The Frank Sawyer I Remember
Many people ask me about the Frank Sawyer I knew. What was he like? Did he teach you to fish? What do you remember most about him? Well, I certainly remember lots of good times and many, many fishing trips, but as Frank (or Grandpop as I knew him) died when I was 9 years old, the memories are a little blurred and, dare I say it, fantastic. This leaves me in a dilemma. Are they fantastic because of the vivid imagination of a young boy, or was the fishing genuinely better and the river-life much more vibrant in those days? I will leave it to you to decide and simply recall a couple of those memories.
The River Avon of my childhood was very different to the one I fish today. There were so many wriggling, jumping and swimming creatures it must have been every boy’s dream. I would spend hours catching bullheads and crayfish in the reeds at the water’s edge and fill up jam-jars with thousands of nymphs, fry, bugs and skaters. The water was always so clear that there was never any problem spotting my quarry. I was once nipped on the finger by a huge dragonfly larva and have remained wary of these creatures ever since.
Chasing dragonfly larvae on my own was fine, but when out fishing with Grandpop, I wasn’t aloud to hunt creepy-crawlies or jump around and make noise. But even crouched at the riverbank behind cover, the banks were alive with flies and other tiny creatures. I used to grab handfuls of big juicy flies and offer them to my grandfather to put on the hook – it dawned on me quite late that the ‘fly’ used for fishing was not a real fly.
My main job as a boy was to hold the ‘wag’. The wag was the old rag used to wipe slime off our hands. My younger brother couldn’t say rag properly and it came out as ‘wag’. The name stuck, but holding the wag was no mundane task, or the job of an unskilled bank-boy. In order to catch more fish, the Killer Bugs and Pheasant Tail Nymphs had to have a regular application of fish slime to make them taste more natural to the fish. The holder of the wag had to check each time a fish was caught to make sure that the artificial was still sufficiently slimed. We certainly used to catch lots of fish. Whether it was due to the wag or not is open to debate.
Another of my jobs was to count the fish we caught during a fishing trip. A hundred grayling in a morning or afternoon was not uncommon. The first time I ever counted aloud to 100 was on a fishing trip. The grayling in those days were considered vermin and the dead fish were disposed off in mass graves throughout the garden. The runner-bean trench was the favourite spot and those beans were certainly big and juicy. I was uncomfortable with the cull even as a boy and realised it was a matter of some weight as the death of so many fish was always explained and justified by my father and Frank. Today of course it would be completely unacceptable (morally if not legally) and I think Frank would have been very happy with this more understanding moral code of conduct.
My grandmother Margaret Sawyer was very much part of Frank’s fishing life and I associate her with fishing as much as my grandfather. She ran the nymph-tying business for Frank and could tie a nymph per minute. I remember her and three of my aunties sitting round the kitchen table with their vices, surrounded by pheasant tail feathers. Their fingers were a blur and even now I am amazed at the tiny nymphs and the skill and speed with which they were produced. Every fifteen minutes or so each of them added another envelope with a dozen nymphs to the post pile. That afternoon Gran would take me by the hand and we would walk up to the village post-box in Netheravon to catch the last post. Sometimes if there were lots of envelopes we would wait for the collection van to save clogging up the post-box. I tie a few Sawyer Nymphs for the many people who still want the original designs but I am clumsy and slow compared to Margaret. I know from my own hook-sliced fingers and limited tying experience that Gran was one of the most extraordinary fly-tyers the world has ever seen. Sadly she died in 2004 at the age of 96, exactly 24 years after Frank. I estimate she tied well over 2 million nymphs in her lifetime.
So what about these little memories and stories? They are just a very small selection, but I think they still have meaning today. My father recently gave me all Frank’s notes, papers and writings. I have yet to finish reading and sorting them, but already they have put many of my boyhood memories into context and show that my recollection is not entirely inaccurate. I have included some of the unpublished material in my new book ‘Fishing on the Front Line.’ Frank Sawyer’s work is today, perhaps, even more relevant as our environment deteriorates and nature needs a helping hand. Over the coming months and years I intend to collate and analyse the many boxes of Frank’s notes and hopefully print some more of his unpublished work. In the meantime, my boyhood memories are a happy reminder of what fishing is all about – marvelling at the wonders of nature.
Frank Sawyer in action on the River Avon
