It’s a Zen Thing

Sometimes the feeling just sneaks up on you. The grass has been mowed, the windows cleaned, the reel freshly oiled, the fly box filled with the most recent bunch of no-fail flies, and there is window of opportunity.

You are greeted at the Goulburn by a strong flow of clear, cold water, despite the surrounding brown hills and the mid 30s temperature. About 4000 ML/day. Maybe a bit more. Just right. You have arrived at gentleman’s hours, about 10:30, also just right for the sun to beam through the willows and light up the water beneath in shifting mottled patterns of clear green where the sunbeams penetrate and greyish shadow where they don’t.

The distant stand of willows beckons.

High on the bank, you make your way quietly, slowly… quietly, slowly… Under fallen branches, over logs, around blackberries. The first trout is finning left and right in the shade below some willows, rising eagerly to something invisible. Ah, the first willow grub feeder.

Grubs in the willows.

You sneak back and slide down the bank, past the scratching tendrils of blackberries, and perform a bow-and-arrow cast with a small Stimulator. The trout sways over and nips the fly gently off the top.

Thirty metres upstream, and (hopefully!) like a shifting shadow, you approach a small backwater. You see the tail of a fish as it mooches ever so slowly up the gentle current behind a tree trunk. You flick the fly out and lose sight of it behind the tree, but the rod springs into life moments later when the fly is apparently accepted.

In another stand of willows, the shallow water truly flows through the willow trunks, enabling you to wade. Head movements are considered and glacial. Hand movement the same. Rod movement like a swaying willow twig.

Be like a tree.

At each opening, it’s a matter of waiting. Count to 100 then count again. You are not trying to see the fish. The fish is trying, ever so slowly, to reveal itself to you.

A trout appears. You bow-and-arrow a sinking willow grub about two metres in front of it with a satisfying ‘plip’. The fish races over. Ah, so the plip is the trigger.

You ghost a further ten metres and note to your right, towards open water, a different kind of plip. Then, three more in unhurried succession, all in a single square metre of water. A big brown materialises. About four pounds. Although you are at one with the shadow, the fish moves off… but returns three or four minutes later to softly clean up the fresh collection of grubs which have fallen or been blown into the bay beneath the willow canopy. Then, your miniscule movement results in the lovely brown tensing slightly. It sidles away, evidently not quite sure what is amiss, but also not quite sure everything is as it should be.

You notice a small backwater a little further ahead, mottled light piercing the surface, and you watch and wait. Watch, wait and count. There’s a dimple, then another. Then a tail below the surface gently beckoning. Once again, a bow-and-arrow cast, the three pounder just visible in the glare, mooching away. The fly lands, the fish instantly changes course, before mooching on its way again. Hmm. Refusal. Was it the fly? Was it the presentation? Was the fish ever so slightly on guard?

Cruising through the logs and shadows.

Over the course of the afternoon, you see well over a dozen fish, all bar one between two and four pounds. About half over three. More big river fish in Victoria than you would usually encounter on a week-long fishing trip.

You have watched them all, every spot of them, enthralled as they silently cycle around the backwaters, as they sidle into the mini bays to subtly mop up the small rafts of grubs which have been patiently blown in by the zephyr. You have admired the single-minded, often predictable way the fish have cruised around the bays and submerged timber tangles, rising here and there to clean up the most recent grubs.

None of that garish casting up the runs for you. None of those showy tight loops. You have just spent the best part of five hours at one with the fish. Invited into their quiet aquatic world. At one with the willows. Being a tree trunk.

It’s a Zen thing.