I was messing about in the shed the other day and came across a very old Alpha Bakelite reel.
Immediately the memory banks took me back to where it all started, when the younger brother of my future brother in law, gave me the rod and reel, with sinking line and a short (very) length of leader. The rod had a wooden handle and was hollow copper, in two pieces, which screwed together.
Sadly I have no idea where that rod went to, but the reel was still sitting here to awake thoughts of times long gone. At that stage I had very little idea about the processes of angling, but there was an inbuilt interest and yearning to fish, so that was the first bit of kit, that I took on my early, but fruitless forays after fish. Any other boys I saw fishing would be thread lining, or sadly, even trying to foul hook any trout they could see. Such are the ways of some young lads.
However I persevered with the old fly rod and only came anywhere near a contact with a fish, when the fly sank to the bottom of a still pool and a 6 inch trout had a couple of nips at the rusty old brown fly. At 12 or 13 years of age I went with family and friends to walk the Milford Track and of course I wanted to take the rod. It was a three day tramp from Glade House alongside the Clinton River, over the McKinnon Pass and out to Sand-fly Point, where a boat arrived to take us to the Milford Hotel. It was a memorable trip on so many levels, which provided memories that have stayed with me across the decades.
The first evening at Glade House, after going up from Te Anau by launch, I wandered down to the river and onto the swing bridge over the Clinton, where I spotted a massive rainbow and there WERE big fish down there in the late 1950s. It was sitting midstream below the bridge, rising from time to time to take something off the surface, from among the floating beech leaves.
Ah, it’ll be easy thought this young tyro, so I dropped a Mrs Simpson down to it, the fish rose, opened a cavernous mouth and was about to engulf the fly, when in my head I had a moment of enlightenment. Here I was, out from a high and very steep bank, on a swing-bridge, way above the water, with only the fly-line and leader tied to the reel. All this went through my head in the space of a millisecond – isn’t the mind an amazing thing? I quickly took the fly right out of the big rainbow’s mouth.
The accompanying images of the alpha reel show it as a gnarly old relic, unsurprising as it would be around 80 years old. However it helped to begin my fishing journey – a thread that has been woven throughout my life, so perhaps you’ll agree, its nice to still have such a memento.
Then I decided to get a thread-line set up, in order to improve my prospects. Ten shillings and six pence (around $1.12) got the cane rod and another five shillings (50 cents) secured the reel from Woolworth’s in the High street, and with a little silver ‘ticer attached by a granny knot or two, it was time to nab one of the blighters.
Nab one I did, in fact I managed 2 on the first successful trip, thus cementing a belief that spinning was the way to go. It certainly was, well for a start anyway, as over the first summer with the spinning rod, I regularly caught fish of a pound and a half, the following season the fish were all around 1 pound, year 3 they averaged only 3/4 of a pound, then the following year there was nothing worth taking. A summary lesson in conserving fish stocks. The other learning that came out of that period was that treble hooks made it difficult to release small fish. Taking one of the hooks off was helpful, but soon a change was made to singles only. These days I have a strong dislike of trebles, especially those lures with 2 sets (I won’t name the brands, you’ll know the ones)
The next stage of fishing was to go back to the fly rod and after a lot of reading, asking questions and watching other anglers, I took my new, cheap cane fly-rod out onto the lawn to get to grips with the art of the cast.
Soon after that, one day after school, I was alongside a stream and with a little help from the current, a Mrs Simpson yellow was put out and slowly retrieved, when to my surprise a fish was quietly finning right behind it. The stocks had improved after our earlier thread-line rampages with treble hooks, and eventually a nice pound and a half specimen became my first fish on a fly. That was a streamer, so next was a dry fly and not too long after that, I was back stream-side, where I spotted a bit of surface movement and I thought it might be a trout, so I managed to make a cast, putting the cochybondhu dry a little above where I thought the fish might be. Long story short, it rose to my fly and another milestone was reached. This young fellow now thought he knew about fishing but there was more to come, so much more. I was introduced to nymphs by a young bloke up the road and another chap taught me something of wet flies.
The learning curve takes you on a long journey and thankfully it’s still going on. Just had another memory – that wonderful old telly ad’ for those chocolate bars. “Life’s a whole long journey boys – – – – “ When it comes to the crunch, you never stop learning do you?
