“It soon dawns on me that this is a shit shoot, a lottery, the exact opposite of shooting fish in a barrel. We discuss flies and runs and pools and targeting the back of that rock and the next level down off that ledge and casting a little closer, a little further and trying any one of 30 flies in our fly boxes that have half a degree of colour or size difference and use ducktail instead of stout tail and marabou instead of pheasant fibres. Only it all seems way too random. My home waters in the Western Cape of South Africa are highly technical. The fish are mostly small, the rivers thin and getting it right involves light tippets, careful selection of flies and about 20 other factors in between. Micro-adjustments usually result in fish. This sort of fishing, seemed utterly dependent on chance, like waltzing past a nunnery hoping for a one-night stand.”

Tudor Caradoc-Davies on salmon in Ireland. Read the full story in issue 11 of The Mission.