Harry and the trout and ...

Press, 25 February 1978, Page 16

Harry and the trout and ...

By

ALEX FOX

Harry is a dry-fly fisherman, with a dry sense of humour; he is thinking of writing books about his experiences. According f o Harry, the first of the series will be called "B . . . if Places I Have Been.” and the second will be called. “B . . . I Have Everv freshwater fisher-

man should buy them, because thev will give him a view of the frustrating side of the gentle art of The shelves of bookstores are full of gentle tales of quiet streams where the bis trout like angels, and fight like demons until netted, out Harry will tell wondrous tales of treacherous rivers he has seen, where the trout ignores the perfect replica of the rising nymph or hovering fly, or, worse still, bolt for cover like startled rabbits. Fishermen will buy Harry’s book to reassure themselves, and to give to their w-ives. who have swallowed the myth that trout are willing to fall easy flv or nymph, and wonder what he has been up to all da> when he comes home with a conten’rd expreshis first book of the day

he, and John, and I spent on the Buller River, and in his second book, I hope he will tell about the canoeists we saw, and the dozen or so two to three’ kilogram brown trout in the bend of the Buller, 35km from Murchison. The canoes bobbed, weaved, rose and fell. But the trout? No. They only

ran the rapids, at the sight of paddle or fly. As for the verdant grassy banks, and gurgling brook, we found manuka, blackberry, rockslides. hard rock walls, and torrents of demented blue water. They have said it all about the peaceful mornings at daybreak, and the frantic rise of the naive trout on the Maruia when the wind drops, and the rain stops, and the sun comes out, and the evening rise as the sun sinks behind the wollows on the Motueka River, and all that stuff about the mayflies dancing, and the caddis flies flitting in the twilight. Harry will write about toiling and slipping over and under and through the rocks and the bush, and the Hereford bull we saw with the bristling hump on the back of its neck, standing in the narrow' track. He will write about the big green-backed. and amber, and blue trout that

ignored him and his br.own beetle, and my beautiful white Mayfly and hare-and-copper nymph. Harry might also write about the boiling torrent that drowns the fly, and jams it in the cleft of a rock on the bottom, and he w'ill certainly write aboqt the trout, or the tree, that snaps the trace when the rise is on and the dark is closing in, s.o that excitement, and poor light, make it take much longer to set up again. The tale about the trout that took his fly on the side of the rushing Gowan River, in a spot that had not yielded a fish before, and then rejected it, after no takes all day. except little ones, will make strong men cry, and it will probably be in both books. John would probably write one of the usual sort of books about fly-fishing, even though he was bitten by sandflies, wet to the waist, and had blackberry scratches all over his legs, because he landed a 2kg fish after a gallant struggle by both of them. But when Harry has come to the end of his books he will probably admit that it did not really matter that these difficult places did not yield a fish for the smoke-box, because he will remember the brown shaddows in the small deep havens, and the manuka in bloom, and the last cup of billy-tea with his mates after a long, hard day, as 1 will.