Shakespeare & Modern Nymphing

Savs

I find myself on the horns of an unfamiliar together. I took an immediate shine to it and dilemma. Furrows are etched deeply into my after some friendly persuasion he parted with it for brow. Dark rings below my eyes are evidence of what turned out to be a very fair price. He’s sleepless nights. This is no ordinary situation in chastising himself over his bad judgement, but I which I find myself. like to think that I taught a young man something enough. I’m pretty easy to please and what your tomato plants upright. part. of the ways of the world. Disappointment and

But let me start at the beginning. I’m in the regret are ubiquitous to the lived experience and market for a new fly rod. he got a large dose of both. How he manages

It is my style to know what I want. It’s usually his maturity. Not that I’m going to judge him, it’s not too much, as it happens, and I simply scour a great rod and I’ll just avoid eye contact until he the used tackle sites until I find something close resolves his angst and settles down. pleases me are rods made not more than three The four weight has proven to be a harder but not less than two decades ago. Sure, they’re proposition. I found one that feels great, but it’s a little heavier and a little less responsive than really a mislabelled three weight and is too close modern rods but there was a sweet spot back to what I already have. Another three weight then that rod designers hit dead centre. With a that has been recommended to me as a four few notable exceptions they haven’t got close to weight has that instantly unmistakable feel of an it since. industrial tyre iron. There’s a remarkable five

Obviously we’re talking here about graphite now, but it’s way out of my fiscal reach. How sticks. Bamboo is a subject that can fill a book they decide on the weights of rods these days is and is best left to the lovers of the arcane and entirely beyond comprehension. Do they stand in the eccentric. Fibreglass is, to not put too fine a the factory, have a scantily clad assistant cover point on it, crap. With bamboo you want the blank with a cloth, turn to the mark and say something either very old or very new and with “give me a number, any number, between one fibreglass it has to be just good enough to keep and seven”?

What is most frustrating about this particular now) told me a story recently of his first rod and purchase is that for once in my life it comes as a reel. He started out in the stream that runs past component of a meticulously strategised system. his alma mater, Stellenbosch University, with a Whereas I advise other people to buy a three Diawa rod, a knock-off Hardy reel, a fast sinking weight and to split the difference between small line and a half dozen wet flies. The rod was stream and larger river requirements I decided on fibreglass wrapped around a mandrel of steel. my foray into nymph angling to purchase a two While it’s hard to imagine that a fibreglass rod weight and a four weight so as to be optimally would be improved by having a ferrous prepared for each occasion. I mean, if you’re endoskeleton I honestly don’t think that there’s a going to try to run along the cutting edge of lot you can do to make them any worse. It may modern flyfishing you want to at least look the even increase your tomato yield. his resentment toward me will be a reflection of weight (that’s actually a four weight) available A penpal (an archaic term, we use our thumbs He went on to tell me - in a charming story that

T h e a c q u i s i t i o n o f t h e t w o w e i g h t I includes a former lover, his current wife, two accomplished with remarkable ease. Bramble different foresters and graphic descriptions of Boy recently had one made to his specifications and he trotted it out on a stream that we fished seasickness - of the world that it opened up to him.

It was in the beginning “piscatorially, a dismal and utter failure” and his exact recollection was that “the rod was as whippy as a tank aerial, the line cracked and went to the bottom immediately and the reel with a single screw fell apart.” While this leaves little to the imagination I can relate. We probably all can.

He still owns the reel, and I envy him for that.

I wish I could find my first rod and reel. They were something that my parents, in this instance my mother, bought for me for as a birthday present. We didn’t grow up with money to throw at capricious whims like flyfishing tackle but my mother did her best. She clearly did it without the advice of anyone who knew anything about balanced fly rigs. This comes as no surprise as she bought it in what was a bait and tackle corner in the back of a Transkei supermarket. The rod was a six weight Mitchell, with a matching two weight floating line and a reel of the finest Japanese plastic. On my better days and with a heavily weighted fly I could get about a third of the fly line out, the rest lying in tight coils at my feet. I caught my first and probably several hundred more trout on it.

That rod meant the world to me, and it still does.

The only two objects on this planet that I can think of that hold the infinite potential energy of a fly rod are an electric guitar and a blank sketch book. Yes sir, I understand the concept of potential energy and my misuse of it. It’s just that

In our correspondence I broke a personal rule and recalled to my friend a bit of poetry*. It neatly, although a little obliquely, sums up how we feel about the mess of ill-assorted gear that almost all of us got started with. Its only saving grace is that it opened a door for us and helped us to fall in love with an element of this earth and of ourselves that would otherwise have remained hidden. It may be that we just weren’t good enough to know how bad it was, but I suspect that despite that we would have forgiven it its faults.

Still, right now I’m on the internet looking at various rod options and am obsessing over the placement of the stripping eye, single versus double footed guides and the exact shape and diameter of the handle (they call them grips these days). I’ve managed to extract any of the wonder of the process and I’m down to the sort of details that probably hardly matter, except to impress your friends and bore your spouse.

I’ve more than doubled my age since that first rod, and maybe I am getting a little sentimental, but I miss the days when the answer to the question “do you have a rod” was “yes” and you’d just go fishing.

*Sonnet 116, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments”, William Shakespeare