Such marvellous souls

Hi and welcome to the Fishing Tackle Box

Marine fly fishing gains new converts every weekend.One of the reasons may well be that fly fishing is much more effective than other ways of catching game fish in the sea.

The marine game fish that respond to lures from your fishing tackle box, such as Shad, Kingfish Garrick and skipjack, are reputed to be complete pushovers when it comes to taking a fly, as apposed to a spoon or bait from your fishing tackle box.

Added to that, few who have tried fly fishing will deny that dealing with a lusty marine fish on a light fly fishing rod is the greatest thrill of all.

Marine fly fishers get their sport in estuaries, in the surf, among the rocks and from boats.Some, indeed, have taken to going after the deep sea giants, Tuna and Swordfish.

People that go fly fishing are an extraordinary breed, and meeting them makes me wonder what it is about the pastime that attracts and binds together such marvellous souls, from the whimsical to the bizarre, the aberrant to the quaint.

I have heard of man speaking in tongues to his materials as he crouched over a fly fishing -vice from his fishing tackle box assembling a collection of feathers and hair into fishing lure.

I have heard of an otherwise impeccable respectable woman stridently curse the fish she was fighting in a language that would embarrass a docker.

There was the fisherman who never went near the water until the sun had set and another accurately recited Keats to himself as he went about fly fishing.

Would Swift have called all of them fools?
Probably, for they inhabit a very singular world in which they dither along a river bank, blessed with the sounds and herbal sweetness of the place.

They creep around a jutting boulder, peer at a delicate waterfall and the troubled pool beneath. They flick a cunning line,letting it grow longer, each cast hanging in the air before it falls.The bright fly drops lightly on to the pool.
As it touches there is a swirl,the fly fishing line tightens, the wispy rod bends….

Some are lazier, happy merely to drift the afternoon away in a rowing boat. They trial their fly fishing lines from their fishing tackle box behind them in the hope that some passing fish will take an interest in what they have tied to the end of them.As often as not they are as surprised as the fish at the result.

In his book, The log from the Sea of Cortez, John Steinbeck reflects on the habit of men to knock on hollow things.

He perceives a nexus between the man in Macy’s department store who taps his knuckles on the hull of a smart powerboat, and the primitive man who once did the same to his dugout canoe.Perhaps it is a whimsical teleology, but fishermen have been doing what they do for thousands of years, and to be an angler is to be joined to an ancient community.

Norman MacLean’s small masterpiece, A River Runs Through It ,ends with the following:”I often do not start fishing until the cool of evening.
Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
Eventually ,all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.

In the meantime, if you have any articles or stories you would like to publish please let me know.

If the weather is not good for fishing and looking for something to do there are lot of fun crafts at http://woodworkingandcrafts.blogspot.com/

Enjoy your fishing.