THERE IS NO CURE IN the transition to Arctic char specialist, you quickly lose faith in your own skills before realizing it has nothing to do with said skills and everything to do with the char’s lack of logic. You regain faith in your skills and lose faith in the result. I have a friend who cannot bear dealing with char in the summer because nothing makes sense com-pared to ice fishing for the same species. I have no experience with ice fishing, so I can neither confirm nor deny his conclusion. But when this friend, who has far-above-average fishing patience, doesn’t even bother to fish for char in the summer, it says a lot. And if you’ll allow me to exaggerate a little (and I really mean a little), char fishing is so unpredictable that there are likely only two to three days each year when it’s straightforward and the fish actually eats everything, no matter what you serve it. This minute hope of hitting a small window has made me almost manic in my approach to summer-time. When there’s a forecast of calm weather some-where I can’t be, I grapple with a sense of deficiency or loss for which my psychologist partner probably has a clinical term. Life feels completely meaning-less. Until I go for a run. Or think about the people who love me. Or remember that my health is good, and that I have a kind girlfriend and a lovely son. But for a moment there, I feel stuck. The fact that I cannot spend all my time in the areas I know house huge char is discomfiting. This is an obsession with the illogical. Undoubtedly unhealthy. Guaranteed for life. My condolences in advance to my loved ones. • LEFT • Andreas Lium, a man with the same addiction and hopelessness as me, releases a magnificent char. Weighing about 5 pounds, he caught it in a slow-flowing tributary of a well-known river in northern Norway after sight-fishing with such a heavy nymph rig that it resembled jigging for cod in the sea. THE FLYFISH JOURNAL 061
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.3: Page 61
