My Private Vocabulary


I have a few phrases that may be unfamiliar to you, and that’s because I invented them. I find them handy, you may too.

Reservoir Dogs – ugly rainbow trout, lacking fins, with distended bellies.

Fund managers
– People who fish exclusively for Reservoir Dogs. They’re into stockies and they want their share.

Czech it out – Arriving at a fast flowing river with little idea of what to put on, and unable to see through the riffles, simply put on a Czech nymph, and Czech the water out.

In the Klink – A fish which has been captured on a Klinkhamer fly. Usually used in satisfaction.

The money room
– the place where a fish ought to be or is known to be. As used in the phrase “That’s in the money room” when your fly drifts over the exact spot you saw a fish rise. Also when your fly lands exactly where you wanted it to and is heading where you want it to. Also “That’s knocking on the door of the money room” when your fly is just short, but may induce a strike. In short, if your heart is beating faster because of where your fly is, your fly is, by definition, in the money room.

Cardiff - The Taff



After two hundred years battling down the pit, the people of South Wales had to go fifteen brutal rounds with Thatcher. What’s left; a washed-up, punch-drunk shoulda-woulda-coulda-been? Fuck off, this is Wales boyo, and if you don’t kill them in fifteen rounds they come out on top. They’ve got a pristine river running right through their capital that puts London to shame. Once little more than an open sewer, a method of cooling industrial parts and running slag out to sea, it’s being put to better use now.

A word of warning: The river that runs through Cardiff is called the Taff. It’s best to remember that an English mouth loudly pronouncing ‘taff’ in Cardiff is soon likely to be filled with fist. But why do the Welsh call their capital river after an anti-Welsh racial epithet? It would be like the French calling The Seine ‘The Frog’, like the Irish calling The Liffey ‘The Mick’, like the Nigerians calling The Niger ‘The… Well, you get the idea. Wales is a foreign country though, and that’s why. You can tell the moment you arrive at Cardiff Central train station. The signs tell you you’re at Caerdydd Canolog. If you look across from platform 1, you’ll see, yes, platform 0, perhaps the only platform 0 in the world. And the people sing so well, how do they do it? They have the most beautiful accent in Britain. It always a pleasant novelty when Americans stop you, mid-conversation, to tell you how much they like your accent. For me, that is Wales. The girl with the best legs in the world berated me as I walked through the centre of the city in my flip flops, carrying my waders on Saturday night. ‘Apparently, some people don’t know it’s Saturday.’ It wasn’t the legs, honest, but I could listen to that voice say anything, she could read Jordan’s biography out to me and have me in raptures.

All right, all right, I realise I’ve waxed lyrical, but I’ve been to Wales and changed my ways.

Arthur Bale and Sons run a fishing and air gun shop at 166a Richmond Road. They have a limited selection of fly fishing gear. Tel. 029 20499889. They sell the permits for The Taff. I asked the guy all about the best spots and he told me freely. The other guy in the shop gave him dirty looks and head shakes. I noticed. The game was up. The guy serving me turned to his colleague, and said “It’s all right, he’s a trout man”. The permit is £12 a day, which is steep for urban fishing. This may be a reflection that you have a fair chance of a salmon or sea trout. The season ticket at £60 is only five times the day ticket price, heavily favouring locals. The permit covers the low tidal water, but this is almost a stillwater, and brackish with high banks and no casting so I avoided it. Walk upstream from the Millennium Stadium to the red bridge in Cardiff Castle’s park. The fishing begins around here. There is a very wide beach above which there are boulders and the water begins to run. A word of warning: Scum kids collect at this beach, and what with there being so many stones to hand, they find it hard to resist throwing some at fly fishermen (this happened to me both days with separate groups of kids. I learned some valuable life lessons.

1 – Pikey kids do not respond well to being asked to stop, and the word ‘please’ is unknown to them.
2 – Finding good throwing stones on the bottom of a river is not nearly as easy as doing it on a beach.
3 – Throwing stones while wading on a slippery bottom holding a rod in the other hand with a bag on your back does not result in optimum power and range.
4 – Throwing wet stones is really hard, the whole index finger purchase thing doesn’t work.

So, I stayed dry and didn’t get hit, but it was not a great experience. Avoid the beach unless you’ve got more street presence than me (I’ve got a bit of face, but less than Ray Winstone, you slag). The rest of the stretch is tree-lined and has few stones, and the kids don’t congregate there.

I also saw some kids throwing stones at a swan. A legal question: Are the swans o
f Wales still The Queen’s property? I know that killing a swan in England is an act of treason (it attracts me to the crime) but is throwing a stone at one in Wales also a minor form of treason? You can never find a Beefeater when you want one, can you?

The Taff is decidedly more Ali G than Aled Jones, but don’t let that put you off. For most of the stretch up to the weir (the end of the permit) it is like being in the countryside. It is extremely lightly fished, the water is clear and pure, there is very little debris. It’s hardly urban fly fishing at all. Actually, there’s a bowls club, where one ancient geezer asked another how he did it, and the other replied “I is a machine is all”. Which was very Ali G if you say it right, and Aled Jones if you don’t, and there aren’t many things that fall into that dual opposition.

The only problem for me is that it is filled with chub. I hate chub with a passion. I don’t hate them because they’re ugly, though goddamn they are ugly, I don’t hate them for their cotton-wool-tasting flesh, or their gin-trap bone structure. I hate
them because they have no heart. When you hook a pike it fights like a bastard and then gives up, only to fight again moments later. Trout of any size will always, always freak out when you try to net them or bring them very close to you. They will always dig deep and find something, and freedom is what they find a frustrating amount of the time. Not chub. Maybe they’re depressed and tired of living, so they’ll readily swim into your hand or net. And The Taff is full to the rafters of chub. I only caught a few fish day one, but on the second day I must have caught forty of my bogey species, which is a bit of a shame. Another fisherman told me he once fished The Taff all season and didn’t get a brown trout until July.

On a brighter note I got a grayling of a couple of pounds, my biggest ever. Also a tiny dace. If you fancy the chance of a salmon or, god forbid, like chub, you could do a lot worse. It’s a very easy river to fish, good for beginners. I think the Birchgrove Angling Society could afford to look at their stocking policy, they’ve got a gem of a river that makes Fly Guy jealous of their capital city, it needs so little to make it brilliant.

Price: £12 a day. Steep.
Price/quality ratio: Could be better.
Quality: 5/10
Chavtastic: Hell, yes! Avoid the beach, unless you’ve been unfaithful to your husband and feel that a good stoning will help clear the air.
Debris: Surprisingly little. The classics were there, two shopping trolleys, two traffic cones, one kid’s bike.
Water quality/smell: Almost gin-clear, no scum, pretty pure, no smell.
Wildlife: Enough mink to make a nice coat out of, rich bird life.

Troutspotting – The Water of Leith


My name is Jeremiah Quinn and I am an addict. The OED offers, unhelpfully – ‘Addicted. Adj. 1 physically dependent on a particular substance. 2 informal - devoted to a particular interest.’ I think they are missing the destructive, harmful element of addiction with their definition, and I’ll come back to that later. Where better to feed my addiction -get well, in the parlance of heroin addicts- than Leith in Scotland?

The smackheads of Leith were immortalised in the book and film of the nineties – Trainspot
ting. The title, not related to the material of the book, is a reference to Begbie and Renton visiting the disused Leith train station (book only). An old drunk guy asks them what they’re doing – trainspottin’? There were train lines that ran from Leith and along the Water of Leith when it was an industrial river, dotted with paper mills and breweries. The river was heavily polluted. But then we stopped making things in Britain, the river flowed pure again, the train lines were converted into The Water of Leith Walkway.

Start at The Water of Leith Visitors’ Centre (we addicts call it the drop-in centre), which has a good little film about the river, and lots of things for kids to do, like lift small sluices to make water wheels turn. They also issue the free permit to fish the river. In fact, a fisher could walk from here down to Leith in a leisurely day, with friends or family tracking them but engaging in other activities (the banks of the river have wildlife, the visitors centre, several pubs, Murrayfield rugby ground, two tennis clubs, a Pizza Express, The Gallery of Modern Art, a shrine to victims of HIV, and much more).

I ran into a fellow addict fly fisher who explained the stocking policy: They put a couple o
f thousand 8-10 inch brown trout in every year. In 2007 to spice things up, they also put a load of 2-5lb fish. Only a few of these have yet been caught, and as the guy said to me – “Imagine that, pal, ye hook a five poond troot in a stream like thess – ya’ll shit yarsell, would ye no though but?” We had a good laugh about it and waved each other off wishing this success both ways (addicts’ solidarity). I won’t keep you in suspense, I just caught a handful of the stocked broonies. The river was flooded, but cleared up the next day only to discolour again when more rain fell. So it can change in a few hours.

The fishing actually starts upstream at Balerno, a bit out of Edinburgh, and it is really a country river (“it’s no natural, man!”) flowing between villages, which have lovely names of course – Blinkbonny, Juniper
Green, Craiglockart, and a tributary called Poet’s Glen. But the urban business starts from the visitor centre. The path is well planned and heavily signposted, though at one point as you approach Leith the distances start to go up and up on the signs, and there are four signs in a row that say that the Museum of Modern Art is just a tantalising ¼ mile away. The distance from first to last of these must be a goodly country mile in itself.

An old boy, tin of Special Brew in his hand, poisoning his body with that shite, stops me passing to tell me I’d be “better off wi’ a wor-um”, but mostly the people are very friendly and many
want to know about the fish in the river and where to get permits. It isn’t heavily fished, particularly up the top, but there are a lot of cyclists, joggers, and dog walkers enjoying the beautiful walkway instead of watching spirit crushing gameshows.

I
was fishing a good stretch, and I heard rustling behind me up a steep, muddy, tree-lined bank. I wasn’t concerned as it was a central, busy stretch and I though it was a dog. The rustle became louder, there was a crack sound, a branch breaking, some thuds and grunts. This fat guy roly-polied down the hill and landed near my feet, all entangled in his fishing gear. “I’ve broke me fuckin’ line!” he shouted. He was wearing tartan. Lost on his way to the circus, or something. I’m not bothered about river etiquette much, but I don’t like anyone fishing very close to me, and especially not this guy. He’s bound to hook himself and fall in. Or worse, hook me and fall in. I don’t want to share his needles. He’s radge.

It’s obvious that The Water of Leith has long been an object of civic pride, particularly in the centre of Edinburgh. For example St Bernard’s Well, 1789, the centrepiece of a particularly bonny stretch, is a place where people used to come for the cure. You can climb down to a go
od pool below it, stepping out onto the brick construction in the river.

In Leith itself, access to the river becomes more difficult and the flow is slower, there are disappointingly few Trainspotter types, as it has been gentrified since the book and film came out. The choicest stretches are from Murrayfield to a little below the Museum of Modern A
rt, for fishing and for nutters.

I crossed over the weir by the Museum of Modern Art and headed downstream, an excellent spot. I had lots of pulls but didn’t bring in any fish. The water was quite stained so I wasn’t thinking much about cover, but cover has a special importance to fly guy in the city that is irrelevant to the rural angler. Cover not from fish – from people. There can be no doubt that if you fish in the city, eventually you will have stones thrown at you. I have been water-bombed and stoned on two stretches of The Dove (Izaak Walton Hotel private beats) stoned various times in Cardiff, and now also in Edinburgh. The new feature in Edinburgh is that they were using a high-powered catapult. The noise the stone made on hitting the water was ferocious.

You can imagine the guy seeing me fly fishing on the river, and thinking to himself, well, you know, can I do a bit of Trainspotting-style dialogue, please, please? Thanks, here goes, this is
what he’s thinking, looking at me: “All a they cunts is intae fly fishin is Anglish, fae London, the cunts, fuckin… An them tha’ isnae Anguish wants tae be fae London which is worse than bein an anglish cunt, ya ken me, pal?” It’s harder than it looks, what Irvine Welsh does.

There are several things to note about using cover in the city. The first thing is that if they don’t spot you, they won’t bother you. Try to be generally discreet. If you are close in to a high wall, most of the time people walk along the top of that wall without spotting you or your rod or line. Generally they will be emboldened by being across the river from you. If they are small kids, and you fish on they same side as them, they will rarely give you grief. If you cross opposite them, giving them time to run away, and there are stones to hand, they may be tempted to use them. Simply moving away from the source of stones was enough in Cardiff to deter the kids.

This was a far cry from kids throwing a few aimless stones. No kid could pull a catapult that strongly. This was an adult, and I had no idea which direction the fire had come from. I was standing in two feet of water, out in the flow. If he hit me and knocked me unconscious it would be murder. A second shot thwacked into the water next to me. I was concentrating on my wading, but it hit a leaf on its way to me, and I had a rough idea of his position, opposite me above the high wall. I could have cut into cover straight across the river, but he would be able to get directly above me and drop a brick on me, and it would be hard to spot him directly up a sheer wall. I backed away, looking in the direction the stone had come from. A third came and hit a tree behind me (none of the shots missed me by more than an arm’s length). I jumped out quickly and got behind the tree. Remember that catapults take a few seconds to re-charge and aim. Air rifles normally
take ten seconds. I snuck away using the thick trees as cover at a swift walking pace. This guy was roughly about the extent of the range of his weapon, 50-60m. At 100m he would have no chance. He popped up and stole away along the wall, pale blue jersey, crew cut, greying sandy hair. I thought how nice it would be to kick his face inside out. It made me angry that he thought my life and health were a joke, and it made me angrier that he spoiled a beautiful river for me. And I’m jealous of their river. How can the Scottish have The Water of Leith when we in London have The Wandle with no path, no riverside facilities, no visitor centre and no trout? They may be colonised by wankers, but they can flick a V at London over their river, any time they want to.

But what this incident didn’t do is put me off. And this is where addiction comes in. I can’t give up, even though I know it’s a little bit destructive, a little bit dangerous. A lot of people would take this as a sign that enough is enough. I shrug it off. I won’t stop fishing. I choose to go back to the rivers of the city because it gets me up in the morning. Choose it yourself. Choose life. Choose fishing. Choose waking up on a Sunday morning knowing exactly who you are and hitting the river as soon as possible. Choose dry fly. Choose Sage. Choose Leith.


Price: Free!
Quality: 6/10
Price/quality ratio: Erm…
Chavtastic: Not really. A few mad guys with Special Brew.
Debris: Eerily devoid of litter.
Water quality/smell: Totally pure higher up. Gets a bit grubby below St Bernard’s Well.
Wildlife: Wagtails, otters, kingfishers, seagull attacking a heron.

Dublin - The Dodder




“You could fish the other river”
“Which one?” I enquire.
“The other river”
“Which other one?!”
I’m on the line to Rory’s Fishing Tackle, Temple Bar, Dublin. The speaker is Rory himself, and he’s getting as exasperated with my blockheaded English monkey business as I’m getting tired of his cheeky Irish sense of h
umour. Moments before, I had secured a four-day job in Dublin, Thursday Friday, and Monday Tuesday, which would mean waiting in Dublin for the weekend. The moment these jobs arrive, in a good fishing country, with time off, I have to check where my travel fly rod is. Of course I know where it is, but I still have to actually go to it, like some people check for their car keys on their approach to their car. I sometimes even get it out and count the pieces to check they’re all there. The next process is to get some local information from fishing books, and then put in a call. And this is where the wheels have come off.

I ask Rory if there’s somewhere cheap in central Dublin where I can fish for trout in moving water. ‘Th’ is pronounced ‘d’ in Ireland and so I assume that he is saying ‘the other river’ when he is telling me I should fish The Dodder River. This confusion aside, he assures me it flows into the Liffey in the very centre of town, is full of trout to a pound, and costs buttons to fish. Now this is news.

Saturday comes, I’m up early and down at Rory’s getting a permit. Which he produces instantly. It is €11. Now I don’t really consider €11 to be buttons for a day permit, but it isn’t steep for a good place, either. I just think it’s a bit cheeky to put forward that it’s a really cheap place at that price. I ask Rory for two of them. Rory wants to know what the name is for Dodder permit. I say Quinn also. He asks if I’m taking the wife. No, they’re both for me, Saturday and Sunday. Rory stops, slows right down, realising he’s dealing with an out-and-out cretin.
“Do you see where it says SEASON TICKET, do you?”
“!”
I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who is paying less for a season ticket. This is less than £7.

Back at the Gresham Hotel, I visit the concierge. It’s a posh hotel my grandfa
ther used to think was, to use a phrase he borrowed from James Joyce; ‘The very it’. I ask the concierge for a map of Dublin, he gets out this cartoon drawing version which only has the very centre on it. No, I need a proper street atlas to see where The Dodder River is.
“Which one?” Comes the predictable reply. I explain myself at length until it becomes clear that the concierge has no ma
p of Dublin, doesn’t know where the river is, has no access to the internet and doesn’t call cabs for people. I edge back away from him, wondering what it is he does all day at the desk of a four star hotel, apart from dodging tips by being amazingly, preternaturally incompetent.

Cabbie hailed, I tell him, “Do you know The Dodder River?”
“Which one, though but?” He asks.
“It’s a river, its name is Dodder.”
“No. Not in Dublin”.

Here, luckily, being a London boy I remember that Rory said The Dodder flows into the Liffey right in the centre of Dublin, at Camden Lock, though he also said the lower reaches are largely ignored, though they have sea trout.
“Camden Lock, please.”
The cabbie duly takes me to Camden Lock, and when we arrive, along Bridge Road, which is actually named for a high bridge over The Dodder, the cabbie looks down at the river as if it had been installed since yesterday. We are still in the heart of Dublin.
“Forty years in Dublin an
d I’ve never seen that. The Dodder: Well!”. He fixes me with a strong look. “Your mother and father made love and you were created, and in that moment Jesus Christ gave you a soul, always remember that”. Time to hit the river.

You may catch sea trout in the lower reaches of The Dodder, and you’d be wise for th
at reason to use a stout leader, because I suspect you’re more likely to hook a shopping trolley, and the likeliest thing you’ll catch might be typhoid, or diphtheria. There’s plenty of street life, graffiti, empty tinnies and used condoms, whatever the cabbie thinks of that… It is tidal, it smells pretty bad, and access is very poor. Heading upstream, it soon starts to flow, and as soon as it does, it looks like trout.

It’s a good two or three miles to Herbert Park, and it’s upstream of here that The Dodder comes into its own. The water quality is obviously better. And by framing your photos carefully, you could prete
nd you went and fished a wild river. There is some litter, and the odd discarded bicycle, but no washing machines or traffic cones. And there are trout in huge numbers. They are free rising and also take the nymph very well. Having covered a huge amount of ground to get to the fishable section of The Dodder, I kept the pace up. Considering it’s just a little stream, there is an incredible variety of water here. There’s a very still flow through a golf course, lots of riffled pools, and very fast runs, there is a section that has been cut like a canal which is very still and in which I could only spook fish, not catch them. The only other fishers were kids with bait. It’s tough for them because it’s really a fly water. I reached a tributary above which both The Dodder and the tributary were just trickles. This is the very edge of Dublin. I started thinking about getting on a bus back into town in my waders, something I hate doing, but I was 10 miles from the centre.

I had a few last casts. This kid came past. Any good? I told him I’d done all right, six or seven fish, a couple near the pound mark. He didn’t believe me when I couldn’t produce them. I was already weird to be ‘floy fishin’ as they call it in Dublin.
“Well, I star
ted early, I’ve come up all the way from The Liffey” I told him wearily.
“Da Liffey?!” He shouted, like I was certifiable, and he made a getaway, fearing that stranger-danger might be moving to a new level with the mad Englishman.

I got on the bus, gave the people of Dublin some laughs as they headed out in their glad rags for Saturday night. I got back to the hotel, sat in front of the telly in the bar, a rare Leeds United match was playing on the box. I ordered up a bottle of wine and a bite to eat. The guy behind the bar served it to me at the table. Not a Leeds fan, but sympathetic to pain. He asked me what I’d been up to. I told him. But I wasn’t going to fall into the old trap.
“I went fishing on The Dodder, it’s a river, flows through south Dub…”
“Sure you don’t have to tell me where The Dodder is. I’m from Dublin”.

Footnote: Not only is the Dodder a lovely little trout stream, full of fish, and an interesting meander through Dublin, it is very well maintained. Included in the €11, is a pamphlet inviting every angler to the AGM and raffle, giving information about hatches and flies, record catches, environmental action, trophies and the like. I can’t tell you how jealous I am of Dubliners and their beautifully run, secret river.

Price: €11 a season, including international postage of the pamphlet. Incredible.
Price/quality ratio: Optimum.
Quality: 7/10
Chavtastic: Yes, but without being at all threatening.
Debris: Every manner of shite in the lower reaches, thinning out upstream, but with a particular emphasis on migratory bicycles.

Halifax - Straight Outta Copley


The Calder at Copley, on the outskirts of Halifax, epitomises urban fly-fishing. It’s ugly, it’s dirty, it’s cheap, and it’s full of massive trout.

You have a choice – you can say you don’t want to fish in a place like Copley, and that’s fine. That’s your business. Or you can say you want to. And that’s fine, too. But here’s the catch, if you say you don’t want to fish in Copley then don’t go around yapping that the people who fish in Copley catch more, bigger fish than you do. Copley is good because you don’t want to fish there. It’s good because the people who do fish there put the fish back because frankly, the Calder at Copley smells bad. Once again, if you don’t like it you don’t have to fish it. It’s almost entirely catch-and-release because the trout from this rather dirty river, taste off-puttingly of soap. Why? I don’t know why. Who am I – Jacques Cousteau?!

Get your permit from Jewson’s, 28 Horton Street, Halifax, 01422 354146, and hit the water. Jewson’s can also sell you personal protective equipment, guns and the like, and if you’re planning any night-fishing in Copley you’ll be needing a shooter. It’s not exactly a fly-only water.

I did run into a couple of pretty ser
ious-looking fly guys on the river, split-cane rods and stuff. I asked them if they got lost on their way to The Wharfe. They laughed, but it’s their local, they fish it all the time, and they love their fishing. The truth is it’s a great place to fish, and the dry fly works very well, and you’ll easily catch more fish than you would on The Wharfe. Also long-shank things cast across and down work very well. There are lots of good grayling too. There are some very low power lines above, so look up.

I walked to the river from Sowerby Bridge train station. Just follow the river downstream, it’s a couple of miles. I said hello to an old lady. It’s an intimidating looking place and I wanted to put her at ease. “It’s lovely down here, int it?” She asked me and then it was me that was terrified. I quickened my step to get away from the old crack hoe. A few years ago next to the river in Copley a man objected to three young men trying to steal his car. They stuck a screwdriver right through his head. The police found them and threw them in jail for ever, but that doesn’t mean he gets to go fishing again or see his children grow up. So keep it very tidy in Copley.

The day before I fis
hed Copley, there was a huge fish kill just below Copley, which apparently killed the fish for two miles downstream to Elland. There is a place called Elland, and yes, Elland Road is a road that goes to Elland from Leeds. Leeds United were playing at Elland Road, trying to avoid relegation by beating the mighty Ipswich. The river was the best place to be for a moment of denial, of not wanting to know. The fishing was very good. As I headed downstream past Copley towards Leeds, the river began to smell very bad. It already smells a bit, it’s The Calder, but this was raw, pungent, untreated sewage. The sun set. Copley smelt of shit. So did Leeds United. It takes a long time to recover from a really disgusting incident that reflects badly on everyone.

On the subject of fishing shops, Jewson’s is one of those places that is emphatically a coarse fishing shop, when it’s not being a gun shop. As their advertising says – ‘A J Jewson (Est.1900) GUNS and FISHING ACCESSORIES Fresh Bait All Brands Stocked
’. You get the picture. It’s very near Halifax train station. They are knowledgeable and friendly, and know about flies even if it isn’t their main business.

In contrast is the extraordinary Lathkill, 19a King Cross Street
Halifax, 01422 354444 – ‘One of the largest stocks of fly tying materials in the UK, held in our purpose built shop in Halifax. We specialise in importing direct from the premium manufacturers in the USA’. Lathkill don’t sell fishing permits, guns or maggots. Broadly speaking, you know which shop you need. Lathkill kitted me out when I first got a four-weight rod, and explained all the gear to me perfectly. When I broke the end of my rod, climbing, they repaired the end in five minutes for a couple of quid. I have the only 8ft 3inch 4 weight Greyflex in the world. And I go to Jewson’s every year and get my permits.


Price: £28 a season.
Price/quality ratio: Very good.
Quality: 6/10 (marked down for appearance)
Chavtastic: Post-industrial wasteland, mostly empty, fairly intimidating.
Debris: Abundant and thrillingly varied; seats, skips, ladders, dolls, surgical gloves.
Water quality/smell: Water always quite dirty and discoloured, slightly smelly.
Wildlife: Very little.

London Calling


My fantasy river would be clear-flowing, with stones on the bottom in the upper reaches smoothing to pools with flowing ranunculus lower down. It would be devoid of chub, populated by brown trout, with a salmon run and arctic char higher up to add spice. It would be a wild free river with great scenery, and obviously, inside the M25. Obviously I’d settle for less, but I’m so far from getting my wish it is a joke. Look at the other capitals of the UK. What is it with London? Why do we get the short straw? Ask at Farlows where to fish around London and they will suggest some dire pond full of distended rainbows.

I read in Where to Fish that Rickmansworth has a free stretch of The Chess. It says Brown and rainbow trout, and that the rainbows actually spawn there. The fishing is at Scots Bridge Playing Fields, behind Scots Bridge Mill pub. The walk from Rickmansworth tube station is short and untaxing. The river is pretty, the water is clean and clear, and full of chub. I caught two miserable chub. The search goes on.

Price: Free.
Price/quality ratio: You’d have to pay me.

Quality: 2/10
Chavtastic: Not at all. Posh people walking pedigree dogs.
Debris: River is pristine.
Water quality/smell: Clear, immaculate water.
Wildlife: A kingfisher, a pheasant, a mouse in open ground (would that be a field mouse?) a guy standing barefoot in the middle of the river singing beautifully. I asked him what he was doing – “Harvesting watercress”.

Winchester - the Itchen


“Ere, mister, why don’t you do normal fishing?”
I turn around. A shell-suited kid is trotting maggots for trout. He looks curious, and a bit dejected.
“I’m catching fish. Why should I fish like you?”
“Make us feel better, urnit?” He laughs.
It’s a big question, though, why don’t I do normal fishing?
For years I didn’t fish the southern chalkstreams though I live in London. I thought they were for… How can I put this? People who wear tweed, people who like either Halford or Skues, but obviously, dear
boy, not both; who think books are rather boring, that the stuff in the Tate Modern isn’t art, and dim sum is a martial art. If I wanted to meet them I could do it at Farlows, or start hunting foxes, or attend the boat race or something. It’d be great fun to push them in, but it’s probably illegal.

The prices put me off more than anything else: £100 - £1000 per day. I wanted to go, but there were these two big barriers, that were insurmountable. I didn’t want to pay that much to go and have a bad experience (the more you pay the more critical of a water you become) so I kept putting it off.

Then everything changed. On a boat in the middle of the north sea, a salty sea dog told me The Itchen was free in the centre of Winchester, and mostly fished by kids, any method allowed. The Winchester tourist office confirmed this information.

I was soon on the train. You could practically wear your waders down on the train from Waterloo. Walk straight out of the station and down City Road, in ten minutes Durngate is a left fork. You are at The Itchen, and it is free, gratis and no costa nada.

Arriving at The Itchen, every angler will think the same thing: That is a fast river. It looks a bit dodgy to wade. The other thing that’s striking is that there are lots of rough kids hanging around fighting, ripping up bits of civic horticulture to slap each other with in inventive, if crude, ways. And these are the fishermen! I couldn’t have been more at home. In between bouts they trot maggots and bread down the stream, complain if you get a fish, and ask strange questions like why you’re not a normal fisherman, the little shits. This is a river packed with fish, and if you tie on three nymphs you’ll soon be trying not to play the smaller ones so they come off rather than go through the tedious process of bringing them all to hand.

One kid is a convert. He goes home and gets a fly reel. He’s back on the river in twenty minutes, with a coarse rod, a 7# floating fly line, a two-foot piece of monofilament and a large pink feather on a hook for a fly. Not exactly a standard rig. This he swings behind me for the rest of the afternoon, following me up and down the pool, hoping that my ability to catch fish will rub off on him through proximity.


In two days of fishing, a series of old-timers queue up to ask me what I’m doing, and tell me they’d never seen it before: ‘floy fishing’ they call it, in Hampshire burr. Ah, the other would nod: floy fishing. The river came to a standstill each time I caught. And the kids would
break off to batter each other a bit more. This is The Itchen, Jim, but not as we know it. There are beer cans and bottles on the bottom, and pizza trays by the seats at the side, though none of the big debris you get in honest-to-god urban fly fishing, such as shopping trolleys (the classic) or rusting oil barrels. The river is pure and clear, the fish can be seen, but not easily as the flow is fast. When I see a good lie, I want to put my flies right into it, and when they are there, I say, “That’s in the money room”, which is just a part of my private vocabulary, I went into the money room at RBS once, me and 100 million pounds together. It doesn’t mean you get to take something out, but if your cast is correct, and it goes where you want it to and covers the water in the way you intended, then it is in the money room. If I’m slightly short, I say, “That’s knocking on the door of the money room”. There’s an excitement about that, thinking this is the moment that the fish will take if he is where I think he is. I was dissatisfied with my answer to the kid, ‘I’m doing better than you’, that isn’t why I fly fish. It’s about trout, and I’d rather pursue than simply catch. It’s very visual and active, and if it weren’t either of these things I wouldn’t do it. It’s about reading the water that is so small a part of coarse fishing. But most of all, it’s about putting the fly in the money room and being excited. When people say you need patience to fish, I simply nod, because I know I can’t convince them that fly fishing is a buzz, it’s up, it’s not remotely transcendental. When your fly is on the water, it’s electric.

The kids went to Kentucky (not the state) to eat. I looked back at their spot, there was a nice channel between them and the middle of the pool. They always cast over it, trying to get to the other side. I cast across it, and as I said “That’s in the money…” A trout of a pound leapt on my weighted
green Sawyer pheasant tail. I brought him to hand. Hint: In water this fast, bring a landing net. Even a fish of a pound is really tough to bring to hand. A gang of old-timers were standing watching as I unhooked him. One took my picture. “I’ve never seen anyone catch a fish in this river in seventy seven years of passing here”. Don’t expect The Itchen, but do expect the fishing, and by all means, wear a shell suit.
Price: Free!
Quality: 9/10
Price/quality ratio: Unbeatable.
Chavtastic: Surprisingly chavvy for a posh town, but the kids are all right.
Debris: None of the classic bits of debris. Just litter, a few beer cans.
Water quality/smell: Totally pure.
Wildlife: Nah.

Without God We are Just Coca Cola


This trip was hatched in Farlows, like so many millions of other fishing trips. I arranged to meet Sean, the saltwater fly-fishing expert at 5pm. When I walked into the shop he was expecting me.
“Saltwater in Colombia. You know, they’ll have dorado there, a great fish. You should
go for that, it’s a great eating fish, too.” And there it was, the idea of going to South America in search of El Dorado like so many thousands of hopefuls before me, was instantly irresistible to me. It would provide a note of heroism to what is, in reality, just a pastime and a holiday. And if I failed? What then? Why, glorious failure, of course! And more heroism. The unattainable, is there anything more romantic?

Cartagena is a beautiful Spanish city on the Caribbean coast. It’s not a bad stepping-off point for fishing. I went to the port and negotiated a day
of fishing in a boat for just 350,000 pesos, which is about 175USD. I had dinner with some French people, including Gilbert, a man famed in the guide books for being Mister Playa Blanca. Gilbert explained to me that I could expect to hire a huge white boat with free women and champagne coolers fore and aft for that sort of money. He, as it happened, was going to Playa Blanca the next morning and if I wanted a lift, and he could provide a half day of fishing in an open fishing boat with a professional fisherman/guide for 60,000 pesos/30USD. He picked me up the next day, we went to the port with his weekly supplies and hammered out to Playa Blanca in his little speed boat. The boat was unloaded at Playa Blanca. I set-up my fly gear on the beach with a popper. I cast it out into the surf. My guide strolled over. I tried English, just to see. I was a novice at Colombia. No-one speaks English, even in 4-star hotels. Buy a copy of Spanish for the Fisherman, and keep it very handy, you’ll be using it all the time, and not just with guides, with everyone.

The guide came up to me and stared at my rod. He touched the fly-line, and stroked it with a puzzled expression, then picked up the fly and considered it from every angle and then studied the joins in my leader. You know what this was? First contact! This guy had never seen a fly rod before, and what’s more, he had never heard of fly rods. This scene was repeated everywhere my rod made a public appearance on the coast.

The guide made a movement with the popper, noting that the front would displace the water. He smiled at me, and said “Bueno”, meaning he rated my fly. “Bueno?” I asked, and he smiled again, and said his catchphrase for the first time – “Claro”.
We set off, saw a big old grouper, and some smaller shoal fish. An
d what do you know? A barracuda mugged my fly as we entered the mangroves. The guide’s lure broke and he asked if he could try trolling one of my flies on his line. He did and he got a bunch of ‘cudas himself. He was astonished at how effective the fly was. When a bird of prey slapped on the water and picked up my fly before dropping it when the line went taught, he mocked our earlier conversation – “Bueno? Claro!” The guy had some kind of genius though. When he brought ‘cudas in the boat he spoke to them. I never speak to fish, except to name them, but he had all these sounds, tssts, and chitchits. All of them clearly meant calm down, mate, struggling won’t help. I wish I’d thought of that, and I know I can do it now, but it’s not the same as inventing it.

We went back to camp, where I met
a man with faraway eyes who was planning to give up his job back home and dedicate himself fully to cocaine and cheap women. Gilbert cleaned the fish and gave them to me to take to a barbecuda, which went down very well with my new French friends. Perhaps because we were speaking French I was caught off-guard when Gilbert asked me if I believed in creation. I asked him, in reply, “Creation of what?”
“Creation. Of everything”.
“Ah”.
Gilbert produced a small book in which a teacher is teaching evolution with a picture of a monkey on a wall behin
d him, with the caption – “Our father”. He tried to push other books into my hand. The Collapse of Evolution was offered, and refused. It was a good day at Playa Blanca, which is very beautiful. If you want to stay, facilities are basic, to say the least, and creationism is big.

No El Dorado.


I went to Arrecifes in the Tayrona National Park. The fishermen there took the piss out of my rod and kept harassing me while I fished. I gave it a day, no more.

No El Dorado. But, of course, The Quest is supposed to corrupt, isn’t it? Moby Dick, big white whale and obsessed guy. Arthur, if he went where he thought the grail was and just found it at the first attempt, it wouldn’t really be a compelling story would it? We’re probably only talking about El Dorado to this day because it was unattainable. For all of us there remains, in life, in love, an El Dorado, a golden place that we had a chance at touching. This is the central truth of so many malarial, feverish deaths, and not just those dying in South America of malaria and yellow fever but all those fade-to-grey, Surbiton send-offs, crying “Rosebud” to the end, with the Volvo still rust-free in the driveway. Fishing is living large, and the quest is probably the biggest part of it. My personal El dorado isn’t really a fish, doesn’t live in tropical waters and almost certainly can’t be caught on the fly. In the meantime, El Dorado (the fish) will have to serve as a metaphor for the one that got away.

I’m telling you, Taganga is another world. It isn’t on the main coast road of Colombia, and it retains its charm as little more than a fishing village with inc
redibly loud music in its beach-front bar/restaurant/cocaine dealership/knocking shops. Wherever you go in Colombia people will pop up selling cold things, it’s a wonderful feature of the country. You need never worry about having water with you. They will find you. They have a catechism that they reel off, “Coca Cola, agua, gaseosas, helados, cervezas”. The sound becomes so familiar, you get used to it. I thought my ears were playing tricks with me, but no, as the guy got nearer I heard his incantation clearly “Cocaina, marijuana, Coca Cola, gaseosas, helados, cervezas”.

One of the great things about Colombia is the fruit juice, available everywhere for 1USD. Lots of them you’ve never heard of, dig in and try the ones you don’t know. But at this juice bar, in Taganga, the first guy who came up to be served said “Shalom”, and got a hearty “Shalom” right back at him from the girl making the juice. And the next guy, clearly and distinctly said “Shalom”, and also got a big fat “Shalom” from her. I had noticed a few haircuts around town that would not normally be seen outside the early rounds of the Champions League, but hadn’t put two and Tel-Aviv together with the preponderance of Kelly McGillis Aviator shades, and realised I was in a new promised land. Taganga’s tourism is a striking 80-90% Israeli, and while fashion makes its shifts and tweaks in the rest of the world, ponytails, Alice bands and Aviators are always tip-top fashion in Jerusalem.

I sat out at a restaurant, in the shade, with a margarita, and watched the people come with their amazing catches of sea-beasts, soon cooked and presented to thrilled punters.

Fishing wakes me early. I need no alarm, the sea calls, and I rise. I was on the beach the next day before five. I was told Alex would be sitting by a palm at the edge of the hotel and he would take me for a reasonable price. He didn’t show. I asked an old boy, but he had no motor, just oars, he said, you need to ask El Niño. So El Niño was woken and arrived at the beach in no time, we fuelled and were off.

No guide I had or saw in Colombia would accept guiding alone, all of them fish as well with gusto. El Niño dragged two rapalas behind the boat and we got tangled a few times. He took us to a spot to do some bait fishing, and we caught a few small fish, but I made it clear if I was paying I wanted Dorado. We headed further out. El Niño nattered away to me in Spanish all day. Occasionally he apologised, explaining he had never met anyone who didn’t speak Spanish before. We met The Old Man of the Sea while we were out. I only caught one half-pound bonito on the fly, which is just down to incompetence: the water was full of fish. We went back to shore, a crowd gathered to see my rod, touch the line, feel the fibres of the fly. Milson, who runs one of the beach restaurants, prepared a red snapper for me that someone else had just caught. He wanted to know about the world I was from. He asked me if London was like Santa Marta. We got onto music. A weird thing in Colombia is that you don’t hear any international pop. For two weeks I hadn’t heard any Madonna or U2. Just Salsa, Reggaeton, Spanish Rap, Vallenato, etc. They have a genre of music in Colombia that is unbelievable, Ranchero. It’s Spanish Country and Western, but not like Dwight Yoakham or anything, it has yodelling, and the fashions look like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or Oklahoma. It is shocking stuff. Milson found it funny too. We laughed and laughed and imitated it.
“I like English music”, said Milson. I was shocked, I didn’t know it existed in Colombia. “Yes, my favourite artist is English”.
“Really? Who is that?”
“Bob Marley”.

“No. Bob Marley is Jamaican”.
“No, he’s English”.
“No, well he was born in Jamaica, but grew up in England”. Milson jumped up and put on Is This Love? on the stereo.
“What’s this song about?” He asked me.
“It’s about a man who is in love with a woman and is offering her everything”. Milson was surprised. I began to translate, and the lyrics are really simple and repetitive. The chorus line
, ‘Is this love, is this love, is this love is this love that I’m feeling?’ Was a doddle, and as it had the same number of syllables in Spanish I sang it over the top of Bob. “Es amor, es amor, es amor, es amor que siento?” Milson loved this, he joined in and others came from the next restaurant to hear the words of Is This Love? I had to resort to gestures for ‘I lay my cards on your table’. Then I got to the line – ‘Jah provide the bread’. I translated it as ‘Bob Marley’s god provides the bread’. Shock and awe.
“God provides the bread?”
“Bob Marley’s god, Jah”, I explain.

“He doesn’t own God. God belongs to everyone”.
“Yes but his god is different”.
“Your Spanish is not so good”.
“I’m saying his god because he is a Rastafarian”.
“This word is not a Spanish word, Rastafarian, what does it mean?”
“He has a different religion, Bob Marley is not a Christian”. The crowd that had gathered dispersed up and down the beach to spread the news, ‘Bob Marley not a Christian’.
The following day a man stopped me in the street to ask me if I was the one who said Bob Marley was not a Christian. It was funny, he didn’t contest it or anything, he just wanted to confirm that I was the man who had said it. He went with the words, “I thought it was you, you don’t look Israeli”.
I came to realise that I was in breach of Starfleet’s General Order Number 1 aka The Prime Directive: Not to interfere with the culture of alien life forms, specifically primitive cultures (those yet to achieve warp drive). If you go back to Taganga in 300 years or so, I like to dream you’ll find a fucked-up culture with bits of mistranslated Bob Marley and sections of Spanish for the Fisherman revered as holy texts, with people eating oatmeal porridge an ting, and having no fear for atomic henergy.
A bunch of English people staggered up to Milson’s place. There are dangers of
totally pure cocaine being just 5USD per gram. One guy looks up after a few minutes and says, “Scuse, mate, do you know how to get served here?” I turn round and shout,
“Oye, Milson!” Milson leaps out of the back and comes to serve the new guests. The English guy smiles and sniffs violently,
“You so obviously live here”.
I didn’t want to tell him that an attempt at Spanish and going fishing gets you right under the skin of any place in 24 hours, but that was the truth of why I was sitting in Milson’s place like it was my regular chair.

The next day was my last day; El Dorado or bust. We headed out early. I caug
ht a garfish. That’s a weird looking fish. El Niño brought his kid brother with him. We saw a big shoal of bonito whipping through the surface, creating little whisps of white. But I’m incompetent and didn’t catch any. El Niño got a beast, he lifted it into the boat in my section, right by my feet. The speed with which it arrived didn’t allow for identification, and my bare feet came out of there at warp factor 5. El Niño thought this was hilarious, and he imitated me several times while he fetched his priest to kill the fish with. He let out great big peals of laughter. I am a bit embarrassed by not knowing anything about sea fish and being a little scared of them, but they have more razor edges and chivs concealed all over them than a seventies Millwall crowd. I was feeling cowed, but not for long. El Niño’s priest was too small for the job and he was battering away at this fish. Suddenly the fish struggled and moved forward, where his head had been was now his tail, El Nino brought the priest hard down on the fish’s tail as it flapped violently towards him. The priest flew away from the fish at El Niño’s head, and made a hugely satisfying ‘tock!’ sound before bouncing into the water with a loud ‘Ploop!’ and disappeared into the Davy Jones locker. We stared at each other for a moment and burst out laughing. El Niño imitated himself laughing at me and withdrawing his feet, and then re-enacted the embarrassment of getting the priest upside his head while laughing at me.
No El Dorado. I came up short. We went back to the shore. Milson found it all funny, and his daughter came over to show off her fish to me, which in truth, wasn’t much smaller than my garfish. One of the guys passed us selling his wares. He had an incantation I hadn’t heard before “Sin dios, sonomos solo Coca Cola, helados, gaseosas, cervezas”. I stared and waited for him to repeat it…
“Without God, we are just Coca Cola, ice creams, soft drinks, beer”. The next morning I left Taganga again, but this time inland, broken like Klaus Kinski, like the most hopeless conquistador. South America made me her bitch and sent me packing back to fresh water and trout. But it was fun.

This is the true story of everything I did in Colombia. Honest.

Tips: You need Spanish. English is not spoken at all, not even at hotels to book a room. Bear in mind that you may be the first person to charter a boat, and it will inevitably be from a fisherman who will insist on fishing himself. You will meet with a lot of curiosity not merely about fly fishing, but also because fishing is not practised by wealthy Colombians, it is a poor man’s job, never a pastime. The boat will be basic, but make sure you have a canopy and plenty of factor 40+, a hat, etc. El Niño told me that February and March are the best months for giant shoals of bonito. The dollar used to command a lot of respect worldwide, but where the local currency is massively outstripping the dollar (Russia, Brazil, Colombia) they don’t like the green stuff any more. Colombians are also incredibly reluctant to take what they consider large banknotes. A huge fuss will be made for anything over 10,000 pesos, and they may refuse to sell you stuff at all. Even in a four-star hotel, getting change can be turned into a Monty Pythonesque, half-hour scene. Be prepared, get small denominations at banks.
For Playa Blanca, Gilbert’s cell number is 311 4366215.
La Ballena Azul is a nice hotel on the beach in Taganga – 5 421 9005. Be aware that Taganga is noisy, the music is loud at outdoor restaurants. Cocaine-fuelled Hebrew is shouted through the night. If that doesn’t suit you, Taganga doesn’t suit you.

Slovenia


“I know you, you fucking crazy guy, still no car?” I am in the lobby of the Hvala Hotel in Kobarid, and the big Slovene Alex is full of good cheer. It’s not every four star hotel in the world where you walk in for the second time, they swear at you. Which is a pity, it’s just what the Savoy needs.

Some destinations speak loud to the fisher. This is one of them. Slovenia is a pretty, mountainous country, with cute little cottages and welcoming people. The food is very good and the capital looks like something print
ed on a chocolate box. But even if none of this were true, if it looked like Stalingrad in 1945, and the people were rude and the food crap, fishermen would still flock here year after year, because the Soča is the only river in the world with marble trout. It gives a rare, holy grail quality to the trip; whatever the fishing, unless you catch marble trout, your visit to Slovenia will have to count as a failure.

This river, the Soča,
called the Isonzo in Italian, was a geographical divide which formed a front almost for the duration of World War I. Kobarid was the centre of that combat. The river itself was what held the sides apart. It was an old-fashioned battle over a geographical feature which lasted the length of the war. As you fish the water you can see why. The water flows very, very quickly, is mostly very deep, and the sides of the river are quite extreme. A well-placed cannon in the hills above would stop any notions of fording or building a bridge. So they died of the cold, they died in skirmishes, and in big pushes to take inches of enemy soil organised by distant, incompetent and incredibly fat generals. The numbers are unknown, but certainly well over half a million men died fighting for possession of this river. The museum at Kobarid is excellent, awarded European Museum of the Year when it opened. Don't miss the film (available in English, Italian and Slovene) which clearly explains the conflict. Then trivialise the whole piece of business by indulging in your favourite sport and throwing four white feathers and a hook on the river for a week.

As I walked to the river, to the very bridge which formed the centre of the conflict between Italy and Austro-Hungary, I pictured Ernest Hemingway walking here almost a hundred years before me. He simply must have walked where I was, as it was the only road through Kobarid, and that is where he was stationed when he volunteered to be an ambulance driver. When he was wounded, his convalescence was at Kobarid. I pictured him walking here. Wh
en I turned along the river, the path had nettles crowding it. I raised my short-sleeved arms, as many must have raised them before in the same spot, some to avoid nettles, others to surrender, and I thought of them, and how lucky I was to be walking to the Soča to fish. More than that, even if there were no sadness attached to the Soča, I would still be incredibly lucky to fish it.

Below the bridge that was so much fought over, there is a huge pool teeming with fish. I fished it for a long time with not a bite. I put on a sinking tip. Clear water is always, always much deeper than it looks. I never get used to this. So it proved. The sinking tip carried the same fly down, and the fish began to bite. It was swelteringly hot. I had thought that the next day I might put on goggles and swim in this pool to look at the fish and maybe spot a couple of monster marbles in their lies. Just then, a gentle bite, a first fish to hand. Was it a marble trout? Was it 'eckers like: A chub. I had never heard they had them here.


When I dipped my hand in the water to fish this little fellow out, all notions of swimming the next day were put on ice. The water temperature was well below ten degrees.

I caught a big grayling after this. A couple of powerful rainbows followed and it seemed like I was on a magical tour of salmonid species, which, of course, I was hoping to end with a marble trout as big as my leg. Just then this breeze started running down the river from the mountain. It wasn't travelling very fast but it was so cold that I called it a day. Back at the hotel Alex told me that breeze happens every night, and if I want to fish after sunset I'll need arctic gear for that pool.
So day one, blank for marbles.

There is a spit of land opposite one of the best pools on the Soča. The upper Soča is as popular for white water rafting as it is for fishing. For some good reason this beach is where the rafters finish their journ
ey and pack their gear away. I fished it with success even though these monkeys keep coming down the river and splashing out of the water showing no concern for your poor narrator. Now these people are of two types, obviously and immediately identifiable. They are either Austrian or Italian. The behaviour of one group is the opposite of the other. The Italians get out of the water and head deep into the woods to get changed, the Austrians whip off their wetsuits right there on the beach. Boys, girls, doesn't matter; off comes the wetsuit and chit and chat, and light a fag, and dry out and little by little on with the clothes. The Italians, in the meantime, emerge from the woods fully dressed.

I was busy fishing, and if you think I'm a perv, you think I'm a perv, but I challenge any man not to notice a gorgeous 6ft blond woman peel off a wetsuit, jump up and down to dry herself, rub her tits and legs to wipe the water away, and, and, (how I wish it weren't true) squat down and have a piss on the beach in front of me.

So down the river comes this guy in a kayak. Dark haired, and I'm guessing Italian. He holds his position in the water by gently rowing in front of me. A couple of dirty looks from him establish that h
e feels the river is for rafting and not for nancy-boy fishing. His mate arrives. They turn around and start to discuss what they are going to eat tonight. He says 'Magna' not 'mangiare' and is therefore from Lazio if not Rome. A third dirty look comes my way, and he says to his mate, in clearly audible Italian, 'Look at that turd there, fishing with flies. It doesn't work, that fucker won't catch anything all day, and he's paying for the privilege'. Now I know some pretty acute responses to this in Italian, phrases you won't find in Baedecker's, and even if that weren't so, I had some excellent throwing stones at my feet, but just then, a miraculous thing happened. There was a huge thump on the line, I lifted my rod, and my reel started to scream. The line pulled out in big jerks as a big rainbow thrashed downstream and leapt twice just for extra drama. And whaddaya know? I netted it before cock monkey even got his boat out of the water.

I caught a couple of hybrid brown/marble trout. I also caught my first pure marble trout, but it was very small. I'm not terribly sizeist about fish, but the marble trout is famous for its size and beauty. Back at the Hvala Hotel* they have a stuffed marble trout in the lobby. It is the size of a ten year old kid. So I'm a bit shy about my ten inch thing. That's the only time you'll ever hear a man say such a thing.

* Great food, good wine list. Only sixty euros a night, an easy walk to the river. They’ll cook your catch, so take some of the rainbows out and eat them. Marble trout, incidentally, like most piscivorous salmonids, doesn’t taste so good, and the limit is 70cms! And if you do take one and eat it I’m going to find you and kill you and your family and burn your house to the ground.

On my last day, I got up earlier, hit the river with more purpose, quizzed Alex for longer. I was almost instantly rewarded. An acceptable marble trout was in my hand by noon.

This was what I came here for. And it is special, a thing of rare beauty. I wet my hand so as not to damage its protective film, and picked it out of the water. I sometimes name fish; fish I catch, but more usually fish I miss catching that hold a particular spot in the river. Perhaps it's clear that I almost revere marble trout. I looked down at him and said, out loud, 'Hello Ernest, you are a beautiful, beautiful butterfly'. Then I turned the hook slowly out of him and faced him upstream, and he melted away into the marble water.

Then I hooked a bigger one. You know that scene in Jaws when Roy Schneider suddenly decides the boat isn’t big enough? It wasn’t until I got this beast, his name was Bruce, near my landing net that I realised he was bigger than the aperture of the net. I got his head in and tried a lift, but Bruce didn’t like that and he headed for the deep. I was ready to feel very stupid if he got off. I brought Bruce round to the net again, got the bulk of him over it and tried a gentle lift, and he was in. I was just relieved.

I walked much further downstream. I reached a broad pool with riffles that ma
de fish hard to see. It looked like a good spot. I stopped and looked around. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. Sitting in front of me in six inches of water was a fish far larger than any I have ever caught. Maybe 10lbs. At first I thought it was a particularly dark rainbow, or maybe a huchen, but it was too dark to be a rainbow, had white stripes on its fins like a brook trout. It was a magnificent fish that would have had no chance against me had I simply battered it on the head with a big stick. I wondered why it was sitting there, idling in the shallows where a bear or eagle would surely soon kill it. Finally I noticed the damage. Its eye was hanging outside its socket. This fish had already been attacked. It was dying in the shallows. I stared at it for ten minutes, wondering what had done this damage without inflicting the killer blow. It was hard to leave it, to walk away from such a spectacular fish, but night was coming in, and it was time to make my last few casts on the Soča. If anybody can tell me from the photo what it is, please, please post a reply.

It's funny how you can tell sometimes what species has taken the fly even if you can't see it. It seems counter-intuitive that species is actually as distictive as size when it comes to fight. I hooked a fish. Not big, but with that distinctive fluttery feel that so ofte
n means a grayling. The fish came to hand, and I was surprised to be looking at something that was not a grayling. It had an adipose fin, so it was a salmonid, but its body shape was rather diamond like. It was sort of steely pink coloured, but lacked the spots that cover a rainbow. It looked a bit like a rainbow, but I suspected some hybridisation.

I killed it and took it back to the hotel. Alex had seen photos of my marbles and hybrids and rainbows and chub. I showed him my catch. For the first time, he showed pleasure. 'Wow! A wild rainbow. Did it fight like a grayling? These are beautiful, and very good to eat'. It was as well.

The next morning I packed my things up and left. I said goodbye to Alex and he said, “I’ll see you next year, you fucking crazy guy”. He will as well.

Price: €150 for three days.
Price/quality ratio: Room for lots of improvement. We want to catch blocks of marble the size of Michelangelo’s David, not reservoir dogs.
Quality: 8/10. Get rid of the ‘bows.
Species: Mostly rainbows, some marble trout, chub, grayling, brown trout.
Wildlife: Don’t get eaten! Bears, snakes, wild boar, huge snails, eagles, etc.
Tips: The vast pool below the road bridge in Kobarid is excellent.
Getting to Kobarid is far easier from Italy than from Ljublana. From Venice, Mestre, etc. take the train to Gorizia, then get the bus to Kobarid direct.