Today was the last day of the salmon extension on the Dart. From the past two weeks I have been able to squeeze 9 days fishing. The conditions have been terrible, I can’t remember the last time it rained before yesterday. ‘The river is as low as I’ve seen it, and I’ve lived on it for 50 years,’ said one early morning dog walker.
In an attempt to surprise a salmon I’ve been getting up before dawn, a painful but cleansing experience. One morning I was crouched tight to the near bank, swinging a fly across a known lie, when a salmon came bolting past me from upstream closely followed by an otter. It’s the first otter I’ve seen on Dartmoor and it made my day, mainly because the salmon remained sullen and uninterested.
But yesterday it rained. It rained so much that the river was unfishable by late morning. Today it was dropping, and that is what we’ve all been waiting for. I fished all day, progressing to smaller flies and lighter tips as the river dropped and cleared. In the last hour I cast a small black fly to swing across a small eddy. It had swung toward the main flow, a few inches under the surface, when a big silver head breached the flow with my fly in its jaws. I let the salmon turn before tightening, and feeling the weight of the fish at the other end of my line, it surged, my leader snapped, and I was left holding on to nothing at all. So it goes in salmon fishing.