Читать книгу On Fishing - Brian Clarke - Страница 18

FOR most of us, the challenge of the fish alone is enough. Just getting a fish onto the line and then onto the bank takes all the knowledge and wristy skills we can muster. It also takes the tackle to do the job, properly maintained. There is nothing worse than losing a fish through carelessness or through tackle that, in one way or another, has been allowed to deteriorate. Everything is hostage to the weakest link.

A FORLORN friend, relatively new to angling but mad keen, told me how, on one of the first casts of his first outing of the new trout season, he had hooked a substantial fish that came unstuck in seconds. When he wound in, the leader had broken a little above what had been a well-tied knot.

This sad little everyday tale, garnished by the fact that – naturally – not another fish was touched all day, will strike a chord in us all. Every new season brings its crop of challenges. Mostly they are concerned with the intransigence of fishes. For the newcomer or the inexperienced, they can concern tackle as well.

The breaking leader problem is typical. Quite often, when a leader breaks under the circumstances described, the problem is not that the nylon chosen was too fine – though, of course, it can be – or that the breaking strain marked on the spool overstated the breaking strain of the line wound onto it. It is that, in the months since last used – or in the time on display in the tackle shop – the nylon has steadily weakened.

The problem is light. I am not sure what the process is, but the ability of light, and especially sunlight, to weaken spooled nylon is well-established. A few days’ use at the water is one thing; continuous exposure for weeks and months on end is another. The answer is to store leader material in the dark. I keep my spools stacked one on top of another in a long, old sock.

The sock lives in my fishing bag. At the start of each season, every spool in the sock is tested and any suspect nylon is discarded. Then, the spools I will need on my next outing are transferred from the sock in my fishing bag to the pockets of my fishing jacket. If the same spools are needed for the following outing, they stay there. If others are required, the appropriate switches are made. At the end of the season, all spools are socked up and rebagged. It is a simple, if somewhat inelegant ploy that ensures no spool is left open to the light and every spool is available when and where needed. The nods and nudges in the car park, when a loosely jointed leg is noticed hanging out of the boot, add to the ploy’s attractions.

Flylines can present problems, too.

A line that has had some use and that is then left wound on a reel through a close season, tends to acquire ‘memory’: that is, when it is taken out and used again, it does not cast silkily and lie flat on the water. Instead, it casts like wire and spirals across the surface like a loosely wound spring. This is especially true of the inner coils, which have been wound in the smallest, tightest turns around the reel spindle.

The problem this time is not light but lubrication. Modern lines are coated in plastics to which a form of lubricant – a plasticiser – has been added. The job of the plasticiser is to keep the line supple. In preventing the line from becoming stiff the plasticiser assists casting and reduces the risk of cracking. But over time – and especially, it seems, if stored in high temperatures – plasticiser leaches out.

One way of alleviating the effects of stiffness in a line is to stretch it. The permanent answer is periodically to replace the plasticiser that has been lost.

Replasticising agents are available from any good shop that deals in fly-fishing equipment. The line is laid out straight or coiled in wide, loose loops and the plasticiser is smeared along its whole length. After five or six hours the line will have absorbed as much as it needs and the surplus can be wiped off. That is it. The line is ready for use. The effect of this simple operation is magical: it not only abolishes memory and transforms the line’s casting ability but lengthens line life. I treat my lines once a season and they behave perfectly for anything up to five or six.

There is another little wrinkle about lines and leaders. At the waterside they have to be threaded through the rod-rings. Ninety-nine anglers in 100 take the fine tip of the leader and poke that through successive rings, drawing the much-heavier flyline behind it. On most days that works perfectly well. But every angler experiences the other days: those days when, in the eagerness to get started or some moment of distraction, the leader-end is accidentally dropped. Then, pulled by the weight of the flyline behind it, the whole ensemble rattles back down through the rings into the grass – and the process has to be started again.

A far better method – and one that does not demand the eyesight of a hawk before fine nylon can be guided through tiny rings – is to thread the flyline up the rings and not the leader.

How? The leader, plus a few feet of flyline, are pulled straight off the reel. The end of the flyline is doubled back on itself to form a tight loop and the loop is passed through the rings, in the process pulling more line and leader behind it. Held between forefinger and thumb, the loop can be closed tightly enough to pass through even the tiniest rings on the top-piece.

Done this way, getting a line up a rod is not only far easier for those with less than nimble fingers and good eyesight, it overcomes the falling line problem as well. If the line is inadvertently released, the held loop springs open and jams in the last rod ring to have been threaded. In other words, line and leader are held where they are so that threading can be continued as before.

With the line on the rod and a reliable leader on the end of it, all is ready. Only the challenge of the fish remains: that, and finding a strong, sharp hook.