The Old Man and the Sand Eel

by Will Millard

  ‘So where were they when we were here in March?’ chirped in Dad with a chuckle.

  ‘Still all at sea,’ answered Dave solemnly, ‘but the conditions are even worse for us now. We are going to have to work really hard for our fish.’

  I couldn’t quite believe it; having begun this adventure with it absolutely shelling it down and facing up to flooded rivers, it was now too dry.

  ‘They just can’t move. The salmon are either waiting to enter the river or they are stuck in the pools and going into a dormant state.’ Dave glanced outside at the crisp weather and clear skies with more than just a furrow in his brow. ‘We need two foot of water from somewhere.’ Praying for rain in Scotland. I’d seen it all.

  At daybreak I shuffled my feet through leaves that crunched as if they had been baked in salt overnight. It hadn’t rained but I did have a raging headache. Nigel had arrived after dark, barrelling through the doors with irrepressible energy, his wife’s lasagne and a fantastically rural Lincolnshire accent on hand. As is typical on virtually any holiday exclusively for adults, we got over-excited at the prospect of the coming days, overdid it on the wine, and then decided an impromptu blind tasting of all the single malts we had brought with us was a brilliant idea. I had comfortably lost the game to my more experienced company and was now feeling decidedly rough. Luckily, though, the Findhorn was poised to provide perfect distraction. In front of a fishing hut that wouldn’t have looked out of place in backwoods Alaska, the river swept my hangover away with all her majesty.

  I’m not basing this on any knowledge of course, but the Tweed always sounded a bit twee to me. Prolific for sure, and very pretty, but its Borders location made it all feel a little too accessible and easy. The Findhorn, however, purely by name alone, conjured up images of a craggy and mysterious waterway, a place frequented by trolls and witches, where you might even still find an army of Iron Age Picts, casually barbecuing a deer and entirely unaware that Hadrian’s Wall had been turned into a tourist attraction.

  In actuality the Findhorn was all of these things and more. It cut a deep cleft in the side of a heavily forested ravine and the size of the stones scattered on the outside of the bend acted as a testament to the sheer violence the river could wreak. The carpet of moss and lichen on practically every tree in view lent the place a magical green hue. It hummed with wildlife, and confident-looking chaffinch and robin took scraps of bread practically from our fingertips. I sipped at a fortifying cup of tea and noted a community of toads swirling in the pools below my feet. Further down, mustelid prints on virtually every exposed patch of sand signalled that there was a very healthy population of otters in residence.

  The river was impossible to ignore. It meandered under a compelling black-tea curtain of colour in the deeper pools and broke into a forceful white in the shallows and rapid tops, clattering over the rocks with a hollow, rolling sound like a bottle of champagne might, if you threw it down a flight of stairs. I shuddered at the thought of what it must look like in high water and was warned to be very careful if I headed upstream into the gorge – downpours brought instant changes to the Findhorn’s water levels, blasting the gorge with water and claiming the lives of unsuspecting wading anglers in times past.

  Our gillie, George, a very friendly old Scotsman who wore a traditional tweed cap and smart-looking tie, had offered to help me learn to Spey cast. It was a new but necessary discipline. The salmon rod required the use of two hands on the cork grip and was much longer and heavier than I was used to. The lines were much thicker too, and, as I would have to cast some distance at times, it was best that I learn how to execute the cast correctly. The Spey cast, so named after the wide Scottish river, provided the salmon angler with a far more powerful cast than what could be achieved on standard trout-fishing gear; critically, the method also kept most of your line in motion in front of you, meaning that you could cast a considerable distance even with obstacles, such as trees and bushes, directly over your shoulders.

  I carefully taped up the joints of the rod Dad had lent me for the trip – apparently the jolting shock of the Spey cast had enough beef to occasionally rip rod sections apart. I doubted I’d generate enough power to achieve that feat, but I enjoyed playing along as if I could. I had tried to Spey cast once before, on the River Wye. A friend of a friend had a regular rod up there, and, unable to make it one evening, it got offered out to us. I leapt at the chance, but, unfortunately, I found Spey casting about as subtle as fishing with a giant broom handle and ship’s rope. Angling success revolves around confidence, and, as I had none, we quickly gave up and went to the pub.

  ‘Lift up the rod tip, roll to your right, arch the tip down and cast in a D-shaped motion aiming the fly for the far bank.’ Poor George must have said it a hundred times, patiently showing me again and again how to do it, as my brow beaded with anxious sweat. ‘Keep that fly away!’ implored George. ‘You were looking good till you collapsed at the end, and that brings the fly closer into you.’ He wasn’t kidding. We spent a good few minutes extracting the salmon fly from deep within the neoprene that covered my rear end.

  We were attempting to fish the very top of a milk-bottle-shaped stretch of water. The far bank was severely undercut by the flow of the Findhorn, red stone warped into attractive-looking coves and flat platforms, good fish-holding areas if only I could reach them. Eventually I learnt to keep the fly away from my underpants but I just couldn’t get the distance no matter how hard I punched the rod out. ‘You need to relax and feel for a rhythm,’ said George. ‘The best casters are the lady fishers,’ he continued, reaching gently for my wrist. ‘Relax your grip.’ I did, and a couple of hours later my casting had improved markedly.

  ‘Let me have a look at that fly,’ George said after a time. I swung it in towards George’s fingers. ‘Blimey, it’s as bare as a baby’s behind!’ he exclaimed. He was right – my fly was ruined from the constant whipping through the air and contact with objects other than the water. He flicked open a box of flies as colourful as a tub of Quality Street chocolates and selected a double-hooked and bright-blue number. ‘Let’s try that all again from the top of the beat.’

  Almost immediately a shuddering take developed into a short but firm fight. I landed a fin-perfect brown trout just shy of the bottle’s neck, and consecutive casts brought me two more fish: tiny salmon parr this time, my first Scottish salmon, of sorts. ‘I think I’ll celebrate with my disgusting habit,’ George laughed, and sparked up a cigarette.

  Clearly Spey casting wasn’t supposed to be as brutal as I had thought, and even with a stiff thirteen-foot rod, 15lb leader and enormous fly I had really felt the bites I’d had. Even those salmon parr, fish of no more than a couple of ounces each, had given a satisfying thump. Goodness knows what a fully fledged salmon must feel like then. ‘Just make sure you get through the first line of the national anthem before lifting into it,’ advised Nigel at lunchtime. ‘The absolute worst thing you can do is strike,’ added Dave, ‘just tighten down on the fish gradually and you’ll soon find it’s on.’

  The first day closed out with a single small salmon taking a swish at my fly. ‘They are in there if we can just find a way to switch them on,’ remarked Dave as we packed up the gear. ‘I saw one of about five pounds up the top. She was bootiful,’ purred Nigel, ‘scarpered as soon as she saw me, mind.’

  That evening Dad told me how Grandad had taken him to fish Ireland’s Blackwater River. ‘It was one of the best day’s fishing Grandad had ever had.’ I could tell by the way Dad began the story it was far from his best day. He took a sip of his beer and continued. ‘We fished at the mouth of a waste pipe flowing from an abattoir. The anglers lined up and waited for the squeal from the pigs inside, then the pipe would churn out enough blood to turn a whole section of the river red. “Quick, son. Get the net and hook out all the blood clots,” he’d say; stringy, worm-like, woollen lengths of clotted blood which he’d hook and trot downstream in the hope of big bream.’

  It was a
horrific tale and I could palpably feel Dad’s sense of revulsion in the retelling. ‘I remember catching a massive dace that day.’ He indicated the fish’s considerable size between his palms, but his tone was one of disgust. ‘It was horrible. Its gills poured with pig’s blood. I put it straight back in.’

  The next morning we all stood outside in the mist as Dad diligently checked the moth traps he had set up overnight, his friends indulging him as he gleefully called out the names of each species: ‘Red and green carpet! Hebrew character! Oh! Wonderful! A nut-tree tussock!’

  It was hard to reconcile Dad’s character with that of his father. Grandad was simply a product of a very different era. Dad was all peace and love, punk and revolution, tight trousers, big hair and open-minded, blue-sky thinking. Grandad, in spite of his rebellious, anti-authoritarian streak, was still operating within the confines of an ultra-conservative world that had just survived one of the most severe wartime periods ever. Back then animal welfare and ethical considerations were the indulgence of those who lived in lands of plenty and peacetime. Any small edge offered was exploited to its maximum advantage at a time when the screws were really being twisted. You simply never knew when, or if, any edge might be offered again.

  Perhaps catching fish on pig’s blood wasn’t the end of the world. You could argue it wasn’t exactly adding to the harm of the slaughterhouse, simply by using its waste product, but that day at the Blackwater the war had finished a very long time ago, and, clearly, Grandad’s actions were upsetting his young son.

  Grandad remained tough and uncompromising throughout his life. He never seemed to take a backward step over anything; I can’t even recall him ever apologizing. I used to admire his doggedness, his ability to laugh off almost anything, and interpreted his stubbornness as strength. To no little extent, I modelled myself on him when I was a young man. Only now it seems a little excessive, inconsiderate even.

  The moth collection was so much fun we lost track of ourselves and turned up quite late at the river. Grandad would never have done that, I thought, he would’ve fished a burning ghat on the Ganges with a human head for bait if he’d thought it would have put him onto a monster. For Dad, though, the Findhorn was more than just the sum of its fish.

  ‘Dad …’ We sat together on a rock promontory looking directly down into a pool. ‘… this is as close to perfect as I think it’s possible for a salmon run to be.’

  We had headed further up into the gorge than I had been before, scrambling over rocks and occasionally pulling ourselves along the smooth, rock-slab sides by rope to get right to the very top of the beat. It was steep and tight but there was still a prevailing quality to the air of a sort of breathy alpine atmosphere that is only really felt in the bands of forest at the extreme ends of the globe. It didn’t feel claustrophobic in there in the slightest. Pungent pine and birch forests stood tall above a maze of warped and twisted boulders, the largest of which tapered high above me as if dropped from a giant Mr Whippy ice cream machine. In spite of the lack of water, the pools in the gorge still looked very deep and alluring.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’ I picked myself off the stone and reached for my rod. ‘I can’t wait any longer, I’ve got to have a cast.’

  The water cascaded down in great steps of a dozen or more. At points the entry to a pool was little more than a foot or two wide, the full force of the Findhorn’s flow channelled through a natural gap you could quite easily hop across. It seemed highly improbable that any living creature could be able to swim against such power, but clearly the salmon here had found a way; of greater concern, then, was what might happen if I hooked a fish in one of these pools and it decided to exit via such an opening? Surely it would be impossible to stay in touch with a fish if that was its will? It was a prospect that was both inviting and intimidating in equal measure.

  We took the pools on methodically, covering the water twice over before moving on down the staircase. I came nose to nose with a deer at one point and we both watched a goosander chase, then swallow whole, a trout. The salmon, though, continued to evade us.

  We headed ever deeper into the gorge. Our nets and rods slung over our shoulders or held in our teeth as we were forced to rock-climb with greater regularity. ‘It’s guerrilla fishing, Dad!’ I called out, as he swung on a rope. Finally, I was about as far from the commercial fishery as it was possible to be. The sense of relief was palpable and, to no small degree, I felt I had achieved one of the major ambitions I had set myself at the outset of this journey. Unquestionably, I had dipped a line in some wonderful places before coming here, but the Findhorn was in a different class of magnificence; a big fish now would be very nice indeed.

  In the last pool of the beat Dad makes a long cast and lets his fly drift along the edge of some rocks and out across the deeper water. It sinks into the depths and he begins a jerking retrieve, lifting the fly, which I notice looks very much like a small carrot, up through the water column and towards the surface.

  I’m sat high above the pool so I get a very clear view of what happens next. Just as the fly looks like it might break the surface, right at the edge of the deeper water, a salmon resembling a silver submarine emerges directly underneath the carrot, swims to within an inch of the hooks, and then drifts back into the shadows.

  I am utterly stunned, but I know I can’t exactly start shouting down to Dad and risk scaring the fish. I stare at his head. Trying to project the scene into his brain, or at least get some sort of telepathic communication going where he might think to look up at me. It’s pointless though; he’s locked within his own little world and definitely did not see the fish. He re-casts and nothing happens. Maybe I imagined it? He casts again and up it floats once again. It really is huge, comfortably the biggest salmon I’ve ever seen, clearly over 15lb, at a push possibly even 20lb.

  ‘Dad!’ I can’t help myself. ‘Dad!’ I try again in my best shout-whisper. I can see he’s considering changing his fly. Bollocks to it. ‘Dad!’ I really shout it this time. He looks straight up at me, smiling. ‘There is a massive salmon in that pool! He’s gone for that fly twice!’ He wasn’t smiling any more. The fly was cast and re-cast, right back into the hole.

  How many times has that happened when I’ve been fishing, I wonder? How close have I been to my own leviathan and not even realized it was there? Surely that fish is going to go for it this time though. I watch on, holding my breath, and Dad gets that great fish to rise up again.

  Many months later I read the following words by Michael Wigan: ‘A salmon that has dwelt in one place for a month may have watched innumerable flies swinging over it and pays them no greater attention than the man on the park bench does who subconsciously watches buses looping their circuit.’

  I wish I had known that then. The fish, like a jealous boyfriend removing his girlfriend from a club, nosed right up to Dad’s fly and chaperoned it from the pool. We tried every fly in the box after that, but only Dave managed to get that great fish to move again. However, it was not going to make a mistake for any of us. That salmon wasn’t interested in anything other than rain and spawn.

  The story of Dad fishing with the blood clots hadn’t actually been news to me. Grandad had told me about that treasured memory before – of course he had, he broke his bream record twice that day. It was the other fishing memories that spilled from Dad’s head, mundane stories when records weren’t on the menu, that were much more telling about their relationship.

  ‘I would have to trudge behind him for miles carrying his gear,’ recalled Dad, ‘off to some distant swim where we would sit in the cold for hours and if I tangled my line that was it. I was on my own. It would reduce me to tears trying to unknot those bird’s nest tangles as he just carried on fishing.’

  Grandad was extraordinarily blinkered when it came to his determination to catch for himself, and even when Dad did manage to cast a line and hook into something it was hardly a cause for celebration. ‘I remember him putting a huge lobworm on my hook and me then la
nding this really big perch. You’d think he’d be pleased, but he was absolutely green with envy!’

  We both laughed. I could picture it perfectly.

  It was all beginning to add up. It had never been about sharing his world with others, it was about catching well and winning. It felt obviously and immediately familiar. It was me.

  I was strangely relieved. All this time I had been chasing Grandad’s higher wisdom it had never actually occurred to me that he had been bound by exactly the same failings as me when he was on the banks as a younger man; but he must have changed at some point later in his life. Grandad may have resembled his younger self at times, but he was undoubtedly a lot more relaxed on the banks we had shared. I wondered when the transformation in him had occurred, and why?

  When he taught me to fish he spent far more time paying me close attention than he did actually fishing himself. If I tangled my lines he would make me untangle them, but he would always help; he would never have fished on. Two stories stuck in my mind as Dad recounted his experiences: the first was an evening when Grandad and Grandma were babysitting us and Grandad spent the entire night carefully untangling one of my rods for me; the second was the absolute pleasure he took in seeing me catch a big fish. When I was eight years old he helped me land a thuggish and powerful tench, scooping it out of the river with handfuls of lily stems, embracing me and cheering with joy.

  The late, great fishing godfather Bernard Venables famously noted the three stages of an angler’s evolution, summarized by Luke Jennings in the excellent Blood Knots: ‘To begin with, as a child, you just want to catch fish, any fish. Then you move to the stage where you want to catch big fish. And finally, with nothing left to prove, you reach a place where it’s the manner of the catch that counts, the rigour and challenge of it, at which point the whole thing takes on an intellectual and perhaps even a philosophical cast.’