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STRESS RELIEF
Trout fishing has long been touted as being of value for the relief of stress and tension. The weeks leading up to Christmas are well known to induce stress. Trout fishing therefore is compulsory medicine.
November weather kept many anglers away from the rivers and while December has been a little better, cold winds and rain still bother us. Nevertheless there are times when anglers can get away to those waters that are not rain affected and in the quiet of the evening or the morning before the day's breeze freshens an hour or two beside a river can provide more freshness to the spirit than many other remedies.
Last weekend provided an open window to the summer with a couple of calmer days and a little more sun than we have been used to. Sunday morning was overcast but calm. We visited a small stream reserved for such occasions and found the riverbank deserted. Tall grasses more used to the melee of a procession of El Nino westerlies peered over the bank, quietly resting, watching the river below. It silently slipping seawards.
We cast a lure so that it landed close to the far shore. In the lee of the current weed beds gathered and our offering was festooned with bright greenness on our first retrieve. Water weeds, home for countless small animals are a necessary part of the life of the stream. But a lure with a treble hook dragged through them collects green tresses and does not look fish-like. Rather it is more suited to a rock concert than a device to trick a trout.
Not every journey through the stream brought the lure back so dressed and those trips where the water was deeper and moving a little faster were filled with expectation. Whether it was because of the recent drought of trout fishing or the shortness of time we had available for fishing that day, I had little hope of catching a fish, especially with most retrieves coming back heavily laden with weed.
A cast through promising water againm pulled up weed loaded. We pulled. It pulled back! Out of the dark water leaped a brown and golden fish. Fat and bright. It bore down to the weed but all our connections held.
The journey to Christmas, amongst the uncertainties of the end of the year was made a little clearer. A little brighter. When opportunities to fish are limited and a trout is the reward of an expedition into a day when brightness is remote those uncertainties somehow lose some of their importance. Little wonder they say trout fishing is worth more than dollars and cents.
Maurice Rodway
Southland, New Zealand E-mail: fishgame@southnet.co.nz Article ©1997 Maurice Rodway, All Rights Reserved.
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