Volume Ii Part 2 (1/2)
A beginner may rest a.s.sured that the golden secret of success in trout-fis.h.i.+ng is to keep well out of the fishes' sight by availing himself of every natural cover, a tree-trunk, bush, &c., or by approaching the stream, if he is very much exposed, in a stooping position. He must, for the most part, learn, by observation, the many singular habits and characteristics of his quarry, and here it is that the old fisherman excels the tyro. The remarkable manner in which the fish's colours change with the nature of the stream in which it lives, is one of these curiosities of the trout. There is all the difference in the world between a fish taken from the chalky streams of Wilts and one that inhabits the dark peaty burns of Devon or South Wales, while both are inferior in beauty to the red-spotted l.u.s.ty fish of a Nottinghams.h.i.+re river. Internally they are of two types, one with red flaky flesh, like salmon, the other white; these variations, however, frequently run into each other. The practical fisherman only can appreciate the great diversity of activity which exists in fish of different sizes and streams, and probably in the same fish in the prime and end of the season. In one bickering rivulet the trout will all be vigorous and bold, leaping out of the water when hooked and dying hard, ”game to the back-bone,” in sporting phrase. In a sluggish brook the fish seem often to partic.i.p.ate in its idiosyncracy, the larger ones tamely surrendering after a few monotonous struggles, the little trout diving to the bottom, and, like tench, hiding their heads in the mud.
We have had to stir such fish up with the landing net before it was possible to do anything with them. Another curious fact is, that if a fish be taken out of a favourite hole, another will almost always be found to have replaced it the next day. Perhaps the most remarkable theory which has been advanced concerning the intelligence of trout is that of Sir H. Davy in ”Salmonia,” which he terms their ”local memory.”
A brief outline may furnish one more subject of observation to the philosophic angler. Sir H. Davy a.s.serts that if a trout be p.r.i.c.ked with a fly (say a blue upright), and then escape, he will never rise again in the same pool to that particular fly while the surrounding circ.u.mstances are the same. Drive him, however, down to another hole, or wait till a flood has changed the aspect of his familiar haunt, and he will take it as greedily as a fish that has never experienced the deceit of an artificial fly. The a.s.sociations of bank, stones, tree-trunks, &c., in his hole, act like visible mentors, and remind him, as the fly pa.s.ses overhead, that it was when surrounded by their a.s.sociations he was simple enough to rise to its fascinations. Solving such questions as these is one of the numerous secondary delights of fly-fis.h.i.+ng. Another speculation which may be pointed out to anglers of an inquiring turn of mind, is to demonstrate why sluggish, muddy streams invariably produce better fish than the sparkling Devon or Welsh brooks. Thus in the Beck, down which our ideal fisherman is wandering, the largest fish which has been taken of late years weighed three pounds and a half, while trout of a pound and a half in weight are by no means uncommon. Three-quarters of a pound is a fair size for the fish of mountainous streams, while the majority of their trout do not exceed half a pound. Doubtless, the greater abundance of worms and ground bait in a muddy brook contributes to the larger size of its fish, but it certainly is not the sole cause of their superiority.
The flies which the modern angler imitates in fur and feathers, belong mostly to the families which entomology knows under the names of _phrygancae_ and _ephemerae_. All anglers should know something of these curious tribes; and nowhere is a better account of them to be found than in that fascinating book, ”Salmonia.” The _phrygancae_ (the ”stone-flies” of the angler) have long antennae, with veined wings which fold over each other when closed. The eggs of the adult flies are laid on the leaves of willows or other trees which overhang the water. When they are hatched, the larvae fall into the stream, collect a panoply of gravel, bits of stick, sh.e.l.l-fish, &c., to surround them, and after feeding for a time on aquatic plants, rise to the surface, burst their skins, and appear as perfect flies. The _ephemerae_ (or ”May-flies”) were noticed so long ago as Aristotle's time, in connection with the brevity of their life. They may be known by carrying their wings perpendicularly on their backs, and by several filaments or long bristles protruding from their tails. Their aqueous existence, like the stone-flies', sometimes lasts for two or three years; but as flies their life is thought never to exceed a few days in length, often but a few hours. In fact their life is, to all intents and purposes, over when their eggs are laid, and this function takes place directly they emerge into the winged state. Besides these, however, there are mult.i.tudes of nondescript flies used by those anglers who commit themselves to the persuasive powers of the fis.h.i.+ng-tackle maker, and fill their fly-books with his gorgeously-coloured creations; but with the stone-flies, May-flies, and other simple flies previously enumerated, most real anglers are contented.
The greatest nuisance to the fisherman on the banks of the Beck are the hovering swarms of flies and gnats. Nature's profusion is almost inexhaustible in this division of her kingdom. In hot, sunny weather, they persecute the angler till he well-nigh gives up his sport, and betakes himself to moralize how his situation, lonely though it be, is no inapt type of a man's spiritual loneliness in the midst of that crowd of his fellows called Society,
”Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies.”
Yes, here is the whole winged legion avenging, as it were, the slight the angler puts upon them by his grotesque imitations, in number and description more fell than Walton ever imagined in the marvellous flies he directs his disciples to dub--”the Prime Dun, Huzzard, Death Drake, Yellow Miller, Light Blue, Blue Herl,” and all the rest! It would require a piscatorial entomologist to identify them; and when they buzz around their victims, how well can these enter into Dante's grim fancy of the wicked in h.e.l.l being exposed naked to the stings of wasps and flies! It is useful, however, to be thus reminded that even so innocent a sport as angling has its drawbacks. Perhaps such small annoyances should be received as part of the discipline of fis.h.i.+ng; winged blessings they then become, modes of teaching unpleasant, perchance, at the time, but none the less fraught with profit to the true angler, who is always more or less of a moralist.
It is time, though, to turn homewards. Our endeavour has been to depict some of the charms connected with angling, and to recommend it as a recreation specially adapted for the feverish agitation of modern social life. Over and above its immediate end, it is a school for moral virtues and the observing faculties which cannot be too highly honoured. The fisherman, like the poet, must be born; but he owes his success, even more than the poet, to perseverance and observation.
However long the sport may be intermitted, when a man has once tasted its joys, and imbibed a thorough love of angling, he resumes it with eagerness on the first favourable opportunity. Nay, the taste is one which deserts not its votary in death. Few angling reminiscences are more touching than the scene which his daughter has described so pathetically, when poor Christopher North lay on his death-bed. In the intervals of his malady, he had his fly-books brought to him, and derived a melancholy pleasure from taking out his old favourites one by one, and lovingly caressing their bright plumage and carefully tied wings, as they were spread out on the sheets. It must be confessed that angling is justly open to the charge of being a solitary, taciturn, meditative sport, which shuts a man out from his kind. We are cynical enough to fancy that if he be shut up with Nature instead, he will suffer no great harm. Indeed, to admit the impeachment is only tantamount to owning that fis.h.i.+ng, after all, is but of this world, and necessarily an imperfect energy. Herein lies its chief excellence in the eyes of hard workers; so there is no need elaborately to refute the objection. Let a man try it, and _solvitur ambulando_. So good is it that the aforesaid Dame Juliana indulges in no exaggeration when she says--pardon once more an angler's loquacity--”Ye shall not use this forsayde crafty dysporte for no covetysenes to th'encreasynge and sparynge of your money oonly, but pryncypally for your solace, and to cause the helthe of your body and especyally of your soule.” Though it be to our own loss, we would nevertheless invite every reflective mind to the Beck, to derive inspiration and satisfaction from communion with the simple joys of nature. May skill and perseverance there bring the angler the usual happy results, and--blessing of blessings where fis.h.i.+ng is concerned--may his shadow never be less!
M. G. W.
AN APOLOGY FOR FIs.h.i.+NG
Ever since the time when the famous definition of angling as a combination of ”a stick and a string with a worm at one end and a fool at the other” was first given to the world, it has been the custom of a large section of society to disparage the particular sport, which has for its object the catching of fish, very much more than any of the other developments which the killing propensity takes among sportsmen.
When a man mentions that he is going off on a fis.h.i.+ng expedition, the announcement is not met with the respect which is accorded to him who proclaims the fact that he has it in contemplation to spend a day in beating the turnips for partridges, or riding across country in pursuit of a fox. People have a provoking way of smiling when fis.h.i.+ng is spoken of; and when they meet you, armed with the necessary paraphernalia which makes up an angler's equipment, their countenances directly a.s.sume either an amused expression, indicating a state of feeling not very remote from absolute pity, or a look of delicate forbearance which is almost the more difficult to bear of the two.
There surely never was any pastime regarded with so little respect as this of fis.h.i.+ng. But one good quality (that of patience) is ever identified with it; and even that, when connected with this particular sport, is sometimes spoken of in a disparaging tone; so that it is by no means an uncommon thing to hear a man brag of his deficiency in this respect, saying, ”I've not got patience enough for that sort of thing”; as if the fact redounded enormously to his credit.
”Going fis.h.i.+ng?” says your hearty friend as he meets you in the hall, equipped for the sport, ”You must be hard up for some amus.e.m.e.nt--for of all the deadly-lively proceedings----”
”Going fis.h.i.+ng?” says another. ”Well, it's certainly too early in the season for anything else in the way of sport; but still----”
The very partisans of fis.h.i.+ng, too, help, in a certain way, to bring it into discredit. What a literature it has! The literature of all sport is apt to be trying; but this of fis.h.i.+ng is surely especially disastrous. The facetious element always figures here in such grievous force. Nor only that. Dreadful conventional forms of expression, phrases in inverted commas, involved ways of expressing a simple thing, abound--so that one meets continually with such expressions as the ”gentle craft” and the ”finny tribe.” The sportsman who devotes himself to fis.h.i.+ng is called a ”member of the piscatorial fraternity,” or a ”brother of the angle,” or a ”disciple of 'old Izaak,'” or by some other roundabout and exasperating designation. Why it is that people who write on this particular subject cannot express their ideas in plain English and avoid such forms of speech as the above it is difficult to say; but so it is.
These stereotyped phrases are to be ranked among the conventionalities of ”piscatorial” literature. Another of these is a perpetual insistence upon the contemplativeness of character which this particular sport tends to develop in those who engage in it. The fisherman is supposed to be left by his pursuit at leisure to ponder and reflect on all sorts of abstract questions wholly unconnected with what he is about. Fis.h.i.+ng is called the contemplative man's recreation, and seems, indeed, to be looked upon by a very large section of society as a sort of excuse for mooning. For my poor part I confess that it seems to me that the fact is far otherwise. If there is one thing more than another necessary to fis.h.i.+ng, it is that the man who engages in it should have all his wits about him, and be thoroughly absorbed in what he is doing. A fisherman who took to being contemplative would, I fancy, stand but a poor chance of catching anything, and would certainly find himself involved in many difficulties connected with the management of his rod and line. While he was contemplating, his fly would speedily get itself fastened to some neighbouring tree, or fixed, may be, into some unattainable part of the contemplative one's own costume; while, if the line were suffered to remain in the water, the flies would certainly be carried by the current into a bed of weeds, or get twisted round a stone at the bottom of the river.
The study of the beauties of nature, again, is an occupation which angling is supposed to lend itself to. Yet even this, as it seems to me, is hardly likely to be carried very far by the really keen sportsman. When walking briskly across the hill or on the moorland on his way to the river he may, indeed, take note of the picturesque outlines of a distant mountain or the rich colouring of a patch of heather and fern, just as he is conscious of the freshness of the air or the warmth of the sun; but he will hardly, when there is any fis.h.i.+ng to do, be likely to dwell on any of these delights, however much he may revel in them at other times. When once he gets really to work he is entirely absorbed in the sport, and will think of little or nothing else till the time comes for putting up his traps and going home. And it is just this which gives such value to every form of sport, and makes them so essential an element in the troublous life of the nineteenth century. They absorb the thoughts and confine the attention, for the time being, to what--in a comparative sense--may fairly be called trifles. You cannot occupy yourself with any deep abstract speculation when it is a question of catching a trout or bringing down a partridge.
The fact is that a prodigious amount of ignorance prevails in connection with the sport of angling. People cla.s.s all forms and modes of fis.h.i.+ng together, and include them every one under the definition given at the commencement of this paper. The prevalent idea in the minds of most people is that fis.h.i.+ng consists of sitting in an arm-chair in a punt watching a float bobbing up and down in the water, and partaking at intervals of very flat beer served out of a stone jar by the attendant boatman. Now this--the very lowest form of fis.h.i.+ng that exists, and, unhappily, the form under which it is the oftenest and most conspicuously presented to view--so little really represents this particular sport, that I think I am hardly speaking too strongly in saying that no real fisherman would consent to hear such a proceeding cla.s.sed under the head of fis.h.i.+ng at all. When a sportsman speaks of fis.h.i.+ng, he is thinking either of fly-fis.h.i.+ng or spinning, and most generally of the former.
For fly-fis.h.i.+ng, rightly engaged in, it is not too much to claim a very high position indeed among the sports of the field; many of the qualities on which it makes demands being the same which are required for the other forms of sport, while it also implies some which are not called for in those others, except, perhaps, in that of deer-stalking.
To be a perfectly good fisherman a man requires strength, agility, spirit, quickness and accuracy of eye, a neat hand, a nimble foot, considerable ability as a tactician, presence of mind, and coolness, coupled with the power of keeping his wits always about him. Nor is this all; a fisherman must have, besides, certain moral qualifications of an exalted nature. He must be possessed of patience, perseverance, and good temper; and, in addition to all this, he must thoroughly well understand his business in all its more intricate technicalities. Let us proceed to consider some of the points here insisted on a little in detail.
In fis.h.i.+ng for trout with an artificial fly--a branch of sport to which, with the reader's permission, we will in this 'Apology' entirely confine ourselves--it is necessary, as it is in a great many other things, that a man should thoroughly understand what it is that he is doing--how, in short, the case stands. It stands thus. He sees before him a sheet of water, containing, as he has reason to suppose, a certain number of fish, some comparatively stationary, some darting hither and thither, all very much alive, very watchful, constantly on the look-out both for what may bring them advantage in the shape of food of divers kinds, or for what may give them cause for apprehension, in the shape of fish larger than themselves and of a predatory nature, herons, otters and, above all, men. To these creatures, vigilant, timorous, suspicious, it is the angler's business to present an object which they are to suppose is an insect which has dropped into the water and is floating down with the stream more or less near to the surface.
If the fisherman succeeds in conveying this impression; if his counterfeit insect is a successful piece of imitation; if the fly which it imitates is one for which the fish has a liking, and if the fish itself happens at the particular moment to be ”on the feed”--if all these conditions are fulfilled, then it will happen that the trout will rise swiftly through the water, will seize the bait, and the fisherman's object will be gained. This desirable consummation is, however, harder of attainment than might be supposed.
Very much is implied in the bringing that transaction which has just been described to a successful issue. If the particular portion of the stream into which you throw your fly is not the spot where a trout lies, if your fly is not well imitated from nature, or does not represent the kind of insect which the fish affects, if the hook is too little concealed, or the line too coa.r.s.e, above all, if you yourself are conspicuous, standing on the bank, your chance of inducing a trout to rise is slender in the extreme. The fact is that the fisherman ought to look at this transaction from the trout's point of view and not from his own. Of the fis.h.i.+ng-rod and line, and of the person who manipulates them, the trout must be kept wholly unconscious. This sounds a simple statement enough; but it does, in fact, imply a great deal. In the first place it implies that both the water and the atmosphere shall be in a condition favourable to the mystifying and confusing of the fish which we are bent on capturing. The atmosphere should not be bright and clear to an excess, nor, by rights, the water either. The water, again, should be, to a certain extent, troubled and agitated. This is effected in a running stream by the current; but in lakes and calm, deep rivers, especially in the former, it can only be brought about by a certain amount of wind, and for lake-fis.h.i.+ng it may therefore be confidently a.s.serted that a slight breeze is absolutely indispensable. A line falling on perfectly smooth water, however fine and delicate such line may be, or however skilfully cast, will make a certain amount of splash, which would awaken the misgivings of any fish which happened to be near.
One of the greatest of all the difficulties connected with the catching of fish is that experienced by the sportsman in keeping himself out of sight. At the first glimpse of a man moving by the side of the river, every fish at once darts away as fast as his fins can carry him. To this a.s.sertion there are few people who would venture to demur; and yet how common it is to see a fisherman placed on a high bank, with his whole figure in strong relief against the sky, and moving down the water, with all the fish in the river facing him as they lie with their heads up-stream. It can only be by some strange accident that he will take a fish under such circ.u.mstances.
Almost the first thing which the fisherman should think of in setting about his business is to conceal himself as much as possible. There are several ways in which this may be effected. In the first place, if the wind will at all allow of it, he should always fish up-stream, as he will then have the backs of the fish turned towards him instead of their faces. Fis.h.i.+ng up-stream is more difficult and more laborious than fis.h.i.+ng down, the current bringing the line back almost as fast as it is thrown in, so that the labour of casting it is almost incessant.
Still, for the reason given above, it is better. It is good again for the angler to get behind some big rock or bush large enough to hide the greater part of his figure, remaining there, with as little motion as possible, till he has thoroughly fished every speck of water within his reach. Or if there are no bushes or rocks to be had for purposes of ambush, it behoves him to crawl along on the lowest part of the bank on his knees, aiding himself with the hand which is not engaged with the fis.h.i.+ng-rod, and sometimes even to wriggle himself along after the manner of a snake--anything to diminish his conspicuousness.