Piscatorial saint, where are you...

Taupo Times, Volume 23, Issue 50, 25 June 1974, Page 4

Piscatorial saint, where are you...

Notice how, when you're desperate for a fish, your personal piscatorial patron saint remembers a pressing engagement elsewhere? Often, if things go too smoothly right up to thev time you make your first cast, your outing is doomed. And the converse is normally the case, too. So, after 20 minutes of feverishly trying to unravel a fly-line that had tangled itself on the reel the other day, and turning the air blue within maximum casting distance all around, I was at least able to hug the thought that I would obviously end up with several fish. But no. That's the other thing you learn eventually — never to make assumptions from past experience, signs, portents, or what the angling stars foretell. Last week, when I was almost ready to catch a fish which was needed the next day as an essential prop in a fishing photograph, I almost didn't bother to get into the water. Things had gone too darn smoothly. The car flew like a bird to the water. The torch worked first time. The rod went together in record time. The line went through ring after ring eagerly, never missing, while the reel handle in the boot of the car resisted its normal impulse to catch on anything within reach. And the long-tailed Scotch Poacher I chose to fish with had no end of knotted nylon in its eye. Ominously, after I'd locked the car, I found the keys safe in my parka. Again ominously, I discovered, either pocketed or hung about me, all the items I needed for fishing. Spool of nylon, donger, scissors, fly-box, main torch, emergency torch, cigarettes, matches, they were all there. So I didn't have to unlock the boo't again and rummage around for all the things I usually forget. Two fishermen boiling up at the back of a four-wheel drive vehicle on the bank nearby were cheerful enough. But in the face of a fickle wind which couldn't make up its mind to blow from the south or the west they had come ashore for a spell and a warming cup of tea. They had been fishing for three hours for one fish — which the older man had lost at the beach at the last moment. I might have known. Still, I must catch a fish tonight, or else. The photographer had his client to think of. But fishermen ought never to make promises, even to themselves. And fish are so notoriously camera-shy. I remember when the combined fishing skills of Admiral Hickling, Geoff Sanderson, Bob Biddle, and at least one other noted local angler, together with a famous Taupo launch and its fishermanskipper, all variously enthused by two crates of good cheer on that thirsty summer's day, couldn't produce one fish for a Tourist Department photographer and journalist. I think it was the journalist who caught a fish the next morning. It was carefully wrapped in a wet cloth and taken from stream to stream, bay to

bay, river-mouth to rivermouth, while the photographer took his pictures and the journalist played fisherman. I walked slowly in, casting as I went into the southerly of the moment. Twenty minutes later I hooked a fish. I would be home early! The fish came off. Twenty minutes later I hooked a second fish which splashed heavily way oufe It moved off irresistibly, took out yards of backing, changed its mind, headed rapidly for the beach, turned west, ran out more backing, came finally into six inches of water, and shook the hook out. Very funny, I thought. Half an hour later, while the wind was taking a turn from the west, I felt a savage pull from a heavy fish. I hooked it. It immediately remembered an appointment in Turangi, and went there like an underwater rocket, remembering to surface once to throw the hook and once to metaphorically thumb its nose. Very funny, I thought It was 10 o'clock. Could I land a fish in the hour

that was left? It seemed unlikely. I changed over to a tail-less Scotch Poacher. Naturally, the fourth fish was a smaller one. How do I know? Well, just ask anyone who lands a fish after losing three. But I never believe in looking a gift-horse in the mouth, and though that hen rainbow was smallish by Taupo standards her vital statistics would probably look quite well in a photograph. To be on the safe side, I went in hopefully yet again, and in five minutes was playing a really big rainbow that spent most of its time in the air. How do I know it was a real big one? No prizes for the right answer. Just before 11 o'clock, cold and miserable, I hooked a sixth fish, a tug-tug-tugging specimen which obligingly remained connected and which inevitably provedl to be a brown and not exactly bursting with good condition. But the jack had a fine head, so I kept him. Maybe the photographer could be persuaded to put just the trout's head in the picture and leave out the rest?