50 MINUTES ON THE EAMONT

Author: Jeremy Lucas (FFFT, January 2005, pp. 72-74)

I suppose it had to happen. It happens to almost all the dedicated grayling fishers I know. It happened to John Lindsey on the Dee, and John White on the Test. Both of them were left with smiles the span of the Severn Bridge and a warmth of spirit that belied the penetratingly cold weather. For me, of course, it was not going to be straightforward, or even a particularly happy ending. For me, it happened on the Whinfell Park water of the River Eamont.

I have caught a fair number of salmon in my time and almost all of them have been by accident, while fishing for either sea trout or brown trout. I have never actually caught one, however, while grayling fishing, which is odd, because I do a lot of Nymphing for grayling, including at times when the salmon are in the river. While sea trout have often taken flashier Czech Nymphs, and brown trout have been down-right pests, salmon have not succumbed. Must be the way I fish them, I thought. Several times last autumn I watched salmon in their spawning preparations, while fishing down behind them with Bugs and catching grayling that have been opportunistically hunting in the disturbed water downstream of the big migrants. I have so often expected that strangely building heaviness that is a salmon mouthing a fly, but it had never happened while grayling Bugging. Then on a mild, damp day shortly before last Christmas it did, and Atlantic-run Hell exploded on the Eamont.

I regard this stretch of water, run by Penrith Anglers Association, as one of the top 10 grayling stretches (you don't call them grayling 'beats', do you - that's reserved for salmon and trout) in the country. It is a special length of river, not particularly rnemorable scenically, compared with many of the other dramatically beautiful rivers of Cumbria, or even the Eamont itself where it leaves Lake Ullswater at Pooley Bridge. It is perfect grayling water: gravelly, boulder-strewn, Ranunculus infested and alive with myriad invertebrate species that grow very large grayling (and trout). There is also a number of salmon redds along this mile and a half stretch. One of my favourite Bugging spots of all is a visually unprepossessing run with a typical autumn depth of perhaps four feet below a bank to bank rapid of about 30 yards. There, in mid-river, is Czech-Nymph water designed by the god of fly-fishing.

The day before 'it' happened I had caught here a gorgeous 44cm grayling that must have gone 2,5lb, comfortably. So I was keen for more.

A pounder came to hand almost immediately. Then a draw on the fly line, right under the rod tip, which I missed. Two more drifts through with the Bugs and then, well, the world just changed forever. The line tip stopped, just downstream of me and then drew away upstream. I struck, wondering if this would be another big, fat cock grayling. It wasn't. It was a cruise missile firing out of the water immediately at the rod tip, and I really very nearly cartwheeled over backwards. I was actually shocked, frightened almost. I swear this was the largest salmon I have ever hooked and at this range a wild, wild animal of devastating proportions.

Okay, how was this going to go? John L had caught his, a six pounder, and John Edmondson had helped him net it. John W had had some help too, though his Test fish was a 'double'. Here I was, just me and my beloved Vision 9ft 6in footer, the perfect grayling rod, and I wasn't hooked up with a grayling. Surreally, on that first leap I could see my Pink Shrimp (middle dropper) lodged in the fish's scissors. I could see the fish was a cock, with a huge recurved kype, and the blood-red lacework colouring over its great, bronzed flank, and the tail ... how was 41b Rio Fluoroflex possibly going to hold on to that? I have caught salmon and steelhead to a little under 20lb. This fish, this metre of missile, was clear of that, so far clear, as it accelerated upstream towards Ullswater.

In dashing upstream, the fish had given me time to compose myself, at least as much as that was going to happen. It had run into the rapid and I could follow it, giving line and wading into the flow. Two more leaps and the fish and the river seemed poised, in slow motion. My own focus, my own adrenalin-swamped body, my own racing pulse, had slowed extraneous time. The world was now me, my rod arm and the great fish, for however long it all lasted. I glanced at my watch. No, really, I did. I still don't know quite how or why: 2.20.

The salmon did not want to run the thinnest water at the head of the rapid. I could feel it turning, questing the flow, again poised there, not even having begun to expend its enormous power. And then it turned down and swept past me, the line hissing as it cut the surface. I'm not going to give you that horrid cliche of how the reel sang, because it didn't. It performed perfectly, though as I tightened the drag a little and watched the line thrumming out I struggled towards the bank so that I could run down after the fish.

So began an exhausting (for me) series of repeated exercises. The fish would run, maybe 30 to 60 yards at a time, almost always downstream, before turning, as if to draw breath, into the flow and maintaining a stationary position. Always the rod was bent, applying strain from all directions, in a futile attempt to tire the fish. I would run down the bank, below where the fish had stopped, wade gingerly into the stream beneath it and try to approach as closely as I dared. I was impressed at the Fluoroflex tippet like never before. It was receiving sheer abuse. And so was I. For my age I am fit, being a bit of a runner, but it was not long before I began to feel the strain. I was warm and sweating, breathing fast, and my rod arm began to ache under the strain. Every time I worked my way to within a couple of rod lengths of the fish it sensed my clumsy presence and I could see the colossal tail sweep and feel that inexorable power...

The salmon found a deep pool close to the far bank, shielded on all sides by a torrent. I waded out to stand knee-high in the nearest torrent with the rod tip over the pool, and somewhere deep beneath, the fish, cruising, circling, sometimes accelerating as if in irritation. The river cascaded past us both. I don't know why the fish decided to leave that pool, where it was perfectly safe, but eventually it turned downstream again and resumed the dashpause-wait-until-he's-almost-on-my-tailthen-swim-off-again routine. We passed together beyond the downstream limit of the PAA fishing and entered the Eamont Winderwath water beneath an oppressive sandstone scar on a deeply cut sweep of river. Below this is a large, horribly deep pool (you can't see the bottom of it, even in drought) where the current from the upstream rapid very gradually fades in midriver. From this swirl of sand-stained water the salmon materialised, vast and hanging in the feeble flow.

Smooth, clear water lay between me and the fish. I wondered, was it actually tiring? Might I yet ease it up onto the shallow water and perhaps go for its wrist? I increased the already alarming bend in the rod, testing. The fish came very slightly nearer, almost into the dead water over the shingle. The tip of its dorsal and tail fins cut into the air; its lower fins must have been touching the stones. I took a step or two closer. There was just a yard or so of fly line beyond the rod tip and a great bow of rod off my right shoulder. We were that close together; connected tenuously by the pinnacle of fly-fishing technology, civilised man and the fish of dreams that had fed in the Greenland tides and left the Atlantic at its tail so that it could come back home.

I was stepping forwards again, beginning to reach towards that enormous wrist, holding the strain on the rod. The dropper knot parted, the rod sprang back and I froze, stunned. The salmon hung there. Again extraneous time quivered. It is all so clear, even now. So, so slowly, in adagio, the great fish eased back into the stream and left me to my less clearly resolved world. Real time - 3.10.

It was two weeks before I could bring myself to return to the river. It felt like going back to the scene of a crime. I fished without real concentration or conviction, and caught nothing. I wandered the banks, looking for salmon redds. Very close to where I had hooked the salmon I found the skull of another cock fish. I estimated that this one must have been a fish of not far off 20lb; but it was not the beast of my encounter. That one, that glorious animal, has returned to the ocean. I know it. I am haunted by an anadromous giant.

Postscript

This story was written last winter, but as the article was going to press this November, Jeremy Lucas e-mailed the editorial office with the following recent account:

'Supposed to be on the Dee today, in my qualifier with JT, Andrew etc, but river unfishable, so visited Eden instead at Bolton Willows - Andrew and Howard C were there. Tenth east in and I hooked what I thought was a big grayling on a Bomb. It didn't move much, so I leaned into it to get it moving or to bring it to the surface to have peep. It just pulled relentlessly away and upstream. Salmon, I thought for a long while (hooked one last week near here, but lost it within seconds). 20 minutes later Driver walks up and said he reckoned it must be a big salmon. Told him I hadn’t seen it yet, and there had been no salmon antics - just relentless power. Saw my top dropper a few times and couldn’t see the Orange Shrimp I had on the middle, or the Bomb on point; hut I reckon it took the Shrimp. Howie walks up after I’ve been hanging on for 30 minutes or so. I pumped the fish a bit nearer and one of the bloody flies caught in a submerged branch that none of us had seen. Ping! and the monster was gone. None of us had so much as a glimpse. I'm more or less convinced it was a big hen salmon, a bit tired after spawning, but we'll never know, will we?

Damn, I would love to have had a glimpse of it. Then again, as Andrew said, if I had glimpsed a foot-long dorsal in lilac and chestnut, I wouldn’t have slept too well tonight. Thing is, I know there are monster grayling in this particular stretch. Someone today had a 47cm, and I lost one a few years back that I swear was over 60. If only I'd seen a big black, forked fin, or deep bronze and spots I'd have known, but to think this fish just might have been the stuff of dreams...'