This is a post about how stories can grow arm and legs and eventually morph out of all known facts into a completely different scenario. It is akin to someone telling another angler they caught a trout on a dry fly and then eventually the story ending up as being they were attacked by a herd of wild donkeys under the control of the evil committee.
The Kelvin has a great angling community, There are lots of very good dedicated anglers – lovely guys, salt of the earth n’ all that.
The river is made up of three types of anglers – dedicated Trout anglers (who occasionally have a bash at Salmon), dedicated Salmon anglers (who sometimes fish for trout until the runs of Salmon arrive) and the chuck it and chance it anglers who fish with no dedicated method and are happy to catch any fish at all. I have got to say the chuck it and chance it anglers are on the decline due to the clamp down on set lining. They either go elsewhere or slip into the other two camps and become better anglers for it.
What unites them all is their capacity to gossip like a group of women at the Bingo.
Stories about catches, rule breaking, and devious plots by the committee all get banded around by everyone – people add on other wee bits they heard until eventually usually story fades away into obscurity or becomes legend.
I wonder if all rivers have the same focus and attention as the Kelvin though – I mean I have ran this blog for ….good grief around 7 years now and it has grown from just a few visitors a day to several hundred. Plus the Kelvin forum is frequented by a nice bunch of guys – I set that up as I get quite a lot of emails from people asking for advice (as if I know what the hell I am talking about) so thought a dedicated place for a bit of peer support would be useful.
I have heard a few things about myself – a few years ago I was attacked and had all my gear stolen off me (not true – I have never even been threatened other than by email). I have had several huge trout from the Kelvin (not true sadly) and I only ever catch tiny trout (kinda true – I just love em’). I have also heard I am a sullen bastard who refuses to tell anyone spots that I fish – kinda true.
A new one reached my ears the other day – I take it you guys read my post about my stupendous blank salmon fishing on Saturday morning. Well, we never even see a fish and did not see anyone catch a fish – what we did see was a few anglers fishing for salmon and Atkins told someone they could not set line – I never said a word as I was on another planet mentally – shell shocked at carrying a spinning rod (the amount of stick I have been getting for that is unbelievable by the way).
Anyway – the story goes that not only did we witness three salmon being caught but we advised the angler who only had a single tag to take all three fish – breaking three of the association rules: one salmon per day and all killed salmon tagged (or was that 2 rules just 4 times)
This story was recounted to the association secretary on one of his jaunts to the river – there is still some confusion about dates etc as he thought it was last week they were talking about and he knew for a fact I was not fishing as I blanked the clean up day due to a kids party and I thought he was talking about that Saturday just there. However the facts remain – seemingly this is what I did.
Additionally – someone telephoned the association this highly important piece of gossip even though they did not even meet us that day.
There are a few problems with this – most guys know who I am on the river even if I do not introduce myself (which I don’t do anyway as I am a shy bugger) and can you imagine the amount of stick I would take if I ever did condone someone breaking the rules – after all the preaching I do about trout conservation? – there would probably be ski masks, shovels and shallow graves behind the Art Galleries involved.
Wry smiles all round…