The Tomb and Other Stories

by Stanley Salmons

  Kevin scratched his cheek. ‘Well that’s right, but we see salmon with them on, and they seem all right. Maybe the lice knock off the younger salmon. Look, I don’t know. It’s probably a bit of everything.’

  ‘What gets me,’ put in Morton, ‘is after all that – the netting at sea, the netting in the estuary, the sea lice, and everything else – you get a precious few fish coming up the river, and you think you’re in with a chance, and the bloody gipsies get them.’

  ‘Poachers, you mean,’ corrected Bill.

  ‘I mean bloody gipsies,’ repeated Morton darkly.

  ‘Isn’t there a water bailiff to look out for that sort of thing?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Morton replied. ‘Not since old Joseph retired.’

  ‘Joseph?’

  ‘Joseph Connolly. He was Game Warden for the Percival Estate. See, this hotel doesn’t own the river or the lough. It’s part of the Percival Estate. The hotel pays for the fishing rights. Joseph looked after the grounds, and the shooting, and the river and the lough. Everything, really, except the buildings. He retired a couple of years ago, but he lives round here. Helps out occasionally. But they didn’t appoint anyone to take his place. Not yet anyway. So we have to put up with bloody gipsies.’

  ‘Sorry, I know this is a silly question, but why are they more successful than we are?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, they don’t use a fly, for a start-off! They’re not interested in decent sport; they want to catch fish and sell them under the counter. You know, I went into one of those Post Office-cum-shops here and the shopkeeper whispers in my ear “Now would it be a nice bit of salmon you’re wantin’?” Bloody nerve!’

  We were laughing, partly at Morton’s righteous indignation and partly at his attempt to do an Irish accent.

  ‘So what do they use?’

  Bill replied. ‘Spinning rods or nets. But don’t go getting ideas, now, Dave.’

  More laughter, interrupted this time by Colom, who told us our tables were ready.

  *

  When we went out in the morning the sky was overcast; it seemed like the weather could jump either way. The beat Padraic had fixed up for me was only a short drive from the hotel, and not a long walk from where we’d parked the car. When we arrived at the river Padraic grunted with satisfaction.

  ‘Nice bit of water here. The others don’t like this beat. Too close to the sea. They think the salmon that come into the river are going to pass straight through.’

  ‘And you think otherwise?’

  ‘Ah, ye can’t second guess salmon. Ye’re just as likely to take one here as anywhere else on the river. And there’ll be some dorrty worrter on the beats higher up. It won’t get here till about midday. So ye can fish away.’

  I had got my tackle ready by the car. I was using an intermediate sinking line and a single fly, a yellow shrimp pattern. So I stepped forward, ready to go, but Padraic stopped me.

  ‘Ye’ll do better to start there, after the willow. It’s too shallow here. Salmon like a bit of worrter above them and a bit of worrter below them.’

  I had heard so much about what salmon didn’t like that it made a pleasant change to learn that they had positive tastes too. There weren’t any stones breaking the surface of the water, so Padraic obviously knew the contours of the river bed by heart. He’d probably observed it when the water was low, and remembered every detail. That was interesting; it was unusual, I thought, to have a ghillie who seemed equally at home on the lough and the river.

  I strolled up past the willow and started casting. I followed Kevin’s advice, casting obliquely downstream and covering the water systematically in a series of parallel arcs. But from time to time I interspersed this with the type of casting I would do for trout, where you either see a fish rise or you imagine a good lie and cast gently to it, or slightly upstream of it so that the current drifts the fly through the spot. I was having a great time. I love river fishing anyway, and although Padraic had said that the upper beats were prettier, this was heaven, especially after the featureless water of the lough. I made a mental note to book earlier next year so that I could get more time on the river.

  Although the only net we had was the enormous round one Padraic was carrying on his back, he was a hundred yards or more away, ferreting around on the bank. If he wasn’t squinting up at the mountains, or along the river, he seemed to be putting white stones in places on the bank or the river bed as it sloped away from the bank. I guessed that when he came down here subsequently he would be able to tell from them whether the water was rising or falling. He also had a heavily weighted bushy white fly on a length of nylon, and from time to time he would lob this in and then retrieve it. Although I didn’t ask him what he was doing, I imagined that he was trying to assess the clarity of the water and the speed of the current; perhaps the depth too. Whatever he was doing he seemed constantly busy, and as content as I’d seen him.

  I did catch a fish that morning, but it wasn’t a salmon. A suicidally aggressive brown trout, about eight inches long and beautifully marked, had thrown itself onto my size 10 treble. I wetted my hands, unhooked him carefully, and supported him in the current to recover for a moment. With a couple of quick wags of that powerful tail he took his freedom. I found it comforting that at least one member of the salmon family had found my fly attractive.

  Shortly after midday I noticed that my fly had taken on a reddish brown hue in the water. I let it sink and it disappeared quite quickly. I looked up and Padraic was standing a few paces away.

  ‘Ye might as well reel in, now,’ he said. ‘They’ll not be interested in yer fly in this dorrty worrter.’

  So far as the water was concerned his prediction had been spot on. I supposed that those streams we saw tumbling down the mountains were washing through peat bogs on their way to the river, and unloading all that silt into the clear water. What now? We had half a day left. Padraic evidently had the answer, as he was already on his way to the car. I reeled in quickly and followed.

  We took the car some distance, to the other end of the river. I guessed we weren’t far from the lough. The potholed road was on high ground so we could see a good stretch of the river on the way. There seemed to be trees right down to the water here. Padraic suggested we had lunch. The way he suggested it was to say: ‘We’ll have lunch now.’

  It made sense to have lunch in the car, as we wouldn’t want to carry the heavy hamper any distance. I sat in the front passenger seat and he sat in the back seat with the hamper, passing stuff through to me. There was more room that way. I missed the performance with the Kelly kettle, and the wonderful tea that followed it, but we had a thermos full of boiling hot soup instead and as usual there was more than enough to eat. We tidied up, and I brushed the crumbs off my clothes and was ready for the afternoon’s fishing.

  Padraic stood square to me and said, ‘Ye don’t mind walkin’ over a bit of bog land, do ye?’

  ‘Well, no. Fine. I’ve got my wellies.’

  Padraic looked dubiously at my wellingtons, as if they weren’t half long enough, and gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head. Then he turned, picked up the net and led on at a good pace.

  I staggered and plunged after him for at least a mile, trying to tread on the tussocks rather than the treacherous and seemingly bottomless gunge between them. I was breathing hard by the time we got to the water.

  He looked at me. ‘The others don’t like to come this way,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ I gulped, chest heaving. I couldn’t imagine why.

  ‘We’re above the dorrty worrter here. This worrter’s clean, from the lough.’

  As my head cleared I could see the logic. The streams presumably coalesced into one or more of the tributaries I’d seen marked on the map, and they would be entering the river lower down. There would be similar streams and tributaries entering the lough too, but the silt would have a chance to sediment there, and the outflow to the river would be clean. Good old Padraic.

  The weather h
ad remained overcast all day. There was a fine mist of rain now, but I fished on as I had through the morning. And then, glory of glories, I saw a salmon do a head and shoulders about fifty yards downstream of me. I looked round, and Padraic had seen it too. My instinct was to run down the bank and cast straight away but one glance showed that I could only make ten yards. Beyond that a sort of small stream or ditch was entering the river and I would have to reel in to go up and around it. By that time the moment would surely have gone. The only thing for it was to walk the ten yards and cast from there, but I’m no tournament caster and it was a mighty long throw for me. Still, I was determined to give it a shot so I aerialised a good length of line and as it got longer it got heavier and then I paused on the back cast for just a shade too long. When I turned to see what had happened, my line was lying across the middle of a large gorse bush, and the hook was embedded somewhere in a patch of reeds beyond it. With a sigh of frustration I put the rod down, and went to sort it out. Retrieving the fly took several minutes, as not only was it firmly embedded but the nylon leader had wrapped around the ball-like seedheads of the reeds. With a series of impatient tugs I succeeded in freeing it, but now I had the job of extricating the line from the gorse. After several more minutes, with fingers bleeding from the sharp thorns of the gorse, I was back on the bank with about twenty yards of line at my feet. What I should have done at this stage was to wind it all back on the reel and start again but so anxious was I to get back into the game that I tried to cast it. Bad call. On the credit side, most of the line did go into the water. On the debit side, some of it wrapped around a willow sapling that was growing out of the bank down at the water level, well below me. It didn’t seem possible that it had weaved in and out and round and round the branch on a single, brushing pass, but it had. I looked round for Padraic, but he was back to his usual activities, seemingly oblivious to my plight. Again I had to lay the rod down and, extending myself full length on the ground, holding my breath and working with my fingertips, I managed to free the line. This time when I stood up I reeled in the line properly, only to find that the fly, which had been in the water, had sunk and was now firmly embedded in something under the water, probably some stones or submerged vegetation. I walked up and down the bank, tugging and throwing roll casts, and finally the line came whisking out of the water and onto the grass. As I reeled it up I saw that the nylon had broken, leaving my fly behind in a watery grave. I looked up from the pathetic, snapped end of the nylon to the river and down again, wondering how quickly I could tie on another fly, when I sensed Padraic’s presence beside me.

  ‘He will have moved on by now,’ he said sadly.

  Just at that moment I could have done without this piece of priceless wisdom. I bit my lip and said nothing. I didn’t see anything move for the rest of the day.

  Back in the bar that evening, the next malt came down from the shelf. The others had enjoyed no better luck than I, handicapped as they were by the peaty water on their beats. I outlined ruefully my sighting of a salmon and the frustrating sequence of events that followed it. I was still shaking my head about not noticing the gorse bush behind me when Morton cut in.

  ‘Ah, Davey my boy,’ he said. (He had taken to calling me ‘Davey, my boy’, but since it was part of his general buffoonery I didn’t take exception.) ‘If you’re wondering why you didn’t see it before, you’ve missed the point. It wasn’t there before. These things spring suddenly from the ground, fully formed.’

  In the laughter that followed it was clear that everyone recognized my experience and had shared at least part of it themselves. Their empathy made me feel better. And I had to say that, much as I had been irritated by Morton on our first acquaintance, he could be a very entertaining companion, and I was beginning to see why the others didn’t mind having him around.

  *

  I was on the lough again with Padraic the next day and it rained heavily. By the evening I was one further down the line of malts, and still there were no fish on display in the foyer. The following day was Friday, my last day, and we were on the river once more. The water should have risen and cleared by now. I was hopeful. But then I was always hopeful.

  *

  Padraic had secured a couple of the best beats for my final day. It seemed he’d negotiated this in exchange for taking the beats no-one wanted two days before, which had of course been no sacrifice at all as it had given us the advantage of clear water. I’d assembled my rod, threaded the line and tied on the leader, and had started to ponder the contents of my fly box when Padraic presented me with another fly. It was tied on a double, with a lemon yellow body, ribbed with silver, but the interesting part was the wing, which appeared to be of badger hair, tied to stand out, like a broken umbrella.

  ‘What’s this one called, then, Padraic?’

  ‘Ye can call it what ye like. It’s of my own makin’. But it has a nice pulsatatin’ action in the water.’

  ‘It’s very neat. I like the way you tied the wing. Is it badger?’

  ‘Oh yes. Not haird to get ahold of. Ye do see a lot of them killed by the side of the road. Too slow to get out o’ the way, poor creatures.’

  ‘Do you enjoy fly-tying, Padraic?’ I was curious.

  ‘Oh yes, I like it well enough. Do quite a bit in the winter evenings. Just a hobby, like.’

  I tried towing the fly in front of me as soon as we reached the river, and I could see what he meant by ‘pulsatating’. The hair wing opened and closed as I towed it in a series of pulls. Would it remind the salmon of a shrimp or a small squid? Perhaps. Anyway it looked promising and I fished it with confidence.

  There was a fair wind funnelling down the river, which tended to blow the line back in my face. By one of those curious laws of nature invented to plague fisherman, it didn’t matter if you went round a corner of the river; the wind was always in your face. I didn’t mind, though, because everything I’d heard this week told me that these are the conditions salmon want. Whether it’s because the ruffled surface of the water disguises your line as it drops on the water, or because it refracts shifting patterns of light onto the fly, or simply because it reminds them of the sea, I have no idea, and neither does anyone else.

  This beat contained the junction of one of those tributaries with the main river, which today was running fast and clean. Where they rushed together the water lifted up into a boiling white ridge. Water like this is brimful of oxygen, and the tail race is a classic place to catch fish. I had to cast across the turbulent current, and of course it bellied out my line immediately and made the fly skate across the flow in a most unnatural way. Then I remembered a casting video I’d seen, and I laid some slack line upstream with each cast. This gave the fly a longer drift before the line was snatched by the current. I fished the area minutely and resolutely and nothing connected, but I enjoyed the challenge.

  After lunch we switched to the second beat. This went alongside meadows for some distance, and for a change there were few obstructions, so I cast my way steadily and happily downstream. The high sense of anticipation had gone now. I’d resigned myself to going home without a fish, and I was just enjoying the sights and sounds of the river. Now and again I would glance around to see what Padraic was up to, and if he was in view, which wasn’t by any means all the time, he’d be placing stones and searching out the water with his white fly as usual. Time went quickly. Towards four o’clock I came opposite a line of trees whose overhanging branches were dipping into the water in two places, creating a kind of dark watery cave between them. It was the sort of place where a trout might lurk, waiting perhaps for a tasty insect to drop off the branches or simply sheltering out of harm’s way. I decided to give it a go. It was tricky; I had to drop the fly pretty much on the button, between the branches and into the narrow gap between them and the surface of the water. I sized it up and cast with the rod held horizontally, and the fly went straight into the gap and dropped onto the water. Almost simultaneously I saw the salmon rise, and the white of its
mouth as it took the fly.

  Fortunately I froze. I say fortunately because, as a trout fisherman, my first instinct would be to raise the rod smartly in a strike. This, I’m reliably informed, is an excellent way to lose a salmon, presumably because it doesn’t turn immediately with the fly the way a trout does, and you whip the hook right out of its mouth. By the time I’d got over the shock and surprise the salmon had hooked itself and I could feel it wagging its head as it tried to free itself. Padraic appeared out of nowhere. He was at my left elbow, saying in an urgent tone:

  ‘Keep the rod high. Keep it high.’

  Now the salmon started to pull properly and the reel was clicking as it took more and more line. The rod bent double. It was like taking a very powerful and very purposeful dog for a walk. So far it had not broken the surface, and all the drama was happening under the water. All I could see was the taut line cutting this way and that in the water. Then the reel sang as the fish made a run. I knew better than to try to stop it, but as soon as the run finished I started winding back again.

  ‘Keep the rod high,’ repeated Padraic, although I was doing precisely that. If I once let the rod point at the salmon it would break me off in an instant. Padraic had unhitched the net from his back and taken up a position a few yards down the bank, close to the water. The salmon took another run, and the reel screamed. This time it was heading towards a bed of partly submerged reeds and I knew that if it wrapped my leader around those I was done for. I leaned the rod as much as I dared, steering the fish into the more central water, and the run petered out. Again I reeled in. This time the fish launched clear of the water, flapping in the air. It seemed enormous. I gave it just a little slack as it dropped back, in case the shock snapped the leader.

  ‘It’s a good fish, a good fish! It’s well hooked. Keep the rod high.’

  How he could see where the fly was in that brief instant I’ll never know. There were two more runs, but shorter this time; the fish was beginning to tire. It turned on its side on the next retrieve and I could see the gleam of its silver flank gliding just below the surface of the water.