• LEFT TO RIGHT • James Barry makes one of many casts into a strengthening wind. Given the choice between the calm side of a breakwater and the windy side, it’s better to choose the windy side—even if, as a fly angler, every bone in your body tells you to do the opposite. The baitfish get disoriented in the rougher water, and that’s where the bass will be. Nails bitten, skin cracked, finger taped. In Cork there’s no skiff to provide a platform and no guide to spot for you. Here you need your best cast, your tightest loop and, of course, the perfect fly. James Barry assesses the potential of a pink fly against the merits of the hybrid Searcher/Clouser pattern that Rupert Harvey had tied the previous night. “OH NO.” Rupert and I look at each other. It takes a moment, but then we realize the same thing Ben has. “Oh shit,” Rupert says. It’s 5 a.m. in Youghal, County Cork. The Irish dawn is breaking overhead. We’re tired; this is the third and last day of our trip, and we’re up early. We were late to bed too. Rupert was up past midnight tying flies for the morning session. Ben was busy downloading the day’s photographs. In the rush to pack up and leave our Airbnb, none of us have re-membered the key fob that we need to open the main gate. It’s sitting on the kitchen table, in the apart-ment we can no longer access. We’re both locked in and locked out. We hassle the keypad, trying to fluke the code. When that doesn’t work, we pace back and forth, hoping to see a light on. But no one else is up—these are holiday apartments and it seems we’re the only ones anxious to catch the tide. “Better tell the other guys we’re going to be late,” Ben says, his shoulders dropping a little. The pedestrian gate is wide open. As I text the others—Myles Kelly and Shane O’Reilly who have come from Dublin, and fish scientist James Barry, who’s acting as our guide—I wander sleepily through it. A sound makes me look up. The little harbor, with its collection of small boats, looks different somehow. Is it raining? Has the storm that’s forecast for later arrived early? Suddenly, I’m wide awake. That isn’t rain—it’s fish. “Check it out,” says Ben, who’s followed me out, “it’s a bust-up!” We stand and watch. Sprat are breaking the sur-face everywhere, emerging in silvery showers as they try to evade the mackerel that have herded them into the harbor and are now hunting them from below. There are countless millions of them; they wash in and out on the boat ramp, the water thick and black like an oil slick. In places they’re piled atop one an-other in writhing balls of silver. A heron standing by the ramp feeds at its leisure. Without warning, it strikes with sudden intent. The next moment a 054 IRELAND
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.4: Page 52
