NATURE Trolling the brickeen

WHERE’S THE ACTION? A day’s fishing with lines baited with minnow and drawn behind a moving boat can try the patience.


Trolling the brickeen


Country Sights and Sounds
John Shelley

A friendly hand waved from the Corrib shore as I walked the short distance from car to water’s edge. The boat was already afloat, rods and reels laid out neatly and an ancient tackle bag stowed beneath the seat, bulging with what I hoped would be lunch.
I had come to troll the brickeen, something I had tried many years ago, before discovering the delight of casting the fly. The brickeen, for the layman, is another term for the minnow, that diminutive and unfortunate member of the carp family eagerly sought after by every carnivorous fish that shares their watery home.
These minnows had been caught last autumn with this spring day, and many others like it, in mind. I asked by what means they had been procured; the answer was lost in a timely twist of throttle as we pulled away. The boat tipped its nose at a wave, climbed over and sped us across the bay.
There is one style of fishing that bores me quickly, and that is trolling. The first half hour was pleasant enough. The boat chugging around, past islands full of trees, along the edge of green fields where lambs skipped about trying to keep warm, over gold-tinted shallow water and deeply mysterious black holes, while 40 yards behind us, salted brickeens held fast to their impalement and twisted and turned, flashing silver black as winter.
The lack of action was mind-numbing. The wind didn’t help. Cold and thin, it crept in from the east at a casual pace. As long as we followed a westerly course it wasn’t there at all, yet when we doubled back it found its way inside hats and coats, and turned our lips blue and noses as red as the spots on a gillaroo. Gloves would have been a good idea. And thermals. And brandy in the coffee that the flask had failed to keep the heat in.
There can be no drinking in the boat, although not everybody agrees. (A few years ago I took two visitors from overseas to Lough Conn for a day’s angling. I hadn’t set the boat on its first drift before the cans were out. Hardly a cast was made all day, but they had a fine time, and even managed to catch a fish or two.) The drinking is best left until evening; most ghillies and guides agree and some I know are insistent, not only about not drinking while afloat but equally so about drinking when they aren’t.
We followed a circuitous route and after an hour found ourselves pretty much back where we had started. The numbing cold had rendered any attempt we made at conversation unintelligible. The trouble is, when dragging a bait behind a boat there is simply nothing to do but sit and wait and watch acre after acre of shore pass by, and this day with sore and watery eyes.
It was no good. There might not have been a fish in the lake, for all I could tell. I put the fly rod up and tied on, after many minutes of fumbling, a cast of small dark flies and sent them out from the side of the boat. ‘A waste of time,’ mumbled my host, pulling his hood up over his head as he turned back into the wind.
I didn’t care. I had had enough, already. At least I was doing something. I cast at right angles and let the flies swing around just beneath the surface until they were behind us, then cast again, and again, and again. Finally, we pulled into the lee of an island to reassess our approach. I was all for trying a regular drift or two. Thin sunlight pierced the cloud to add a glint to the lake, causing it to wink in agreement.
A strange but familiar awareness, known only to anglers, fell upon us both. It is impossible to describe other than as a heightening of the senses and is due, no doubt, to an almost imperceptible change in conditions – a slight softening of wind, a lessening of barometric pressure, who knows?
A long cast dropped my team of flies just beyond a large rock that marked the drop off from shallow to deep. A dark shape materialized for just a moment and as it faded so my line drew tight. Minutes later a fine, fat, speckled Corrib trout splashed its two pound weight to the net.
I believe it is customary to return the first fish of the season to the water. Ahem. I earned that one.