Let it fly

At the start of the new fly-fishing season, our correspondent confesses to being a ‘possibilitarian’, who fishes as often as he can wherever fish are to be found

- David Profumo

OUTSIDE, it’s 47ËšC below and I’m dreaming of the burning-hot bonefish flats of the Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI), where we’re due to land close to tea time. There are certain species that an angler lusts after. For me, wild hill-loch brownies and their spiffy cousins, the sea trout, belong to that category; but facile princeps is the subtropical boney—exquisite and endearing, spooky and athletic even in the smaller sizes and, whether tailing, mudding, flashing or pushing nervous water, my favourite of all angling quarries. I have chased him in more than 10 countries and now, after an enforced abstinence of three years, I was positively consumed with bone fever.

Shakespeare gave his melancholy Jaques that magnificent soliloquy (‘All the world’s a stage’) about The Seven Ages of Man, from puking infant through to second childhood, and I have heard it said there are comparable stages in an angler’s progress (let’s leave out the puking, for now). First comes the impulse to catch anything you can; next, to rack up as many as possible; then the biggest; then the trickiest; and, finally, simply to enjoy fishing whenever the mood takes you. There is said to be one extra stage—deriving as much pleasure from seeing beginners enjoy success as you would from catching fish yourself. But I’d be fibbing if I claimed I had ever experienced that.