Guides Diary June

General

Fly

Coarse

Sea

Tackle

Guide’s Diary After an inauspicious start, Jim Hendrick finds a chance customer becomes an established client.

“Hello Jim, this is Eric calling from Belgium. We are coming to fish with you on Monday afternoon in Wexford, myself and Michele, can you tell me how far it is from Dublin airport?” This took me by surprise somewhat. The pleasantry almost led me to believe that Eric was a long lost friend that I had forgotten about, and his confidence convinced me that somehow I had made myself available to fish with him and Michele (wife/girlfriend, male friend?) on Monday and then forgotten about the arrangements. He continued. “How shall we contact you when we arrive in Wexford to meet and fish?” Normally I don’t take calls when I’m up to my chest in estuarine water with customers. Too many fumbled and dropped mobiles have convinced me to leave them in the car. And the ringing, it bothers people too. Rather than continue the conversation in a confused manner I adopted a tone of complete calm and re-assurance as much

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as if Eric and I had been finalising his Irish bass fishing plans for the last six months. By the way, this was Saturday evening on the last good tide of this cycle, so two mysterious Belgians arriving on Monday was going to prove particularly testing. I told Eric I would ring him back. I liked him immediately. When I rang him back I determined that they had already booked their flights, would be arriving in Dublin on Monday lunchtime and wanted to spend a week fly fishing for bass in Wexford with myself, whilst staying in my house. The momentum was relentless. Somewhere over the previous few months they had neglected to tell me of these important details but re-assured me that they were competent fly fishers and were looking forward to their first trip to Ireland, there would be no problems! I advised them that we were heading into a neap cycle and fishing would deteriorate until possibly the last day of the week, this

was met with nonchalance, high spirits and something about wanting the experience. They would hire their own car and drive from the airport to Wexford – easy street for me! I expected them about four o’clock on Monday and asked Eric to ring me when he arrived in Wexford so I could meet him and bring him and the mysterious Michele to the centre. Four o’clock on Monday afternoon came and went, and at closer to six I finally got the call from Eric. He seemed calm and a little tired after his journey and said he was in the middle of Wexford outside a wedding shop called Berry’s. I’ve lived in Wexford town for a long time and wedding shops were never high on my radar, so one called Berry’s was proving elusive to me. I asked him to describe where he was and things started to become difficult with the Flemish accent. I decided to ask my wife Eileen to ring Eric, to try to determine where he was,

“Michele, I finally determined, was male”

she speaks fluent French. She rang me back shortly. Eric was in Westport. I realised why I had never heard of Berry’s. I think there used to be a road sign just before the old toll on the M50 heading south – It read Westport blah de blah. It had taken Eric six hours to get to Westport and as far away from Wexford as he probably could. He called me back and said they would drive to Wexford the next day and would probably arrive mid-afternoon. A highpressure system had been building over the country since Saturday – the sea was mirror like, and, as Bertie would say, the neap tides were getting neaper and I still hadn’t met Eric. They both arrived on Tuesday evening, a little tired and came into the house to chat, smoke and rest a bit. Michele, I finally determined, was male, the strong silent type who spoke English very well but preferred to watch myself and Eric battle things out over long periods of

hopeless misunderstandings. Only when we had exhausted every avenue including drawings might Michele contribute to the conversation. I explained to them how difficult things would be and suggested we trout fish on Wednesday and Thursday until some of the spring tide took at least a little grip on the fish. I showed them to the house and said we would fish in the morning at the river all day after we had got our licences. About an hour later Eric called to the door and told me he had left his Simms G4 jacket in the B&B in Westport. I said don’t worry, give me the name of the B&B and I would ring them to ask to send the jacket. Eric didn’t know the name of the B&B. He said he would ask Michele. Both of them returned about 10 minutes later, neither of them knew the name of the B&B. “Have you got a card?” I wondered. No. “Any idea of where the place was?” No. “Was it in Westport?” No! Mmmmmmmmmmmmh! We never found the jacket.

We caught a pile of trout on the river without any mishap. It was Friday the last day of the week and we were going bass fishing before the guys quit the country for Belgium. The sky was blue, the water was clear and the fish were silver. Eric’s blood was red! We were fishing over the rising sun and as the tide pushed a few fish through a narrow channel we covered them with big blue and white Deceivers. Eric hit a nice fish of about 3kg, fought and landed him successfully. We took some nice photographs, returned the fish, shook hands and sighed contemplatively. He shouted at Michele – “Ouiii…” – put his fist in the air shook it, and then slipped off a rock, ripping his expensive G4 waders, and his leg. Out came the First Aid. Eric smiled, Michele started to laugh, and we fell around for about five minutes and then went home. Eric and Michele have been back to WEXFORD three times since 2004.

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