The Mayfly
Early each summer, between late April and early June, on Irish Loughs and Gin clear streams, the MAYFLY hatches, dances, reproduces and dies in a magic ritual that sends fishermen running for their rods. A race of men, intent, wooly, in chest waders and oil skins, colonize the lake, trailing miles of fishing lines and dreams of glory.
The life of this beautiful creature is made out of one crowded glorious day, birth into light, a dance on the leafy banks, copulation at evening, and laying of eggs, dying from exhaustion on the water from which it emerged.
Eggs fall to the lake bed, the nymphs that hatches from it burrows in the mud and grows there in the dark for a year or two until Maytime comes again.
You are on the lake again…
Hatching mayflies are fluttering on the sweet breath of spring.
Scattered by the spendthrift hand of nature, small miracles of life, some come to rest upon the boat.
Rocking on a gentle swell, enveloped in the sudden quiet of a silenced out-board engine, you look around you at encircling hills that are mottled with cloud shadows.
You are looking on the lake again, oars dipping to scatter reflections of sky and the flies are up.
Life is reborn through spring and beneath the Mayflies that are trembling into flight, on and under the surface film move the trout.
Bronzed, speckled with gold and red, trout that rise to snatch your fly and make the reel sing.
When the long awaited hatch finally begins, there is no use expecting rational behavior from the Mayfly men . It would be asking too much in a season that only lasts for a few weeks. They know they cannot wait about , (LIKE I AM NOW!!!!). — Frustrated authors note —
They come from all over like devotees to Mecca.
To Lough Conn, Lough Mask, Lough Corrib, Lough Carra and the many other venues.
At last, its out on the water with a gentle breeze that is just right for
dapping. This is what you might call living, angst, stress and alienation.
Where are you?
Above your head the clouds filling out like God's washing, high and immaculate and all around the water shimmers with reflections.
Then the dapping rod bends, the reel spins and the first trout is on.
By Michael Murphy and Nutan
