Instinct – Gone or Just Forgotten
… by Philip Weigall
The night was cool and dark – not quite “can’t see your hand in front of your face” material, but dark enough that the images received through my puny human eyes were general, lacking any sharpness or distinction. It was difficult to tell where the water stopped and the bank started, where the currents swirled strongly, or where it was slack and still. The distance to the willow-lined far bank could have been 15 metres, or 30. I was reluctant to cast a long line, expecting to feel the springy but lifeless pull of a green branch every time I did so.
Normally, I endeavour to night fish on a section of river that I know reasonably well. That way, even on a dark night, I can fish largely on memory, relying on a minimum of visual clues as a guide. But on this evening I had been gripped by a case of “wonder what’s around the next bend” syndrome and had ended up fishing a great Red Spinner fall on a completely unfamiliar stretch of water. The quality of the fishing during the last half hour right on dusk had made the walk upriver worthwhile (unless the fall had come off just as well back at the car, which was a distinct possibility). However, I was too far from the familiar pools back there to fish the valuable period when dusk fades into complete night, so I settled on where I was. Compromises are par for the course in fly fishing – you just had to hope you’ve made the right compromise.
I decided to fish a black nymph across and down in the area (I hoped) where a powerful run dissipated into a large pool. Across and down is my standard method of nymph fishing after dark, and in any case, there was absolutely no chance of seeing any kind of indicator in this light. Tactile contact was the only conceivable way of detecting a take.
The first few casts produced no response. The black nymph I had on was large and shaggy, but with a little added weight besides a few turns of copper wire. In the swift current was it possible the nymph was travelling too shallow for that critical period when it swings across the current? Even worse, could it be actually skating across the top? In the dark I had no way of knowing for sure, but the lack of action in a stretch of water so recently dotted with rising fish had me doubting.
I decided to try a different tack. On the next cast I presented the nymph upstream on about a 45° angle, as I often do by day, thereby (hopefully) allowing the fly and leader to be sucked down by the swirling current to a decent depth whilst dead drifting the first few metres. Once past me I planned to again work the nymph across, then up against the current, only this time I expected the fly to be swimming a good distance below the surface.
On the first drift the technique appeared to be succeeding, judging by the increased tension as I worked the fly against the flow. It had indeed sunk further than on previous attempts. For the second time I threw the nymph upstream, and the dead drift phase of the presentation commenced.
I had absolutely no expectation of a take at this stage – only during the latter “swing” would I be alert for the tug of a fish grabbing the fly.
Then a remarkable thing happened. Well before the swing commenced I suddenly lifted the rod and was greeted by the heavy throbbing of a good trout. It was almost as if my arm had decided to strike of its own accord.
Why was this remarkable? Firstly, I had no tactile contact with the fly – the dead drift served merely to let the fly sink and I had deliberately avoided any tension. Thus I am certain I felt nothing to cause me to strike. Secondly it was way too dark to see anything at all of my line in the boiling current, so it was impossible that I could have struck on the basis of any visual cues. And thirdly the roar of the nearby rapid drowned out any sounds I might have associated with a take.
In short, there was no simple explanation for why I lifted my rod into that trout, yet I had done so as deliberately, and with as much conviction, as if I’d seen this brown snout chomp my dry fly off the surface in broad daylight. Later, as I sat on the gravel bar admiring the 1.4 kilo brown in the torchlight, I came to the conclusion it was instinct, and instinct alone, that had brought this particular fish undone.
‘Instinct’ – what a strange and disconcerting word. We fly fishers like things to be explainable according to the laws of science. We want to know what trout see, how they hunt, what they find uncomfortable. We want our rods to be made of the best space-age compounds, and our flies to mercilessly contain all the components that the cold little brains of trout compute to mean “food”. We want to know that we should count to three when a trout takes our dry fly in still water, or just pause for an instant in the rapids.
Instinct does not conform to such neat and tidy rules. It cannot be measured or seen, or even explained. Many of us choose to ignore it as a result. Yet few would dispute its existence. Every day we react instinctively – looking in the nick of time to see the car that’s going to run the red light, anticipating a competitor’s shot in tennis before it is delivered. Often when we do something clever without really knowing how or why, instinct was responsible.
No doubt instinct was both recognised and highly regarded by hunter/gatherers thousands of years ago. But in our highly technical 20th century world it has been smothered, and largely discarded as the invaluable ‘sixth sense’. We are taught to act on facts, not hunches.
Fly fishing brings us briefly back in time to a more simple world, one where we do not have to justify anything to anyone except ourselves. Next time you’re out on the stream, try following your instincts a little more and your technical manuals a little less. If your instincts tell you ‘just one more cast’, do it. If your instincts say ‘strike now’, and not in two seconds, then strike! As you relax and let your ‘hunches’ and ‘gut feelings’ play their role you may find a few more fish are being separated from the water by sunset. Instinct is still there in most of us. It’s not gone, it’s just forgotten sometimes.