Hook removal - a practical demonstration.

In more than 30 years since picking up a fly rod I have never experienced a barbed hook lodged in my skin - until the last Dee trip.

The night before we fished Mark Crampton Smith was outlining a discomforting but, he assured us, effective method for removing a hook from the head. The idea, he said, was to loop some nylon around the bend in the hook, then push the hook inwards with a thumb while yanking swiftly on the thread.

It sounded a bit grizzly to me but the very next day I had the opportunity to put it to the test. I'm not sure what happened, a mistimed cast perhaps, combined with a gust of wind; all I know is that there was a sharp crack to my sunglasses and a bang on the upper cheek, leaving a large double hook embedded in my skin.

Yes, I know some will be saying that the barbs should have been crimped. Well they weren't. The cheek felt a bit a numb but the hook had to go so I went over to our hook specialist, Mark, who seemed less confident than he had been when discussing the theory.

He did just as he had been told and the hooks were out, almost painlessly, leaving a couple of neat pin pricks in my cheeks.

I must have been so impressed that two days later I drove another hook in to my skin, this time a finger. The point was close to the bone so pushing it through wasn't an option. This time I had Will to do the necessary and he chose forceps, ripping out the hook before I was ready. That one did hurt but, again, it left no more than a neat hole. After that I was much more careful in my casting.

If you don't fish with some kind of eye protection I hope these lessons will be sufficient to convince you of the wisdom of doing so.

Trophy fishing on the Dee

The spring Dee salmon fishing was as tough as ever this year but our party improved slightly on last year’s performance with seven fish. Two of our goals were achieved when everyone caught a fish and we had a fish on every day of the week.

They were all in the 6 lbs to 10 lbs range, so we didn’t land one of the big Dee springers although Mark Crampton Smith lost a big fish, apparently after mistaking it for a rock. This is not as daft as it sounds.

A big salmon can be pretty stubborn, holding station, refusing to budge, but if there is any “rock or fish” doubt in the mind, it’s better to hold steady rather than yanking hard at the obstruction as Mark did. His rock finally responded by spitting out the hook and shooting off up stream to a more appreciative beat.

First fish

The first fish fell to Bryan Kruse which, in an earlier visit, when we did that sort of thing, would have scooped him the first fish prize money in the sweep.

Mark objected to a sweep, arguing that it was ungentlemanly to despoil our experience with grubby money, so he had to settle for our new trophy, the Carlogie Cup for best all round fishing performance. This included ferreting out a fish from a “secret pool” that also produced a salmon for Will Sadler who had been showing signs of desperation as the only fishless rod midway through the week.

First he blamed his rod, then his line, then his rod and his line until the ghillie loaned him an identical rod which somehow seemed better.

Sluie Saucer

There was a second trophy, the Sluie Saucer, named after another nearby beat that we had rented for the week. This one has less to do with fishing prowess and more to do with general ineptness. After falling in the river three times, hooking myself twice, dropping off in the hut while holding a glass of wine, and losing my wading stick, I suppose I couldn’t complain when the saucer came my way.

Two other goals, a salmon over 15 lbs and a fish at Sluie, both eluded us. Sluie has recorded just two fish for the season to date and the beat owner is more than a little hacked off with spring runs that are a shadow of the old days.



During the 1960s river netting was taking 60,000 salmon a year and 10,000 or more were falling to the rods. Today the annual total of rod caught fish on the Dee in a season is somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 fish with all but a small minority returned. It's difficult to say how many fish are caught more than once but when records were taken of River Carron salmon - all tagged - some 19 per cent of catches were fish that had been caught twice.

Burn Improvement

While burn improvement on the Dee is to be commended, I am less convinced about the wisdom of the Dee Salmon Fishery Board decision to close its hatcheries. If the river was teeming with fish I could appreciate an argument to simply let the fish get on with their own breeding. But the Dee is far from reaching the levels of returning fish it needs to restore and sustain the kind of abundance it enjoyed in the past.

This week the weather warmed up and catches increased. They had 15 fish between four rods at Ballogie, the beat below us. The Carlogie total was six in ideal conditions, so I don’t think we did too badly.

The spring fishing is much improved on the way it was 10 years ago when some believed that the Dee springer could be extinct, but there is still a long way to go.

Angling

Angling Unity or Angling? These are the two names in the frame for a unified body to represent angling interests in England and Wales that is to be created from an amalgamation of six associations. The new body should be ready for legal registration in July if all goes to plan, becoming fully operational by January next year.

Pulling together six different groups in 15 months since the idea was first mooted by the Angling Conservation Association has been a minor miracle. The various boards who have buried any differences and self-interest for the good sense of having single more powerful voice, are to be congratulated.

The six associations in the move are:

Angling Conservation Association,
National Association of Fisheries and Angling Consultatives,
National Federation of Anglers,
National Federation of Sea Anglers,
Salmon and Trout Association,
Specialist Anglers' Alliance.


Now there is just the question of a name. Unless the group comes up with something it thinks is even better, my preference would be "Angling" so that way its interests would be rolled in to a single descriptive word.

April on the Tay

The problem with turning up to fish on the River Tay in the spring is that the fishing has been so poor in recent years I find it difficult to raise any sense of optimism and, believe me, I am an optimist.

No matter, it's good to practice my casting. On the Monday morning I had been fishing just 20 minutes at a place they call the "little shot" - an old netting spot - on the Benchill beat of the Upper Scone fishings, when I had the strongest of pulls on the fly.

I had run a Black Frances through the pool on an intermediate line with a fast-sinking tip, and had just changed the fly to a Temple Dog.

I retraced my steps on the bank and, after about three or four casts, hooked in to a salmon. Could it have been the same fish? Unfortunately I lost it after two or three minutes, but it was a reminder that I shouldn't have been so complacent. Fish were running and, although they weren't stopping, there was always the chance of a take.

On the Tuesday it rained heavily, leaving the water coloured for much of Wednesday. On the Thursday I was fishing the Cawnpore pool just opposite Stanley Mills when a fish took my fly just three or four yards from the bank. It was not a big fish, about 8 lbs, but it stripped off a lot of line before I beached it and returned it, having left my landing net at home.

On the Saturday morning I hooked in to another a little further down the same bank but this too, came off after a couple of minutes. I noticed that the landed fish was lightly hooked. These were fast running fish, hitting the fly from behind, not turning on it in the classic take.

Our group had six fish for the week, not great but a hell of a lot better than some recent years when the return has been one or two or none at all. Had all the lost fish held we would have been in double figures.

It was satisfying too, that the bank outfished the harling boats, with four coming from the bank, three on "flying C" spinners. I was the only one fishing fly but it fished just as well as the spinners. In fact I would argue that it fished better because it fishes a little more slowly.

It's too early to be optimistic about the Tay but the spring runs do seem to be improving gradually. It will be interesting to compare this with the Dee in a week's time.