As in the trespass of many other male preserves, women are increasingly taking up fly-fishing. The question is: why? It’s not as if women weren’t always there, but female fly-fishers were considered eccentric and therefore not much worth the bother.
Yet the real bother was that, for many years, there was a closely guarded secret in the male fly-fishing community: that most world records for salmon caught on fly are held by women.
When this little-acknowledged fact reared its uncomfortable head some years ago, male fly-fishers went on the defensive. Clamourings were loud and long.
Men maintained the success of female salmon-fishers had nothing to do with ability and everything to do with female pheromones.
And although women would like to think otherwise, part of this anxious rationale enjoyed scientific endorsement. Some years before, intrigued by the phenomenon that women catch more and bigger salmon than men, scientists at Edinburgh University began to investigate.
Sure enough, they discovered that women are the serendipitous possessors of pheromones which just happen to be attractive to male salmon. In their upstream breeding migrations salmon don’t feed but, if a woman with a rod just happens by running waters, hovering male salmon seem to find her pheromone-tinged fly irresistible.
There is, however, a critical flaw in the pheromone consideration. If women are the producers of pheromones that — when present on the fishing flies and lines — are attractive to record-breaking male salmon, then conversely men should be the carriers of pheromones attractive to record-breaking female salmon. If not, why not?
The Chambers English Dictionary defines a pheromone as being ‘a chemical substance secreted by an animal which influences the behaviour of others of its species…â€
Please note ‘… of its species…†As far as fishing is concerned, either this definition is incorrect or it proves that women are of a separate species to men. Could it be then that women are of piscine descent? Was it they, and not men, who first crawled from the swamp? Was Eve ahead of Adam?
This still doesn’t answer the question of why more women are choosing to fly-fish. I’ve heard a number of arguments, but there is one that comfortably fits. It’s called self-defence.
Imagine this. Your other half decides he’s going to spend the weekend fishing. From the moment this decision is taken you are inexorably drawn into the process. An invisible list arrives in the form of the ‘where is?†question. It rears its head every other minute. Its demands are infinite.
Women wishing to avoid the ceaseless irritation of the interrogatory become impromptu detectives, tracing patiently all the bits of equipment scattered around the home; those things necessary for the success of such an expedition and dumped, after the last foray, in every conceivable nook and cranny.
Rod, reel, flies, lines, landing net, fly-jacket, waders, boots, sunblock, jumper, priest. Patiently she congregates everything in one place and the inevitable aggravation is sidestepped.
Time to gasp a breather? Forget it. There’s still the day’s victuals to attend to. Men can make Babette’s Feast seem like a famine. Plain old sandwiches just won’t do. So begins the planning, the buying, the cooking.
Finally, you think: that’s it. Happily, you can send him off. Not so. Because you have taken on the man, you are expected to take on the full course of his hobbies as well. That means lending your presence to the place of angling.
Said day arrives. You’re on the river expecting pleasant dreamings and meanderings. But with the dawning of the day comes a new set of guidelines and you find yourself being instructed in the niceties of being an uninvolved participant.
There exist two paramount formalities — one: stay as far away from the fisherman as possible, but within sight so that you may heap lavish praise for any fish hooked. Such distance is important, you are told, as it averts any danger of spooking the fish in the pool that said fisherman is presently crouched over and gamely attacking.
Two: as he moves down the river, maintain a following distance and don’t crash through the bush and brush, lest the vibrations of your footsteps, or loosened rocks and stones tumbling down from the bank into the pools below, also spook the fish.
Fastidious observation of the golden rules eventually finds you expert in the twin arts of reconnaissance and concealment, and such bona fides bring to mind fresh considerations. Since you have been initiated into some of the niceties of fly-fishing, why not go the whole hog? In self-defence you escape the apron and buy a fly-rod.
Eventually you discover that, inadvertently, your man has endowed you an enduring gift — all that time spent in the company of like minds and practice, on waters where nature is at her most abundant, is time of the most precious kind.
And even though in the land of the fly-fisherman the pheromone is queen, on the practical side there is little to distinguish the male from the female fly-fisherman. You don’t need strength to fly-fish rivers, streams and lakes.
No muscle-enhancing drugs, no pumping iron. All that’s really necessary is to practise in the basics of casting a fly-line, eventually lending the fledgling disciple the two great essentials of fly-casting: rhythm and timing. (An ex-world champion fly-caster is a slip of a thing named Joan Wulff.)
After that, everything else is learnt from those who have fly-fished longer than you, and from the rough and tumble of the waters and their secretive life. The longer you fish, the more secrets you discover.
Try it, you might get taken.