Magazine Confluenze | fly fishing experience Number 8 Year 2 | Page 4

Warmer, sultry, almost humid air, river oxbows, chirps of birds, splashes of big carp, attacks of bass
and pike.
I stop a second, what should I expert to see next? Sea shores, lagoons ...
I sit on my bed, I am now awake, perhaps I have not opened the windows of my home, but those of
my fantasy instead, and whenever I am opening those, my mind runs and flies away towards much
sought after places.
The new season with its mysteries is coming fast and eventually we shall try and experiment all the
novelties we have prepared in these long months of gestation.
Long, medium, short rods, tackle for all tastes and all situations.
New and strange trends, very light rods to be matched with almost non-existant fly lines, bobber
fishing, czeck nymphs, new flies, nynmphs of every kind, form and size, modified with new tying materials, droppers, false and huge dry flies with dropper nymphs, bread flies, chum flies, flies-no-flies
and, finally, genuine flies!
And what about the fish? What have they decided to do during this long winter? How have they prepared to face our challenge in the next season? It won’t be easy to learn, certain secrets cannot easily be unveiled and also, you know, the fish speak little.
However, some rumors seemingly indicate that they gathered and decided to belong to the following
categories:
Sacrificial fish, ugly, crooked, pecked, with little or no fins, for put and take reservoirs, with suicidal
tendencies, rubbish fish.
Fish for no kill rivers and ponds, with reinforced lips, big jaws, somehow handsome, singles, castrated and sterilized, some overweight, some of them well trained or with sewn mouth to drive no kill
members crazy.
True fish, little but beautiful, dwarf but sincere, fish for ‘there is no fish’ fishers unaccustomed to wild
fish, fish that accept their challenge for survival, a few of them, hard to catch.
Who will be our challengers among them?
Maybe our challengers won’t be the fish, the genuine fish, but – as already happened in the last
years – the men instead, that with their stupidity, unawareness, arrogance, are spoiling each passing
day our world and the future of our sons. Our fishing world (not to say the environment in general)
needs more and more an external help to survive.
The nature by itself is no longer enough and the fish, even if continuosly stocked in any kind of river,
reserve or not, disappear, vanish, quite often do not spawn, leaving no visible trace of their stocking.
This is absurd and unacceptable!
The costs are becoming higher and higher, the reserves are exclusive ones, protected areas, the
trend has not changed.
You are not a little pervaded with some doubt?
The new season has arrived, it is now time to get prepared and stop a while just for some small, logical reflection.
Natalino Costa

4 Confluenze