JDog Posted November 15, 2013 Report Share Posted November 15, 2013 I am incapacitated at the moment and I have been going through my game book (which was started in 1978 long after I started shooting) and reading some of my favourite sporting books (Lord Home's 'Border Reflections' and Joe Nickerson's 'A shooting man's creed' amongst others). My game book recalls all sorts of sporting moments (achievements would be the wrong word) but the greatest in my lifetime is easily recalled without recourse to my diary. The month was August in the 1980's and I had arranged for a friend and I to take the shooting on a very wild piece of mountainous land in Perthshire which rose to over 3000' in parts. The land was unkeepered and the heather had not been burnt for a generation and was rank and there was no vermin control in place. The family which owned the land used to shoot a few stags and a few more hinds but basically the land and the potential sporting on it were under-utilised.To me it was heaven. We rented a very basic cottage a few miles away along Loch Rannoch and caught some trout and shot a couple of rabbits on the first evening of our arrival. Our initial food supplies were also very basic so we managed to make something for dinner out of the trout and bread and eggs! Our sandwiches the following day had the same ingredients needless to say. I had a map with the estate boundaries marked on it and we set off the following morning with hope and expectation. The midges were horrific and I took up smoking cigars there and then. The heather was in bloom and we lined out and walked fifty yards apart with our dogs working tirelessly reasonably close by. Grouse were few and far between and at the end of a long day we had three brace and a snipe. We returned to the cottage with something rather special for dinner. The following two days were of a similar nature. Lots of midges, lots of walking and a few grouse and a brace of blackcock. The fourth day we planned to go to the high tops. There were a couple over 2,500' and one over 3,000' and we left it until the final day of our stay so that we could achieve a reasonable level of fitness before we attempted the big climb in the hope of a Ptarmigan or two. It was tough going, brightened up by the appearance of grouse quite high up which excited the dogs no end. Once over 2,500' we could see signs of Ptarmigan ie feathers and droppings and we did come across a large covey of ten birds which got up some way infront and we managed to get one each. The top of the hill is conical in shape and we knew that Ptarmigan 'contour' at times when flushed and the closer we got to the top the more we considered that we may, just may, flush birds infront which flew away from us and around the hill on the contour and came back towards us from behind. Quite some way from the top a covey of six or seven did get up infront, too far for a shot and more in hope than expectation we turned round to shoot 'driven Ptarmigan'. We were both ready for the event, guns at 45 degrees peering over the rocks. The covey did come, and they came from exactly where we thought they might but they were just too quick for us and they flew over our heads and away before we could even get a single shot off. Realising the enormity of what had just happened to us we threw our caps in the air in a salute to the birds and then shook hands with each other, knowing there and then that what we had just witnessed was something very special indeed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penelope Posted November 15, 2013 Report Share Posted November 15, 2013 I like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aled Posted November 15, 2013 Report Share Posted November 15, 2013 Nice read. Good when something like that happens, Felt exactly the same when i saw a sea trout over 20lb moving upstream, she was one fish i did not want to catch. Tight Lines Aled , Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kippylawkid Posted November 15, 2013 Report Share Posted November 15, 2013 Brilliant! Sometimes we get spoilt by how easy our sport can be. i.e standing on pegs, high seats etc It does no harm to have to work hard for our rewards and your excellent sporting moment is a great example of that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turbo33 Posted November 15, 2013 Report Share Posted November 15, 2013 My idea of heaven What a priceless few days Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caeser Posted November 17, 2013 Report Share Posted November 17, 2013 Fantastic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SNS Posted November 17, 2013 Report Share Posted November 17, 2013 JDog - write a book, I'd buy it ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WGD Posted November 17, 2013 Report Share Posted November 17, 2013 Great write up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul T Posted November 17, 2013 Report Share Posted November 17, 2013 I enjoyed that tale... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lg1 Posted November 17, 2013 Report Share Posted November 17, 2013 Nice read :0) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fisherman Mike Posted November 17, 2013 Report Share Posted November 17, 2013 It was the long hot summer of 76 I was 17...the sun was so hot the tarmac was melting and sticking to my bike tyres as I wound down the Cotswold country lanes to the school. I was brought up in a little village on the banks of the Coln a river which occupied my time summer evenings and weekends for as long as I can remember. Each trip to school was across the green, down church road across two ancient Cotswold stone bridges and up rag hill. I always left an hour early in the summer months just to spend some time peering over the old bridge into the crystal water below. There as the water deepened before running into the mill race, by the buttress lived a trout, not just any trout but a wild fish, with a head as broad as my hand and a tail that wafted slowly side to side in the current steering the head to intercept whatever morsel the flow brought it. Now this trout was a celebrity with local anglers, many had tried on wet or dry to catch this fish over the spring and summer months for two possibly three seasons, but it was a wary fish, often I saw it take a nymph or rise to a dry only to shake its head and spit it out when the line went tight. It was the 23rd of July the height of the drought, the field was dry and grass crisp and coloured as the mellow stone of the village houses, the village was still as I walked rod in hand to the riverbank as dawn started to break over the valley. Just past the Earl Grey the Landlord was welcoming the day and the dairyman as he dropped off the days milk..."You will never catch it" he said as I walked past...he knew where I was bound, such were the tales told by local folk around bar at night. The dairyman wished me luck and stood me a bottle of cold milk for breakfast straight from the local dairy. None of this semi skimmed water we have to suffer these days...Gold top! I crept to the rivers edge like a snake on my belly pushed back the vegetation and peered into the gloom. He was there! I knew I would only have the one chance, my hands were shaking as I tied on a 12 olive dun to my 6lb greased leader. I wanted to go finer but couldn't risk the chance of him breaking off, or of a 14 or 16 not striking home in that fierce, bony mouth. I held my breath and flicked the line upstream and let the current bring it round in a gentle ark right over the top of him...nothing, another cast and nothing again... several more cast were ignored and why I don't know, but a voice inside me said it was the meal I was presenting before this fish, too early in the day for an olive hatch I thought, but looking around there were a few early crane flies just taking to the air disturbed by an audience of Jersey cattle which had gathered to watch proceedings. I scoured my tackle box, bag, tins, and jean pockets but couldn't find anything that was of any resemblance to a daddy long legs at all. All I had was a spent Mayfly, I took the penknife and fashioned the hackle as best I could, tied some impromptu legs from a shank of horse hair caught under the barb of the bankside wire fence and cast out again.. Now any child or young man who in his infancy as an angler will know that in situations like this, time stands completely still, seconds become minutes, minutes hours, your heart stops and you seem to be able to hold your breath for an age... As the fly curled in the flow, a shadow moved and the great leviathan broke the water and enveloped the fly and time did stand still...I cant recall what happened then...I've often tried to think back but the adrenaline of that moment has erased every memory of the fight, of the banking of the fish and even what weight it was....I can recall holding this perfect bar of deep yellow, orange, gold in my hands before slipping it back into the cold ...I don't know why I put it back to this day, it was my intention when I set off that morning to bring this fish back and proudly place it on the kitchen table to greet my family as they arose. I looked up to the bridge above and there drawing on his pipe was the dairyman who had stopped and watched the events unfold and was witness to the mighty feat I had achieved... Although not quite 18 I had started drinking in the Earl and that evening I couldn't wait to get there and tell the tale of how this young spotty amateur had beaten the hired hands to the draw, out witted the local bailiff, and out fished the Doctors Hardy with his Woolworths £4.99 solid fibreglass fly rod....No one believed me of course, not the Landlord, the Gamekeeper the Bailiff, the Farmer who tended the Jerseys, the Doctor or his wife... The Dairyman came in at 9 and tapped the small bar with his pewter pot...." whose going to buy this lad a drink...he caught the biggest trout in the Coln this morning that I and Isaac Walton have ever seen." That night I was, as Andy Warhol said, famous for a while in my small community, and got very drunk for the first time. Now I am 55 and I've never forgotten that short hour in my life...I may never make a fisherman, I may never catch that elusive 2lb roach but the quest to recapture the elation, the pride and dare I say it the adulation I felt that day will keep me trying as long as I live... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDog Posted November 18, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2013 A very fine tale Fisherman Mike. I lived in the same area in 1976 when I was at the Royal Agricultural College. Your description of the heat and the drought brought it all back to me. One thing never ceased to amaze me that year and that was the fact that the smaller spring/aquifer fed rivers flowed at all after three months without rain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pigeon controller Posted November 18, 2013 Report Share Posted November 18, 2013 I am incapacitated at the moment and I have been going through my game book (which was started in 1978 long after I started shooting) and reading some of my favourite sporting books (Lord Home's 'Border Reflections' and Joe Nickerson's 'A shooting man's creed' amongst others). My game book recalls all sorts of sporting moments (achievements would be the wrong word) but the greatest in my lifetime is easily recalled without recourse to my diary. The month was August in the 1980's and I had arranged for a friend and I to take the shooting on a very wild piece of mountainous land in Perthshire which rose to over 3000' in parts. The land was unkeepered and the heather had not been burnt for a generation and was rank and there was no vermin control in place. The family which owned the land used to shoot a few stags and a few more hinds but basically the land and the potential sporting on it were under-utilised.To me it was heaven. We rented a very basic cottage a few miles away along Loch Rannoch and caught some trout and shot a couple of rabbits on the first evening of our arrival. Our initial food supplies were also very basic so we managed to make something for dinner out of the trout and bread and eggs! Our sandwiches the following day had the same ingredients needless to say. I had a map with the estate boundaries marked on it and we set off the following morning with hope and expectation. The midges were horrific and I took up smoking cigars there and then. The heather was in bloom and we lined out and walked fifty yards apart with our dogs working tirelessly reasonably close by. Grouse were few and far between and at the end of a long day we had three brace and a snipe. We returned to the cottage with something rather special for dinner. The following two days were of a similar nature. Lots of midges, lots of walking and a few grouse and a brace of blackcock. The fourth day we planned to go to the high tops. There were a couple over 2,500' and one over 3,000' and we left it until the final day of our stay so that we could achieve a reasonable level of fitness before we attempted the big climb in the hope of a Ptarmigan or two. It was tough going, brightened up by the appearance of grouse quite high up which excited the dogs no end. Once over 2,500' we could see signs of Ptarmigan ie feathers and droppings and we did come across a large covey of ten birds which got up some way infront and we managed to get one each. The top of the hill is conical in shape and we knew that Ptarmigan 'contour' at times when flushed and the closer we got to the top the more we considered that we may, just may, flush birds infront which flew away from us and around the hill on the contour and came back towards us from behind. Quite some way from the top a covey of six or seven did get up infront, too far for a shot and more in hope than expectation we turned round to shoot 'driven Ptarmigan'. We were both ready for the event, guns at 45 degrees peering over the rocks. The covey did come, and they came from exactly where we thought they might but they were just too quick for us and they flew over our heads and away before we could even get a single shot off. Realising the enormity of what had just happened to us we threw our caps in the air in a salute to the birds and then shook hands with each other, knowing there and then that what we had just witnessed was something very special indeed. It was the long hot summer of 76 I was 17...the sun was so hot the tarmac was melting and sticking to my bike tyres as I wound down the Cotswold country lanes to the school. I was brought up in a little village on the banks of the Coln a river which occupied my time summer evenings and weekends for as long as I can remember.Each trip to school was across the green, down church road across two ancient Cotswold stone bridges and up rag hill.I always left an hour early in the summer months just to spend some time peering over the old bridge into the crystal water below. There as the water deepened before running into the mill race, by the buttress lived a trout, not just any trout but a wild fish, with a head as broad as my hand and a tail that wafted slowly side to side in the current steering the head to intercept whatever morsel the flow brought it.Now this trout was a celebrity with local anglers, many had tried on wet or dry to catch this fish over the spring and summer months for two possibly three seasons, but it was a wary fish, often I saw it take a nymph or rise to a dry only to shake its head and spit it out when the line went tight.It was the 23rd of July the height of the drought, the field was dry and grass crisp and coloured as the mellow stone of the village houses, the village was still as I walked rod in hand to the riverbank as dawn started to break over the valley.Just past the Earl Grey the Landlord was welcoming the day and the dairyman as he dropped off the days milk..."You will never catch it" he said as I walked past...he knew where I was bound, such were the tales told by local folk around bar at night.The dairyman wished me luck and stood me a bottle of cold milk for breakfast straight from the local dairy. None of this semi skimmed water we have to suffer these days...Gold top!I crept to the rivers edge like a snake on my belly pushed back the vegetation and peered into the gloom. He was there!I knew I would only have the one chance, my hands were shaking as I tied on a 12 olive dun to my 6lb greased leader. I wanted to go finer but couldn't risk the chance of him breaking off, or of a 14 or 16 not striking home in that fierce, bony mouth.I held my breath and flicked the line upstream and let the current bring it round in a gentle ark right over the top of him...nothing, another cast and nothing again... several more cast were ignored and why I don't know, but a voice inside me said it was the meal I was presenting before this fish, too early in the day for an olive hatch I thought, but looking around there were a few early crane flies just taking to the air disturbed by an audience of Jersey cattle which had gathered to watch proceedings.I scoured my tackle box, bag, tins, and jean pockets but couldn't find anything that was of any resemblance to a daddy long legs at all. All I had was a spent Mayfly, I took the penknife and fashioned the hackle as best I could, tied some impromptu legs from a shank of horse hair caught under the barb of the bankside wire fence and cast out again..Now any child or young man who in his infancy as an angler will know that in situations like this, time stands completely still, seconds become minutes, minutes hours, your heart stops and you seem to be able to hold your breath for an age...As the fly curled in the flow, a shadow moved and the great leviathan broke the water and enveloped the fly and time did stand still...I cant recall what happened then...I've often tried to think back but the adrenaline of that moment has erased every memory of the fight, of the banking of the fish and even what weight it was....I can recall holding this perfect bar of deep yellow, orange, gold in my hands before slipping it back into the cold ...I don't know why I put it back to this day, it was my intention when I set off that morning to bring this fish back and proudly place it on the kitchen table to greet my family as they arose.I looked up to the bridge above and there drawing on his pipe was the dairyman who had stopped and watched the events unfold and was witness to the mighty feat I had achieved...Although not quite 18 I had started drinking in the Earl and that evening I couldn't wait to get there and tell the tale of how this young spotty amateur had beaten the hired hands to the draw, out witted the local bailiff, and out fished the Doctors Hardy with his Woolworths £4.99 solid fibreglass fly rod....No one believed me of course, not the Landlord, the Gamekeeper the Bailiff, the Farmer who tended the Jerseys, the Doctor or his wife...The Dairyman came in at 9 and tapped the small bar with his pewter pot...." whose going to buy this lad a drink...he caught the biggest trout in the Coln this morning that I and Isaac Walton have ever seen."That night I was, as Andy Warhol said, famous for a while in my small community, and got very drunk for the first time.Now I am 55 and I've never forgotten that short hour in my life...I may never make a fisherman, I may never catch that elusive 2lb roach but the quest to recapture the elation, the pride and dare I say it the adulation I felt that day will keep me trying as long as I live... Brilliant writing from both of you , I was there in both cases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aled Posted November 18, 2013 Report Share Posted November 18, 2013 Nice write ups again. Cheers Aled Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ants Posted November 18, 2013 Report Share Posted November 18, 2013 really enjoyed those! cheers lads Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filzee Posted November 18, 2013 Report Share Posted November 18, 2013 Keep'em coming lads those two previous tales were brilliant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darno Posted November 19, 2013 Report Share Posted November 19, 2013 Brilliant writing from both of you , I was there in both cases. Me too! Could do with a book of short tales Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penelope Posted November 19, 2013 Report Share Posted November 19, 2013 A fantastic tale Mike. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FOXHUNTER1 Posted November 21, 2013 Report Share Posted November 21, 2013 Brilliant .........felt like I was there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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