All this week one of the most evocative sounds of spring will echo up and down the country. The swish of a well-cast fishing line, accompanied by the feather-light drop of a fly on the water, will signal that anglers are abroad on Ireland’s river and lakes.
s a sign that things are once again becoming right with the world, the sight of busy riverbanks is as welcome as the proverbial April showers that bring May flowers.
This year, for the first time ever, Inland Fisheries Ireland has designated the next seven days as Go Fishing Week 2021, a national celebration of fishing bolstered with a programme of online events. Aiming to virtually connect with people across the country to showcase the joy of fishing and encourage a new generation of angling acolytes, the programme of events will encompass themes ranging across environmental sustainability, protecting habitats and the sport’s well-being benefits.
A standout amongst the varied offerings on display is a competition entitled ‘Why I love to fish’ – an initiative to spread the good word through video clips of anglers sharing experiences of why fishing means so much to them. Of all the senses that evoke memories of my childhood, it is the beguiling scent of damp wax jackets and wet tweed socks drying on the Rayburn range that instantly transports me back to a family life where rods, flies and nets were the currency around which our lives revolved.
On the banks of the Feale, Blackwater and Caragh from January to September, we marked the seasons by the arrival of the salmon and trout – and the rich variety of piscatorial souls encountered on the riverbanks in search of the same slippery prey. Somebody once rightly remarked: “Fishing’s charm is the pursuit of the elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”
Years later when a well-thumbed copy of Norman Fitzroy McLean’s A River Runs Through It dropped into my lap in college, it was clear to see that the pioneer sentiments of casting a line in the sparkling waters of Montana were actually not that far removed from our rhythm of life in the south-west of Ireland.
“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing,” McLean recalled. “Father told us that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favourite, was a dry-fly man.”
My father and older brother were the experts of the fly-casting art, conductors in a symphony of grace and style to effortlessly land a Hairy Mary on a lily pad forty feet away. I was always the tangle-prone plugger, content to sit and observe on many a muddy bank, unaware at the time how those gentle hours would form the treasured memories of later life.
Fishing is about patience and timing, was a favourite dictum of the old man’s, and both of them will come in very handy when you venture out in the world. How right he was. The riverbank was the classroom, always learning and testing new skills – only to be reminded by the salmon who was really the smarter in this endless game. Unlike the simplicity of soccer, wrestling or javelin throwing, the noble art of angling is an ever-changing climatic universe where the elements are in constant diabolical conspiracy devoted to ‘the one that got away.’
No matter how much you spend or how far you travel, the simple act of dropping a fly on the water will always be a contest where the scales, so to speak, are weighted heavily in favour of your foe. Reason enough to keep a game plugger like yours truly returning time and again to the pleasant purgatory of a muddy riverbank.
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