The weekend is back, and everyone's off playing golf. Motorways are swelling with golfers racing past the rivers and rolling fields of Kildare, and into the K Club for their tee time. They're looking for a natural environment to relax in, and a sport to empty their minds of the Monday to Friday treadmill. Fair enough. Golf's a good game to play with a few friends, a dull walk brightened. But after a certain point it can become acquisitive; people start to play a game-within-the-game. You can shell out thousands of pounds on clubs and memberships, on one hand diminishing the simple pleasure of the game and on the other increasing the pressures of playing it, pressures not unlike those of a working week.
That's when fishing may look an increasingly attractive option. Winding its way around the club's ground goes a one-mile stretch of the Liffey. According to the K Club's estate manager and fisherman Sean McManmon, fly fishing between Straffan and Clane is real fishing in a river where the salmon season peaks between August and September each year and the natural limestone lies keep the number and weight of salmon and brown trout high. Not for him coarse fishing, where you drop a line and pray to catch bony fish like perch and bream, or dump in buckets of bait to get them jumping in your lap. Coarse fishing is just that, with Sky Sports shows such as Fishomania 5 wrecking the Zen concept of the sport, giving weight to that old saying "a worm on one end and a fool on the other".
Sean has worked there for longer than there's been a K Club. He tended the gardens and runs the shooting range. He was taught fly fishing by his father, who wouldn't let him drop a line in the water until he could fish with flies - and Sean, in turn, taught his son in the same way. His son caught his first fish with a fly-rod when he was 10, and went on to beat his father in the Irish championships a few years back: "The proudest moment of my life", says Sean.
Out at the river side, he lights a pipe, the sun comes out, and we start. For dry fly fishing you use a variety of artificial flies that float on the surface of the river. Fish are conservative eaters, and each artificial fly mimics an existing fly in that area to bait a hungry fish. Wet fly fishing requires weighted flies that sink a little below the surface in imitation of other types of flies.
Sean has been in the Irish fly fishing team nine times. In 1992 he won the fly fishing championships against 2,300 other competitors. He can land a fly in a threefoot circle from 400 feet away. He's the Johnny Giles of fly fishing, parting with pearls of wisdom as he goes. "It's all about the casting. If you can cast properly, you're set." Tourist golfers scuttled by tensely, followed by beleaguered caddies weighed down with graphite shafts and specialist putters. Someone's mobile phone rang. I casted again.
Fly fishing is an accuracy sport, unlike other forms of fishing. Rather than dropping a speculative line, you wait to see where the fish surfaces, then try to land the fly a little upstream of that point. You use repeated casting to gain longer distances and land near that ripple on the far side of the river. With fly fishing the river is a target board. It's easier to catch a fish in a shaded area, however if you see a fish surfacing under a branch 100 yards away, the best can cast into that point to catch it.
After a while the surroundings and the swishing of the line become hypnotic. Like golf, the way you swing becomes its own end, a meditative pursuit of perfection distinct from the idea of catching something. Unlike golf, there's no better or best. It's all good. You'll catch the most fish in the evenings when the flies skate across the water and the fish swim up to eat them, but who cares about the one that got away? Unlike coarse fishing, there's little point in sitting glumly watching your line, waiting for a bit of luck. Fish surface the whole time. It's all about the casting.
Sean's taught a shoal of celebrity fishermen at the K Club. George Bush cancelled four hours of appointments to continue practising casting at the Liffey, while there's an irony in the number of professional golfers who fish to relax. Only last month Tiger Woods ("a real character") and Mark O'Mara had to be pulled away from the river at 11.30 p.m. after a long day practising their casting. Their arrival caused ripples of envy among club members, who an recounts; "real mega-bucks members they were coming up to me, asking me if I were asking Sean if he could get a picture or an autograph for them. A heron landed on the bank and stared intently at the shimmering water. Its clear-eyed concentration was absolute, its mind a study in calm intent. Surprising a heron at the river bank can give it a fatal heart attack. The bird stood motionless, ready to spear a fish in the brown waters below, and Sean stopped to watch it. "Still, that's the best fisherman of them all," he said. We casted again.
Green fees for 18 holes of golf at the K Club are £130; a three-hour fly-fishing lession is £30 (gillie fee not included). Tel: 01-6017300