Fishing: Beginner with a river in his bloodstream

Many learners will flag it away after threshing the waters in ungainly fashion for a couple of days and catching nothing more than a sore arm and a hook in the ear.

They'll blame the weather or their gear for their lack of fish. Others might make three or four expeditions before they land their first trout.

But occasionally you meet a beginner who is born to it, who has that intangible thing called intuition, a natural angler with fishing in his blood.

Last week Auckland schoolteacher Anthony Clark, who has been fishing the Tongariro for more than 20 years, took a work colleague, Manu Scott, along for a quick trip. Scott, an experienced seafisher, knew nothing about troutfishing but was keen to learn.

"It takes a lot of time and patience to get it right," Clark said later. "I thought I was going to have to spend a lot of time tutoring him and looking after him on the river, but that wasn't the case."

Many beginners will need several trips before they learn to flycast reasonably well, to develop the rod into an extension of the arm, to achieve the all-important balance and timing necessary for success.

But Scott picked it up in no time.

"He learned to cast so quickly that after just a few minutes I sent him out into the pool," said Clark. "I didn't have to worry about him. He didn't get frustrated like most beginners. He just kept at it.

"One of the locals on the bank watching couldn't believe it when I told him Manu was a beginner. He said, 'It can take years to get to the stage he's at now'."

Making matters twice as difficult was a head wind - the flycaster's nightmare - blowing straight down the river amid driving rain, the sort of weather that so easily upsets the dynamics of casting, and he was using a cheap hire rod that lacked real punch.

In fact, Scott had just about everything weighted against him, including the fact that few fish were being caught.

But he handled the trying conditions and the inferior rod like a true professional, and after 20 minutes he got his reward when his strike indicator ducked under.

And it was a big hit, a 2.5kg jack in prime condition that took Scott downriver to the bottom of the pool past a line of anglers who retreated to give him room to land it.

He was amazed at the size of the trout and the battle it put up in the strong current. Seafishing, he says, offers nothing quite like it.

He landed three more like that one, lost several and got plenty of strikes. He hadn't expected to catch anything. He was simply happy to be there to see how it's done. Now he's well and truly hooked.

The cheap gear he was using was no setback. Which just goes to show that it's not the gear that catches the fish, it's the guy using it.

Clark got the last word: "He got more strikes than I did. I told him he was banned from the river from now on."

* Anthony Clark is the columnist's son.