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Manual de Lanzado
Sección de Carlos
The Downloads

Falsecast

Monday: Paul Arden
Tuesday: Harps
Wednesday: Bernd Ziesche
Thursday: Mr T.
Friday: Ray
Saturday: Viking Lars
Sunday: Bruce Richards

Ronan's report

It's getting late. The light has pretty much gone, the fish have stopped rising. There's a high probability that your fly is tangled but with this light, no torch and no glasses, you aren't really in a position to do anything about it. You said you'd be home half an hour ago. The midgies are biting and given that you haven't eaten anything since that sweaty service station sandwich eight hours ago, you are hungry.

Better start thinking about the last cast.

I say "start thinking about". That's about as far as you can go just now. Actually committing to the last cast of the day means that in just a few seconds you'll be turning to the bank, slowly picking your way across the stream, winding the fly line back on to the reel as you go; suddenly noticing the chill, and trying to remember where you put the car keys.

You can't just go around springing the last cast on yourself. Jumping from the intense close-up of fishing focus to the long-view panorama of work, family and friends is quite a leap and you need a bit of a run up, so-to-speak.

We need to do a bit of circling before we come in to land. Just easing the thought into our minds. "Another half hour and I'll start thinking about packing up" is a decent first step. Then we can actually move on to maybe thinking about it, and subsequently we might even go as far as saying we're into our last twenty casts, or so. Give or take. Approximately.

Even if you are a regular fisher, on the bank every other day, it's always a wrench to leave the water. The fact that the next cast could be the one, the cast where the fish of a lifetime at last hangs on, is enough on its own to keep us on the bank for another couple of hours. You never know. We never know.

But big fish almost never take on the last cast and the fishing day seldom ends on a rising note. The crescendos usually come throughout the day and even if they do happen late on we'll usually linger longer and mostly our days on the water fade to a sustained minor and melancholy refrain.

That last cast moment, though, is a big moment. It has a finality to it that is quite out of proportion to the event itself. There is a sense of mortality in finishing the fishing day. This could be The Last Cast. You know, ever. Who knows what life has in store around the corner? Who knows when you'll be back? So we hang on. Drawing the day out like a taught length of catgut: 7x or finer, as fine as we can manage without breaking our connection with the non-fishing world.

In the final minutes of the day you find yourself trying to force the sights, sounds and smells of the waterside into your memory: The sound of the stream, the smell of the water, fields and flowers, and the shimmering shadows of leaves and branches as they creep across the water. It's all too beautiful. You can't take it with you, can you? You have to let go.

Our long-term affair with the water and the fish isn't too different, then, from loving our significant other. One last kiss. Then another. Holding their gaze and trying to remember what it feels like in this moment, to have them near. Promise to come back soon.

This is a fine distillation of bittersweet and we must learn to savour the flavour.

Will

Pic Of Day

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