MUM'S THE WORD

Fishing runs and fly patterns are among the best kept secrets, and only those in the know will be able to find angling paradise, says Michael Wigan

Loose lips sink ships, and give away the best fishing spots too

The wife of a holidaying fisherman looked furtively around and whispered, ‘He got another. We feel like not telling anybody’. There is a whole culture of the tales of fly fishermen but one theme is how much to reveal and how much not to reveal. Fishermen prize what they have learned the hard way and hang onto it.

The exact taking spot and the fly pattern can be secrets held dear. This can go to extremes. Sometimes the river itself is a titbit withheld, let alone the pool.

Take French rivers. The French want them to stay French. Why have foreign anglers jostling your elbow and beating the gleaming pool to a froth when the river is owned by the state and any revenue would enrich the government not you?

It took me by surprise to discover that there are rivers in south-western France with stately pastoral salmon zones where runs are in thousands. Tell the average UK anglers that some individual French rivers have catches in thousands too and they look incredulous. But that is a fact.

French anglers, between indulgent smiles, will come clean. The good fishing in Basque country is keenly protected by local people. Fly fishing is an art and ‘le saumon’ an almost mystical phenomenon. Up-river the expansive gliding water turns into rushing cascades dropping off the Pyrenees. Rivers are big and the salmon numerous but the area needing care-taking is not unduly long.

The French see no need to publicise their backdoor bounties and our armchair doom-mongers chanting salmon extinction should note that some of these rivers luxuriated in the biggest runs for 50 years this season.

Northern Spain is similar. Short salmon rivers are fiercely protected by locals. Franco was once a seasonal visitor.

The secrecy can verge on pathological. I was on a press trip to Vancouver Island looking for steelhead. The summer and the land were dry. My guide, who breathed fishing, drove down a remote red track without vehicles. He stopped and then walked hundreds of yards backwards before glancing left and right. Suddenly he dived through dense vegetation.

I followed and he stitched together the branches we had burst through. A track through dim pine forest was just discernible.

As we neared the river he padded noiselessly like a cat-burglar. We peered in slow-motion over smooth rocks and the sun lit up a shrunken pool. Deep down half a dozen steelhead were gently finning. I floated something over them, purely as ritual. They remained motionless. We crept back out and finally he relaxed and raised his voice. ‘We don’t want everybody else knowing that little fish-hole,’ he said.

Even in our own commercialised fishing scene the same can prevail. It especially affects sea-trout fishers. In south-west England I have seen figures dodging through the trees then ducking into the undergrowth to avoid meeting anyone. Sure enough, just further on lies a paradisal sea-trout pool. Artfully-targeted enquiries revealed — yes, very good indeed, but we don’t tell anyone.

It is said, loosely, that there is little good fishing to be had. Not so. Using a search engine is not the way to find out all that has been going on. Government stats are as good as those supplying the figures.

There is a thrawn streak in many of us. Non-committal fishermen are a familiar breed. Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies.

One way of finding out what’s been happening is having a look, checking with the fish. I paid a call on a trout loch one recent evening where the natives were distinctly sticky. They rose and followed, frolicked and waved, but they would not imbibe. I knew why. Three fishermen had been there through the week. They were well-educated fishers and they had educated the trout too.

The loch had been fished right down.

It would take a fortnight to wake up again.

“As we neared the river he padded noiselessly like a cat burglar