Fly River Tales

Tales of the Fly River

The man was real old, chewed up and leathery, but his eyes still
sparkled.
He began to talk after the meal shifting and settling his old bones so
you couldn't tell whether it was him or the chair that was creaking.
The story came slow at first, with wheezing breath, then in a rush as
he remembered the hunt and the fish that had eluded him, up there in
the high country, at the head of the Fly.

I packed that night and left in the dawn with the night sounds still
echoing. I travelled light, taking only my rod and fly kit, the old
billy with some black tea and a wedge of damper wrapped in a cloth. The
moment my paddle dipped into the water I felt the old excitement well
up and I increased my stroke. Still it was dusk before I reached the
stretch the old man had described with only a few minutes left to study
the eddies before dark.

If the old man wasn't exaggerating, this was the home of brown trout
grown so big they'd turned cannibal. Maybe it was something in the
water or the weeds that allowed a five pounder to grow into a thirty
pound slab-sided monster. Or perhaps none of it was true. Fisherman can
be awful liars sometimes. But the river, bathed in the glow of sunset,
seemed to hold mysterious promise and the evening fly hatch dappled the
surface like it was raining.

There! By the far bank, in a hollow framed by the roots of a Red Gum
and almost screened by overhanging branches, something big had risen. I
watched the place as I crouched by my beached canoe, gathering deadfall
by feel for the fire. Again! A huge, hooked jaw emerged from the
depths, sucked at a fly and withdrew. And then it was dark as if a
blanket had been thrown over the sun and I was left with my
imagination.
I don't think I slept a wink that night and it wasn't the dingoes and
hawks that kept me awake.

It was cool the next morning, not cool enough the prevent the river
steaming in the early sun, but enough to stop the morning hatch of fly
and therefore any attempt at fishing. The day passed agonisingly, slow
and hot, and then it was time to fit my rod together, thread the line
and tie the fly. Now time seemed to flow past and I fumbled in my
excitement.

The trout's lie had given me an almost impossible cast, twenty yards
across the river and down a little, through a gap no more than six
inches wide. Too short and the river would sweep the fly away
downstream, too long and I'd be in the branches and snagged.

I laid some line at my feet and tried a practice cast upriver. The rod
was made of Tonkin cane, built by myself so it seemed to grow out of my
hand and it cast true and straight and long at the first attempt, the
line falling snaky and soft upon the water. It was time.

I drew some line off the reel and began the rhythmic switching that
pulls line through the rings and into the air until I had fifteen yards
of it trailing above me. I leaned into the final forward stroke willing
the fly and leader through the gap in the branches on the opposite
bank. Damn, it was too long and slightly wide. The fly and leader
dangled from a branch inches from the surface. I paused and then there
was a surge
at the surface and that great head lifted clear out of the water and
plucked my fly off of the branch clean as you like.

It was snaky line that I'd cast so the fish felt no resistance and nor
did I until I gathered a few coils in my hand. Then it was as if I'd
hooked a log, ponderous and unbelievably heavy. Now the small hole in
the far bank was giving me different problems: not how to get the fly
in, but how to get the fish out. I kept up the tension, gradually
increasing it until I thought the leader would part, but it
didn't.

Suddenly the fish was out in the main stream, plunging and leaping.
When it landed on the water after one of these displays, it was with a
solid smack that threw up gallons of spray. I ran along the bank,
following the fish surging up and down the river. All the time I was
praying that the line wouldn't part or my equipment let me down. I
fought him for two hours with the rod tip touching the butt until at
last I had him beaten. I drew him over the reeds towards me, like
beaching a boat.

The trout went thirty-one pounds even on my scales and if it had been
an ounce heavier I truly believe the spring would have snapped. I
packed him in moss and laid him at the bottom of the canoe and set off
home. It was a full moon and nearly as bright as day, although
ghostly.

When I brought out the monster the old man laughed and laughed,
"That's not a bad trout," he gasped, " but as to the one I was talking
about, why, that's just his baby brother."

As I said before, fishermen can be awful liars sometimes.

&;#61651; Christopher Slatter, 2002