Dapping – A Delightful Diversion

Dapping, a delightful diversion, a secret pleasure. It appeals to the eternal child in every fisherman, the one that will spend hours dangling a crab line off a Cornish harbour wall, or even longer messing around lifting stones in a Hebridean rockpool.

For the uninitiated, and I expect the majority of sassenach based anglers, I suppose I’d better give the dry technical explanation of what on earth I’m talking about.

Dapping is an art really only practised in the far north of Scotland and on the western loughs of Ireland.

Traditionally you need a long rod in the fourteen to seventeen foot range, to which you mount a fly reel loaded with nylon, to which you then attach a couple of yards of dapping floss. At the business end add another yard of nylon to the floss, to which you tie on a big bushy fly, or even better a couple of natural mayflies or daddy long legs. You’re set to go.

The only other thing you need is a bit of wind. When the breeze obliges, you trip and skate the fly on and through the waves, sweeping from left to right, stopping and dancing the fly on the spot as you go. There’s a natural balance between the wind, the weight of the floss, and the fly, which sets how far from the boat you are fishing.

There’s a Goldilocks scale of breeze, too little and the floss lies limp and useless next to the boat, too much and the the fly is sent careering upwards and away.

When the wind is high your landings may be rare, but you could still be rewarded with the sight of a fish lunging out of the side of a huge wave and onto your fly.

To me it may not be truly serious fly fishing, and perhaps the fish caught aren’t as meaningful as those caught on a fly that’s been cast, but it doesn’t half work – and my God it’s exciting!

What makes it exciting, I hear you ask. The answer is the way a fish will take the dap. We all know about the different ways in which a fish will rise to a fly, the sip off the top, the head and tail, the savage take. Dapping has all these, but the really exhilarating ones are when you see the fish arching downwards on the fly – and then there are the drownings, not of the angler I hasten to add, but of the fly.

Like a torturous cat pouncing on a mouse for pleasure, a big fish will sometimes turn and splash to assault the fly with its tail as if trying to drown it. If you are in luck, the fish will turn and, hopefully, take the swamped fly properly.

At this point the hook is not yet set, and if you are of a certain age and in Scotland (not I suggest if you are in Ireland!) you were always taught to recite “God save the Queen” before lifting the rod to see if the fish is hooked. I can assure you that the citing of the National Anthem has nothing to do with being a monarchist, but everything to do with timing.

As you lift, you’ll either feel the thrilling resistance of the fish as it plunges downwards, or a frustrating lightness as you pluck the fly skywards clear of the water. If it’s the latter you need to quickly dip your rod tip to land the fly back on the surface to tempt the fish’s return, as it often does.

It’s simple and it works. Not only does it catch more fish than traditional wet fly, but it also undoubtedly catches the bigger fish. It also moves a lot of fish, so it always adds an element of interest and an expectant frisson to the day.

There’s no better way to introduce a novice to fishing from a drifting boat, within a few minutes the new recruit will be fishing with a realistic chance of some action.

I think dapping’s true home is on the great western loughs of Ireland. It almost has its own subculture. Dapping frenzy hits its peak during the mayfly season, those few short weeks through May into early June. The killer method is to fish with two natural flies hooked through the back of the thorax. Even when reduced to a mangled mess in a big wave, they are still surprisingly, stunningly effective.

In times gone by, the children of Corrib’s Oughterard were given a week off school to catch and sell mayflies to the visiting fishermen. Even now, as you drive along Corrib’s early morning shore, you’ll find the kids selling their wares before they go off to school.

On my first visit, fresh from months of ruthless negotiations in the cut-throat automotive industry, I set off into the middle of town to buy my mayflies. Sure enough, lined up outside The Boat Inn were a gaggle of commercially naive nine-year-olds, each with a couple of ancient homemade wooden mayfly boxes. “How much?” I enquired, “A pound for a dozen” was the reply. Bringing my experience of bulk purchasing power to bear, I hit him with “How much if I buy three dozen?” The stony, expressionless response was “Three pounds.” And there the negotiations ended.

During the day you need to top up your fly stocks, so you will see grown men slowly pacing around island shores, shoulders hunched, hands clasped behind their back, staring at the stones and shallows, searching for the newly emerged mayfly dun.

Then there are the ones you catch from the boat with your child-sized tiny net in hand. You lunge for that elusive, always just out of reach fly, desperately turning the boat in ever tightening circles, and you still fail! As you sit there frustrated, you glance down at the oar next to you and there sits a stunning mayfly! You carefully pinch around the thorax and drop it into your box.

When it’s quiet, or horribly bright, catching mayfly becomes the main childishly addictive sport. Three old men chasing mayfly from a boat, surely that’s the long lost episode of Last of the Summer Wine?

The other spiritual home of dapping would be the sea trout lochs of the far north west of Scotland. Tragically, a home from which dapping and its prey have been unceremoniously evicted. For me, dapping for sea trout is the pinnacle of the art, with the most savage of heart-stopping takes. 

The greatest proponent I’ve come across was my sister. The Scourie Hotel fishing book would chronicle her unending stream of large sea trout, and even a couple of salmon, all taken on the dap, mostly off the drifts of Stack, More and Dionard.

Not content with this success, she then went and intruded into what I thought as my specialist domain, the hill lochs.

I put huge effort into this endeavour, tramping miles, covering ridiculous mileage, crawling round countless lochs on hands and knees, all in pursuit of that trophy trout. My sister would just rock up to a loch we knew held good fish, pick a high bank with the wind at her back, and flop down amongst the heather, before tripping and skating a dapping fly to yet another slightly annoying success.

I often have a dapping rod nestling at the front of the boat, but now I rarely use it; I think I’m just too addicted to casting a fly. In the old days a dapping drift would give my wrist a much needed break from the hours of wielding an eleven foot Hardy Perfection, but with the advent of today’s graphite wands, I no longer feel the need.

But I do have a cunning Baldrick inspired plan left to fulfil. 

It’s in pursuit of my endless quest to capture the trout that once upon a time would have been destined to end up in a glass case. To finally catch the one.

This most cunning of plans entails lugging the float tube that I bought many years ago and still haven’t used, up to some distant highland hill loch. I’m going to don those ridiculously large flippers, and serenely dap my way across the loch to entice the fish of my dreams – how can it fail?

The challenge appeals to me, as does the potential carnage of trying to a net a huge fish from a float tube, whilst handling a ridiculously long rod. Possibly another scene from my long lost episode of Last of the Summer Wine!