It may seem sacrilegious to write this in a FlyStream editorial, but perhaps flyfishing isn’t for everyone… or at least, what I consider flyfishing to be perhaps isn’t for everyone.

Recently, I went away on a trip with a couple of long-term fishing friends. Angler A is a dedicated fair-weather or foul flyfisher; has been for decades. Angler B is a very nice bloke, as decent as they come. But with flyfishing… how do I put this politely? He’s in it for the quick fix.

For B, successful flyfishing is catching a lot of fish – preferably large ones – very soon after arrival. If that doesn’t occur, he quickly loses interest, either ceasing to fish altogether, or taking what he sees as the shortest angling route to a result; for example, if we’re flyfishing in the salt for Australian salmon, B will turn to casting lures with spin gear if his Clouser isn’t hit after a few casts. This of course becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the environment or the species is unfamiliar or at all difficult, I’m sure B is subconsciously planning his flyfishing surrender before the first flick.

For Angler A, instant results aren’t required, or even necessarily desirable. The process is part of the joy of flyfishing. The often twisting path to success makes it all the sweeter when a fish is eventually caught.

On this latest trip, to the Gippsland coast, the path resembled more of a maze. I was the designated estuary expert, being the only one who’d caught fish on fly in estuaries generally and with any regularity. However, for the first afternoon, and the following morning, all I could find were little salmon, and not many of those! It was a puzzle, because superficially, things looked good. The tides were okay, the winds tolerable, and the freshwater flows hadn’t muddied things too badly (something I feared might have been the case after a lot of recent rain).

Angler B stuck at it for a full 5 minutes on the first afternoon, before I noticed him having a snooze in a sunny spot out of the wind against a sand dune. To be fair, he lasted a little longer the next morning, partly because I found that school of small salmon and directed him exactly where to cast.

But 20cm salmon were never going to keep B interested for long, and by the afternoon, he’d grabbed his big spinning rod and headed for the surf in search of, as he put it, ‘proper’ salmon.

Meanwhile, Angler A never stopped. Without so much as a bump to keep him enthused, A continued trying: spots, flies, retrieves, sink tip or not… It wasn’t that he panicked, he just studiously tried different things until he was satisfied a change was needed. I had to admire A’s persistence. At least I’d had those little salmon plus a couple of misses from better bream. Yet as he’s done since we were kids, A kept going, causing me to question even my own willingness to persevere.

It was a good thing Angler A was fishing with me, because by late on the second afternoon, with very little extra action, I may have temporarily gone the way of Angler B. As it was, our constant attempts to boost each other’s morale, like, ‘I think the tide’s starting to push in’, or ‘Just saw some nervous baitfish’, or, ‘Looked like a big swirl on the far bank’, may have kept us both from giving up.

And just as well. In the middle of this fish drought, as my Hammerhead swung in the deeply tannin-coloured current, it was stopped dead by something decent. What I first assumed was a big bream, then took off for Bass Strait. I was nervous I’d lose it, not only because I hadn’t hooked a good fish in a day of trying, but also because of the boost I knew it would give Angler A… and okay, I admit it, the ‘I told you so’ for my other mate who, at last count, was fruitlessly hurling metal into the surf.

After several more stressful minutes, I was able to bring the fish to the net. Not a bream, but my best-ever estuary perch.

It is so strange how flyfishing works sometimes. One of my toughest sessions in ages, then suddenly, I had my PB EP. I suppose that fits with a certain kind of flyfishing narrative which I can appreciate; a catch that was the opposite of a quick fix.

Angler B came sprinting back from the beach as soon as I sent the photo to his phone, threw his spinning rod into the marram grass, and started flyfishing the estuary with renewed zeal. However, it quickly became apparent that, despite another good perch attacking minnows nearby, and a further hit, I hadn’t found the motherload. B fished with rapidly declining interest, then wandered further up the estuary to chat to a pair of bait-fishers who had just caught what looked from a distance to be a good bream.

While the fishing remained tough, the big EP did prove to be a turning point of sorts. When Angler B retired for the evening, I caught another smaller EP with Angler A, who in turn saw a few break the surface. I had to head off the next morning, but on the drive home, my phone beeped to reveal a pic of Angler A’s first-ever EP; and then another. Thoughtful determination had paid off, and I couldn’t have been more pleased.