemicals in the rivers but when we are ruled by halfwits that’s what we get more of. In some ways they are restrained by economics and their own stupidity — large investments in green energy cannot be wished away; big business doesn’t work like that.

Thanks to the Blue Upshites that fluttered at the end of our lines more than forty years ago, our water utilities were turned into cash cows for dodgy banks and shit shows for our waterways. No immediate end in sight for that particular environmental disaster. But an even worse fly is swarming over the country, bred on a rotten carcass somewhere, the Teal Blue and Shitforbrains, to whom the environment is for the turds. Some airheads on the TV say the current administration hasn’t worked, so let’s try them. Which is like saying, paracetamol hasn’t cured my headache, let’s try chopping it off.

People say they don’t like career politicians, they like ‘ordinary blokes’, even or especially if they are racists and misogynists. Does an ordinary bloke know how to run a country? If I’m sick I prefer to consult a career doctor than a plumber. Those kinds of ordinary blokes are not going to look after my fishing (or much else). Yet plenty of fishermen think they will, or at least hate the same others they hate.

The biggest, ugliest, nastiest fly of them all, the Muskrat, a relatively new pattern, though modelled on many older, is appearing in every flybox where it’s not wanted. It wants to supplant all the genteel tyings of the past and stick its point of many barbs into as many fingers as possible.

Beware the TBS and imitators and be careful who you vote for. These flies will burrow under your skin and lay eggs that hatch into maggots.

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Fishwatching amidst the bedlam

Another spring bank holiday, this time with amber heat warnings and a threat of record temperatures at levels once rarely seen in this country even in August. The kind of weather in which you want to sit quietly beneath the shade of a tree. Instead most people, especially the petrolheads, prefer to burn fuel on the roads, sports cars and convoys of helmets creating a deafening roar, and not only on the main routes. I’ve written before how the narrow byways of the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales are turned into homages to the internal combustion engine and illegal exhausts. Riverbanks are no sanctuary either. Blokes in shapeless shorts and printed T-shirts waddle along with little dogs, the aptly name shih tszus (correct spelling shitsu) and cockerpoounderyourshoes, yappy untrained pooches that jump up at you when not pissing on the pavements or crapping on the wild verges.

Where can the angler yearning for the peace of the waterside go? Not to the beach. The waters of the English Channel are usually too clear for daytime fishing. Besides, they are crowded with those who do love to be beside the seaside and give beach casters little room to swing a five-ounce lead. Then there are the floating versions of motorbikes, the jetskis ridden by tattooed lobsters with shaven heads, ignoring the local beach bylaws and boosting the skin cancer figures.

The coarse angler can seek out the deep gravel pits where the tench can seek out the cool depths. With a bit of luck there will be a tree to fish under. But even then you may not get a bite till evening brings some relief from the heat.

The fly fisherman has few options. There are the big reservoirs if you like that sort of thing but rivers are hot work and the trout don’t like warming water. At this rate the southern streams will be too warm to fish before we get to summer proper. Too many reaches now attract bathers and paddleboarders, rock-throwers and flea-treated dog washers, whether they’re allowed or not. No place for the delicate art of the dry fly.

Instead of fishing I went to watch fish from the footbridge over my local river. I spotted a pair of trout holding in the current, moving to the side every so often, sometimes coming to the surface. I can happily watch fish for ages. In this weather it seems the right thing to do to leave them alone. We all need a bit of peace.

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