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TROUT FISHING WITH MAURICE RODWAY - Weekly Column: December 14, 2001
 Southland, New Zealand

True Friendship

You know you are with a friend when your conversation bubbles along with out end. When you have plenty to say and they do too. Your talk is as important as theirs is. You can tell the things you want to tell and hear things you want to hear. You listen as much as you talk and each of you is excited about what you hear.

True friendship involves reciprocal rewards. Of course our friends are usually people, but there are many cats and dogs that qualify too. Quite a few anglers have a relationship with rivers that stirs feelings of warmth and excitement that are kin to those that are aroused when friends meet and the news begins to flow.

You cannot converse with rivers unless you know the language of the waters. Waters flow in response to the river's bed and the land on its banks, the rain that falls on its mountains and the sun that shines on its face. The conversation only has meaning if you can see into its depths. The boulders that lie under the current are brought to life by the interacting forces of nature.

This is why clear water streams have the most interesting conversations - the most to say about what lives in them. Multicoloured boulders that come to life in the water form phrases about fish, floods, and droughts that the river knows.

Your journey to your river is one of increasing anticipation. When you finally crest the last hill to see it and its valley your heart races. You cannot wait to leave the car and approach the water's edge.

In the early morning light the sun penetrates deep into the pools and reveals trout that weave a tapestry of hope and fulfillment all at one time. If the fish refuses your fly it becomes not a fish lost but one saved for the future. The river promises other fish a little farther upstream. Perhaps beside an enticing bank or in a deeper run formed from the interplay of rain, rocks and time which stretches back into time that cannot be properly comprehended.

A trip to a river can be shared with an angling companion and, if you have chosen well the pleasure obtained from your fishing day will be enhanced. But your relationship with the river cannot be easily shared. It speaks to you in words for which only you have an understanding. Your river speaks to you alone. Each of us can understand its words which it shares joyfully. But we cannot share these words with others. River words are made from the union of our individual angling hopes and the life that we find in the currents of our river. 

Maurice Rodway
Southland, New Zealand                           E-mail: mrodway@southlandfishgame.co.nz

Article © 2001 Maurice Rodway, All Rights Reserved.

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