Last cast
...you get a hat. But which one? ponders Giles Catchpole
TIME WAS WHEN THE GENTLEMAN angler wore a Fore and Aft hat. In estate tweed, probably. Family estate, obviously, even —perhaps especially —when fishing a river on someone else's estate. Not a deerstalker because those flaps and the bow on top would be chancing your arm more than somewhat when hooks are flying about. So, you do away with the furbelows and fandangles and stick to the essentials. Which are a peak at the front to shade the eyes from the sun and another at the back so the rain doesn't trickle down your neck. And a goodly thickness of material in between to protect the bonce from passing barbs.
It must be said, however, that tweed, despite its many benefits, has one huge drawback: once a hook gets into it, there isn't a means yet invented of getting it out again. The Dear Departed Progenitor had just such a titfer and he used it to store his flies. As he diligently matched the hatch, he would select a new lure from one of the many tins and boxes he carried with him and grip it between his teeth. Then he would reel in his line and snip off the flea being substituted with the scissors that dangled about his front. The scissors would zing back up their elastic bungee leaving him with leader in one hand, fly in the other. The fly went directly into the hat for safekeeping and, with the hand thus freed, he would retrieve the fly from his mouth and secure it to the nylon. The only difficulty with this manoeuvre —leaving aside the very real possibility of hooking your own lip — was that, over time, the bulk of his flies ended up in the hat while the many tins and boxes became progressively depleted. He solved this problem by spending the winter tying new flies, which he set in neat serried ranks in the boxes and tins ready for the next season.
The hat meanwhile grew larger and more congested as the insertion of flies was strictly one-way traffic.
Unless, of course, my mother touched it. If she found the hat and so much as looked at it, flies would flutter out and cascade in every direction which, as she pointed out on more than one occasion, represented untold and innumerable dangers to any pets, children or tradesmen who might stumble into the vicinity where th
