A Fishy Tale

Once a year our gardener/handyman/part-time keeper has to cut the hedge that encloses the lodge garden. It usually takes a couple of days. For the other 363 days of the year, he dreads that time coming round again.

I must have upset someone because I was deputised to him this year. It's been 2 looong days and I'm sore in places I didn't know I had. I've been up and down that ladder like a fiddlers elbow.

After all that noise and graft I decided to spend a quick hour down at the river. It had been a muggy overcast day but it turned out to be a beautiful evening.The river was surprisingly low and I reckoned my chances of catching a fish were slim. But that didn't stop me trying.

Which is just as well as I was into a fish within 20 minutes. I was fishing with spinning rod and Flying C lure and hooked a large fish in a wee lie at the far side of the river.

For 15 minutes I played this fish, desperatly trying to keep it from going behind one of the many rocks that surrounded the lie. Eventually it got it's head downstream and went for it. I put as much strain on as I dared, knowing that if it got out of this little glide, it was lost.

But there was no turning it. In a last ditch attempt to stop it before it went behind a massive boulder, I increased my finger pressure on the spool a fraction more.

Suddenly the guitar-string line sprang back and floated down onto the surface of the water. The line had broken and the fish was gone!

I was gutted. I stood for a while on my rock at the side of the river, feeling sorry for myself and sorrier for the fish. I hoped the fish would manage to shed the lure.

However, it was far too bonny an evening to stay upset for long. I tied on another lure and decided to fish a bit further down the river.

I worked my way down through a series of little, difficult pools that I haven't fished for years. I was already 5 minutes overdue at home when I decided to try one more little spot I know.

I clambered over a shelf of rock and there, lying in the shallows below me, was a salmon. It was upside down, with it's tail waving feebly over the gravel. My first thought was that it was a diseased fish and then I saw the eye of my lure sticking out of it's mouth.

I couldn't believe my luck as I scooped it out of the water and onto the bank. The chances of me coming across the exhausted fish- and in an accessible place- had been tiny.

My dad loves a bit of wild salmon. I guess that's Fathers Day taken care of.