First trout raptures still fresh

Taupo Times, Volume 23, Issue 62, 6 August 1974, Page 9

First trout raptures still fresh

. ...j » W / > Trout fishermen ^ have short memories for bad days. Give . the angler a starspangled outing, though, and he'll remember it as long as he lives. yA a A big , brownie seen, stalked, and caught; several fish taken in the most trying circumstances; a time when every cast goes unerringly to its right place; even a day of breathtaking beauty beside some small stream; these are the things that remain undimmed with a fisherman for the rest of his life. The most vivid memory of all, surely, is the angler' s very first trout. ^ And if, like me, he caught only the one that. day — which is as it should „be — his second trout will ^also stay with him as long as the first, just as mine does. When all you know of fishing is 10 years of - baiting for coarse fish in the slow 'rivers and lilycovered ponds of Kent, - your first trout is an occasion of some magnitude. Especially if it's the kind of fishv yoii least expect. Tjfi bnufiL I didn't catch mine in Kent. In fact, I was 20 years old, inTndiaMibefore I could add a -tstaut to the many differdnt species of sport-fish I had caught. It was a bfo&n trout, and I took i£ ' on a worm from a flooding hill-stream 8000 feet up in the Nilgiri Hills of Mysore. You appreciate life at such an altitude best if you've just left the stifling summer heat of the plains "below. Exchanging that almost Tntolerable shir#ftnerinf>%rid country for forested green hills, frost at dawn, ferns and moss on shady banks, was like- stepping out of nigbtmatie into the sweetest dream of all. There must be other ^blaces in the world where an escape into the mountains is the only relief from blazing summer heatT but Tuckily New 'Zealrfnd:' isn't "T>ne of them. It's only when you experience such an occasion that you bless the more even-tempered climates of countries like our own. Morning mists in the Nilgiri Hills, the stror.g scent qf pih.^|fthe evidence of recent rains, drove thoughts of the g* pitiless plains far away. One morfting, I went out into immens'e' fltb^y clouds

blundering damply among the mountain peaks. But before I was half-way to a stream called Sandy Nullah, the sun came out. Along the road, where lines of towering blue gums now cast dappled shadows, wagtails sought flies. Beyond the trees, Sandy Nullah tumbled down a rocky gully dark with gorse and scrub. One thing I knew for certain. There were no fish in Sandy Nullah. An Englishman of undoubted authority had told me so. I didn't know it then, but just as Australia and then New Zealand had been stocked with brown trout from England, so had one or two places in India, notably the Nilgiris, in days gone by. So why there were none

left at that stage' remains somewhat of a mystery. But the prospect^ of catching no fish in Sandy Nullah was not disappointing. Just to go out with a rod to a stream on that cool green morning was reward enough. It was a cheap rod, bought in Bangalore. The reel was cheap, too, an inferior Indian instrument of brass. It turned, but only just. The line was strong .-twisted silk. from Madras. It kinked if you looked at it cross-eyed. The gut was what in those days was termed gutsubstitute, a material which for many years bridged the gap between old-fashioned gut and new-fashioned nylon. The 20-yard length had been airmailed out to me in a letter from England. The hooks were suspect. They were whipped to lengths of the Madras twisted silk. My gut-substitute was thinner, so I cut through one of the hook-links an inch from the end of the shank, and tied on a

gut-substitute cast. t I pinched a single split shot on the cast a foot from the hook, and began hunting for worms. And found some. I scrambled along the stream. It was a small rushing brown torrent, flecked with foam. Ever optimistic, I was trying to decide where the fish would be. But there weren't any fish, remember? Trout in England had interested me only academically. I had read a few trout-fishing books. I had fly-fished, certainly, but for those dashing small fish called dace, and those doughty cunning fish called chub. But as for fishing a worm for trout, without a float, well, the technique was as far beyond me as threadlining for salmon.

Gradually, Lworked out where any non-existent fish might be sheltering. The stream dropped into pools here and there. Where eddies formed under the banks of those pools, the water seemed to be a little less coloured. If there were any fish at all in the stream, that's where they would be sheltering. I cast my worm into many such holes, allowing the current to take it away and sweep it round under overhanging bushes. But no fish took it. I. found a larger pool. In went the worm. Nothing happened on the first time round. Nothing happened on the second, third and fourth times. The fifth cast had covered three-quarters of the pool when an extra strong push of the current carried the worm right under the bank. The next moment, wonder of wonders, I was playing a fish. I had it on the bank in half a minute. And it was my very first trout, all of six ounces. It was the only one I ever caught in India.