BEST DAY. WORST DAY.
(But not necessarily in that order.)

It’s Neil Patterson’s turn to look back on two of those three million fly-fishing days of his.

“We’ll have a bit of breakfast first,” The Hotch tells me on the phone after he’s told me where to meet.“Trevor will be there.”I remember Trevor. We shared a boat at Amhuinnsuidh. He raised the best sea trout, rolled the silverest of salmon and kept smiling through the worst of luck. This is how I remember him best.We said we’d meet again. And here we are sharing breakfast, going fishing; still smiling.

England is at its most beautiful here in June, wrapped up in a Hampshire valley. I ask myself why men aren’t allowed to cry. If they were, The Hotch’s beat on Itchen would have more water and flow faster. But today it flows just fine. After mayfly is the finest time to fish a chalkstream. Fewer people; the game, trickier; the flies, smaller; the nylon, finer. Everything’s just fine. I’m thinking: Can anything be better? I watch the sparkle of the river crack when a fussy trout sips something. It’s not an easy day and I think of Trevor down river, still smiling. This makes me smile.“I’m going to see how he’s doing,” The Hotch says, leaving his young black labrador with me.

Now I’m not a dog person. If I were, I’d have one. Like children, I smile at them and let them get on with it. Today, I’m full of smiles. Trevor-like smiles. I soon forgot I have this dog-thing with me. I see a trout on a sliver of golden gravels that I want to retrieve and I’m reminded I have a dog. It is nowhere to been seen. It must have hot-pawed it back to The Hotch. A small nymph has my trout lift and look two times. Once, I swear, it’s a lick. The third is a snap and I have him. The trout leaps in the air, with a loud whirr. A leap for freedom – then a splash, as if someone has driven a Toyota Land Cruiser in after it. A black Toyota. The shape and the size of a dog that surfaces with my trout in its soft-lipped mouth. A black labrador shape. Le chien de Le Hotch!

Up the bank it scrambles and lays the fish festively at my feet. Flicking the barbless hook, I return the trout gently to the water, watching it slide back to its mattress of gold, none the worse. I turn to the dog. We look at one another a little. I turn away – then I repeat the process. It’s true. Dogs can smile. The smile of Trevor. I catch another. My black lippy net lands my fish once again. And the next one. I’m no longer fishing. I’m The Circus Ring Master. “For benefit of Mr. Oliver Kite, there will be a show tonight, on trampoline!” I have Dog Fantastic bouncing back at my beck and catch. How clever of The Hotch to train such a hairy retrieval system. I can’t wait for lunch to congratulate him.

The Hotch and Trevor have lunch spread out on a table outside the hut by the river. They are well into their second quiche slice. “I’ve had the best morning ever,” I say, pointing at an empty creel. “How did you train a dog to do such things?”“What things?” The brow of The Hotch twists into The Knots.

This has never happened before. There has been no training. Far from it, the dog is banned from water sports of any kind – save a hosing down. “Don’t ever mention this to the keeper,” The Hotch pleads, turning to glare at his hound, clouds darkening over one riverside black labrador, heeling his owner. The keeper arrives. I congratulate him on his river management. The quality of his trout. We offer him as much of our lunch as he wants. We even suggest he might like to take some away. But no mention of doggy bags. Then, a loud whirring sound interrupts the conversation. A dinosaur of a trout leaps out of the water, snapping at a seductive sedge. All heads swing round in the direction of the river. All heads; dog’s included ...

* * *

“I don’t know whether to envy or feel sorry for him,” is how the New York publisher, Nick Lyons, described him when he suggested I get in touch with Pierre Affre at his veterinary surgery in the Rive Gauche, thirty or so year’s ago.

Charles Ritz’s casting protégé and fly-fishing wizard, it was some time before I caught up with him. He was in Somalia, after something on fly. Or Key West, Africa, Kashmir, Iceland. Now, with few places left in the world for him to be the first to catch whatever fish lurks wherever, he’s usually in town when I’m in Paris visiting my friend, Vincent. It’s at Vincent’s rooftop flat, perched high over St Germain, where we all always meet for dinner. We eat late. The wines are astounding. We give Pierre a damn good listening to, well into the early hours. He has lots to say.

“Now I’ve killed off everyone’s pets in Montmatre,” he tells us, “I just go fishing.” He also tells us that the fishing centre of the world is the centre of Paris. In the Seine, close to his defunct surgery, now his home and storeroom for several container loads of tackle, angling books and stuffed fish. Pierre and his family squeeze home at night. He’s had camera crews outside Notre Dame filming him hook into huge perch, roach, pike, zander, carp; you name it. In one programme, he hauls out a catfish as ugly as sin. Children scream. Women faint. We nod a sure-sure, like we have done so many dinners before. “I am at Pont Neuf tomorrow. Come! I’ll bring rods – for all of you.”

The next morning, I’m for a museum. I want to try out one these Vélib rent-a-bikes that stand in ranks on every second corner that you can hire with a credit card. But it’s Sunday. They have all been taken. So we walk a bit and find ourselves leaning over Pont Neuf wondering if Pierre has recovered from the night before. And if he’s out there fishing. Sure enough, there he is. BB shot size, right at the end of the peninsular that sticks out, upstream of the pont, mid-Seine. We climb down some stairs and along a finger of a walkway that must have a name, but I never found out what it is. There, under a willow growing out of concrete, Pierre is fishing – with tackle for all, as promised, waiting to be fished.

“Zere is a beeg perch, right … zere,” Pierre points with a rod already pressed into my hand. “But I’m not dressed for fishing,” I tell him, Louvre-like and lovely in my Eurostar weekend best. But how to cast between the tourist boats? I think ‘fish’ and wonder where I’d be on a day like this. Probably somewhere in Alaska. Anywhere but here.

Under the bridge, I deduce. Close to one of the supports. Least chance of getting run over by a bateau. Or photographed by one of the many tourists standing looking down at this rather silly fisherman in his Sunday best. I decide to hide under the bridge, too.

I cast a long line to where the oily waters run along the side of the brickwork. I hear the hook sharpening as it scrapes along the cement. A nose appears. I strike. I can’t remember doing any of this, of course. What follows is instinct. I’m awakened by the applause of a dozen Argentineans aloft, in Paris for the World Cup match against South Africa the next day who finds this unlikely event the perfect practicing ground for their forthcoming gritos and alaridos.

My fish doesn’t come easy. In fact, it goes like the clappers at great tugging depths, back up river, away from the bridge, to the feet of the jubilant Pierre, still after that beeg perch. When it surfaces, it’s no perch. It’s a chub. “Two kilos,” Pierre informs me, dishing out a French version of all the gritos and alaridos he can muster and digging deep into tackle to excavate a net. “Wrong again. Four pounds,” I calculate mentally, digging deep into my long lost maths. Wrong, yet again. For when I get back and send a photograph of my city chubbling to Simon Evans at the Usk & Wye Foundation, who knows more about fish than anyone I now, he has words with me. “That’s no chub,” he informs me. “That’s a golden orfe you caught on that fly!” “Wrong again,” I have to admit. “On that Rapala.” Tell me, what worst thing could happen to a fly-fisherman than to catch such a magnificent fish on anything other than a fly? If you know, write in and tell the editor. This column will surely be yours, next issue.

Flyfishers Journal - March 2008
With kind permission of the editor - Peter Lapsley

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