INTO DEEP WATER

The unpredictability of fishing keeps anglers coming back for more, but risking your life in dangerous waters is a gamble not worth taking, says Michael Wigan

Michael Wigan won't gamble his life in dangerous waters

Iknew someone who hated winning at gambling. The more he won the more morose he became. He trudged back gloomily, conceding he had won again. When onlookers tried to persuade him to double or quits he abandoned the roulette wheel. The possibility of winning was too awful. Like many, he really gambled to lose.

I have never known a fisherman like that. You can tell who has caught fish in a group without asking. Especially fortunate anglers have a deep-down look, as if they had found a part of themselves they never knew was there. The fish-catcher is often more gregarious, talkative, laughing louder, unaware of the group dynamic.

For angling isn’t gambling. Gambling is cold chance maybe wedded to cold calculation. Angling has another party, a fish. The fish isn’t open to reason or ridicule. If the angler succeeds in getting one of these creatures out of his natural element he has left his own natural element, and the feeling has an indefinable frisson.

Like gamblers, anglers may have to endure a run of bad luck. The fish I best remember losing was landed by someone else and the net had a hole in it. I felt gutted. Never hooking fish has a potentially worse significance. It means the angler has adverse magic. He is ill-starred, attracting sidelong attention.

A mischief-maker could even point out that during locals-only fishing in Scotland one girl aged seven caught three salmon in three days.

Fishing writer the late Bruce Sandison once came to fish on a loch. He strode into the water casting out line, talking and smoking at the same time. He walked in right where he was, just striding forward in his hip waders. All the while he hooked trout. Catching them seemed easier than not catching them. He caught them almost every cast for maybe fifteen minutes and then retreated out of the loch smiling, ‘What a lovely loch, thanks Mike, I’ll give it a good report’. Catching trout was like breathing.

Fishing takes on a new dimension when it entails the possibility of not breathing – evermore. I recently heard two river-bank stories sparked off by someone catching a brace of sea-trout.

The man beside us, an orchestra percussionist, related his vividly-remembered tale. He had waded out into a west Scotland estuary in the fading light. Perched on a sandbar he had a magic sea-trout chapter, and accumulated a basket-full.

Then he became aware of what he described as like a washingmachine noise. In the 400 yards behind him water was coming in, tufts of grass still showing, but water travelling at speed. In front was a fast-moving surge in a 50-yard channel. ‘I thought I was done.’ He shouted for help.

This is a somewhat forlorn act on an estuary with dark gathering but someone saw him, or his desperate flash-light. The man ashore winked his car headlights and drove to the coastguard. Nobody was there. He came back, launched his boat into the current and rowed out. The narrator was saved.

The other drama was on the north coast’s Kyle of Tongue. The too-intrepid sea-trouter was not on a sandbar but up to his waist in saltwater, which he suddenly realised was rising. Behind was 60 yards of fast tidal flow. He thought, ‘I’ll have to try for the shore’.

Angled away downstream was a shingle bar. He waded chest-high, lost his footing and floated, twice. That is highly dangerous. Then he somehow managed to scramble onto the bar. He said he felt like crying.

It happened to me on a whirlpool in a river. Ankles start slipping in the gravel, you wobble and backpedal onto land – just. It is a very nervy operation.

Last year a special services soldier drowned on the Spey. When washed in he had bitten through his chest-wader straps. Drowned anglers re-surface a long way downstream of their miscalculation.

There are worse fates than being blank.

“The too-intrepid sea-trouter was up to his waist in saltwater, which he suddenly realised was rising