A Chapter from Fifty Favorite Fly-Fishing Tales
No Fish for a Tiger
By: Chris Santella
Told by Mark O’Meara
It’s been said that fly-fishing for Atlantic salmon is a great equalizer. The fish don’t care how much money you have, what clubs you belong to, how high your IQ is or how well-received your latest movie has been. They only care about how your fly is presented—and if the bite isn’t on, even that doesn’t matter. Just ask Mark O’Meara, who witnessed some Irish salmon’s snubbing of one of the greatest golf champions of all time.
“I go over to Ireland to fish for Atlantic salmon twice a year,” Mark began, “and one of my favorite rivers to fish is the River Blackwater. One visit is just after the Master’s Tournament in April. The other is in the summer, just before the British Open. The spring is a great time to be on the Blackwater, as this is when the river gets its run of bigger fish. I was there a few years back at the Careysville House, with a group that included Tiger Woods, who is a dear friend. That particular week, the fishing had been a bit slow, though we’d been fishing pretty hard. Of course, anyone who fishes for salmon or steelhead on a fly understands that there’s always the possibility of getting shut out. We weren’t shut out, but we were doing none too well, especially Tiger.
“One morning, Tiger and I were on a run with two guides—Sean McMannon, who is a member of the Irish Fly Fishing Team and a guide at the K Club in County Kildare, and a local ghillie named Paddy.
Paddy was a slightly older gentleman, and had one of the thickest Irish brogues that I’ve ever heard. It was barely comprehensible. Tiger and I had worked our way through most of the run, and breakfast time was coming around. Sean, Paddy and Tiger decided to take a break and grab a sandwich. I reminded Tiger that the best way to catch a fish is to stay in the river and keep fishing, but they all retired to the bank. They were barely on shore when I hooked into a nice fish, about seven or eight pounds. I played it to hand as they went to the ghillie’s hut for their snack. As they were coming back down to the river, I hooked into another fish. I played it for a while as they looked on, and it eventually came off. I went over to the bank, and I could see immediately that Tiger was getting a little worked up about his lack of success. I said to him, ‘Don’t worry, the fish are in here. Let’s put you right in the middle of this run where I’ve been getting some takes. I’ll stay with you and get you all fired up. When your confidence is up, you’ll get a fish.’
“I stayed with Tiger in the river for a while to help him get in the swing of things. He was in a nice long run, and it was just a matter of getting into a rhythm—cast, swing, step; cast, swing, step. After a time, I left Tiger to his own devices and joined Sean and Paddy up on the bank. It was a pleasure to watch Tiger cast. The mechanics of golf swing and a fly cast are pretty similar, and as you might expect, Tiger’s golf swing translates into an excellent casting form. Though a fish would roll out in the run every now and again, Tiger was having no luck. As he made his way downstream, I could see that Tiger was beginning to rush his casts a bit, and sensed he was getting frustrated again.
“As we watched Tiger cast through the bottom of the run, Paddy, who had been pretty quiet most of the morning, suddenly spoke. Apropos of nothing, he said, ‘Boyz, if those salmon only knew who was on the other end of that line, they’d be stackin’ up to take that fly.’”
Mark O’Meara took up golf when he was 13, and turned pro in 1980, shortly after graduating from Long Beach State University. Since turning pro, Mark has won more than a dozen PGA tourneys, including the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am (five times), the Masters (1998) and the British Open (1998). He is an avid and accomplished fly fisherman and fly tier, and recently teamed with PGA TOUR Design Services to build TPC of Valencia, California. Mark lives in the Orlando, Florida area with his wife Alicia and children Michelle and Shaun Robert.
Blackwater Salmon
Rising in the mountains east of Killarney, the River Blackwater flows through counties Cork and Waterford until it reaches the Irish Sea, 75 miles later. It has traditionally been one of Ireland’s most prolific Atlantic salmon rivers, yielding between five and six thousand salmon per annum. Like most European salmon rivers, much of the Blackwater is private, though there are ample beats available for lease. (The largest lessee is the Blackwater Lodge [www.ireland-salmon-fishing.net], which holds beats on 15 miles of the river; the Careysville House [+353-58-54424], where Mark and Tiger fished, offers beats on 1.75 miles of prime water. While Blackwater salmon (and Irish salmon in general) run a bit smaller than the fish that return to neighboring Scotland, the beauty of the rolling countryside of the valley, the welcoming charm of the villages that dot its banks—and the promise of a fresh Guinness at the local pub—more than make up for the absence of trophy specimens.
