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When you hang out that shingle on December 24th, you know the one,
The one that says “Gone Fishing”
The first thing that has to happen is the last minute shopping.
Then you’ve got Christmas day with all the joy this brings, Grandchildren, presents, laughter, being surrounded by the ones you love.
Not to mention the spiritual reason for all this good will to all men.
Then comes Boxing Day, a day spent relaxing, reading that new autobiography you got the day before, feet up, back veranda, surrounded by coffee cups in the morning and Bourbon glasses in the afternoon. As the new book becomes harder to read and I am not sure if that is caused by failing light, failing eyesight or failing to put the lid back on the Bourbon bottle, the mind wanders to other things. Fishing or more specifically “Fly fishing”, you know, that time honored art of landing a trout with an artificial temptation of hand tied beauty.
You get the rod out and wander out onto the back lawn, “to get in some practice and lubricate that old shoulder” so that you don’t make a complete fool of yourself when on the river.
An hour later with aching shoulder, you can land the fly within a meter of what you’re aiming at, not the best, but it has been a while since the rod saw the light of day.
More importantly you have a plan, fish the sunrise till 10, continue building front fence till 3, 2hr afternoon siesta, and then fish the sunset. Repeat as often as possible given your family responsibilities and the fact that you have a new grandson arriving on the 29th. Does it sound like bliss, I thought so.
Out of bed before sunrise, wake the granddaughter, make a hot drink and sandwiches and were off, you see I know this little stream not to far from my place that has at least 5 wily old trout living in it and a more perfect spot to teach the “light of your life” to fly fish you will never find. Wrong.
There are twelve townies camping in my favorite secret fishing hole this year.
OK I know prior preparation and all that, I should have done a Recce first, but it is my “not so secret spot”. OK, good will to all men, revert to plan B.
A nice easy walk up the Selwyn, not that easy for a 5 year old, but she’s got grit in her veins, she’ll handle it. Two hours latter we have covered about a kilometer, fished a lot of likely spots, but if truth be told, seen nothing.
The Selwyn is really under pressure this year from lack of rain and dairy farmers wanting water for irrigation, but at last we come across a perfect hole, deep, thirty foot long, over hanging willows at the top end full of willow bugs and feeding fish.
Twenty minutes later with my young progeny totally impressed by my ability to catch willow trees and broom bushes, we decide to give the pool a rest for a while and have a hot drink and a samy. You can’t rush these things.
We sit in the sun and enjoy the morning, discussing the reasons why some people want to dam rivers for power, water and money, mostly money. We both wonder why some people think that Canterbury is a good place to start a dairy farm, to spend millions of dollars on irrigation equipment, dams and such, just to waste the precious water to the dreaded Norwester. I try to explain to her the reasons why some people think that building a sixty foot high dam within a hundred meters of our front door might be a good idea, lots of new jobs, and vast riches for the investors from Auckland who never milked a cow in their life.
But her argument was simple and hard to sway, if they take all the water Poppa, there will be no where for the fish to live. Who am I to argue with that, it’s her country too.
But then, that’s “just an old trucker’s point of view”
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