Dales Folk
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'Fly fishing is the new golf'
Because I pay my extortionately expensive salmon fishing licence by direct debit - which has gone up another £10 as another un-reported "stealth tax" - I receive from the Environment Agency a full-colour magazine called Catch.
Most years, it gives details of work being carried out to clean up our rivers and stretches of water that have been restocked with fish for the benefit of anglers. This year, however, it is full of pleas to take your children or a friend fishing.
I suspect there is a reason for this: my tackle dealer and I had a conversation recently and he is deeply concerned that fewer youngsters are taking up the sport these days: they either stay at home playing with computer games or, in the worst case scenario, hang around on street corners striking fear into the local adult residents.
There is, however, a brighter side to this sad situation here in the Yorkshire Dales. The one sector of angling undergoing a marked boom is the numbers, men and women, taking up fly fishing, for which our rivers are ideally suited. It is, in the words of Stuart Minnikin, "the new golf."
Skipton-born Stuart lives an unusual double life. Four days (or nights) a week, he is a full-time fireman based in Keighley. In this time, he lives cloistered with the other members of his watch, cooking, cleaning and training together like an army platoon waiting to go into action.
Then, on his days off, he goes fishing, sometimes on the River Aire 100 yards across a field from his cottage at Funkirk Farm on the winding lane between Broughton and Carleton. On his very favourite days, he escapes to remote stretches of the Wharfe or the Ure: "There I can be alone with a rod, a few flies and a sandwich - that's why I was so lucky to be born in the Dales..."
But fishing is not always fun. It has become work, because Stuart is one of those lucky people who have turned his hobby into a business by setting up Yorkshire Dales Flyfishing, where he takes out novices and teaches them the basics of this not-so-simple art. And he has become so busy that, he admits, "I can barely cope."
"More and more people are taking up fly fishing, which is why I call it the new golf," he says."
When you think about it, it is the complete sport. There is the exercise, out in the fresh air in wonderful countryside; there is learning the complex skill of casting which can give the same satisfaction as a golfer striking a good drive; there is the etymology involved in studying the fly life on a river to match it with an artificial fly in your box; and in the long winter evenings you can tie those flies yourself, which is almost a hobby in itself.
"Then, of course, there is the incredible excitement of landing good trout or grayling from a fast-flowing stream," says Stuart. "Many people I teach to fish have different motives - to relieve the stress of a tough job, to be out in the countryside, the simple satisfaction of mastering a difficult skill - but I suspect that the joy of catching a fish that you can take home for supper satisfies some primeval hunting urge that goes back thousands of years."
I couldn't have said this better myself as someone who started fishing aged four with jam jar tied with a bit of string and someone who has been (clumsily) casting a fly for 40 years.
I taught my son and daughter something of this esoteric skill - it is much easier to catch trout with a maggot on hook, line and sinker - and can't wait until my grandson is old enough to start.
But to compare myself to Stuart Minnikin would be absurd. He has fished for England in international river casting matches, selected from hundreds of skilled hopefuls, and takes people on fishing breaks to discreet pubs and hotels in the Dales.
That business has taken off - literally. For his holidays, he has taken parties on fishing trips to Poland and now jumps the Atlantic to go sea fishing off the Bahamas or stalking big trout in Chile. The world has become his piscatorial oyster.
So, will he make it a full-time job? "Never. Funnily enough, after all these fishing trips it is great to get back to the lads at the fire station."
Lucky fella, Stuart Minnikin: I should be out on the river instead of sitting here writing this early on a rare sunny morning in May. But I wish there were more like him to inspire our young folk to take up what Isaac Walton described centuries ago as "the reflective man's sport".
To him and anyone else who takes up this soul soothing sport, I extend the traditional fisherman's good wishes: "Tight lines."
9:33am Friday 9th May 2008
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