BERKELEY

GENERAL
LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA

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p<

WINGS AND HACKLE.

To

J. E. SMART
My CEYLON FRIEND

AND

ANGLING TUTOR,

AND TO
MY FELLOW MEMBERS

OF
THE STOCK EXCHANGE.

These are the days that must happen to you,
You shall not heap up what is call'd riches.

Walt Whitman

WINGS and HACKLE

A POT-POURRI
OF

/ FLY FISHING

FOR

TROUT & GRAYLING

AND OF

NOTES ON BIRD LIFE,

CHIEFLY IN

HAMPSHIRE, DEVON AND DERBYSHIRE.

BY
RAYMOND HILL,

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
E. B. HORWOOD & CO. LTD.,

THE CREECHURCH PRESS,
87, LEADENHALL STREET, LONDON, E.G.

1912

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED,

CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFACE ... i

HINTS FOR BEGINNERS ... 5

CASTING — AS A BEGINNER 12

DOWN STREAM — UP STREAM — DRY FLY 21

APPROACHING THE WATER 29

THE DIPPER ... ... ... ... ... ... 39

A WOODLAND MURDER 46

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES ... ... ... 52

THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL : A RED LETTER

EVENING 64

BLANK DAYS 76

FLOOD LANDS AND THE WATER SUPPLY 88

WHERE TO FISH 98

WADING: A SANCTUARY FOR TROUT 112

THE NIGHTJAR : OR FERN-OWL 127

THE EAGLE OWL : A GLIMPSE OF CEYLON ... 136

HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS ... ... ... 143

THE MAYFLY 151

M838979

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE : THE FIRST HALF

OF JUNE 162

AUGUST ON THE ITCHEN 173

THE ANGLER'S BIRDS 186

RIVERS ; AND HOTEL FISHINGS 198

CHOICE OF FLY 205

BIRDS OF THE ESTUARY 214

THE GRAYLING 220

FLY FISHING FOR GRAYLING 227

LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING 236

THE CURVED MEADOW : A PARTING REMINISCENCE 249

POSTSCRIPT 269

INDEX 273

PREFACE.

Sed nunc dilatis averte negotia curis

Et gratam requiem dona tibi quando licebit

Per totam cessare diem. Non feneris ulla

Mentio.

JUVENAL.

Put off all cares, lay business aside, and
allow yourself pleasing respite since you may
be idle all day long. Let there be no talk of
'money out at interest.

PROBABLY the last touches given to the
average book are the few pages which form
the introduction. This is so in the present
instance. And an additional fact may be added :
that no ' circle of friends * have ' urged me to
publish ' these scattered reminiscences of out-
door scenes. Indeed my few friends — whom I
have not consulted at all — would certainly have
urged me in an opposite direction. Perhaps
this is the only originality connected with the
publication.

So far as I have seen, the man born and
brought up in the country in England is not the
one whose love of outdoor life and of nature in
her more natural state becomes the chiefest
pleasure of his middle age existence. Too many
country born men thirst for the waters of
Babylon in lieu of those of Derbyshire or
Dartmoor and occasionally become so deeply
baptised in the business cares or joys of
Walbrook or Conduit Street that they quite
forget their old home and its humble and

2 PREFACE.

innocent pleasures. It is often to the wearied
City man that the river calls most audibly. If
once the spirit of the stream can gain his ear
for a quiet hour in Spring or early Summer she
will whisper a tale of future delights which can
soothe the troubles of a twelvemonth. She can
tell him more of ease and contentment in a few
flashing moments as be lays his head back
among the young bracken and closes his eyes
than the wealth of the Stock Exchange can ever
promise or perform in a life time. The tinkling
of even the tiniest stream strikes a responsive
chord the harmony of which sets a thousand
pleasant memories vibrating, which displace for
the time being all harassing thoughts and
worrying topics. To the barrister talking in
carbonised courts, to the stock dealer yelling in
the heated House or to the ordinary business
clerk jaded by eleven months of long hours,
long wrangles with his fellows or still longer
wrestling with recalcitrant columns of figures, a
holiday spent in fishing comes as a holy
pleasure. If he does not feel this then he has
not been worked to within a dangerous limit of
breaking point.

That awful law in London which makes life
so galling is absent from angling. Thank
heaven, on the river bank Competition is
unknown. One has heard of a * fishing com-
petition ' but like a nightmare it need not be
referred to. The real charm, the real rest cure
of fishing lies in its comparative solitariness.
To be able to say I have not talked for six

PREFACE. 3

hours, nor fingered money, nor caught trains,
nor bored any of my fellows, nor lied, nor
sinned, nor betted, nor breathed used up air,
forms at least a comfortable confession, which,
when repeated day after day for some weeks
cannot but restore health and nerves to a
normal condition.

Then as to age. ' Staleness ' in fishing — as
understood by a boxer — is so slow a process that
the angler hardly feels it. I met a man at the
" Isaac Walton " who was spinning a minnow
at the age of 86 and who told me he had fished
the Dove for seventy years. A young and active
man can make fly fishing quite a strenuous
sport, walk eight miles in heavyish kit, crouch,
stoop and crawl until he tires himself out
completely even before he faces the long tramp
home. A middle-aged man can laze and smoke
half the day and yet do> well in the basket
filling line. Or an old man can take the air
by the river-side and still enjoy himself with
very little exertion. To leave a stool or an
easy chair in an office after a year's sedentary
work and then rush off to Switzerland and tramp
for ten hours a day during a three weeks
holiday is a poor way — physically, of restoring
tone, and in a man past forty it probably
does his heart no good, although it will harden
his calves.

Like many other City men I have had to
take my chance on open or club water. No
solitudes of Ducal stream stocked with unpricked
three pounders have "ever floated a fly of mine,

4 PREFACE.

so that anything in the form of a red letter
day here recorded can be easily rivalled by
others after a few years' practice and experience
who are similarly reduced to fish in stretches of
Hotel or other so called Preserved rivers where
the fool at one end of the line is certainly
pitting himself against a sharp eye and a
slippery skin at the other. And finally if I
can interest any reader in just that outside
fringe of natural history with which I am
acquainted, and induce him to derive pleasure
from the same source, and regard with indul-
gence all references to trivial experiences with
birds and flies — with wings and hackle — I shall
be glad to have recorded them.

HINTS FOR BEGINNERS.

HINTS FOR BEGINNERS.

THE ROD — THE LINE— THE CAST — THE FLY-
THE HOOK — THE BARB.

r | ^ HE legal day on which Trout Fishing
J^ begins in South Devon is 2nd February,
and it therefore need hardly be said that,
given suitable weather, this is the easiest as well
as the earliest time a beginner can choose to
make his first acquaintance with the fish which
is perhaps destined to add a charm to his life
for another forty or fifty years. Often and
often after a mild winter trout are in actually
better condition in an open and sunny week of
February than they are in the harsh and windy
weather of a month later.

Before attempting to describe trout fishing
from the opening of the season let me try and
briefly give the process in the simplest language
from the beginner's standpoint. Every angler
can skip the following pages, leaving them to
the man who frankly owns he does not know
a trout when he sees one and who has never
affixed a r£el to a rod nor ti'ed a knot in
anything but a shoelace or a necktie.

6 HINTS FOR BEGINNERS.

For initial outfit regard forty or fifty shillings
as necessary, sixteen of which can be expended
upon a neat greenheart rod of 9 feet 6 inches
or ten feet — avoid anything an inch longer —
of three joints with a spare top the pair of
which fit into a hollow bamboo case. This
latter is fitted at the lower end to receive the
screw of a collapsible landing net which can be
adjusted on trial at the time of purchase. Let
the rod err on the side of lightness and stiffness
and so save an aching wrist and a wobbly
unmanageable motion. It should have fixed
upright rings through which a line runs easily
and without kinking. See that the butt of the
rod contains a threaded hole for receiving the
screw of a spike and that this spike is contained
in the jean case — in fact see that it fits. To
use a rod without being able to spike it into
the grass usually means that you or a friendly
companion or cow will tread upon the middle
joint as it lies in the meadow while you are
looking for a fly or the pair of scissors you have
dropped.

A reel will cost seven to ten shillings; and
the centre of it instead of consisting of a single
bar of a quarter-inch* diameter (off which a line
will never run smoothly or easily) should be
flanged by five or six bars forming a drum
with a diameter of ij to 2 inches. This
advantage is apparent both for ready winding
and for keeping the line well aired. Reels of
the plain centre bar variety are usually
' advised ' to beginners by shopmen who find

HINTS FOR BEGINNERS. 7

that every angler rejects them even at their
reduced sale price.

For the line pay another nine shillings, thirty
yards, tapered at each end so as to admit of its
reversal upon the reel at the end of the season,
or before that in the event of a serious break.
For wet fly fishing a level line is good enough
but as with care the life of a good line is five
seasons whereas the rod may be supplanted after
two by an expensive split cane, it is just as well
to get the tapered line at once, although the
charm is chiefly appreciable in dry fly fishing.
By getting an Olinea line something as near to
present day perfection can be obtained provided
it is aired round a chair back after a day's use
and rubbed with vaseliny fingers the next
morning while rewinding it on to the reel.

Before speaking of the * cast ' as the action
of throwing the fly, let us consider it as that
six or nine foot length of gut which is attached
to the line. Some anglers make their own
casts : that is they buy hanks of gut of different
thicknesses and knot them together. It is
probable that at first the most convenient plan
is to buy the casts ready made. Later on in
one's angling career the making up of casts
becomes a leisurely and pleasant mid-day
occupation when one is nursing oneself for a
strenuous evening's fishing. How well I can
recall the very primitive inn where I first
enjoyed a day's gut soaking and cast making.

For whatever style of fishing is adopted a
tapered cast from stout to fine gut is decidedly

8 HINTS FOR BEGINNERS.

the most handy and workable. It may safely
be said that little is lost by having the upper
strands of gut fairly thick. It assists accurate
throwing and minimises tangling. It lasts
double as long; and moreover should a break
occur this usually means only the two finer
strands leaving six feet of the original to carry
on with. For upstream fishing with a wet fly
it is as well to affix a ' dropper ' which is put
on some two or three feet from the end of the
cast. An ordinary gut-tied fly can be used for
this purpose and looped on just above a knot
so as to stand out some three inches at right
angles to the cast. For tail fly eyed hooks
should be used as they alone will stand the
constant flicking to which they are subjected.

Without using clear illustrations and far
clearer language than I am master of it is well
nigh useless to touch upon the matter of knots.
A visit to an angling friend will effect more
than any explanation can do, and if the
various knots are first tied in stout string
thfough a loop made out of a hairpin their
power of resistance and their general efficiency
are far more easily seen and understood than
if tied in fine gut through the tiny eye of a
hook. Some men are born with a natural
aptitude for knots. Besides being able to tie
them by feel — and consequently in the dusk — they
are able to invent knots of their own. Others
are either clumsy or resent the trouble involved
and will even have entire casts made up by
tackle makers before starting off on an angling

HINTS. FOR BEGINNERS. 9

holiday. All I can say is that if any man
loses as many fish as I have through hasty or
bad principled knots he has my sympathy. To
tie neat knots with the ends closely snipped
off so that the whole cast runs through the palm
of the hand without catching in each bit of
rough skin constitutes a charm which always
stands one in good stead. Even with fish rising
around one and with only half-an-hour between
you and the last light it is seldom wise to
hurry in the making of any knot.

Fliies are not easy to thread in the dusk and
consequently it is as well to have fully half-a-
dozen ready done and kept for emergencies
either in a damp box or far better in the
damped underflap of a Burberry hat. In case of
necessity for replacing a lost or unsuccessful fly
it is easy enough to tie an ordinary double
water knot in the dark. And I would like just
here to refer to that very common accident of
finding the barb of the hook gone — an accident
probably caused by the fly touching or catching
in a grass stalk while extended over the meadow
behind one. For a long time I supposed it
invariably broke off in a river stake or in the
jaw of a lost fish, but now am convinced to the
contrary and believe that twice out of three
times the barb has gone a cast or two before
the one which succeeded in rising and hooking —
for one struggling moment — that fish which you
are sure during the lonely walk home was by
far the heaviest you touched all day. So
important is this barb business that a small

10 HINTS FOR BEGINNERS.

magnifying glass should be carried and the hook
examined through it, when a touch with a fine
file can often be given with advantage. When-
ever a fish is lost and the fly comes back
apparently free the thought of ' barb gone '
should recur, even with grayling whose mouths
far more often give way to the hook than the
barb does to them.

Just as spare flies tied on to gut should be
carried already damped, so in summertime should
an entire spare cast be made ready with a single
fly — probably a sedge — attached to it and be
coiled either round one's hat (in wet weather)
or kept in an envelope between damp blotting
paper. Then if a hopeless break occurs after
sundown it proves a godsend to the distracted
fisherman and relieves him of that arm-straining
action of holding up a cast to the sky and
making entanglement worse entangled. He can
cut the whole cast adrift and put on the new
one within a few minutes. This spare cast need
not be more than seven feet and should be
devoid of any * dropper ' for the obvious reason
that in the dusk when throwing for rises the
tail fly is all one wants to watch, while if a good
fish takes it and careers as near to bushes and
weeds as he can there is no dropper to assist
him in hitching up. After a few seasons'
experience it will be found that the loss of an
entire cast is a rare occurrence. You may use
one through a Mayfly week without losing
anything beyond the point or last strand of fine
gut. Sometimes however in windy weather

HINTS FOR BEGINNERS. 11

accidents are inevitable, the whole cast is wafted
right across a blackberry bush and the line
itself has to be cut at the risk too of falling
into the river.

Casts if made up oneself from lengths of
plain white gut should of course be stained.
Inky-blue for chalk streams or perhaps green
when weeds are prevalent; while strong tea
affords an excellent protective colouring for
gravelly bottoms. Judsons' dyes are harmless
enough. Even green baize soaked in a teacup
will be found useful if nothing else is available.

12 CASTING— AS A BEGINNER.

CASTING-AS A BEGINNER.

TROUBLES OF A DRY FLY CAST— THE PERVERSITY
OF TROUT — Two EVENINGS* EXPERIENCE.

THE actual muscular or mechanical action
of casting a line with a fly attached
admits of no explanation by mere words.
As Mr. Herbert Spencer occupied several pages
before acquiring the polysyllabic satisfaction of
his definition of * Life,' humbler individuals
prone to the use of a single word when a cast
goes wrong, may be forgiven if they avoid
defining the process. It can only be acquired
by practice and vastly improved by watching a
good man at work while really fishing. To
practice with a line upon a lawn is of course
a good plan at first, keeping the elbow fairly
close to one's side and using the forearm and
wrist until by the knack of a slight but almost
imperceptible jerk and pause the line flies
forward and backward in the air without falling
down at one's feet or becoming entangled with
the top joint.

By the river's bank it all becomes more
difficult and there is no denying that the per-

CASTING— AS A BEGINNER. 13

petual hitching up in grass, branches, or brambles
forms a somewhat wearying drudgery which
every beginner has to go through and finally
conquer. How well we all know that distracting
moment when, after getting out the exact length
of line required to reach the rising fish, the fly
is caught by the neck of a malignant buttercup
far back in the meadow behind, or perhaps
worse, by a small bramble which is absolutely
hanging over the fish. How often in such
positions have we crept back and carefully
decapitated with scissors every flower or leaf
which seemed likely to prove an obstacle, or
crawled forward venire a terre and chin in
nettles with creel and landing net swinging
round under our knees, to free the fly from its
place over a trout's nose. Talk of an angler's
patience, why the exasperation of such moments
is without equal. If a cow treads on your top
joint you have something to address your
remarks to and you can blame your own care-
lessness for leaving your rod on the grass.
Or if a bat takes your best fly at a time when
you can scarcely see to thread on another.
But the puff of wind which springs up actually
after your correct cast is made and wafts your
fly into the aforesaid bramble does not stop to
listen. It has moved upstream with the fish
and leaves you with your perspiration and
expletives.

But what is the bright side of the picture
and how well is the game worth the candle if
the whole scheme works successfully and the fly

14 CASTING— AS A BEGINNER.

is taken ? How disguise is then thrown to the
winds as with line running off the reel one is
free at length to stand up and play the man
instead of the snake, as well as — perhaps — play
the fish right into the landing net?

One of the most effective casts to use,
especially for a trout rising under one's own
bank, is where the rod is held almost parallel
to the water and the fly is thrown as it were
slightly upward instead of downward and is
consequently able to pitch so softly that the
odds are much in favour of its being mistaken
for a real insect. In water but little fished — I
have had no experience — a trout even if he
pays no attention to the fly may at any rate not
be seriously alarmed, and he may possibly be
tempted with another pattern ; but very different
is his behaviour on club or open waters. Far
too often the very sight of an artificial fly
makes him shun all further thought of dessert.
He slips away and sulks in a secluded drawing
room half a fathom down among the weeds.
In such a case it becomes obvious folly to
continue casting at the spot. Nothing but a
long rest is likely to cure him. Note the spot
for another hour — or another day — and move
along.

On certain warm evenings trout appear to
be possessed of almost unnatural cunning,
rendering it doubtful whether it is any use
continuing to cast for them. I would like to
describe two evenings spent by a large but
still weir pool on the 2Qth and 3Oth of June.

CASTING— AS A BEGINNER. 15

The river was low and practically no water ran
over the fir trunks which, laid side by side,
formed the slope over which the river when full
rushed with plenty of red or white foam. The
pool itself was just about forty yards square
so that every bit of it could be reached from
one side or the other. Under the escarpment
of fir poles the quiet bottle-green water was
perhaps five or six feet deep shelving gradually
away to a shallowing and shingly beach. As
this beach was due west of the weir, anyone
fishing in the evening enjoyed or rather endured
the disadvantage of having the setting sun or
its warm afterglow behind him, and I could
not but remember how seldom any good fish
were taken by anglers in that position. The
day had been one of cloudless sunshine, a
faint southerly wind and the air full of insect
life.

After waiting until eight o'clock to see the
arrival of the inevitable angler at this enviable
period of the day and finding to my immense
relief that he had been attracted elsewhere, I
determined to risk a slippery fall and to get
on to the sloping weir itself, take position on
the slimy larch trunks, and await the evening
rise. With no one watching it was not
difficult and I managed to find an insecure seat-
hold behind a clump of dock leaves and jetsam
in which a dipper's brood had been hatched.
Seated there with a background of the sloping
weir and dark trees I could reach fully half,
and that the deeper half, of the pool into which

16 CASTING—AS A BEGINNER.

little runnels of gurgling water found their way
under the fir logs. Choosing a hackled blue
upright the shape, size, and side-bend of which
satisfied in every way I watched the water
intently.

At about 8.15 the rise began, one — two — three
fish, nice quiet pooly rises which promised all
things. Selecting a fish which had three times
taken down something from the same square
inch of water I made a cast and never did a
fly pitch more softly in the intended spot. It
was untouched and it floated slowly down over
the place where fish number two had just
risen. This process was repeated quietly, and
all the time both these and a full dozen of
other fish were rising in the same determined
manner, yet not one of them would even see
the blue upright. I changed the fly to winged
olive, smaller pattern, and again made some
thirty casts. I changed again : without avail.
The last train went by in the distance (8.45)
and still not a touch. Then without rhyme or
reason I was taken ; a severe prick, tug — and
gone. After that the rise continued for another
twenty minutes and yet not a touch. I tell
you it was maddening. No jumping out of
water or bulging but a steady suck down each
moment by good fish who seemed to have lost
their heads with gnawing hunger. It was like
being the victim of a nightmare.

Soon after nine the fish rose less; but still
they continued at intervals — real lumpers for
that water— literally asking to be hooked— and

CASTING— AS A BEGINNER. 17

yet not a touch of any fly I offered them !
With back half paralysed by casting in this
uncomfortable position and with grasp well nigh
gone, I staggered up, got back to the bank and
again tried in the growing darkness to secure
one — only one to take home. But no, not even
a sedge or a governor would they look at, so
with angry heart, empty creel and damp scant
I tramped the three weary miles home never
to fish again.

* * * * *

Well, as we know, time heals all that, and
the next day at teatime I was at the village inn
half-a-mile from the aforesaid weir pool, putting
together the maligned rod and the execrated
line and affixing thereto the same accursed blue
upright which had done such execution in dis-
tracting trout the evening before. Tea,
Devonshire cream and a new mixture of
tobacco had somehow combined to make the
sight of the river palatable, and laughing at
my feat of the previous evening I was even
able to bear the sight of the green water
viewed from the bridge parapet upon which on
such a night as this promised to be, had the
vicar of that old-world parish laid out exactly
a year before glistening in the early June moon-
light four trout each one over the full pound
caught — with two others of smaller size — while
sauntering hatless up the meadow below the
weir, clad in dinner suit and evening shoes.
His plan was to throw a dry fly left-handed
over a low fringe of nasty bushes which nearly

18 CASTING— AS A BEGINNER.

every other angler passed by with a reminis-
cence of flies and entire casts caught up on
horrible spiky branches overhanging the deeper
water.

I stayed by the bridge for a long time
thinking of the fish that had been lost under
the red roots of those bushes, waiting both for
the sun to set behind the high ground to the
westward, and also to see if the last train
brought any other angler. A friend came who
had formed one in a small fisherman's knot at
the Club that morning when I had described
my catalogue of failure to which they listened
with unappreciated attention. He was going
a mile up the water, not even passing the weir
pool, so that he would not interfere with me
or my plans. At a little before 8 I decided
after much vacillation to again climb on to the
weir and this time to try the still stretch above
it. There is always something very comfort-
able in finding oneself able to work from a
lower level than the water and before long a
promising fish rose close under the red cliff.

Owing to trailing ivy and upstanding fox-
gloves leaving as little space as they could
through which to make a cast, it became a
matter of creaking and crawling on a slimy
edge board to get into a possible position, but
the end rewarded the means for he took the
blue upright without demur, behaved most
sportingly, and was eventually netted after a
final splash on the surface — a three-quarter
pounder. Apparently this disturbed all others,

CASTING— AS A BEGINNER. 19

for not another rise took place even under the
overhanging bushes where the natives of the
deep pool might know themselves to be safe
from feathered steel. So much so that I began
to look below me at the weir pool which was
so alive with rings the previous evening. There
the fish began just as they had before, two
especially rising in the same positions.

Slipping down to my old place it took but
little time to make a cast for the first and as
though by magic this was taken at once by
something heavy. He hooked himself almost
as he plunged down and kindly made away to
the shallow water instead of collecting his
thoughts and running under the fir poles with
the line or the cast round an occasional rusty
nail. Backwards and forwards he went boring
down to the bottom, feeling on the long line
as though he must be a two pound peal.
After exhausting himself nobly among the
stones he came lamblike to the net and proved
my best of the month (i Ib. 3 oz.) This was
•evidently my No. i of the yestereve. Before
completing his laying out in a wrapping of
dockleaf, No. 2 was more than ready, swallowed
the same fly as though it were a jujube — far
down its gullet as it proved — and after a
vicious kicking on the top of the water where
it was held hard joined its companion in the
creel.

During the ensuing half-hour nine or ten
trout took that fly, mostly between 8 and 14
ounces, and of these all but two were landed,

20 CASTING— AS A BEGINNER.

one escaping after a quivering jump and the
other breaking me, fortunately only the gut
point, under the fir logs. After that I tied on
the first fly that came to hand and it received
due attention. Whether, mistaking my sex,
Notumque furens quid femina possit, they feared
she would come the next day and dynamite the
pool, as Cingalese blasters do in Ceylon, can
never be known, but anyhow they made
ravenous amends. When reaching home I had
nine fish the best seven of which weighed 5 lbs»
9 oz., by far my best basket for the season on
that river. Latitude, longitude, temperature,
season, time, wind, cast, fly, identity and
position of angler, state of water in colour and
volume, all were precisely similar on these two
evenings, yet the results were accurately as
described.

DOWN STREAM— UP STREAM— DRY FLY. 21

'

DOWN STREAM-UP STREAM-
DRY FLY.

LET us suppose the time is Easter, which
embraces the entire month of April. It
is not too late for downstream fishing,
land should you not as yet have learnt to
throw a fly upstream well, it may be your only
alternative, particularly if the water be rather
full and coloured. Even for downstream fishing
it is best to use a tapered cast as far less likely
to tangle, while the old-fashioned flies tied on
gut will save you trouble and perhaps be more
effective. To give yourself every encouragement
fish as far as you can with the wind behind
you, so that the least effort is necessary for
switching the flies on to the water. You have
put on say a red-upright tail fly and an iron-
blue as a dropper, both plain hackle. Cast
them well out at right angles to the bank or
slightly down stream and allow the current to
carry them round in a semi-circle until they
come almost to rest under your own bank. If
the stream is fairly fast and you feel a tug
hold the rod steady, and nine times out of ten
the fish will hook himself. Some anglers say

22 DOWN STREAM— UP STREAM— DRY FLY.

strike, so if you like adopt both plans alter-
nately and judge for yourself. ^

Probably like most people who take up fly
fishing and who are keen to become more or
less proficient at it, you will soon discard this
method altogether, excepting when season, wind
or water renders it the only way of filling a
basket. That the down stream style will fill a
basket on certain days is undeniable, and thirty
years ago it was in general use. Fortunately
for the stock of trout in many rivers they only
come to the downstream lure for a few weeks
in early spring with that wonderful freedom
which old-fashioned anglers love to recount. I
have seen a three days' take of ninety fish fall
to one rod in March, more than half of which
were dark little eely things of four or six
ounces which should never have been killed.
On such days as these it is probable that nearly
every fish that saw the flies tried for them and
one can quite credit tales of three being taken
on a cast. Two will occur at times, in which
case secure the end fish first, as the fellow on
the dropper can still be played from the net if
he proves lively, whereas should the dropper
fish be in the net, the end one can at once get
a sharp pull on taut gut and manage his own
release.

If after a day or two of down streaming the
water fines and the wind drops, or still better
gives place to sharp showers and sunny
intervals, change your tactics and fish up stream
casting up-and-across and be ready to strike at

DOWN STREAM— UP STREAM— DRY FLY. 23

any rise or suspicion of a movement near your
fly. The dropper is very likely to account for
a yellow half-pounder, and great will be your
joy at your first experience of a fish caught in
this method. You will feel that you have had
a far greater hand in the capture than in merely
holding the rod while the stream trails the fly
along for you. Needless to say the amount of
casting is trebled as you cannot afford to allow
the flies to remain long on the water. Thrown
above you either on to rain-dappled stretches of
quiet water or into sparkling runs and stickles
they travel towards you at a brisk rate, and you
cannot allow them to get too close or the line
becomes unmanageable to raise, being too slack
to respond to the lifting action of the rod.

Upstream casting over rising fish is half-way
towards dry fly fishing, and forms a very great
advance on the elementary style you have
hitherto tried. One fish struck and hooked
above you will soon give more pleasure than
three which attach themselves below stream.
Besides this the upstreamers are as a race
considerably better in size. Half and three-quarter
pounders will be taken in lieu of medium sized
herrings. Facing up stream as all trout do
they see no arm-waving angler above them nor
do they shy suspiciously as at a fly travelling
far slower than the current. Their standpoint
shows them a drowned fly travelling at normal
pace downstream, and, not detecting the gut
attachment, they rise and swallow it. Another
obvious advantage the fly when struck is not

24 DOWN STREAM— UP STREAM—DRY FLY.

pulled out of their mouths but is probably
jerked against the corner of the jaw where it
takes a firm hold. And lastly the angler is
below the fish, able to pull him or rather guide
him down with the current instead of having
the stream adding its weight to the trout's
struggles. How well indeed do large grayling
appreciate this advantage, running downstream
and setting their broad back fin athwart the fast
running water until the angler has to hurry
after them with an almost slack line or else risk
the break which inevitably follows should a
strand of 3 x gut be taken through a bed of
weed by an experienced two pounder.

For fivers which in Spring seldom run quite
clear and which make their way through red
earth or rich loam, receiving at intervals the
contents of ditches by the side of ploughed
fields, upstream wet fly fishing is probably the
most deadly form of angling — leaving worms
and minnows out of the question — but in the
chalk streams of Hampshire and Wilts where
the water runs over a grey-white bottom and
is often as clear as Apollinaris, and not unlike
it in brilliant sparkle, the dry fly process leaves
any other far behind. To the question of the
novice * What is dry fly fishing, and how does
it differ from any other kind of angling"? the
answer is simple. In the first place it consists
of trying to induce a particular fish already
noticed as having risen at surface flies to be
deceived into taking an artificial which floats
over him, sitting as it were upon the water

DOWN STREAM— UP STREAM— DRY FLY. 25

ready to fly away again just as live ones are
accustomed to do.

In a chalk stream moreover, owing to the
clearness of the water and often the absence of
cover, it is a matter of some difficulty to
approach near enough to the fish — of course
from below him — to be able to make the cast
without his detecting the movement of arm or
rod, and without any unseemly splash of the
gut. It is therefore of the greatest importance,
sometimes even a sine qua non, that the fly
should be placed lightly in the exact position
about a foot or two above him at the first cast.

To do this means that the distance must be
judged to a nicety, wind or no wind, and the
cast be made with neatness and precision, so
that the little fly whether hackled or winged
pitches upon the water and floats down in full
view of the angler as well as of the fish. As
soon as it passes over the rise, and is not
taken, it is whipped off the surface and dried or
kept dry by false casts made in the air two or
three times. This ensures its floating; in which
process it can be aided by having its wings
and hackle slightly water proofed by a soupqon
of odourless paraffin oil, or failing that of
vaseline. Even a pinch of one's fingers upon
the dry fly after rubbing them through one's
hair will assist should nothing else be handy.

As many good fish will at certain times of
the day any year, only take live floating flies—
indeed the most knowing of them nowadays
will only take live floating struggling flies —

26 DOWN STREAM— UP STREAM—DRY FLY.

and will allow all sunken or semi-sunken food
to pass, it follows that the man who can
imitate the live insect by placing an artificial
fly so as to actually sit upon the water and
can throw it so that it floats down without
drag at just the natural pace of the current
will succeed in deceiving a fish where other
devices have failed.

It is as a rule not wise, however neatly one
may cast, to throw more than three timep over
a trout. If he takes no notice the best plan
is to wait and watch him feed again. During
this time the pattern of the fly can be quickly
changed; and if this change takes the form of
a smaller fly so much the better.

One of the great pleasures, and distinctions,
of this method is that the angler sees the
whole process. Often he sees the dim outline
of the fish in the water, and often making
his cast can watch the fly alight and see the
actual movement of the trout as it rises to seize
it. The fly disappears, and as the fish turns
down after taking it the strike is made by
slightly lifting the rod. Then follows the great
reward; or the extreme disappointment of a
check, a struggle and the sickening sensation
of a slack line almost hitting you in the face,
sometimes with the hook intact, sometimes with
barb gone, and sometimes with gut severed at
the eye, having been worn thin by frequent
casting, or frayed by contact with weed on the
waters in front or the meadows behind.

A very common experience of those who have

DOWN STREAM— UP STREAM— DRY FLY. 27

not learned to throw well or who cannot disguise
their movements while casting is to find that
they have 'put the fish down.1 Something has
caught his eye, or aroused his suspicions—
perhaps a friend from below running up stream
and calling out the news — and his form, or his
furrow, can be detected as he moves away.

Or if in deeper water he merely drops under
the nearest weed bed, and ceases all surface
feeding. In either case it is no good continuing
to cast.

A man thoroughly bitten by dry fly fishing —
a purist in fact — never throws on chance;
indeed he does not throw over a fish he sees
or knows to inhabit a certain spot. He looks
out for a rising fish and casts for it alone —
sometimes devotes an hour to it, and generally
ends by pricking, hooking, or getting it.

Without attempting to belittle wet fly fishing,
clear water worming, or spinning a minnow, all
of which require just as much art, science and
practice as throwing a dry fly — and which in
addition demand a far superior knowledge of
the habits of fish at all different seasons — this
latter process appeals to me, and many, as by
far the most pleasurable.

Occasionally, it is the only way of catching
trout or grayling in club waters. When
executed well over a feeding fish it more often
succeeds than fails to deceive him ; and, should
the strike be equally well judged and every-
thing hold until his weight is felt in the net
as he is lifted well over the bank and dumped

28 DOWN STREAM— UP STREAM— DRY FLY.

on the grass, the cup of satisfaction is filled
to the brim with no after taste of fluke or
unfairness. One more advantage can be cited,
that as a rule one can make an accurate guess
of the size of a rising fish and so devote time,
energy and skill to one worth basketing.

A dry fly man on rivers where pounders are
rare is more likely to have one in his creel than
any down stream angler, or than his fellows
who fish wet, unless they have great experience
of the water, like that acquired by residents
after a dozen seasons. He often captures trout
or grayling from close under his own bank,
perhaps in quite shallow water, which the less
guarded approach of the wet fly fisherman might
scare into its holt. And lastly occasionally—
notably on a hot July afternoon when good
fish are midging under bushes in sluggish
water — will bring back a basket of half-a-dozen
fine trout when other rods have declared that
the fish will take nothing.

There is the reverse I know : the dry fly man,
as he describes himself, sage, sour, and
superior — with nothing in his creel — highly
critical of all other methods but his own,
almost thanking goodness that he has caught
nothing, sitting alongside a genial angler who
says he prefers a wet fly and produces two
brace of trout whose tastes had sympathised
with his own.

APPROACHING THE WATER. 29

APPROACHING THE WATER.

THE APPROACH — THE RISE — A TROUT'S

POWER OF VISION — AN OLD HAND —

A YOUTHFUL EXPERIENCE.

THAT trout have eyes "all the better to
see you with," like the wolf in Red
Riding Hood, is a fact which non-anglers
either disregard or are in utter ignorance of.
Take the average man out for a stroll along
a river bank, either alone or with the girl of
his weekly choice, and watch his behaviour on
meeting a fisherman. He has perhaps never
seen a fish taken on a fly and having time to
spare, whether the girl has or not, and feeling
a certain amount of interest in sport he
naturally thinks he would not only like to see
the thing done, but determines that, being on
the free list, he may also as well be in the
front row of the stalls on this his first night.
He accordingly sidles up alongside the river
bank some half-dozen yards above the angler —
the girl is standing on oosey ground and indoor

30 APPROACHING THE WATER.

shoes, comfortably out of view of the stage — so
that he may be exactly parallel to the rise
which she has been sharp enough to detect.

As the fly reaches the water, provided the mis-
guided 'rod ' essays one or more throws before
the fish is permanently put down — he peers
forward so as to miss nothing, and after the
cast is made and the line reeled in he regards
the angler with something akin to disgust at
not continuing to throw. He sees him spike
the rod, and considers that slow filling of a
pipe as a selfish and unfriendly act. Perhaps
he imparts the information that * it was a fish
he is sure,' or perhaps he strides off as much
as to say ' I shouldn't grudge letting you see
me catch a trout if our positions were reversed.'

Now for the matter from the angler's stand-
point. He has waited for twenty minutes
watching a certain fish — a good one he thinks,
rising occasionally and shyly below a clump
of celery weed. He has made a short detour
in the meadow so as to get well below him.
He has approached the edge of the water on
his knees and gradually crouched into position
as though he were a housebreaker peering into
a dining room window. He has measured the
distance and already made a cautious cast or
two, one of which the fish half rose at.

He has rested that trout a few minutes and
is just about to throw again, when he is sud-
denly made aware of an intrusive man standing
above him and approaching at full height to
the very margin of the rushes. The trout must

APPROACHING THE WATER. 31

already have seen him and bolted under the
weed with an appetite for surface food thoroughly
sated and a fright that may last an hour.
The angler, disgusted and disappointed, makes
a despairing cast at the spot and reels up his
line resignedly, mentally wondering how any
man with eyes in his head can be so wanting
in discernment as to suppose that the fish
cannot see also.

I remember two sharp looking boys playing
this trick to me on the Itchen, and as they
looked keen and intelligent and might be about
the bank every day I tried to put the matter
clearly before them. ' Have you boys ever
trapped birds'? 'Yes,' they had, indeed they
had. * Well, if you had a sieve trap and one
of you staod twenty yards off with a long
string in your hand to pull it with, would you '
—looking at the other boy — ' go and stand
right up alongside the sieve to see the birds
go under it ' ? ' Noo, he wouldn't, he knew
better than that.' * Then you may be quite
suiie that these trout have just as good eyes
as birds, and you have spoilt all my chance of
catching that fish this morning.' They took it
well and seemed decently sorry. Anyhow they
never resented it by stone throwing.

It can never be waste of time to approach the
bank cautiously, more particularly if the rod has
to be put together, which may mean a quiet
quarter-of-an-hour very useful for observation,
from a point some yards back in the meadow.
To stand on a grassy knoll, or to sit on an

32 APPROACHING THE WATER.

overhanging stile at the extreme edge of the
water with arms necessarily waving as one
threads the line through the rings of the
spiked rod — or still worse with one's shadow
extending in the form of a moving black bogey
right across the stream, is of course to proclaim
aloud to all the trout of over six inches that
their enemy has appeared and is about to
distribute his barbed confetti for their patronage.

To start fishing after such a beginning by
steadily walking up stream, tramping perhaps
heavily through the rushes and making the
boggy and fibrous bank tremble, as it will do
for some feet ahead, and to throw at intervals
on the chuck and chance it principle, is to
raise the hue and cry twenty yards afield for
a mile at a time.

And yet how many of us have done this, and
how many hundreds more will continue to do
it; and then after a trudge of four miles
occupying six hours along a stretch of good
water, will return home with semi-blistered palm
and aching heart to show two little herring-like
trout, deficient probably in sight and intelligence,
which are just over the limit.

At the station, or the hotel, such a man
will meet — we all have met — a middle-aged
taciturn angler who was at that time sitting
moodily watching the water from ten yards
back in the bracken. * It has been a wretched
day ' we remark with assumed cheerfulness,
4 the fish will take nothing. I have only got
two, and my friend has hardly had a touch.

APPROACHING THE WATER. 33

Have you done anything ' ? * Just look at
this.' The moody man had opened his creel
and lifts out number one. * About three-
quarters,' he grunts. Number two follows. * A
trifle over,' he continues; 'that,' referring to
number three, ' I hope is a pounder.' Several
more of eight, nine, and ten ounces and last
but one a thick dark fellow with the scar of a
heron's bill on his side ' that's my best, one
pound seven do you think ? just six brace.'

Where did he get them? — oh just in the large
meadow below the weir. Any marvellous fly
unknown to hotel visitors ? * No — small blue
quill and red upright.' And, he might have
added, if he had wanted to be sarcastic, ' an
intelligent approach to the water.'

The excited feeling of wanting to get to work
at once is natural and excusable. The only
objection to it is that it does not pay. By
taking the precaution of putting up your rod
leisurely in some position where, without showing
yourself you can obtain a fair view upstream,
especially of the bend close under your own
bank, you may begin the day or the evening
well, rising hooking and landing a tidy fish
within the first quarter hour and by so doing
may put your eye, hand, and temperament into
that state of good form which is so suitable for
catching more fish. A contrary state of mind
is fatal. I mean when one begins badly and
becomes careless and almost testy gradually
tending toward Charles Keene's purple faced
gentleman who cast his fly book into the river

D

34 APPROACHING THE WATER.

for the infernal fish to choose a pattern for
themselves.

There is one point about the dry fly fisher-
man, perhaps in his favour, that in addition to
having learned to cast he has also learned not
to cast. This alone takes seasons of practice,
and accounts for many a good capture.

That impatient laceration of the water pre-
serves a fishing better than any keeper can.
Turn three duffers on to your favourite stretch
day after day, and you will have more head of
pounders in the river at the month's end than if
one expert were given two days a week.
Owners know this thoroughly well, and, feeling
they can afford to give permits freely to certain
friends, are thus enabled to decline them to
others on the score that the available days are
alrteady booked up. So there at least is a
handicap in favour of the beginner with the
rod — which a beginner with the gun would never
have — the owners treat him kindly, letting him
scare their best trout with casts that make a
wake like a towline.

If in the foregoing lines a hint has been given
of what not to do, it may be as well to add
some of a more positive character. Let us
assume you arrive at the ladder-stile leading
down to the river at seven o'clock on a cloud-
less June or July evening. The path runs
straight to a small plank bridge braced by a
steel wire, to prevent it wobbling under the
weight of the girl with the butter basket who
has just crossed it. Now do not imitate her.

APPROACHING T\HE WATER. 35

To set foot on that bridge would be equivalent
to whispering the word ' Tecs ' among a friendly
gang of pickpockets.

You are going to put up your rod. There
is a small brook running into the river at right
angles twenty yards below the bridge pool.
[How well can I see the place in my mind's
eye — and myself, ten years younger, with beating
heart nervously and hurriedly fastening cast to
line and fly to cast, while peering over the
tangled bushes which afford the only cover at
the glistening water above.] That is the place
to select, and having got all ready, crouch down
among the low rushes in the mud with your
rod on half cock, and watch the small run
where the brook or ditch discharges its trickle
into the main stream.

There is no hurry. If feeling impatient
begin upon your sandwiches : you may be too
busy to eat them later on in the flush of the
•evening rise or when you feel really hungry.
From where you are you have access to quite
a stretch of likely water and it may not be ten
minutes before a rise occurs close in to your
own bank, in a tiny runnel not a foot deep.
Keep low, sit upon your heels, and let your
rod begin that rhythmical sway with ever-
increasing line pulled off the reel by your left
hand, which will suffice to place the fly above
the fish. It is successful or not as the case
may be. Let us suppose not and that the
trout goies off, leaving a warning furrow across
the pool.

36 APPROACHING THE WATER.

The spell is broken, you must try above the
bridge, and remember to again execute a prudent
approach by keeping back in the field among
the sheep and coming up to the bank behind
the next high tuft of grass.

Once in situ keep quiet again. Within easy
casting distance are perhaps half-a-dozen trout,
mostly over ten ounces, any three of which you
may pick out within the next half-hour. Does
half-an-hour seem a long time ? It may ; but
do not forget the last occasion when you fished
that meadow a year ago when you pressed on
and on right up the quarter-mile stretch, and —
got nothing before the evening rise. As it is,
if two or three goodish fish are basketed before
8.30 you will have done creditably. You may
get more; you may even get into a pounder at
the extreme top of the next stickle by throwing
far over the eddy into the circling backwater the
other side where the bushes overhang. Don't
stand up, and don't hurry. To an angler
accustomed to fish in coloured water all this
sounds poor fun, slavery, but under the con-
ditions cited it is the only way to catch trout,
and sooner or later you like myself will find
it so.

As regards learning to approach the water
well it is an advantage to begin one's education
in June rather than in March or April. For
all future pleasure it will scarcely be denied that
it is best to learn to play the game, and
practise upstream fishing, with wet or dry fly,
rather than merely adopt the vocation of a creel

APPROACHING THE WATER. 37

filler and make a feature of a turbid spring
water, when trout will occasionally come to a
downstream cast and its three flies in a way
that proves this process to be the most killing
lure. Even with this method great individualism
is shown. There is far more in it than the dry
fly purist can ever imagine : let him try it fot
a week and he will be quite convinced when he
comes to compare baskets with the native cracks.
One man at the end of an hour has his two or
three brace while another has nothing to show,
due perhaps to the former keeping more out of
sight of the fish which are of course all facing
the angler.

Some men are quite annoyed at the thought
that the fish can see them, and plainly state
that if they cannot walk as they please without
stooping and crawling they prefer to wait for
a thicker water and use a minnow. Many others
agfain, either of an antiquated, lazy, or unedu-
cated school, rarely attempt up stream fishing
at all. They can fill their basket to over-
flowing on their own particular days in March
and April and after that they simply do not go
out. Such niceties as bothering about a proper
approach to the water are beneath their dignity,
or are regarded much as the old farmer,
accustomed to plain cattle shed stuff, expressed
himself on the subject of artificial manures when
he said he didn't believe in putting pinches of
snuff into wheatfields.

I know the argument that to be a good all
round angler, or a good all round the year

38 APPROACHING THE WATER.

angler, it is necessary to vary the process, and
that the object of fishing, even fly fishing, is to
catch the most in a fair manner.

This sounds unanswerable; although the
lessee of a river may well take exception to the
statement and amend it by saying the object is
to so manage that he and his friends can
* expect to obtain an equal share of sport each
succeeding year without restocking.'

To adopt dry fly fishing becomes therefore
in such a case a method of preserving somewhat
akin to the shooting of no hen pheasants during
the latter part of the season. With me the
pleasure of downstream fishing did not last : so
that while admitting all its difficulty, and the
greater water knowledge it undoubtedly shows,
as proved by the old hands doing so well, I
would advise all beginners to discard it after
their first two seasons and resolutely set their
backs to the sea and fish upstream on all days
when the wind renders it feasible.

THE DIPPER.

THE DIPPER,

[Cinclus aquations].

The Fulmar Petrel lays but one egg; yet
it is believed to be the most numerous bird in
the world.

DARWIN.

As more individuals are produced than can
possibly survive, there must in every case be a
struggle for existence, either one individual
with another of the same species, or with the
individuals of a distinct species, or with the
physical conditions of life.

DARWIN.

I FEEL sure that if ever human ingenuity can
devise a clockwork or electric bird to bob
up and down, to fly — either in the air or
under water — and to sing; the result will
approximate the form and movements of the
common dipper or water ousel more than any
other bird that is known in England.

Everything about the bird is mechanical. Its
song could be nearly produced by a wet cork
on a window pane, and its two screamy notes —
uttered on the wing — are far more artificial than
those of the kingfisher or sandpiper, who fly
past one in much the same hurried manner;
generally in pairs, and at much the same
height above the water. The note of the sand-
piper seems to come from a clarinet; while the
squeal of the kingfisher, or the squeak of the

40 THE DIPPER.

dipper, recall experiences of moving heavy;
furniture or opening rusty shears.

When first one begins to learn trout fishing,
the dipper may make our acquaintance.
Unnoticed as he perhaps is during the first ten
minutes of our casting across the fast water on
an open March day, he soon catches the eye;
and the tyro with the rod becomes aware of a
dark slaty grey or a light sooty black bird
with a white breast sitting on a wet stone just
the other side of the run some few inches
above the water, who seems wound up to make
a certain fixed number of bobs at intervals.

He is like a schoolboy somewhat watershy,
who has undressed and is standing at the edge
of the swimming bath constantly gesticulating
with his hands and knees as though about to
take a splendid header, and who still remains
in position. The dipper always appears about
to fly off or about to take a header, and yet
stops on his stone as though intending to wait
and see a fish caught before he takes action.

He is to the angler what the robin is to the
gardener, and in the friendly position he takes
up says, like Laura, * so long as you are
pleased to stare I'm pleased to stay.' And if
you cast too close to him he at length winds
his internal machinery up for flight and whirrs
off like an aeroplane down stream or upstream —
never in any other direction, cutting never
even off a corner if the river makes a sharp
bend, and alights upon a similar stone two
hundred yards away to recommence his twitchy

THE DIPPER. 41

watchfulness up that stretch of water which he
and his mate have leased from nature for the
season.

Every trout fisherman must notice how each
quarter of a mile of water contains its pair of
ousels. They are as jealous of their beat as
policemen and hold themselves aloof from all
relations, flying their two hundred yards up or
down stream from their favourite central stone
just opposite the rocky cascade which they have
settled upon as their nesting place. It would
be interesting to know and to trace precisely
what becomes of the new brood when once the
parents are persuaded that the time has arrived
for their progeny to be sent out into the
world. The beats above may be taken by their
uncles or by their cousins once removed, and
also the beat below. Do they seek another
stream or do they actually combat with their
own parents for the possession of that length
of water where they first tasted the sweets of
caddis worms shrimps or snails? I certainly
have seen dippers fight. A species of flying
warfare mixed with stridulous screams, and
possibly these are sharp actions at law after
which the title deeds change hands and the
water rights with them.

A puzzle which field naturalists have never
explained is why should not the dipper be a
far commoner species than it is. Two and
sometimes three broods a year are hatched,
generally successfully, and the average number
of eggs laid is four or five. The bird has

42 THE DIPPER.

hardly any enemies. Even the average school-
boy who spends his Easter holidays close to a
stream seldom finds a nest, or if he does locate
one sees with regret that it is the other side of
the stream under a tangled overhanging bank.
Yet the dipper like the nuthatch is often
unknown to those who take suburban walks, and
is even spoken of as an unfamiliar bird.

The starling rears as a rule but one brood.
It is shot at by every cockney sportsman who
can borrow a gun. Its nest is rifled by mere
urchins and its young becomes a prey to any
cat or catapult in the district. Yet countless
flocks are seen, and the bird is reckoned as
common as the hedge sparrow. We have all
found dead thrushes or starlings on many a
winter's walk. I have never seen a dead dipper
on the sandy beach of any stream nor have I
ever seen the bird attacked. The nuthatch also
enjoys an immunity from birdsnesting boys and
must rear its young with comparative success
year after year, yet how few are seen excepting
by those who really set out to look for them.
The balance of nature so admirably kept in hand
is hard to analyse.

In the case of the dipper there is a statement
in Morris' British Birds to the effect that "one
pair — or at least a pair — built in the same place
•for thirty one years, rearing three broods each
year." Can they have reared three hundred
young during that period? If so then their
descendants would be sufficient to monopolise a
river valley of ten or fifteen miles. No one

THE DIPPER. 43

probably has seen fifty dippers in the whole
length of Dovedale. I have not seen twenty.

Many of the best days fishing have been
secured by an angler who takes an interest in
watching the habits of a dipper. Tired of
walking along on a ruffled day in April, casting
up stream every yard of the way upon the
Scotch principle that the fly which catches the
most fish is the one oftenest upon the water,
he at length spears his rod with an impatient
jerk into the wet grass, makes a cushion of his
mackintosh and plumps himself down on it
determined to knock off for a space and smoke
a consoling pipe. He sees a small bird fly off
a stone and deliberately attempt suicide by
drowning.

He wonders if like Alice and the rabbit he
has been dreaming; but his interest is aroused
and he finds himself too absorbed to fill his
pipe. He watches the dipper flutter right into
the sparkling stickle and behave like the
penguins in the Zoological Gardens, swimming,
diving, and almost running under water in
search of food. If he keeps unobserved he can
in the space of half-an-hour become a witness
of most of its life's history, and will in addition
be rewarded by noticing a brace of good fish
rising almost within casting distance. Without
getting up, he reaches for the rod, places a red
upright a foot above the rise, and to his
unexpected delight finds it well taken and the
fish hooked before he has risen to his knees.
He plays him carefully, backing down stream

44 THE DIPPER.

with shortening line and rod well up, and after
guiding him past an ugly strand of blackberry
slips the net underneath and lifts out a cur-
vetting ten ouncer as bright as yellow amber.

Thus we are all wooed from the cast-on-chance
principle towards the methods of dry fly, or at
least of only fishing for the rise. The pleasant
interlude of watching the dipper has taught the
angler that the successful basket filler is he
who is most often sitting on the bank, not too
close to the edge, with grounded rod, gazing at,
instead of constantly thrashing, the stream.

The nest of the dipper is difficult to see but
easy to trace by watching the movements of the
birds. Towards the end of April they lose
much of their shyness and gradually betray the
close whereabouts of their bulky home. The
nest itself is usually some five feet above the
ground or water, in the opposite bank among
the bared roots of a tree. It looks at first like
a lump of debris left stranded by flood water.
Generally it is found just out of reach and
requires a boat or a bridge to get at it. I have
located scores which followed this description;
but often again it can be found under an old
bridge and even among the fir trunks that are
laid to form a weir.

Among wet rocks near a dam or a waterfall
is another favourite locality. The nest is some-
thing between a wren's and a housesparrow's :
occasionally very large and straggly, covered
with a dome always and with the entrance hole
at the side, lined carefully with oak or beech

THE DIPPER. 45

leaves, dried grass and bits of river weed in
preference to hair or feathers. Indeed the two
latter I have never noticed. The eggs are plain
white, four or five in number; usually found
the second week of April in Devonshire, or a
week later in Yorkshire.

So frequently do they pass and repass that I
have touched them with the line in casting; and
have known of one being hooked foul in the
wing by an angler, and brought to bank after
diving furiously.

46 A WOODLAND MURDER.

A WOODLAND MURDER.

timebis.

Et motse ad lunam trepidabis arundinis umbram.

JUV.

Plumamque nocturnse strigis.

HOR.

AS you remember how we always made a
point of stopping far later up the river
on the longest day, ever since that
memorable occasion when you caught the four
pound three ounce peal at half past ten, you
'will be interested in hearing of a small adven-
ture— or rather experience — that befel me a few
nights ago.

Having tried all the morning the dark still
water under the r*ed rock and only succeeded
in pricking two tidy fish by the folly of
striking too soon, I did not feel much inclined
to continue all day. Fortunately however after
a lazy afternoon there seemed something in the
look of the weather at tea time which aroused
all the old keenness for that walk which you and
I know so well; and I set out by myself up
the water blank or no blank.

I will not describe the tramp along the
marshes and the regret felt at being alone. I
saw nothing of consequence either of bird or

A WOODLAND MURDER. 47

fish life, and was fairly hot — in rubber boots —
before I reached the footbridge and looked over
at the small but rich preserve above, with the
familiar Naboth-like longing. The river was as
still as a pond, and not a fish was moving
although there were clouds of fly in evidence.
As the sun sank behind the fir clump, the whole
air turned into one of those evenings we have
often remarked on, when the atmosphere seems
filled with golden dust. And indeed, as far
as fishing went, it proved just as unfavourable.

Wading over to the patch of watercress above
salmon pool I peeped through the dry reeds
into * the pocket,' and was pleased to notice a
good fish rise three or four times. It is a poor
chance to do much with a dry fly down stream,
but for a wonder he took it just before it began
to drag: and I had him. He was thirteen
ounces as it turned out, and fought well, bolting
right under the sycamore and obliging me to
cross the river — of course playing him from
above all the time. Well, not another thing
could I touch. The flies were literally in
myriads but what the fish were taking during
all the evening rise they would not tell, and the
result was that by the time I finished up at ivy
pool it was well past ten.

The moon was up, and a fine brown owl flew
out of the trees and circled close over my head —
and then its mate. I was so startled for a
moment that I stopped throwing and watched to
see them alight, and could just make out one
sitting on a broad lateral branch exactly

48 A WOODLAND MURDER.

opposite. They both passed again, and a few
seconds afterwards there was a furious rustling
in a dense ivy clad stump and screams from
two blackbirds, which scolded and cried louder
than I have ever heard them before. I saw one
owl pass against the light sky, and, from the
dreadful noise the poor blackbirds were making,
I could tell that one of their nearly fledged
young ones had been taken out of the nest by
the owls. Standing in the water in the dark
like that it made me feel almost frightened, and
although an occasional rise took place, it quite
put me off fishing.

After perhaps five minutes of crying and com-
motion all was quiet again, and I supposed the
poor birds had got over their trouble. I was
just thinking of coming out of the water to reel
up when, again, just the shadow of an owl's
wings and the same horrible rustling at the
blackbirds' nest. This time it seemed worse.
I could hear the young birds cheeping between
the frantic calFs of the two parents. Both the
owls passed up to the taller trees on the left,
and the wretched blackbirds quieted down. I
was determined to try and stop the owls if they
came again, but the trees were too high for a
stone to do much good, and before I had
decided how even to try they were back at the
nest. This time the blackbirds appeared more
dazed or frightened, as they cried in now a
despairing manner, and from the tearing and
scuffling of wings that took place in the ivy I
think that the remaining young birds were taken.

A WOODLAND MURDER. 49

One it seemed fell down out of the nest to
the foot of the stump as the parents were making
their continuous noise almost on the ground
among the high grass of the steep bank. It
all appeared such a dastardly and cowardly
murder that it made me long for a gun to shoot
the owls.

After the final visit it must have been getting
on for eleven, as it was past twelve by the time
I reached home and weighed the one trout in
the kitchen. The whole way back I felt
exactly as though I had really witnessed a
murder. You know the feelings walking home
alone when the river looks and sounds so deep
and all one's sins rise up out of the water, like
amorphous ghosts, and make you afraid to step
into what you know is only a shallow lest it
prove the bottomless pit : — when the quiet
stretch of two foot water, embordered by the
dark fringe of rushes, becomes the tarn of the
House of Usher; and the gurgle of the stream,
and of the nightjar, blend into the suggested
sound of those huge winged mysterious dragon
flies that flutter up in a cloud out of the earth
and then sink back again, in the crescendoes
and cadences of Wagner's music.

This pair of owls were not here last year.
Whether their species are always such marauders
I do not know, but am pretty sure the white
owl, which beats over the meadow precisely at
sunset, is not in the habit of tearing young
roosting birds out of their nest under the eyes
and wings of their distracted parents. Nature

50 A WOODLAND MURDER.

is cruel indeed. One would not mind so much
in the day time, and with adult animals, the
one preying upon the other. Even the heron
and the trout cannot but be justified by any
angler seeing that he is doing the same thing.
Fish however do not look after their young
unless it be to eat them ; but for these blackbirds
to have had their home destroyed does seem
unnecessarily hard. Yet it must take place
nightly somewhere, and in the present instance
I am fairly sure from the way the two owls
returned to the large oak tree on which I first
saw them that they were accompanied by their
own young ones, especially as there was a
slight metallic noise which probably came from
a hungry family.

Both parent owls were noiseless. They
uttered none of their Hoo-Hoo-Hoots recalling
to memory a winter night in the New Forest
when I went out after supper to gather moss
for a wreath we were making for my uncle's
grave. The constant hoots of the brown owl
alternating with the scream of the barn owl
could be heard all around us in the forest, and
more than once we saw them pass among the
giant oaks. Their cries were a fitting dirge.

******

I remember finding the nest of the Brown owl
some years ago in a rabbit burrow on the edge
of the red cliff, half a mile lower down the
river, in that patch of brushwood near the cart
bridge. They were large eggs, white and
smooth and round — two of them the first day

A WOODLAND MURDER. 51

and three the next. This was in the first week
of April 1898.

One of the fishermen, who nets the river, told
me he has seen a brown owl try to take fish
and had watched them gliding close to the
water; so it would seem that trout may have
other enemies besides you and I, the heron and
the otter, to keep them wary at night. Of
course a close inspection of their regurgitated
pellets would soon settle the point. Gilbert
White says the young will eat any carrion or
offal that may be brought, and are therefore not
exacting — like barn owlets — as to their food being
freshly killed.

52 DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

He makes a mayfty to a miracle, and has
furnished half the country-side with angle rods.

SPECTATOR, 1711.

A LTHOUGH the rising generation of trout
jf~\ and grayling are justly credited with
being far in advance of their ancestors
of two hundred years ago, when the lines at
the heading of this chapter were written, it
must be admitted as a counterpoise that modern
gut and flies have been brought to something
very like perfection. I have never mounted a
fly upon a cast plucked from the tail of a
white stallion — a recipe one reads in old angling
books — so whether Hercules casts are better than
this I cannot say, but they offer little to be
desired, and are made in a variety which must
satisfy the most exacting dry fly fisherman.

DRAWN OR UNDRAWN GUT.

4 That is the question.' Indeed a parody
could be written upon this vexed soliloquy by
men who have either failed to rise a shy
trout by using too stout a cast of undrawn gut.

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES. 53

or have been broken by the only two pounder
they ever hooked owing to the fineness of their
3 x point.

You will find yourself inclined to hold a
brief for either side of this important contro-
versy exactly as your recent experience of
success or disaster prompts you to speak. And
your shifting views will generally be warmly
opposed by a counsel in waders on every
occasion. Upon the principle that whether you
marry or whether you don't you are sure to
regret it, so the dogmatic man, who makes an
iron rule with respect to drawn or undrawn
gut, is bound to have opposing evidence thrust
upon him in the form of disappointing blank
days, or of exasperating smashings.

Take the case of undrawn namely natural gut
first. No one will deny that, however well
soaked it may be, it will not and cannot drop
a small fly upon the water with anything like
softness. Nor will it as a rule allow the fly to
ride upon the surface with the natural ease so
often necessary to deceive fish in a clear water.
The obvious result is that when small flies of
any particular pattern are proving successful,
the men who use undrawn gut are hardly able
to move a fish, while their fellow anglers have
basketed two or three brace.

But now change the conditions to days when
a mayfly, an alder, a Welshman's button, or a
sedge, are the flies to put up; when the fish run
larger and the water is weedy. What is the
result? The undrawn gut not only stands the

54 DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

strain of the constant casting with the heavier
fly; but it enables the strike to be made with
more decision, and gives a confidence in playing
and guiding through weeds where drawn gut
so frequently fails.

With trout, the question practically resolves
itself into one of size of fish and state of water.
In Hampshire, where the keepable limit usually
varies from three quarters of a pound to a
pound, and where at certain seasons weeds and
celery beds are prevalent, undrawn gut is far
the best to keep to, especially from mid-May
onwards. On rivers and streams where the
limit is expressed in inches — eight, nine, or
ten — or where the water is gravelly and free
from all obstacles, the advantages of drawn gut
are beyond all cavil.

With a really good 3 x point no one should
be broken by any trout of under a pound in
open water.

If the parting occurs with the strike, then this
has been made clumsily ; from too stiff a check
on the reel, or from a line held too tightly by
the hand. Where the break occurs later on,
it is probably owing to the fish being allowed
to get into a strong current below the angler,
to the cast being touched by the rim of the net
just when it is taut, or to its hitching up in
a bush or rushes close to the bank. In any
event it means, seven times out of ten, bad
management more than what can be fairly
termed bad luck.

Again, a windy day introduces a new element

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES. 55

even where fish are small, for then the drawn
points mean the cracking off of the fly at
times when the angler can scarcely blame himself
for making too quick a recovery. As moreover
on such days there must necessarily be a ripple
on the water, often sufficient to half drown the
fly, the nicety of casting is less important and
consequently the natural gut cast is a distinct
advantage.

For evening fishing too, meaning by that
when it is too dark to be able to see your fly
upon the water, or when you have mounted a
somewhat larger bodied pattern, drawn gut is
a mistake, a snare, and a delusion ; as it seldom
stands a touch from a branch or a stake when
it is occupied in its proper vocation of hauling
a struggling trout over the edge of the net, or
of lifting its head and shoulders clean out of
the water, so often the only alternative under
the dark shade of a steep and grassy bank, or
while craning over on one's stomach on the top
of camp shedding. To lose a really good fish
after a poor day at such a time when you have
actually counted him as your own, and thought
how his contour will cause envy and admiration
at the inn bar, seems to take years off one's
life.

THE TREATMENT OF GUT.

I have rather put the cart before the horse
by speaking first of soaked gut in action rather
than of how to treat it before it comes to the
river bank.

In cases where you only get a fortnight's

56 DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

holiday a year to devote to fishing, it will be
best to buy complete made up casts of nine
foot lengths, which should be sold each in a
separate transparent paper envelope on which
their exact description is entered such as * stout
to finest undrawn,' 'medium to 3x' et cet.

Among the many appliances now offered to
anglers, a tin cast box containing loose felt or
flannel for damping purposes can be bought
for a shilling, and a couple of casts should be
put into it to soak for some hours as well as
several fine points. This soaking must not be
continuous day and night or the gut will
become too sodden and rotten. The cast kept
in reserve during the day in the box can be
taken out and allowed to dry on blotting paper
each evening.

Soaked gut is not only more elastic and con-
sequently far stronger, but in that condition
alone is suitable for any kind of knotting, or
for the mounting of flies. So much has gut
improved of late years that it is now quite easy
to buy points of sixteen and eighteen inches
varying from those which are perfectly natural—
namely have never been passed through the
drawer and have consequently a certain spiral
twist on them — and arte strong enough to
manage a two and a half pounder among weeds,
to almost gossamer gut of 4 x and 6 x which
may be used for grayling in gin clear water on
a chalk bottom who need the wiles and acces-
sories of an angling artist to be attracted to
the surface.

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES. 57

As to the proper time and place for attaching
flies to gut opinions must always differ; but
the plan of doing so in cool blood indoors
before the breakfast things have been cleared
away, may at any rate be tried. It is more
extravagant of gut certainly, as such mounted
flies kept in a damp box, or still better in the
damp flannel fold of a flap cap, are bound to
become either rotten as to their gut or rusty in
their barbs, and must be sacrificed from sheer
economy in the matter of breaks.

Where you know your water, and have quite
made up your mind irrespective of local advice
as to what patterns you intend to use or try,
the threading process at the breakfast table is
useful and interesting. The points have of
course been soaked the evening before, so that
fastening the fly becomes not only a leisurely
process but is attended to with a care and
nicety that minimises accident at the bank side.
It is a satisfactory plan to look at the knot
through a pocket magnifying glass, and see that
it has fallen into its place rightly, whether you
use the Turle or the double-jamb knot.

The possession of half a dozen of such flies
mounted for immediate use, makes the change
of pattern an easier, quicker, and safer process
when executed in the presence — we will not say
in the sight of — a readily rising fish. There is
then no attempted threading of a semi-blind eye
in a biting wind or a pattering shower, with its
risk of snipping off some of the wing or hackle
with the scissors.

58 DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

THE STRIKE.

Having attempted to compromise the contro-
versy upon gut drawn or undrawn, it is no use
shirking the still more important one of when
and how to effect the strike. Fishing, as we
all of us must often do in full view of that
professional bystander, whose occupation is to
spend his eight hour day upon the bank giving
advice to amateur anglers, who could manage
to dispense with his company, one cannot avoid
remembering the remarks thus occasionally
volunteered : that * you were not quick enough ' ;
and that * the gentleman down here last week
never missed a fish.'

Still, it is not only bankside Jeremiahs who
advocate this desperate quickness in striking;
for I see in the ' House on Sport ' that a fellow
member, after upwards of ten years experience
on the Test, gives the advice to strike as quickly
as you possibly can. It is obvious therefore
that the practice must have much to recommend
it; and in the case of grayling I agree
unreservedly.

With trout, especially fair sized trout, my
own opinion tends to dissent; for, bearing scores
of cases in mind where I have failed to hold
a fish after the strike, I believe that it has more
often been due to the hurried than the leisurely
practice. Two friends of mine, whose know-
ledge and experience are equal to anyone's, took
pains to test the time occupied by several trout
in the process of rejecting an artificial fly, and
came to the conclusion that extreme quickness

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES. 59

of strike was not nearly so effective as allowing
time for the fish to turn down after he had
risen and taken it.

In making these experiments the one stood
upon a plank bridge just above the rising fish,
while the other threw floating flies over them
from a down stream position, and delayed making
the strike until he was told to do so.

That was on a Devonshire river in quiet and
clear water. To give him time to close his
mouth upon the fly therefore sounds reasonable
under similar conditions. Of course in a cross-
stream cast with a long line out, the immediate
strike cannot be immediately communicated to
the fly, so that ' the time to close his mouth
upon it ' is given by the straightening of the
sag on the line as it is lifted from its curve in
the current.

In casting for a trout rising above one, a
first class rod on the Itchen gave me his recipe,
which was that as he always fished from a
kneeling position he made a practice of rising
to his feet directly his fly was taken, and
striking as he did so. For several seasons I
have acted upon this advice and can recommend
it as a plan to adopt. Everyone will probably
agree that large fish rise more slowly than small
ones; so that if the pause between the rise and
the strike often results in losing the fish, there
is a satisfaction in knowing, or even in thinking,
that it is the smaller ones which escape.

Better allow two half pounders to reject your
black gnat and save their skins, than twitch it

60 DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

out of the jaws of a pounder whose intention
it was to turn down with it first.

AFTER THE STRIKE.

Before touching on the subject of playing and
netting, it will be as well to mention the
different methods adopted of managing the cast
and line just after the strike has been made —
and has fastened. Many anglers always strike
from the reel : that is to say they have their
line taut between the lower ring and the winch ;
which, having an adjustable check, prevents
that break so inevitable to the beginner who
keeps his ringers pressed tightly upon the line.
Personally I have almost given up this plan of
striking from the reel, and prefer to hold a
loop of line in my other hand, taking care to
keep it well vaselined so that it slips quite
lightly between thumb and first finger when
striking.

Several advantages can be cited in support of
this method, one being that in making the cast
the release of the loop causes the line to extend
itself better, and thus places the fly more lightly
upon the water. Another distinct advantage is
that after making a cast upstream you can, by
taking hold of the line between the lower ring
and the reel, gradually draw it into a loop, and
so counteract the action of the stream and keep
the line from sinking as the fly travels towards
you. This of course enables the strike to be
made on a line fairly straight, or assists in
picking it off the water far more cleanly after

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES. 61

your fly has passed over the rise without being
taken.

Indeed a second and a third loop can be held
quite easily, and retained in the hand as you
walk upstream keeping the line in the air.
With a very little practice a series of loops can
be held, until the line beyond the rod point
becomes so shortened that you can reach and
examine the fly. I find this a far simpler plan,
especially when wading, than always winding
up from the reel, in spite of the fact that at
first it gives some trouble among thistles or
coarse grass owing to the loops catching in
them.

Should the fly be taken, and the strike be
well timed, then the pulse of the situation can
be felt far better by the line in the left hand :
indeed it is like a rein in the horse's mouth.
You can feel what he is doing — almost what he
is going to do, whether to bolt or to back.

This the reel cannot impart with the same
certainty. If a fish immediately turns and runs
down stream towards you, the pulling in of the
line in loops, or even allowing it to fall upon
the ground, is a quicker process than winding
it up. Your hand is already upon the line, and
there is no need to shift the rod from one hand
to the other. To do this while backing down-
stream at the same time is the only process I
know to keep a firm hand upon the fish and
prevent losing touch with him.

After this first rush is over, of course it is
advisable to recover the line upon the reel,

62 DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

although I have frequently netted the fish out
before being able to do this. A disadvantage
is that in winding up the loops of slack one is
apt to overwind them, or to find them lying so
untidily on the reel that it necessitates a
rewinding before beginning to cast again.

PLAYING AND NETTING.

Precisely the same doubts and difficulties arise
in the matter of playing a trout after the strike
has proved successful. Some anglers accuse
others of being too rough. Others accuse some
of being too easy and nervous — of allowing a
half-winded fish to cruise about and enlarge the
hold of the hook until it allows room for the
barb to pull through on the slightest slacking
of the line.

Circumstances of size or behaviour of the fish
on that particular river or season — circumstances
of the size of your fly and strength of your
tackle — circumstances of weediness of the water,
•either on the surface or the bottom, or swiftness
of the current — circumstances of bushes or rocks
below you, or of stakes and obstacles on the far
side, must all be taken into account.

There are times and places when it is best
to tear your line through the rings, and back
into the meadow as fast as you can, and to
keep your fish upon the top of the water
splashing aimlessly right into the net, rather
than allow him to gain his head and take in
the desperate situation.

There are times, particularly with grayling,

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES. 63

when it is politic to treat her as a cat does a
mouse, to stroll down stream and coax her after
you with so little strain on her lips that the
pliant rod only shows a gentle curve; to tire
her down until she seems waterlogged and lies
over on her side even in sight of the net.
Grayling exhibit a far greater horror of the
landing net than trout, and more are lost at
that moment of tension than during their
wrigglings and shakings in the deeper water.

To hook and play a fish in a spot where you
have hooked and played many a predecessor is
an advantage to the angler that cannot be over-
stated. He knows exactly what the surroundings
are, and what is in store for him and his gut
twenty yards down stream. No intuition can
tell him of a hidden stake; but, if he has once
lost a trout under it, he knows where and how
to ' hold up ' at the right moment.

Do not follow any struggling fish with the
net. Sink the net and bring him over it before
you try to dip him out.

64 THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL.

THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL.

A RED LETTER EVENING.

MY days on the preserved water that
summer were Mondays and Thursdays,
so that during the month's holiday there
were four days in each week to plan either to
put up with the free fishing, or else to devise
short trips to other stretches.

The miller had his quarter of a mile, including
the still piece above the dam and a few rocky
pools below the weir. For this the charge was
five shillings a season ; and, although it was
good enough during wet weather to be worth
the eight mile journey there and back, the
prospect for a cloudless fortnight in June of
getting even a brace of good fish during the
daytime was poor in the extreme.

It was however during one of the trips to
this miller's water that my good fortune asserted
itself — a piece of good fortune which lasted for
several seasons on end. Lying on the grass

THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL. 65

one hot afternoon building castles in the water
of two pound trout and fairy tackle, I heard a
step behind me and a man of about forty
passed along. We spoke about the usual
topics, and it was soon apparent that he knew
every yard of the river and had killed more fish
upon it than he was able to remember. He
said he was going out that evening; and for
over an hour we sat on the bank smoking and
talking.

Without asking my name or telling me his,
he ended by saying I was welcome to fish his
meadows, some three quarters of a mile,
extending from below the miller's water down
to the stone cart bridge. Perhaps he thought
this sounded too general an invitation to be
acted upon, for he then gave me a card ' has
permission to fish Tuesdays and Fridays.*
" You will find me there most evenings " he
said " but whether or not there is plenty of
room for two."

The possession of that card seemed almost
too good to be true. Permission is one thing
but the card put quite a different pleasure into
it. The next morning I arrived at the inn,
intending to sleep there that night so as to
have every chance of stopping out as long as
it was light enough to see a fly.

A drizzly rain after tea time promised a wet
evening ; and, by some unaccountable reason in
strapping on my mackintosh my canvas creel
was left at home. It is said to be lucky to
forget something, so stuffing two extra hand-

66 THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL.

kerchiefs into a pocket I started off in the best
spirits. The rain soon stopped : the clouds
grew higher, and between six and seven o'clock
there was every sign of a fine sunset and a
perfectly still evening.

Turning off the railway line, I struck across
the gorse meadow, enjoying the swish of the
wet bracken against rubber boots, and the sight
of the yellow wagtails running after flies in the
hot odour of damp cowflanks. No better omen
of a good evening rise can be cited than this;
the birds often being absent from the meadows
for days together, and then congregating among
the cattle as though by prearrangement at a
particular hour in the afternoon.

Half way down the water there are two dams
across the river made of larch trunks, at either
end of which were likely looking pools, and
after waiting among the dwarf willows for some
time my patience was rewarded by a rise. He
came at the first cast, a gray quill gnat but let
it go by; and the very next time changed his
mind and had it well. The moment he felt the
strike he was in under the willow roots, and
no coaxing or hand lining would move him.
After long manoeuvring the point frayed and
came back minus the fly.

As I was looking for another, my friend the
owner came up the meadow and told me he had
lost the same fish the previous evening. Our
estimate of his weight no doubt did ample
justice, but still the fact remains that he was
worth anyone's best attention. * Now you fish

THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL. 67

wherever you like, you won't interfere with me
I am going above the wire bridge, but if I
may give you a hint — with those boots on — you
cannot do better than go down to the bridge—
you see the wall, and that small grassy island —
get across to that — you will find under the wall
and in those runs above, the fish will rise well
this evening. Hardly anyone goes there — the
water is not a foot deep over the rocks between
this bank and the island.'

I thanked him and moved down, wondering
secretly whether he wanted to get me out of
the way ; for the tug of that lost fish had
rather chained my affection to the larch dams
as an evening anchorage. It was nearing half
past seven when I made up a new cast on the
bridge, keeping my eye on the island during
the process. ' Not too small a fly — a ginger
quill for choice ' he had called after me, and
much as the idea of an olive asserted itself, I
threaded the ginger quill on to a soaked point
and climbed down to the river bank. It was
a hackled fly which floated inimitably and
looked larger than it really was.

The water parted among some rocks just
below the nearest point to the island, and I
was just going to step on to one when I made
a short cast. It was taken at once and the
result was a half pounder jumping on to the
stones at my feet with the net clapped on top
of him before he could get back. A very
little further out two others were rising and one
of these was landed.

68 THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL.

After trying the other small runs without
avail I got from stone to stone on to the
island. It was only a few yards long and was
covered with coarse tufted grass eight feet high.
Shelving stones on one side, banked up by the
last flood, gave an insecure foot hold into
deepish water : on the other, slab rock formed
the higher level of a shallow. It is difficult
to refrain from drawing a plan of it with
bearings and soundings like the one in Billy
Bones* sea chest.

To the right was the stone wall, studded with
ferns in the crevices, and under this wall over
mossy stones the water ran smoothly and
swiftly, perhaps three feet deep, with some
eddying holes. Two more fish were taken out
of it, but neither was above the eight or nine
ounce average. I pushed quietly through the
tall wet grass and peered out. Never since I
have fished that Devon stream can I recall such
a small-world paradise. The whole sky in
front was golden sunset and of course the
water too, the various runs and channels being
merely marked by flecks of lilac. To the right
the wall had ended in a fringe of rushes, and
the current lapped and murmured down over a
slimy green slab of rock covered with weed, to
be sucked into creeks and bays below.

Above this was a pool the shape and smooth-
ness of a billiard table; and before looking at
it for more than a few minutes, three fish rose
repeatedly one exactly above the other. The
difficulty was not to show oneself and yet to

THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL. 69

get space to make a cast without being hitched
up in the long grass behind, but I parted a
narrow lane and made just sufficient room to
give the rod play. All this time the three fish
rose with fascinating persistence, the rings they
made changing immediately into a broken oval,
which was carried down over the slippery rock.

The lower one was on the baulk spot, hardly
two rods lengths away, seemingly taking a fly
every few seconds with a vicious snap. Would
he catch sight of me and be gone, or would
the ginger quill attract him? It pitched two
feet above him, a movement, a suck, a violent
tug, and he came down towards me over the
green weed into the deeper water under the
wall. So short was the line after being pulled
through the rings that it made the grass bend
beneath it, and I had to step back on to the
rocks below the island to play him. Round
he came held hard, for there was plenty of
weed large clumps of dock leaves and other
obstacles to catch any slack line. Fortunately
I had stood up the net among the grass handy
enough for sudden usage, and he came open
mouthed over it.

Every second of time was grudged, and while
thinking * you are fully three quarters ' as I
stepped across and put him on to the bank,
my thoughts were with his fellow rising on the
pyramid spot. The pleasurable excitement of
stepping back into the old position, and again
watching for the two other fish to rise, was
checked for some minutes by a feeling of

70 THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL.

disappointment that their keenness was over,
but with the fly between thumb and finger I
waited breathlessly. The upper one rose, this
time nearer to the rushes, and right under a
heavy headed tuft of nightshade which bobbed
forward at intervals and caught its crest in the
current.

Just as I was thinking of casting for it the
trout in the centre rose well, and it was easy to
see that his proportions were attractive. He allowed
fully half a dozen casts to be made without atten-
tion, and then perhaps the seventh time, without
a movement, he was on — a splendid ' rug,' a
vigorous holding water, and round he came
with a rush over the rock, in under the tangle
of brushwood at the foot of the wall without
a check on the short line, down under the
stones of the wall, and round below me among
the rocks. It seemed as though something must
give way, but it was no use letting him have
more rope : he would have hung himself up.

As it was he jumped and churned until the
idea of a foul hooking suggested itself. But
no, he allowed himself to be reeled in and the
net received him kindly. I carried him across
the rocks to the bank and unhooked the fly
from the extreme edge of his upper lip.
Nothing but a break or the flattening of the
iron could have saved his skin, and with an
exulting feeling I saw he was better than the
other and fully fourteen ounces.

A short space more and the billiard table pool
was again before me, its smooth glide unbroken

THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL. 71

by any rings. The fish that had risen on the
spot must be there, and but for the time wasted
in landing his rival would no doubt have been
secured. Above, in the gravelly shallow fish
after fish were feeding, their snouts coming up
and leaving a purple semicircle in the auburn
of the water. But I watched the rocking night-
shade near the top right hand pocket with
intentness, and — he was there.

The fly hit the leaves and for a moment the
fear of a hitch up added excitement to the
situation. Cast after cast followed, far too
quickly, but the distance was right, and if only
the fly would pitch just as the nightshade rose
clear all promised well. It pitched too far out,
a foot to the left, but a sideways movement
followed and the next instant there was a dark
form in the air with a fed gold outline —
a splash, and a dash up the narrow run leading
right among the rushes.

I pressed my finger on the line and held
the rod up tightly, hardly daring to think the
gut could stand the strain. It did — and the
sudden slackening told me that the same course
down stream was taking place. Line was on
the water, and as I tore it in lay in coils among
the high grass and around my feet. He would
be off or under the broom bush of course, but
a welcome wallop in the pool below showed that
so far all was clear. Hea'd and shoulders out
of the water he kicked somewhere below me.
The net had fallen in the water and in getting
it I tripped forward and was on hands and

72 THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL.

knees. It seemed impossible to save him and
yet I had to try and pull him up chin over the
rim of the net.

As I did so something gave way, and only
a dark mass of weeds seemed there instead of
the trout. I felt inside, he was there, free in
the net, swaying and arching in a way that
made me afraid to lift it up by the handle lest
the knuckle joint should give way. He was
mine, upon the bank, carried well up over the
stones in a spirit of caution and set down among
the nettles before I dared to unchain him : a
perfect fish in every way dwarfing the others
and fully a pound and a quarter. Coils of
line were still round my boot and took some
time to adjust but the fly, the ginger quill, was
unharmed and its barb as sharp as before.

The time was now eight forty, and the
shallows above the island were still dimpled
with rising fish. The trio on the bank made
quite a warm place in ones heart, and their
capture appeared to have occupied only a few
minutes. It was now becoming unnecessary to
take cover. The whole sky was ablaze in waning
sunset so I waded slowly out a few yards above
the grass clump where fish were rising well
nigh between my feet.

Away to the left in shallow water, lit up by
the warm afterglow, a good trout took my fly
among the stones, ran up and across the river,
jumped high, and vibrated off. He was a
twelve ouncer; the last of that size I hooked.
Four more, all over nine ounces, were taken,

THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL. 73

but at a quarter past nine they stopped, only
a few dark rings under the shade of the rushes
on the right being made from time to time.
The last fish I had to slip into my boot, and
it worked down so far that a visit to the bank
became necessary. If only the creel were not
hanging in the verandah at home what an
opening there seemed for picking up two or
three lumpers in the dusk.

To get the three prizes into two knotted
handkerchiefs and to carry them in one hand
was a difficult matter. It was no use putting
them into the net; besides its mesh was not
too safe, as it had been repaired with common
string that afternoon. Hot with excitement,
dripping with the various burdens of fish, rod
and mackintosh, I thought — perhaps for the
first time in my life that I had enough.

Deep * ploops ' sounded from time to time
close under my own bank as I stumbled on,
and twice I set down the impedimenta and
threw for the rising fish. It was a mile and
a half to the inn, the nearest way being up
the single railway line, so by the time I had
laboured over the wire fencing, dropping all
three fish in the thistles and the dark, I felt
fairly well done up, bathed in perspiration, and
desperately hungry. Sitting down on the rails
to cool I noticed that nearly every other sleeper
was lighted by a glow worm; twenty or thirty
I counted on the way back, and although a
pair of fern owls were hawking round I never
saw one taken. It was nearly eleven before the

74 THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL.

inn was reached and the fish laid out on the
table and weighed. Each one was above the
estimate. A golden day indeed, from water
into which not an artificially-bred trout had ever
been placed during the hundred odd years that
anglers had haunted the stream. How my host
had fared that evening I did not know then,
but his advice was truly disinterested. He had
told me of a veritable Arcadia. Twice again it
fell to my good fortune to fish the same place
but no such red-letter luck recurred.

A long rest after supper with the battle
fought again amid wreaths of smoke — a nirwana
of trout lore — brought that day to a close and
sent me out down the road to the upper bridge
a hundred yards off under the light of a moon
but two days past the full. While stepping
across the side parapet I saw and heard a rush
in a shallow stickle and for a moment thought
of salmon. it was a pair of otters who had
been lying out in only a few inches of water.

A rustling wake and they were gone. Every-
body was gone. The river seemed to be the
Kotmali-oya of Ceylon. One o'clock struck :
I could keep awake no longer.

So ended a beautiful evening in my angling
memory, nor was its beauty mainly attributable
to the success of the fly which proved so kind
and killing. The rarity of such days — that com-
bination of good sport, fortunate management,
and lovely surroundings, makes them stand out
the more.

All the penance of blanks and blundering

THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL. 75

forms the background of a picture which can
be called up at will after any disappointing day,
when ones legs and back ache deliciously on
the old horse-hair couch of the inn parlour, and
the drawling songs of the haymaking yokels
percolate through the cracked panes of the tap
room door and steal across the creaky passage.

76 BLANK DAYS.

BLANK DAYS.

" And tell of pain as well as gain
That waits us on the morrow."

ERIC MACKAY.

NEWSPAPER articles on fishing, or letters
from friends on holiday, almost always
speak of success — disappointing and
qualified, but still, of success. Downright
failure, an utter blank day, is never alluded to
in the present tense. It may have taken place
last season, or even last week; but it forms no
subject matter for a Saturday column, or for
a yarn to a brother angler unable to leave town.

And yet, in the early days of fishing, with
what dire persistence these blanks occur. To
forget about them is best. To slur them over
is pardonable : but, in describing angling as it
really is, to those who wish to learn all its
rites and mysteries, failures and exasperations,
one cannot maintain a dishonest silence.

On certain days blanks seem preordained. The
total inability to hook, or even attract a fish is
not always the fault of the ' rod,' the fly, or
the cast; although if trout are rising, it is best
to infer that one of the three factors is at

BLANK DAYS. 77

fault. You start badly, perhaps by putting up
your rod in too close proximity to the water,
and then cast at random expecting like
Micawber that something will turn up. You
remember an occasion when this happened, and
fatuously you continue to walk up the bank
casting, when, provided it is not too cold, you
had far better sit down and watch the water.

But on some days as we say nothing happens :
one is obliged to stroll on. The best plan, if
there is no suspicion of a rise in the quieter
stretches, is to look out for a place where a fall
or a sharp run disturbs the stream and creates
eddies, swirls, and backwaters. Here again it
is better to wait and watch than to whip the
surface at once.

Remember that good trout are especially fond
of lying just between the current and the back-
wash, in a place where floating or semi-
suspended matter will circle slowly round and
round among the bubbles.

Good eyes and good observation will usually
detect an occasional suck by a trout which is
poised at an angle of 45 degrees, and which
always at much the same angle allows himself
to drift in a three foot circle. When looking
at such a place from a bridge on a non-fishing
day, or on to a piece of private water, I have
otften watched a trout for half an hour and
counted the number of times that he takes
something off the top of the water; and also
noticed the false rises he makes, merely bringing
his nose within an inch of the surface and then

78 BLANK DAYS.

dropping back as though the object were not
worth the effort of opening his mouth.

At intervals a distinct blade like stroke of
the tail and a snap would occur, showing how
very carefully the floating food is scrutinised
and appreciated.

Bearing this experience in mind, I would
repeat that it is best as a rule to wait and
watch for at least five minutes. But at the
same time there is no need to go too close, and
failing the sight of any dimple in the water- —
difficult indeed to see if there is a dancing
light — a trial cast must be made. Repeat it
foot by foot up the run, not omitting the
extreme sides under the projecting willow bushes
or brambles. On many and many occasions
this cast at random will be successful. The fly
disappears — and you have tightened and struck
the fish before being aware of it. He bores
down hard, you hold him perhaps almost too
firmly, and he comes to view with a quivering
jump a clear foot out of the water, and seems
to shake in the air. Lower your rod point of
course, to lessen any resistance and prevent his
falling athwart a taut line; which is what he
may have done before to another angler.

But I am forgetting this is a blank day, a
day of disaster. You hook the fish indeed and
he gives a sidelong leap on the surface, a
convulsive squirm, and your fly almost strikes
you in the face. We all know the feeling :
take it as read; and pass up and on to the
still water above the run.

BLANK DA YS. 79

Whip away under the rushes of the opposite
bank. There ! two or three tidy fish have
already run up out of the shallow, so that your
hours of failure are pursuing you, or rather you
are pursuing them. The next stretch is cold
and windblown, a row of stakes is on the left,
and shallow water at your feet. You are no
good at left hand casting so it seems utterly
hopeless to go on. That fish you have lost —
the only bit of sport enjoyed all day — is on
your mind, and it may be well worth while
after a pipe-filling pause to approach him
again, this time from above, with a long line
and a wet fly. If he is not in situ but has
retired with toothache another may have taken
his place, and I quite agrtee that the laborious
detour through the meadow and over two lots
of barbed wire, in order to again get below
him, seems hardly worth the trouble under the
circumstances.

Fish down the run with a hackle fly for
choice — a drowned female blue upright is as
good a pattern as any — and hope to attract a
non-feeding fish. It is a forlorn game I know
on such a day; but if you cannot get one by
orthodox means you must try for a fluke.
If you have reason to believe that the run
contains good trout put on a dopper. It
may be more attractive in a place like this,
especially in the broken water. Probably a
small fish will rise at it almost at once and you
will notice his whole yellow form turn over the
cast although scarcely a check comes to the line.

80 BLANK DAYS.

Of course everything depends upon the season.
If our supposititious blank day occurs in March
or April you have very little chance after five
o'clock. And yet this moment I can remember
a last half hour in mid April when between
5.30 and 6 p.m. I arrived back at the pool
where the rod had been put together earlier in
the day.

It had been an utter blank rendered memor-
able by bad luck, bad fishing, bungling and a
break. My creel was empty of everything; my
temper, patience, and appetite at the last lap,
and I speared the rod with a thud in the turf
by the railway above the stone bridge over-
looking what we called — in July — the peal pool.
Under the point of the bush fringe opposite
there was a rise, a second, and a third — rises
clearly at floating flies. The fly being quite
dry enough for the purpose, I knelt down and
pitched it above the spot expecting a flap from
a fingerling. Instead of that it was taken and
proved to be a bright half pounder. The others
continued; and although the train was already
in my thoughts, I had ample time for casting.

Within a minute another good rise came, an
awkward kick, and he was free. This caused
a lull and I began to think of Heeling up when
two rings came abreast of each other, right
under the prickly bush. One came again, a
trifle lower, as though he had dropped back,
and the next moment my fly was in the place;
a turn came under water as though it were
being followed, a strike, and it was taken down

BLANK DAYS. 81

in earnest. The fish never showed, he kept well
under and seemed stronger — indeed he began to
assume the imaginative proportions of a three-
quarter pounder.

Round the railing he came, the line resting
on barbed wire, until I could get over and lift
the skirts of a mackintosh as well as disentangle
the net. Then he kicked on a tight line, but
it was no good, for as it proved he was only
a nine ouncer hooked foul in the cheek.

Never in my experience has a foul-hooked
trout managed to regain his pals without taking
the hook to prove his story.

During the landing process the other fish
rose and joined his fellow — only seven ounces —
and that ended it. After such a bad day it
seemed foolish to wait in the growing cold
another hour and a half for the next train.
The rod was put down on the platform in good
time and, to show how childish a man can
become, I was quite elated at this piece of luck.
Others had scored a brace, or a blank and so
had I but for this accommodating party of four
taking a snack after hours — an utter blank just
avoided, but so narrowly that the days record
is properly included in this chapter.

It is difficult to give hints for days which
threaten to be blanks. Change of fly effects
something; change of tactics more. The best
chance lies in a change of water, I mean to
fish parts which ordinarily you pass by. More
particularly does this apply to shallows. If the
day is blustering think of some exposed shallow

G

82 BLANK DAYS.

pool above or below a cattle ford very often,
where trout always see one and move away from
the bank long before you get towards casting
distance.

Manoeuvre up into position during a strong
wind flaw and take what cover is offered. If
a shingly or grassy beach lie down on your side
and wriggle a shade closer to the water. Then,
with the wind to assist, begin to cover every
square yard you can reach ; throwing up and
across and allowing the flies — for a dropper here
is most important — to float right down stream
every time on a lengthening line. These tactics
have saved many a blank day, and, so long as
the wind continues, some fair chance of sport
may extend hour by hour although nothing
breaks the surface. This form of approach is
most advisable dirty, wet, and uncomfortable as
it sounds — indeed it is far wetter and dirtier.
Fish which are feeding intermittently under
water in a shallow must be undisturbed. They
can see through ordinary ripples especially any-
thing tall, but however shy they are they will
often take it when one is lying down.

As any fish caught must be beached it is
rather interesting to let him drift downstream
with an additional ten yards of line to play
with and exhaust himself — or get off — among
the stones in a few inches of water. He has
to be gradually windlassed up, until he slides
alongside one's elbow, and basketed without ever
rising beyond a sitting posture. Trout of even
ten ounces can be slithered up this way without

BLANK DAYS. 83

disturbing the shallow; whereas th.e getting up
and back into position in order to use a net
may make certain of the one fish but also of
no other.

A fine series of blank days can generally be
counted upon by those who fish in July and yet
are debarred from stopping on until the evening
rise. A really hot July day with a low water
when brother anglers, who hanker after false
gods, whisper treason about clear water worm,
can promise as much in the way of a blank as
a Barking creek could perform. But it is no
use grumbling : if you are out for a day you
must fish. Seek out a shady deepish run under
some bushes and then from the shallow side try
your most artistic casts on a longish line;
pitching a dry fly, a small olive or pale watery
dun, yard by yard upon the surface, letting it
float for five or six feet under bushes which
almost touch the water. It will be taken
within forty casts, probably at a particular
moment when you have looked away. You give
a furious belated strike, as though you were
trying to fix a meat hook into the jaws of a
dolphin, and your point with the fly is left in
the lip of a really good fish, the cast flying
back into an inconspicuous gorse bush yards
away in the thistles.

But for this permanent hitch up you would
again have cast at the spot where the demon
disappeared. We all do this, I don't know why
and have often smiled when thinking of the
method of reasoning it out. If a ' badly

84 BLANK DAYS.

bepricked trout is to so quickly take a hair of
the dog that bit him one must imagine him
saying " Well I did enjoy that lacerating tweak
that has loosened my tongue : I really did, and
I will dally on the top of the water just where
it occurred in hopes of getting another taste
or at least of being caught in the loins or
the eye."

With a played out grayling such a process
might be possible — no doubt it has been done
as I have cast for and foul hooked a water rat —
but with a trout, never.

Still better if on a well thrashed Association
water make a point of walking up the right
bank — geography books still persist in telling
you it is the left bank — and cast with your left
hand in the same manner getting the fly well
under the long overhanging grasses. On
scores of occasions you may find such a bank
unoccupied — even in a May fly week — and can
pitch your evening camp there undisturbed.
If you have practised for a short time every
day left hand casting comes simple enough in
two seasons; while in three or more it is no
trouble whatever excepting against a wind,
when the extra twitch of the right hand is
needed to cut the fly on to the water.

As a blank day cure in Summer I know of
no plan better than this one especially if the
casts be made parallel to the water, of course
from a kneeling position, thus assisting the fly
to visit those small bays and inlets which are
partially arched over with the tufts that have

BLANK DA YS. 85

escaped the hay cutting machine. From per-
sonal experience as regards flies used I find
that red ant, black spider, and even a small
governor have all been fortunate enough to
hook and to hold trout of from ij to if pounds
in such places in the forenoon of a brilliant
and unpromising July day.

Two fine fish of about this weight I also once
hooked and lost upon a gold-ribbed hare's ear
within five minutes of each other; the second
after an exhilarating reel screech, and a tele-
phonic line throbbing message from a weed
bed to say goodbye. These fish were attracted
from a comfortable ventre a terre position with
a very short line, one indeed almost partaking
of the dap style.

All this has of course occurred to every
experienced angler; who possibly says little
about it. Indeed the experienced angler on the
bank differs sometimes from the one that figures in
the story books — not very much perhaps, take him
all round, but in small particulars. An awkward
right hand bank with overhanging tangle where
the river is broad or hardly fishable from the
other side is the place where many a specimen
trout has been picked out. If the man who
has left it takes a short cut across the meadow
and thus avoids conversation, it may be that
he has a slimy secret in his creel, present or
prospective, which he wishes no eyes or antici-
pation to feast upon.

That waiting with a cinnamon sedge between
thumb and finger in the dusk of an August

86 BLANK DAYS.

evening after a blank day, with a kink in the
small of your back from continuous kneeling,
becomes one's last resource time after time and
season after season. There is an element of
fortune in it, as you cannot do much more than
watch the twenty yards of bank ahead; but
blank after blank can be broken if a left
handed awkward cast is the only one likely to
attract a cautious trout or an extra large
grayling.

So often too when they come are they good
fish that if one is hooked and netted early in
the limited time they allot for their angler-
baiting process, there may be a chance of a
procession of three all finding themselves on
the same scales. With really gilt edged luck
this is the time for a solid two pounder so that
hope can be continued right up to the end.

The blank is breakable even on the walk
home down stream. Keep a look out especially
when a turn in the path brings the western
sky, or the moon, over the water close to the
rushes. In such a case do not stickle for the
upstream cast, but float your sedge down over
him and do not strike too soon. He will do
the business for you if he means anything at
all. I remember hooking and landing a fine
trout after a bad day and within a few
minutes seeing another not ten yards lower
down. The second one took the fly, gave me
play right to within a cast of our opening
stile, was plunging and splashing in the forget-
me-nots, and got off literally on the net — the

BLANK DAYS. 87

actual net having doubled itself across the rim
in the shape of a tennis bat. He might have
been thrown out. He was a splendid two
pounder : the other weighed i Ib. 14 oz. at the
Post Office counter.

Still, this skirmish in the dusk raised the
thermometer of one's feelings ten degrees and
elicited an opinion from the Postmaster which
surprised me more than I could say. " That
is the best trout I have ever weighed on these
scales." While recollecting this I had better
add a codicil to say that the lost two pounder
was possibly an ounce or two less, though I
honestly do not think so. I can see the
hiatus in the muddy bank now in my mind's
eye and gauge his weight on the net.

FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY.

FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY.

A RIVER'S BIRTHRIGHT.

Famous rivers lessening into shallow brooks.

SWIFT.

WHETHER or not the Egyptians, before
the time of Herodotus, possessed a
great deal more knowledge concerning
the management of a river, in times of drought
and of flood, than is enjoyed by the average
conservator of the present day, it is certain that
no record of complaint has come down to us
regarding the mismanagement of the Nile ; while
a great many accounts and illustrations are
extant of the engineering feats planned and
carried out hundreds, if not thousands, of years
before Christ.

That the Egyptians had learnt the importance
of not interfering with the flood lands of the
Nile, but had left to nature the formation of
those ' Khors ' mentioned so frequently in the
accounts of Kitchener's Khartoum expedition,
is beyond all question ; while it appears that
this same knowledge has been withheld from
those who during the past fifty years have been
responsible for the management or conservation
of the Thames.

It had better be stated in the first instance
exactly what is meant by ' flood lands.' They

FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY. 89

are the meadows, swamps, inlets, bogs, soft
places, or lagoons, which in every natural river
lie on either side of its banks where the country
is fairly level. Needless to say, where a river
passes through a rocky defile there can be no
flood lands, and any rush of water merely
deepens and slightly widens the stream.

During its summer — or perhaps it would be
more correct to say — during its drought level,
when the water recedes below its average banks,
the flood lands become almost dry, and in that
aspect rather offer themselves for cultivation, or
permanent occupation.

Little objection, from the river's point of view,
can be taken to their being used as osier or
water cress beds, or as preserves for snipe.
But they rightly and naturally belong to the
river, just as much as a reserve fund belongs
to a Bank; and if once this fact is lost sight
of, and they are used for other purposes, nature
is certain to be revenged in her usual slow and
sure method.

The very fact of these damp places being
left undrained and uncultivated renders their
soil spongy, mossy, and fibrous; in which state
it both absorbs and retains moisture during the
weeks or months of a prolonged drought, and
also promotes the growth of vegetation which
may in its turn retain, utilise, or even induce
an increased rainfall.

But for the possession of its flood lands,
therefore, a river could almost run itself dry,
or at least become resolved into a mere

90 FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY.

succession of pools. During prolonged wet
weather, the river again looks to its flood lands
for assistance. It becomes bank high; and
then the increasing flood water, instead of being
all hurried down stream to do tearing damage
to its own banks, and to those who dwell near
them or between them, has room to spread far
and wide over the meadows, swamps, and
reservoirs, which nature or man have either
provided or prepared.

It is, in two words, held up; and can take
its own time for gradual evaporation, absorption
or dispersal. Although the whole country at
one time of writing may b~e deploring a water
famine, and grumbling at the insufficient storage
capacity of the various Water Companies*
reservoirs, one has only to look a few years
back to find letters in the press asking for more
adequate provision against the state of flood,
consequent upon a continuous wet winter. Here
then are the two extremes of flood and drought
both occurring within one quinquennial period,
and both likely to recur in future years, so
long as the flood lands, properly belonging to
the rivers are not strictly conserved, or even
restored to their original littoral ownership.

When engineers plan the building of a bridge
in a tropical country, they set to work intelli-
gently to learn up the history of the river,
which they propose to span, for a period of
ten years or more; together with the average
rainfall in that river's upper districts. Even
after this precaution, they occasionally find that

FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY. 91

the ten years' record is not enough, and that
an abnormal flood, like that which swept away
the bridge at Brisbane, upsets all their
calculations.

Nothing so strikes the attention of a visitor
to hilly and wooded tropical districts, during
the dry season, than the vast disproportion
between a tiny stream trickling through a large
bed of sand, and the enormous span of a new
iron bridge which carries the road or the
railway across the nullah. Yet in England —
especially in the whole length of the Thames
valley — one is almost forced to the conclusion
that intelligence has been sadly wanting — or has
been sacrificed to greed — as evidenced by the
gradual reclamation of the flood lands.

Had the river Thames been conserved, in the
literal sense of the word, there would neither
have been floods in one year, nor a severe
drought in another. Anyone who walks along
the banks of a river can see fairly accurately
what difference a rise of one foot, or two feet,
will make as regards the retention of the stream
in its normal bed. When the rise amounts to
four and five feet, owing to heavy rain in the
upper or hilly districts, it is evident that the
water requires an outlet, through natural or
artificial * Khors ' or channels, into some
adjacent low lying land, where it can remain
for days or weeks until the season changes and
the stream subsides.

Where adequate flood lands are provided, as
they are by nature, it is often possible to

92 FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY.

prevent a small river from rising as much as
four feet lower down the stream by thus
retaining the overflow.

During a long series of years, prior to the
present generation, our English rivers had been
accustomed to occupy certain low lying land
after every burst of wet weather. They filled
the dykes in February in the old proverbial
manner, and the lower reaches were accordingly
saved from the full force of the flood. The
Thames was able, to a limited extent, to look
after itself as soon as the lock system was
completed, and needed but a little intelligent
assistance in order to behave well during the
wettest years. This help has never been given :
and instead of a single acre of flood land being
provided for the use of the river, thousands of
acres have been gradually abstracted from it.

Of late indeed not a year passes during which
some reclamation of flood land does not take
place. The river is thus ' cabined, cribbed,
confined,5 until its waters have no lateral outlet,
but are forced to pour down the main stream
and cause dangerous and damaging inundations
in the lower reaches above Richmond. Thus
floods at Windsor may be caused by the walling
off of flood lands above Oxford or Reading :
and floods at Kingston from the reclamation of
low lying meadows at Windsor.

A river without flood lands is simply akin to
a railway without sidings; and disorganisation
is a natural consequence.

As the principle alone is being discussed, no

FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY. 98

object can be gained by the citation of glaring
examples. These are very evident and must
occur to a man who even takes a long cycle
ride along the banks of a river. In one place,
it is an old creek leading to a large pond which
has been piled off by a private landowner, and
the pond in the rear filled up and done away
with. In another, it is the low lying swampy
bank that has been artificially raised perhaps
four feet by a house proprietor in order to
prevent his garden from being annually sub-
merged. (You can hardly tell him now that
the garden ought never to have been there).
In a third it is a long asphalte wall, ten feet
high, erected by a speculative builder, in order
to turn what was a river side snipe swamp into
an eligible building site.

Thus acre by acre, and year by year, the
abstraction goes on under everyone's eyes; just
as the abstraction of common land used to,
until a river has no reserves at all, and the soil
on either side of it is drained and dry from
decade to decade. Why, even the flood arches
of bridges may be seen let to boat builders,
or coal merchants, in many places; who no
doubt complain bitterly, and think of compen-
sation, should a drop of flood water ever dare
to trickle through their premises. The irony
of it strikes nobody.

Leave the Thames, and turn to any and
every other river, stream, brook, or ditch in
the country. Even look at them from the train
window along a railway route familiar to you

$4 FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY.

from boyhood, and carry your memory back as
far as you can. Has any one of them increased
in volume during the past fifteen or twenty
years? Has anyone suffered less than a twenty
per cent, shrinkage?

On either side of the railway line, one can
note the changed and changing features of
country. The swamp of a dozen years ago,
where clumps of marsh marigold stood out like
brass headed nails from the dull dark earth
visible half a mile away, has had a deep
herring bone drain cut through it, which con-
ducts the old water storage, gallon by gallon
along the edge of the lower field, into a ditch;
and ultimately into a brook. These same
drains will now serve to conduct the very next
shower of rain down the same well worn
channel, and all within half an hour; whereas
nature had been accustomed to something more
like the pace of a glacier.

It would seem as though some harm to
agriculture must result later on if this drainage
is continued in so wholesale and systematic a
manner.

We can only have cattle upon a thousand
hills, provided we have streams in a hundred
valleys.

These streams too, if they are never to fail,
must look to waters held in solution in meadows
and swamps — waters which are given up to the
streams so slowly and grudgingly, that the
fierce months of a dry summer have completed
their season before the last drop has percolated

FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY. 95

from the swamp to the ditch, or has been
licked up in evaporation.

For a long period the gradual drainage of
this country must have added millions to the
natural wealth. Roman England sounds like
a series of high pitched camps and military
roads dominating a country of wooded morasses.
From even earlier traces than this London
appears as a pile village not unlike those of
Malaya or New Guinea. No doubt the rivers
needed curbing and taming all through the bad
old days, even the bad old coaching days, but
we do not want to improve them altogether off
the face of the country. Many small streams
have suffered this fate, their names serving as
grave stones in certain districts. The old
anglers who caught trout in the West-bourne,
or the Tye-bourne (Tyburn) would lose their
bearings to-day if set down on the spot of their
old pastime; just as we shall a generation hence
when revisiting places where we netted minnows,
or caught small trout on a worm, as boys.

Overwhelming evidence as to the conversion
•of swamp or flood land into grass or building
sites can be gathered from the most cursory
study of bird life in England during the last
hundred years. The bittern has been treated
like the Tasmanian until he is nearly or quite
extinct in most places outside the Fen country.
Bewick, and the early editions of Yarrell, tell
a different tale from Seebohm as to the range
and number of the grallatores or wading birds.
No one can look through the inimitable wood-

96 FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY.

cuts of Bewick without being struck by the bird
life in the swamps. Snipe, coots, and all kinds
of duck appear to have been numerous on the
flood lands of every river in the kingdom.

THE ANGLER'S OUTLOOK.

I remember sitting at a Geographical Society's
dinner alongside a stranger when good fortune
introduced the topic of fly fishing between us.
I had been saying what a charming thing it
would be to have the lease or the ownership
of a long stretch of small brook, and to widen,
deepen, and dam it, until it became a trout
stream — to form your own bends and small
weirs, to plant its sides just as you thought
would be suited to the fish, and perhaps even
to have a hatchery adjoining.

After listening for some time he quietly
remarked that he had just lately done all this
' to a small stream called the Lathkill in
Derbyshire.' It all sounded to me as delightful
as a fairy tale, read to the children just before
bedtime, which you cannot help listening to
from the writing table. I told him that in
Devonshire we called * a nice fish ' one of eight
ounces, and ' a good fish ' one of twelve or
over. ' Well, if you will come and fish my
water one Saturday and Monday, I have no
doubt you will do much better than that. We
should use those terms for trout just double the
size. My daughter has caught one of nearly
two pounds.'

A few short years afterwards I saw the death

FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY. 97

of his wife in the paper; and later on his own.
But I have often fancied and fished his fairy
stream from the library armchair, reconstructing-
his small lodge and all the pools and dams he
formed. It must have been intense pleasure to
him after a busy life. I wonder who has it
now.

Since the early part of this chapter was
written in the Pall Mall Gazette (who have
kindly given me permission to reproduce it) in
1899, a great deal has been done by certain
angling associations and hotels to prevent this
wasting of the water supply and its inevitable
consequence. While they look after an actual
river however, they can do little with the
adjoining lands. They are powerless to prevent
the swamps, which hold, like a sponge,
thousands of tons of water, from being drained.
While they are conserving the cash in hand,
someone else is tampering with the bank
balance. None of us want to see fly fishing
die out, like hawking, as an English sport.
But it is extremely difficult to know how it can
hold its own for another thirty years with all
the troubles that threaten it. While the
quantity of the water is decreasing, its quality
is being tried by chemical works or drainage,
and by tar refuse from the newly treated roads
— two factors which must kill out game fish
from many a stream otherwise well suited to
their requirements.

98 WHERE TO FISH.

WHERE TO FISH.

EARLY SPRING — THE AXE VALLEY — SHUTE ESTATE

WATER — DOVEDALE — SMALL HOLDINGS — SPORT

AND SIMPLE LIFE.

"Tis a month before the month of May
And Spring comes slowly up this way.

How soft the music of those village bells

Falling at intervals upon the ear

In cadence sweet . . .

. . . whenever I have heard

A kindred melody the scene recurs,

And with it all its pleasures.

COWPER.

I WAS always rather taken with the account
of a City man who never made a plan of
where he was going for his holiday, until
he had packed his portmanteau and was ready
to hail a cab. He would then suddenly settle
which terminus to drive to; and be guided by
his fancy or caprice, either on seeing a train
ready to start, or after looking down a time
table, in the matter of taking a ticket for a
station over a hundred miles away.

His pleasure also was to make just the same
haphazard choice of an inn, leaving his luggage
at the station, and strolling about until he saw
what he thought would suit him. He might
stop a night, or spend a fortnight; and usually

WHERE TO FISH. 99

managed to enjoy his holiday as much as others
who had laid their plans for months before, and
knew to an hour where they would be every
day.

Although I have never actually done this, I
must own the plan sounds attractive. We all
see rivers from train windows the very names
of which we do not know, yet which wind
among quiet old world villages miles away from
a station. I have often longed to take my bag
and fishing rod, book to the station nearest to
such a river, and put up at the village inn for
the night, relying upon my being able to hear
of some meadows where I might throw a line.

My first introduction to the Axe was brought
about in a very similar manner years ago. It
was the first week in April after an exceptionally
early Easter, when having on a previous journey
to Exeter seen the Shute Arms Hotel from the
carriage window, I made up my mind to send
a wire, and book to Seaton Junction, arriving
there early in the afternoon in time to go on
to Colyton or Seaton, in case I could not be
taken in. As it happened, all turned out most
pleasantly. A fishing ticket for the Shute Estate
preserved water was going to be available the
following day when a visitor was leaving, and
that same visitor, a young schoolmaster, who
came in at teatime with four brace of small
trout, took me for a walk before dinner and
proved a most entertaining companion as we
sat up and smoked together afterwards.

So much was his company appreciated that I

100 WHERE TO FISH.

decided to forego the next morning's fishing,
and went for a walk with him instead, through
woods and lanes round Axminster, Chardstock,
and Colyton. It was my first country holiday
that year. The masses of primroses, as well
as the sight of the first swallow, made me in
love with the district from that day forward.

Acting upon his advice I fished the Coly
more than the Axe during the four days that
the ticket covered, getting a few trout each day
of over the limit (nine inches) headed by a
brace of ten ouncers. The Axe I found very
difficult for the want of knowing which part to
fish. Roaming about is often a mistake; and
so it proved on this occasion. There is always
an inclination on new water to try the whole
length during a first visit, which results
naturally in taking plenty of exercise with but
little to show for it at the end of the day.

For a week in early spring the Shute Estate
maintains a good reputation, provided one is
lucky enough to avoid a gusty or cold snap.
I know few places where the effect of a north
wind is more biting and disastrous than in the
open Axe valley between Colyton and Colyford.
That is perhaps why I always look back to the
first visit, when the weather could hardly have
been kinder, and when the whole face of the
country, and of the river, smiled a welcome.
It is only fair to remember too that, on one of
the days I was fishing, a local angler brought
home seven brace from the Coly of a distinctly
better average than my best day's basket.

WHERE TO FISH. 101

There is another good piece of fishing above
Axminster, a rod on which can, I believe, be
obtained for three guineas a season, where
excellent trout are obtained on June evenings.
On all the lower reaches of the Axe sea trout
or peal are taken after July, and although I
have never caught any of much over a pound,
other anglers have had a far better experience.
Salmon of good size run up the Axe freely;
but that is another matter altogether.

From those who have been fortunate enough
to obtain a day or two on the Shute stream, I
have heard good accounts. It is really a tiny
brook, with a few open pools and a dam, which
winds down through hilly meadows from the
high ground under which the Honiton tunnel
has its boring. Many a Sunday evening in
summer have I walked along it to watch the
trout rising in the small pools from behind a
screen of willows. They must give pretty sport
with an eight foot rod, as they apparently run
to a better size than the average on the Estate
water.

Although glorious Devon begins between Chard
Road and Axminster, I always feel that the
centre of the Honiton tunnel is the real gateway.
The train, even with its most powerful engine-
it used to be two — pants and groans up the
incline past almost deserted orchards, so old that
most of the trees stand on crutches; past swampy
copses and meadows starred with primroses,
marsh-marigolds, and daffodils; past a cottage
close to the line, guarded by giant sows, where

102 WHERE TO FISH.

the children always wave me a welcome from a
broken stone wall ; past sleeper-propped huts,
where the gang of workmen, whose task at the
tunnel seems never ending, keep their tools and
frying pans; up further again, alongside a
quarry which yields water from its rock, as
though Moses with his rod had a week-end
retreat among its gullies; until the hoarse croak,
which is all the engine whistle can manage from
its wheezy throttle, is drowned in the entrance
to the steep and gloomy tunnel.

Then comes the steady acceleration, a vision
of popping lights, a shiny roof — still as always
dripping upon its patient repairers — and we rush
down the gradient into sunshine again, knowing
we have passed from the Axe to the Otter
valley.

This year (1912) there are to be for the first
time Sunday trains on the Sidmouth and the
Budleigh branch lines. The old walk alongside
the river, until Ottery St. Mary church stands
out against the yew trees and the setting sun,
will probably be discontinued. I, for one, shall
always regret it. For many years that walk
in mid March from Sidmouth Junction has been
an event looked forward to as the opening of
my fishing season. By a certain gateway,
leading into a tangled copse, a friend so often
met me that I used to wait at the place much
as younger men do for their sweethearts on the
same Sunday evenings.

This friend was a white owl which beat along
the hedgerows parallel to my walk, crossing and

WHERE TO FISH. 103

recrossing, always appearing and disappearing
at the same places. Of late years it has failed
me : though I have waited by the gate in the
gathering dusk until the cold evening air obliged
me to walk on, after deepening my initials on
the top bar, cut some seven years ago when I
first saw it. Nailed to a barn door perhaps by
some well meaning gamekeeper, has too probably
been its fate.

Speaking of picturesque villages far from the
beaten track reminds me of Gittisham. As one
strikes up from Tipton St. John to the high
ridge above Ottery, and passing through
Wigaton, the road through Gittisham is not
the nearest way. Like the Autocrat's first walk
with the Schoolmistress, that is why we take it.
There is plenty of time to pick up the Sunday
train, which used to stop at Honiton at 2 p.m.,
and get back to work after the two days' fishing.

There is no walk I can remember which brings
more vividly before you the absolute desertion
of the country on Sunday morning. For miles
and miles you will not see a solitary human
being. What becomes of the few labourers
who work during the .week, I cannot think.
While we all talk in theory of ' back to the
land,' the trend of this entire England seems to
be to get * back to London.' Many of us
cannot help ourselves. I among others can
never sufficiently appreciate the good fortune
that has enabled me for so many years to enjoy
these week-end journeys.

Perhaps it is the natural instinct of a City

104 W\HERE TO FISH.

worker. Perhaps it is a morbid or unnatural
restlessness : but the mere fact of distance in an
express train adds to the luxury of the outing.

DOVEDALE.

A week end trip to a very different line of
country is that to Dovedale in Derbyshire. The
train has for many years past left Huston at
ii a.m., never stopping until Nuneaton, and
setting you down at Thorpe Cloud a little before
three o'clock.

I have stayed at both the * Isaak Walton ' and
the ' Peveril of the Peak ' hotels, each of which
gives access to fishing in the Dale. The Isaak
Walton has a portion of the Manifold — as well
as the Dove — a stony stream below the hotel,
containing good grayling in the autumn. The
Peveril water is above the stepping stones on
the right bank, looking up, and leads you
through the narrow Dale, where the sport can
be better described as pretty than actually good.

For a trip to Dovedale, May and October are
by far the best months for the angler, owing to
the comparative absence of trippers. Those who
can take a week in the latter half of a fine
October, and who lay themselves out to enjoy
the crimson, brown, and gold masses of foliage,
which rise for hundreds of feet above you on
either side, as well as the mountain air, can
hardly be disappointed with the fishing. They
can climb Thorpe Cloud on Sunday morning,
then taking their luncheon with them, can spend
the day wandering up the Dale, returning at

WMERE TO FISH. 105

tea time to plan an evening stroll to Ham
church.

At either hotel the visitor is hard to please
who does not feel at home after the first half
hour, and is fairly sure to secure some pleasant
sport on the Saturday and Monday. To obtain
the advantage of the week-end ticket, it may
still be necessary to book to Ashbourne instead
of Thorpe Cloud.

Grayling, in the Dove and Manifold, do not
-attain the size of those in the Hampshire rivers;
indeed a fish of a pound and a half is perhaps
as uncommon as a three pounder at Stockbridge
or Bishopstoke. But they are bright and
beautiful, game and cunning, for all that :
yielding the most enjoyable blank days to many
a skilful angler. I mean of course upon
occasions.

FISHING ON SMALL HOLDINGS.

There are small farms within five miles of
Torrington, Honiton, and Thorverton where the
most enjoyable fishing can be obtained by those
who lay themselves out to get it, and who do
not mind the food and accommodation of the
smaller inns or cottages. Many a City man
will reply eagerly that he is always prepared to
rough it for the sake of good sport. He is
'* quite game to live on chops and steaks.' If
his idea of chops and steaks is derived from
Simpson's or Baker's, it would be amusing to
watch him tackle the samples which can be
produced in the west country.

106 WHERE TO FISH.

Where they get the shapes of meat which they
sometimes produce, I cannot divine. The very
bones of the chops seem different to those
belonging to ordinary sheep or goats — double
as long — while the meat, which is fastened to
them by thews of twisted gimp, causes the teeth
of a mincing machine to ache in anticipation.

I remember once asking my landlady if she
could manage to give me a fowl for Sunday
midday dinner; and after a long morning spent
in looking for white violets, I looked forward ta
the comely form of a roast chicken, with perhaps
bread sauce and chipped potatoes. The cooking
and the serving had been deputed to her small1
maid. At length the dinner hour arrived, and
when the soup plate was removed from the dish.
a curious sight and steamy odour alarmed the
senses.

In the dish was a substance which I took at
first for an unfortunate boiled suet pudding, or
an overlooked bran mash. It was without form
or void, and emitted a suppressed hissing sound;
in fact it moved uneasily in the dish like cooling
lava, as though it had been well below the face
of the waters during a volcanic period. I
touched it with a fork, and after slight pressure
the leg bone of a fowl or rabbit came through
as clean as a museum skeleton. A further
probing proved that all the bones were there.
They were curiously mixed however, wings and
legs being indistinguishable. It was not a
roast fowl at all. No, it must have been boiled.
It certainly looked as though the boiling had

WHERE TO FISH. 107

been over-extended by a week in a hot water
cistern, and it had then come down the waste
pipe. The flesh was grey and fibrous, having
a faint taste of saucepan lining with soot
flavouring; but it is only fair to add that,
although I eat much of it, I never felt better
in my life than during that afternoon or evening.
It was the most unconventional treatment of a
veteran rooster that I ever saw attempted even
by a Tamil kitchen-cooly, which is saying a
good deal.

Many of the small farms in question own
nothing more than a couple of good pools
connected by a gravelly run of fifty yards.
These farms lie perhaps two miles from a
station from which the last train leaves at nine
o'clock. This means that they are good enough
in Spring when the best fishing is between ten
a.m. and four p.m., but are useless in Summer
for the evening rise to anyone who had to reel'
up and leave the bank just at the only time
(8 o'clock) when there is the chance of good
sport.

Yet if one cares to map out a plan of
campaign upon so modest a field, and can
manage to get put up at some adjacent cottage,
so as to be able to stay until at least nine-
thirty, the sum total of a week's sport in a well
behaved June does not compare amiss against
similar evenings spent upon a club water.

The two pools and the run are often quite
enough for one, if you are that one; or if you

108 WHERE TO FISH.

can feel sure that a good fish which you have
pricked or lost on Monday; and mean to
revisit on Wednesday, has not succumbed to
another man's fly in the meantime.

One great difficulty is to keep your little
preserve secret; that is if you happen to know
other rods and are in the helpless position of
having to run the fire of cross questioning that
the exhibition of any decent brace of trout
always invites. One can parry this ordeal with
strangers without giving offence or illtreating
truth ; but the desperate inquisitiveness of
neighbours is a more difficult matter to evade.
They want to know when, where and how you
managed to get leave; where you put up;
whether they may share a trap to the same or
an adjacent place. They generally succeed in
worming the small discovery from you, and
chart it accurately upon their survey — for
annexation. You do not like to own to the
modest finesse employed in attaining your object,
to the ground baiting used in the form of fowls
bought from the farmer's wife — for the proprietor
as often as not declines a money payment — or
rabbits left at the house during the preceding
autumn or winter.

A friend, who I know will read these lines,
wrote me accounts at intervals during a whole
season of sport he was enjoying in a place such
as I allude to. The water consisted of a dam,
a mill leet, a small run, and a bathing pool on
a river where half pounders were always
respected. Week after week he managed to

WHERE TO FISH. 109

secure two and three brace on lucky evenings
ranging as high as thirteen ounces, with a
special cuvee of pounders from the pool.

As we were a hundred and fifty miles apart,
and both doing well as doctor's bulletins say,
the exchange of experiences incurred no risk of
either of us trespassing on the other's preserves.
This kind of fishing is of course incompatible
with the meals of civilisation. One must not
only rough it, but be content with simple life
and an outdoor existence. But it can be
attained every year in nearly every county by
those who are keen enough to seek out, and put
up with, its conditions. It can be managed by
City men on holiday, alone, almost better than
by country residents who do not care for the
discomfort of sleeping away from their homes,
or who might feel a little ashamed of their
surroundings.

For ten years now I have always been
fortunate enough to take a holiday of three
weeks in Devonshire or Hants embracing usually
the last week of April and the first fortnight of
May; waiting in fact for the quiet time which
sees the gloriously lengthening days between
Easter and Whitsuntide — which sees the arrival
and hears the song of the warblers, the black-
cap, the willow wrens and the chiffchaff, as they
choose their nesting places — which sees the sky
changing from ominous black to smiling showers
after the east wind has had its innings and the
flooded meadows have recovered from the furious
rain storms that followed its departure — which

110 WHERE TO FISH.

brings the cuckoo's welcome call to the angler
as he puts up his rod, and the green wood-
pecker's joyous laugh as he loses his first fish.

When all the land is musical, ' the woods like
great cathedrals pillared with oaks, and roofed
with the sky, from which the birds sing like
hidden nuns in the green twilight of the leafy
•cloisters.'

During this time there is seldom much gained
by being too early. One can go down to the
bridge in slippers for an hour before breakfast,
without the rod, and make plans for the day
•according to the wind and one's own inclination,
deferring the real start until ten or ten thirty.

I used at one time to be bursting with
impatience; to hurry to the best runs and
meadows with the idea of getting ahead of other
fishermen, the result being that I found my
pleasure rather clouded by haste, and my sport
by bad casting or careless fishing. Fortunately
I have never aspired to being a first rate fly
fisherman, have no reputation to keep up, and
can be as philosophic as anyone over an empty
creel, without abating a jo.t of keenness or feeling
a tinge of ennui.

There is no denying that angling is selfish in
all these particulars. To feel that you can
deposit your belongings under the hedge near
one pool while you move up to fish the other;
and can return to the first exactly when you
like with no fear of finding it occupied, con-
stitutes a satisfaction that all will understand.
The week-end visit from Friday to Tuesday

WHERE TO FISH. Ill

evening is often the exact length of time you
care to devote to it. Far nicer to return a
day before you want to after good sport than
to outstay your own pleasure. As the old
German proverb says ' the man who wants to
get the last drop in the tankard is very likely
to get the lid on his nose.' In that particular
a pleasant four days is like a good profit. You
must leave the last bit for someone else, or for
another time.

112 WADING.

WADING.

A SANCTUARY FOR TROUT — THE CHARM OF FREE

WATER — A SURPRISE BASKET — PLEASANT

TRAMPS BACK.

'Tis sweet to hear the watch dog's honest bark
Bay deep mouthed welcome as we draw near
home;

'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark
Our coming, and look brighter when we come.

BYRON.

ON far more than half the water that I
have ever had the fortune to fish,
wading has been prohibited; and, much
as the restriction is often grumbled at or actively
resented by holiday visitors with day tickets,
there is no denying that from a proprietor's
point of view, it is the best, and perhaps the
only plan of preventing the stock of good fish
from being exterminated.

It forms in fact, like the prohibition of worm
or minnow, a kind of preservation, very like
that of dry fly fishing.

We can all of us recall winding streams where
every half mile or so the trees meet overhead
for a short interval, rendering casting impos-
sible; or again where the opposite side is steep
and cliff like with trailing ivy or dripping ferns,

WADING. 113

under whose roots the deep water is removed
from us by a full twenty yards of gravelly
shallow. In each case the poaching instinct
asserts itself; the thought occurs of breaking
rules or promises, and of stepping into the
stream, to reach the coveted spot where the
trout continue to rise, on days which threaten
ominously to prove blanks. Where such places
occupy less than ten per cent, of the available
water the true angler will own at once that he
is not unfairly handicapped, and he must regard
them either as nurseries or sanctuaries. But
for their existence and maintenance, all chance
of hooking a trout well over the average would
be so remote that his sport and pleasure would
lose half their excitement.

Thirty years ago when anglers were few, and
generally local, even a stretch of free water was
able to maintain its reputation of furnishing
specimen trout every month, and of retaining
a decent head of fish year after year; but now,
when we have nothing less than a territorial
army all trained by experts, all well equipped
with the most modern split cane weapons, the
most deadly ammunition of duns and alders, as
well as with petrol driven lines of communication
and commissariat, nothing but an angling Hague
tribunal can prevent the last six ounce trout
from being literally hunted down, surrounded,
and given no quarter.

Even the boy scouts of this army now exist
in the form of youths well versed in the habits
of fish and birds, assisted as they are by

J

114 WADING.

school-board text books, and Nature-study
lectures.

They can chase a spawning trout up a narrow
brook in November, and stop its retreat by a
barricade; doing thereby as much damage as
an enemy that poisons the wells. Any regret
I have ever felt at reading the words ' no
wading allowed ' upon my ticket has long since
faded away, or has been replaced by a feeling
of thankfulness that for another generation
perhaps fly fishing may exist for the lower ten
thousand, as well as for the upper five hundred.

There are two main objects in wading. The
first is to enable you to fish water quite out of
reach otherwise : the second to cover a pool or
shallow from a downstream position.

Wading is in fact strategic or tactical. On
broad shallow rivers interspersed with boulders
like parts of the Coquet, the Teme, or the
Manifold, wading is necessary to get at the
water. On smaller streams, easy enough to
cast across from bank to bank with a nine foot
rod, wading is often the only means of coming
into touch with the sharp sighted fish that are
feeding above a stickle and which cannot
possibly be attacked on either flank. This is
the form of wading that requires the education
of at least two seasons to be brought to work-
manlike efficiency. Practised on still summer
evenings on free water, where as we all know
a blank of anything over six ounces is the
usual reward of four hours enjoyment, it has
a calm fascination for the enthusiast.

WADING. 115

To set off up the river at seven o'clock in
June or July with a tried and trusted friend,
and to meet the returning holiday angler
hurrying back to the apartment supper, and thus
leaving the field in peace, constitutes a pleasure
composed of little or no alloy.

********

It is a left bank water with a public footpath
-extending for two miles, before you come to the
small bridge half hidden by the trees, and the
notice board with the variegated fate awaiting
trespassers engraven upon it. All this lovely
stretch of river is slightly affected by the tide,
the stickles being drowned during the hours of
high water; and, during spring tides being
quite unfishable excepting for peal. As the
course of the river is roughly north and south,
the bank angler has all the glow of the western
sky behind him, thus giving a warning
silhouette to the few and wary trout who venture
forth after their prey like the lions in the
psalms. This is where wading does something
to equalise the chance of a heavy fish finding
itself upon a cool plate in the larder when man
goeth forth to his work and to his labour on
the following morning.

At its summer level, the river is fordable in
many places for knee high rubber boots ; and
at exactly eight o'clock the passage is attempted,
with much probing with the landing net handle,
and much balancing on slimy stones, before a
stand is taken up on the narrow beach or fringe
of rushes, with its background of red cliff or

116 WADING.

of tangled foliage. What a different scene is
now presented. One feels secure in the protec-
tive shadow of the stalls, while the rises take
place behind the footlights.

There is no need to roam about much once
you have chosen a favourable pitch, as fifty or
a hundred yards is quite enough to allot to
oneself; care being taken to study the position
of stakes and obstacles, which, clear enough
now, will fade into dangerous unobtrusiveness
after nine-thirty, or just when the coveted
pounder indulges in his well chosen sucks of
floating flies.

And, speaking of stakes and obstacles, it is
needless to add there must be no dropper.
Long before that time however the rise begins,
at first the sprats and then the better fish.
Some are rising in the broken or swift water,
which can be easily covered by remaining on
the bank, and are more readily attracted by
casting with the left hand from a kneeling
position ; but afterwards the shallows must be
approached.

The least ripple, or up stream wave, caused
by stepping into the water clumsily, will spoil
everything, and stop each reachable ring as
suddenly as though you had thrown a stone in.

Edge quietly forward step by step without
casting, and make your way up the current,
until you stand a few yards below the unbroken
glide of the shallow pool. Again, there is no
hurry. Wait and watch as quietly as an old
heron, keeping your best eye close under the

WADING. 117

rushes of the bank on your left. If a promising
rise takes place give time to see whether he is
a feeder in position, or merely a roamer moving,
up stream. After he has risen twice, or three
times, the critical moment has arrived, and the
first cast must drop your fly a foot or so above
him.

All the walk, all the trouble and planning, is
rewarded by the tension of those few seconds.
A ring appears, a sound like a smothered kiss,
a, pause, a check, a struggle. If all succeeds
and he is played and netted, with cast almost
round one's boots, it must appear to an
onlooker — an imaginary one of course, for no
one in his senses could tolerate a soul by his
side at such a time — that trout fishing is not
only simple, but is a certainty for the rod.

There are seven phases of pleasure, each in
its way separate, yet, when complete, all com-
pressed within a very few minutes. There is
the pleasure of the rise, followed by that of
moving into position and adjusting the length
of line so that the cast may cover it without
falling short or overlapping. Then comes the
cast itself, and the true rise made at the false
fly. Next, the crowning pleasure of the strike
and the finding that the line is tight between
you — the more sober pleasure of playing and
netting — the quick and varying estimates of his
size as you feel in the net, and the fond look
at the divine form before he is dropped into
the creel. The final pleasure is more one of
pride, as the catch is shown on the dish at

118 WADING.

home, after having been washed at the pantry
sink, with tumblers and teacups pushed aside,
and each glistening fish arranged head and tail
on the grass you have hurried out and snatched
beyond the back garden door.

But to return to the pool, where you have
been standing. This has now been too disturbed
by the waves of the recent struggle to offer,
much hope. Across to your right is a narrow
side channel, very small and overhung but deep
and swift. Just at the head of this, where the
water laps over a stranded stake with an inter-
mittent gurgle and is guarded by a hideous
bramble, a good fish may be expected. A
ridge of rush covered gravel affords some little
cover; but if you have no knee pad you are
badly handicapped.

Although the light is wrong, and you have
scarcely two yards of line through the top ring
it is worth watching; as a brace of fish on the
free water in one evening means a bag well
above the average in these degenerate days.
You can see the eddy swirl round, where after
a short and uncomfortable interval of attention
there is a rise. It is so close that the move-
ment of the rod may give the danger signal.

Possibly when a trout is poised so near to
the surface his eyes are focussed for short
vision only; and so it seems, for he has taken
your cast and has bolted under some weeds,
leaving the line round an obstacle almost before
he felt the check. He is throbbing with fright,
and you are with excitement. The line is freed

WADING. 119

by good fortune, and the rod forms a neat
curve with only the cast beyond the rings.
There is nothing for it but to lie down, pull up
your sleeve, and grope down the gut until your
ringers are feeling among the weedy tendrils.
You have got him tight by the gills. You
manage to get out the scissors and cut the point
with your left hand. Nothing of great size,
but a plucky eight ouncer taken in his own
lair by fair play.

Further up again the current is deeper, the
volume of stream being under the left bank. A
fish can be made out, rising repeatedly in the
broken water, while a governor is being quickly
tied on. Twice it seems to have moved him,
and twenty, thirty casts are made at the place.
Suddenly it is taken, he gives a tug right on
the surface — a frantic struggle, and back it all
comes with the fly still on, and in perfect
order. Whether you were too rough, too soon,
or too late, matters little; but the disturbing
fact remains that he is in the river, one of the
might-have-been pounders that jars upon your
memory for hours after.

And so the evening passes, or rather glides
into dusk without one's noticing the process.

With eyes gradually accustoming themselves
to the fading light, one can see the rises up to
ten o'clock or later, and can cast a fly with fair
accuracy at the spot. After they have ceased,
there is the final down-stream-and-across casting
with its pulsating pauses, occasionally broken
by a tug, either from a large trout or an early

120 WADING.

peal. And finally the welcome ' coo-ey ' from
above or below, with the query as to whether
you have knocked off.

Yes, there were giants in those days — as also
in these, for the river has improved of late —
and occasionally one of them was brought home,
usually in my friend's creel, and weighed on the
kitchen scales, after we had had the pleasurable
topic of his estimate in ounces during the two
mile tramp back along the marshes.

These giants too were not the nebulous fabled
monsters described in hostelries, always in un-
broken pounds, two pounders, or three pounders,
occasionally topped by a hiccuping four pounder,
caught — always ' on a dry fly ' — by the gentle-
man in gaiters at the end of the bar, whose
legs were as much in want of support as his
tales, and whose fondness for running water
would never have been guessed by the amount
of whisky with which he diluted it.

This too, out of a river, remember, where a
sixteen ounce trout is an object of beauty and
envy. No; these giants of ours took the form
of brown trout of one pound one, one pound
five, one pound nine, one pound twelve — his
tracing still preserved and coloured from
memory.

All this night work reminds you of boyhood,
of Fenimore Cooper's red Indians, where men
of few words talk for five closely printed pages
upon the necessity for preserving breathless
silence at the cost of your life.

WADING. 121

And now it is a week and a year later. ' I
like to be particular in dates ' — the eleventh of
July. It was not only a summer's day, but
one of really tropical splendour, like that sixth
of June which Dona Julia had cause for remem-
bering so well.

We had agreed that it was useless to
attempt day fishing, even when a ticket for the
preserved water figured temptingly on the mantel
piece. Although the river was low, it had been
thoroughly freshened up by a week of con-
tinuous wet weather, and had not as yet run
down to its summer level.

We had heard peal jump on the two previous
evenings — that startling sound in the dusk, as
though someone had thrown a brick into a quiet
pool and it had grazed your heart in passing.
I had accordingly looked out and mounted a
fly suited to the occasion, a luscious caterpillary
reddish brown creature, on a hook the size of
a mayfly. This, threaded on to a strand of
undrawn gut, or better still mounted on a
separate six foot cast, is all that is requisite, as
it can then be used from nine-thirty until ten
o'clock or later, according to the hopes or
delusions of the angler.

To hook a peal on rod and fly, on the free
water, is an event nowadays of perhaps only
weekly occurrence, but on the night in question
I was fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to hook
two, each of about a pound and a half — that is
the commonest size — and lose them both ; the
first jumping on to the bank, and off again in

122 WADING.

freedom, and the second after a hustling run
along the surface of a dozen yards.

I have never been lucky at peal on this river,
as August is really the best month; my largest
being only i Ib. 12 oz., with few adventures of
anything over that weight. The heaviest fish
I have seen was four pounds and a quarter,
hooked and played on trout tackle and a light
Hardy rod at half past ten, after a desperately
exciting struggle with a landing net licensed to
carry sixteen ounces inside.

On this particular evening the free water was
at its best; but it must be understood that this
word is used in relation with a very poor
standard — a standard so poor, that evening after
evening we had to be content with either
touching a peal, or bringing home a trout of
eight ounces, or even of eight inches.

The most barefaced netting had always been
resorted to, beginning at day break on the
second of February, when some hundreds of
forlorn little trout were hauled out by the local
fishermen ; followed by periodical visits after
larger trout or peal on summer nights. Under
such circumstances the rod has a miserable
chance, and accordingly a two mile stretch of
perfect water is rendered almost useless. No
one but an enthusiast would go — and we
belonged to that genus.

As however it is the only part of the river
where no restriction is made as to wading, the
pleasure of getting into the cool water after a
sweltering July day, and of thus exploring

WADING. 123

unreachable creeks and pockets on the other
side, can easily be understood. An old pair
of carpet slippers or tennis shoes is all the
equipment required; for thistles, nettles, or
bracken soon lose their sting, or are disregarded,
as the evening rise dapples the surface or
catches the ear from the pools under the red
cliff and the sycamores.

As no other rod was out that evening, we
divided the upper meadow between us, and
separated at a quarter to eight to seek adventures
and sport each in our own way, agreeing' to
meet below swing gates at ten o'clock and tell
each other all about it.

I should like to be able to convey to others
the sense of absolute pleasure derived from
sitting on that bank and looking out over the
river. After fifteen years knowledge of nearly
all that has been done each season — and of what
a modest aggregate the all consists of — it is
surprising that one can begin evening after
evening with renewed hope and interest. Yet
so it is, and I really believe if the water were
privately owned, were stocked with two pounders,
whose appetites were attuned to surface feeding,
and I were given the only ticket to fish it, the
old spell would be broken.

All the same if any philanthropist will try
the experiment, and enclose a stamped envelope
for the return of his permit, I shall be happy
to give him my address and will let him know
how I get on at the end of the following
month.

124 WADING.

One factor we had quite forgotten — the tide.
It was so badly up that it quite prevented my
friend from getting across to the other side.
My upper beat was clear, being above the
influence of anything but a spring tide backed
up by a south wind. I regret to say my
friend's plight, doomed to cast into brackish
water, which we all knew was no good, did not
enter my mind until later on. Wading quietly
in just below the island I found small fish
rising well; with some that looked better higher
up out of casting distance.

After doing my best with each fly that seemed
suitable, I had to confess that they beat me
altogether. Each one in turn would rise and
tealute the fly with a splash the first time it
passed over him, the evident message being
'all right old sport, I see it, don't trouble
further.' After this attention they continued to
feed in their own way, sometimes a few inches
from the fly.

I tried in every place, making casts that never
went wrong, with gut points that lay on the
water like cobweb — it is always easy to do this
when fish are not taking. Never did the rod
throw better, never did the fly pitch more
temptingly. They would rise at it, but nothing
more. I tried striking the very moment the
ring appeared, sometimes even in anticipation ;
but it was no use, I could not get them.

At dusk I stopped, after getting one small
trout on a downstream cast while crossing the
stickle, and walked down the meadow wondering

WADING. 125

whether B had bicycled home disgusted with

the tide.

Before I got close enough to see him I could
hear the welcome swish of his rod. ' Is that
you ' he said ' have you done anything ? ' * No,
practically nothing.' ' Well, come down here
quickly — fair sized yellow fly; they are taking
like mad. All our experience is upset. I have
got a full dozen, of sorts — there he's missed it —
one of a pound and several tidy fish. To think
of our always being told that it was no good
when the tide was up. I have never done this
in the last seven years; and should not have
believed it.'

The rise was nearly over : he got another, I
got two pulls, and after that we whipped away
for ten minutes into blank darkness without
result. While he was getting off his wading
stockings I examined the fish — a really good
miscellaneous basket — fourteen trout, ranging
from little three ouncers to several of over half
a pound, one of three quarters, and the big one
which proved an ounce over our estimate. We

reeled up and walked home in triumph, B

pushing his machine and recounting the
evening's adventures. My envy quickly vanished
under his pleasant assurance that ' you could
have done just the same had you been down
here.'

So here was another case of listen to every-
body, but try everything too. Seven brace of
trout, half of them above the preserved water
limit of nine inches, from the Free water, when

126 WADING.

the tide was full up. This was in our small
world a record-breaking feat. Had we been
reminded of the tide before starting, we both
agreed we should not have gone. Others said
they did not go for that reason.

We tried it the next evening : but no :
not four by honours two deals running. We
were dealt a few trumps, but nothing to count
beyond the pleasure of theorising explanations.

Orthodoxy in fly fishing is a hideous mistake.
It stifles initiative and cramps experiment : two
of the finest and most pleasurable attributes of
angling. Was it Brougham who said of
Macaulay ' If I could feel as sure of anything,
as he is of everything, I should be satisfied ' ?

THE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL. 127

THE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL.

AN AFTERNOON WALK— THE NIGHTJAR'S EGG-
OXSHOTT WOODS — NIGHTINGALES AND
MAYFLIES.

And pleasures flow so thick and fast

Upon his heart, that he at last
Must needs express his love's excess

With words of unmeant bitterness.

COLERIDGE.

They answer and provoke each other's song.

COLERIDGE.

THE scene to be recalled is that of a close
and somewhat misty June evening, when
a heavy thunder shower which is
popularly supposed to have settled the weather,
has as a matter of fact unsettled it for weeks
or months; when the sun, which rose in
unclouded splendour, is sinking behind the
heavily dripping fir trees, and is half obscured
by the exhalations from a swampy heath and
an overheated soil; when all the birds, who
have remained mute and motionless while the
thunder rolled among the hills and the rain
flashed down like bayonets, have once more
come forth from their hiding places, as though
resolved to attend vespers together, and to

128 T,HE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL.

testify to Nature their intention of praising their
creator; when the man and the maid, who have
taken sweet counsel together in a stroll through
the woods instead of attending Whit-Sunday
evening service, and who, like the rest of those
that perish, have acted as troglodytes during
the fury of the storm, sally forth from the
shelter of a bank and hasten homewards in the
gloaming, fearful of the lateness of the hour;
when the new moon sails high in the heavens,
and the soft west wind causes a miniature
shower to fall from every pine and silver birch
on to the knee deep bracken and drooping
bluebells.

At such a time as this, and in such a locality,
the wavering churr of the fern owl is bound to
arrest attention, even if the bird is not itself
seen sailing or flapping its wings over its back
between us and the lowering sky. I had often
seen nightjars, had listened to their humming
on warm evenings, when the landrail responded
with its unvarying call, which had I thought a
complaining scrape in it, and noted the contrast
between the querulous and discordant voice from
the rich meadow, and the droning content
uttered by the nightjar from the high elms on
the other side of the road.

I had often tried, in the gathering dusk, to
watch their wheeling forms as they played
round me in their erratic hawking after insects.
I had often had their eggs brought to me by
country children. But never, until this Whit-
Sunday evening, had I found one myself. The

THE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL. 129

rain had given over, and the woods and common
seemed literally alive with bird life, jays,
cuckoos, and woodpeckers.

Only a few minutes before I had heard, for
the first time that year, the r-r-r-r-r of the
nightjar, when, under a larger clump of larches
than usual, I saw one fly round the trees. A
few steps ahead another — evidently the hen bird,
seemed to be wafted up from the ground, and
flew round uttering a low guttural note like
* ku-ep ' with each gyration. I at once guessed
that something more than chance chained both
birds to the spot.

One peep among the ferns was enough : there,
upon the half dry fir spines, lay an egg. Had
a cuckoo dropped it, it could not seemingly
have been laid in a more unlikely place. Yet
the nightjars intended the spot to be their
house and home for some weeks to come.
From a distance of ten or fifteen feet the
appearance of the egg was pure white; so white
indeed, that it would have attracted the attention
of the most unobservant passer by. If the bad
reputation which jays enjoy of egg suckers be
true, it is wonderful that a bird like a nightjar,
which lays on the ground in the open, and in
the very places where jays abound, is able to
hatch out its clutch.

Though the wild duck and the moor hen
contrive to cover their nest when they leave it,
the nightjar makes no such attempt. Yet the
eggs of this bird have no protective mimicry to
rely upon, as have those of the plover which

K

130 THE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL.

are hard enough to see even a few yards away
from the nest. As a matter of fact the nightjar's
eggs are not white, but are most artistically
blotched with grey and amber. The one colour
overlies the other so distinctly as to look as
though the eggs had been coloured by hand,
first with a brush of the grey paint, and then
with a second brush containing the richer brown.

They are in form, no less than in colouring,
quite unmistakable; and should not be con-
founded with those of any other British bird
even if the situation of the nest — but there is no
nest — were unknown. They are almost an exact
oval, that is to say the thick and the thin ends
are hard to detect. In shape and size, as well
as in polish, they are like a woodpigeon's; so
much so that a clever artist in days to come,
when nightjar's eggs are as valuable as those
of the great auk, might colour the pure white
eggs of the woodpigeon so as to deceive many
a buyer.

The nightjar's family, like the pigeons, con-
sists of two; so that the single egg I saw had
probably been laid that day. Had not I felt
sure it could not escape detection, being so very
close to a footpath, I should have left it : but,
knowing how all the boys of the village would
be upon the prowl on the Whitmonday holiday,
it would have been too mortifying to seek out
the place the next day and find nothing. In
all probability the birds made another home, as
the female would be bound to lay her second
egg, and I felt that by taking this one I should

THE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL. 131

never have any excuse, or any desire, to do so
again.

The bird is far from uncommon, especially in
the southern counties, and can be heard and seen
as near to London as Wimbledon Common.
The open heaths of Surrey, in any place whose
name ends with 'shott, Aldershot, Bagshot,
Oxshott, Eushott, nightjars are regular visitants,
arriving long after many other migratory birds
have eggs and young. In colouring the night-
jar is sombre almost as sombre as a London
sparrow, and in habits crepuscular and nocturnal.

The mouth, for it has very little actual beak,
is edged with bristles or vibrissae, thereby aiding
it to catch the insects on which it feeds.

Although known in certain districts as the
* Fern owl,' and the ' nighthawk,' it is more
akin to the swifts and swallows both in food
and flight. The term * goatsucker ' or
caprimalgus is a delusion void of all foundation
like the mythical thunderbolt; and, as a matter
of fact, the bird would be physically unable to
attempt any such action.

An interesting feature to naturalists is the
serrated claw of the nightjar, seeing that no
actual use has ever been discovered for so
curious a characteristic. One theory which is
accepted by Bree, and other * separate-creation '
naturalists, as a proven and patent fact, is that
the pectinated claw is used for combing out the
rictal bristles which surround the bird's mouth.

Bree goes so far as to twit evolutionists on
this point, and asks them how they can possibly

132 THE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL.

explain so beautiful an adaptation. ''To
imagine that this comb, on the claw of the long
middle toe, is an accidental variation, would be
the inference that such a variation could have
been produced by successive steps through a
long series of years." Darwinians will own,
with something like a sigh, that there are many
more difficult matters to account for by natural
selection than this one.

Both Alfred Newton and Seebohm — the latter
an evident evolutionist — are far more cautious;
" whilst Naumann was of opinion that it was
of service to the bird when perched lengthwise
on the branches." With regard to the rictal
bristles it must be remarked that in many genera
of the Family they are absent, although the
serrated claw is still present, which Bree may
possibly have overlooked.

For myself, I venture to think that the file-
like claw can assist the bird in holding, or
possibly in scaling, its insect prey, upon some-
what the same principle that rowers have the
handle of an oar roughed with a file to prevent
its slipping from their grasp.

How many a common is there now where
the beetle is allowed to continue his droning
flight untouched by the nightjar or the kestrel;
and where golf balls lie ensconced in places
where the fern owl laid her eggs. The making
of golf courses is one of those deruralising
processes which have waged war against the
birds, by rooting up the bracken fern, and
making the rough places smooth and lawn-like.

THE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL. 133

Within the past ten years thousands of acres
have been thus treated; so that the man who
strolls out in the calm of a June evening across
the common, now listens in vain for the soothing
chur-r-r which used to make him watch for the
flap of those mystic wings against the moonlit
sky.

Following fast in the track of the golf links,
come asphalte and lamp posts, with the laying
out of the old tangled common into summer
gardens with band stands, or into recreation
grounds for the children — yes, for that genera-
tion of children who will in ages to come possess
automatic nightjars and mechanical nightingales,
and who may be happier and longer lived for
the changes in their environment.

Birds too, which are being displaced by the
improvement to commons, are the whinchat, and
the stonechat — both very familiar in one's daily
walks about Esher and Wimbledon. The lap-
wing also, and the green woodpecker, are being
driven further afield since the days when we
used to hunt Arbrook Common and the Oxshott
Woods for the eggs and nests respectively.
Those woods still contain a surprising amount
of bird life; abounding with jays, cuckoos, long
tailed tits and woodpeckers all the early summer.

Among the less familiar birds, which I have
either seen or found the nests of in this district
—which is after all only seventeen miles from
London — are the turtle-dove, kestrel, sparrow
hawk, greater spotted woodpecker, red backed
shrike, crossbill, golden crested wren, horned

134 THE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL.

owl, nuthatch, and hawfinch. On many
evenings, when taking a two hour walk, I used
to make a list of the different species seen from
door to door; and found that it compared
favourably in the matter of numbers with walks
in far more distant places.

All the borders and approaches to these woods
are haunted by nightingales, thus making a
walk, after ten o'clock on a calm May evening,
a pleasure to look forward to.

At intervals during the day, especially in the
afternoon, the birds sing freely in the tangled
sides of Woodstock Lane, between Long-Ditton
and Claygate, their nests being only too readily
found — I hope this is not adding to the know-
ledge of nest robbing boys — in the nettle-covered
banks of the broad ditches skirting the road.
Even until the young are hatched they will
continue their song; although it is never so full
or intense after the eggs are laid. An angler
may take the nightingale's song as a prelude
to mayfly fishing. He will recall listening to
the nightingales answering one another, as he
sat on a hatch stile in the moonlight on his
way back to the cottage, and link it with the
capture of a fine brace of trout, hardly stiff in
his creel, taken on an alder or a Welshman's
button.

Similarly, from an angling point of view, one
may always regard the nightjar as a bird of
good omen. On a fine open stretch of the
Itchen, where a narrow peninsula faces due west,
I can associate many a splendid splashing in

THE NIGHTJAR: OR FERN OWL. 135

the shallows from a lusty trout on a spent-gnat
or straddle bug, with the erratic hawking of a
pair of nightjars; so close indeed round the rod
that the probability of foul-hooking one could
not have been very remote.

136 THE EAGLE OWL.

THE EAGLE OWL.

A GLIMPSE OF CEYLON.

We wandered to the river as the sun
Was setting, now the sultry day was done;
We saw the purple darkness close around,
We watched the river mist from off the ground
Rise as a mantle o'er the shadowy palms
That swayed their feathery heads and rustled soft
Rocked in the night wind's arms.

IF the reader will accompany me in spirit,
we will saunter along a jungle path
together in the Low Country of Ceylon.
The month is January, and the North East
monsoon has fairly set in, with little prospect
of rain for some few months. The time is
between ten and eleven at night, and it wants
but one day to the full moon.

To the left are low hills, covered with the
densest jungle from base to summit. Stately
palms stand out in relief against the clear sky,
shaking their serrated leaves. Clumps of
bamboos sway and nod their feathery heads with
a murmuring rustle, as the night wind creeps
gently over them. The air is filled with the
sound and conversation of the insect world;
noisy cicadas, and stridulating beetles almost

THE EAGLE OWL. 137

drowning the soft humming of night-moths'
wings. Clouds of fireflies vibrate, like luminous
vapour, against the dark background of the
foliage; round which they hover all the night
long. On our right is a plain, stretching away
into the misty moonlit distance as far as the
horizon.

In front of us is a * tank,' over four miles
long, edged with arecas, green bamboos, and
wild plantains. While watching its surface, a
silver streak is seen every now and then,
announcing the presence of alligators, which
protrude their uncanny eyes only for a moment
above the wrater. Far in the distance are
elephants bathing — elephants in their native
haunts undisturbed and unfearing. The light
every now and then catches the water, which
they love to cast upon their backs unceasingly.
While watching them we notice one or two of
their large forms disappear for a few minutes
entirely under the surface. Then they emerge
dripping with water, and silvered by moonlight,
to recommence blowing fountains through their
trunks. Apparently something scares them, and
we witness a quiet but hasty retreat. One after
one they shamble up the muddy bank, and
disappear quite noiselessly into the gloom of
the Jungle.

Let us examine this spot upon which we are
standing. Masonry can be traced, although
rotten and distorted, down among the snake-like
roots of this huge * banyan ' tree. Kandian
Kings, in the time of Daniel, may have stood

138 THE EAGLE OWL.

here with their engineers and courtiers, superin-
tending the formation of this dam. Stones,
trimmed and carved all over with Bhuddist
hieroglyph, brought from far distant quarries,
must have been laid here by trained elephants
and slaves in far distant days.

To those who have read the ' Mahawanso,' it
must be evident that a Cinghalese population
once existed of six or seven millions, whereas
to-day it is under two. The land, upon which
all this Jungle and ' cheddi ' now teems, must
once have borne extensively terraced rice fields
irrigated from this enormous reservoir. Huts,
thatched with paddi straw, and villages must
have nestled here under their cocoa nut trees,
giving out each morning a busy swarm of
labourers to till the fertile land. And where
are all gone now ? Perhaps some sudden call
to arms obliged those peaceful people to
exchange their hoes and wooden ploughs for
swords and spears of steel and ebony, and to
hasten off in defence of their distant capital and
sacred tooth.

Or a panic stricken exodus may have been
made before a death-breathing epidemic of
cholera or small pox, which report told them
was decimating their villages daily. A desertion
of the district was made whatever may have
been the cause.

The entire appearance of the land would
rapidly alter as soon as it was neglected. A
few short months would be sufficient for weeds,
wild plants, and parasites to grow up and choke

THE EAGLE OWL. 139

the tender ' nellu ' (rice). A few short years
would amply suffice for Jungle trees, bamboos,
and rattans to spring up and spread over each
other, until every sign of cultivation was
obliterated.

The cocoanut palms themselves would die, as
soon as they missed the sound of human voices.

The slender rootlets of growing trees,
insinuating themselves between the stones of the
tank, would grow in time to distort, and even
to throw down, powerful retaining walls. This
we can see has been the case. Here are roots,
large as a man's body, encircling in their strong
coils blocks of stone which must have taken
many slaves to lift. The water, once beginning
to ooze through the crevices of the dam, would
soon swell to an irresistible torrent, tearing
down all its walls, and escaping over the
adjoining flat land to stagnate and seethe under
a scorching sun. Malaria, and Jungle fever,
would quickly be generated by the rotting
vegetation.

The margin of the lake is here impossible to
walk on. Soft mud and decomposed rushes
form the abodes of alligators and snakes, which
lie in horrible enjoyment upon these pestilential
beds. If we are to continue our survey of this
region, we must mount upon the wings of the
lotus-bird, who will waft our spirits over the
tropical water lilies and shallow lagoons.

Hidden among the dank rushes here is a
leopard, waiting with feline patience for his
prey — a thirsty deer. Little does it know how

140 THE EAGLE OWL.

near its own end may be. To-morrow night will
see its carcase exposed to the birds and insects.
A dark and moving shadow comes upon the
glittering surface of the water; and on looking
up, we see the form of a huge owl floating
noiselessly through the still air. Its shadow
has crossed the spot where the leopard crouches.
Its cry makes one's blood run cold, and would
cause the poor natives to live in dread of the
death of someone dear to them.

The cry itself suggests the sound of children
being choked, or strangled. A low and spas-
modic gurgling is preceded and followed by
screams of desperate agony. This being's flight
is perfectly noiseless. Hardly a feather can be
seen to move, but like a ghost it haunts the
scene, its red eyes gleaming luridly at the
sleeping world below. This is the ' Ulama '-
the Devil bird of the Cinghalese, who affirm
that every living thing upon which its shadow
falls will die. This can only happen upon
clear and moonlit nights, as the mysterious
visitor is never seen by day. We watch its
form disappear over the tufted and lemon
scented mana-grass upon its plutonian mission.

Suddenly we partly awake ; the noise of
civilization surges to our ears, but again dies
away. The opalled tank shines out clearer than
before : and we roam through Jungle vines and
palmyras, talipot palms, and bamboos as we
once did years ago.

Across undulating ' patenas ' of waving mana-
grass; past gigantic ant hills and sacred Bo

TffE EAGLE OWL. 141

trees; through clumps of cacti, and tree ferns,
starred with many a luminous insect; by
hundred-rooted banyan trees, covered with rattans
and parasites; along the orchid-clad sides of
babbling water courses; we wend our way,
breaking through the clinging and thorny
tendrils of many a jungle creeper, wading across
many a ferny swamp, climbing over the upraised
roots of forest giants, or stooping under their
spreading branches.

A sudden snort is heard, then a crash and
sound of hurrying feet; and we know that some
old boar has been disturbed from his favourite
* form.' We fancy we are pulling off leeches again
from our bleeding ankles, while pressing through
the wet grass. Then that we are being pursued
by some * rogue ' elephant, while our comrades'
rifle shots sing past us.

But it is of no avail. The elephant, with
springy strides and uplifted trunk is rapidly
gaining upon us. His jaws are seething with
foam, and his hoarse and angry trumpeting
seems to impel him upon his mad career. The
pace has grown terrific. Bamboos, guavas,
lantana and plantains brush quickly by us : and
we see for a minute human forms and firelight.

Our pursuer has vanished. The sound of
voices has awakened us with a start. Our spirits
can only wander through these regions alone.
Again the sound of English traffic asserts itself,
and the chilling feel of winter's breath puts an
end to all tropical reverie. We have been
day-dreaming.

142 THE EAGLE OWL.

Once only did I succeed in obtaining a
specimen of the Eagle-owl — a bird which needless
to say I have never seen in England. My
* appoo ' shot it, on a Casuarina tree, just
outside my bungalow in Kotmali, at eight
o'clock one evening. I would not believe his
tale, that ' one big bird ' — he stretched his arms
out further than I thought they would go — is
making that dreadful noise, master bring
master's gun.'

I sat up skinning it that night, and it was
long past twelve when I had finished, with a
feeling of exultation that there was not a
feather upon the table. It measured sixty five
inches across the wings — two more than the
largest specimen I could read of. Having
stuffed it lightly with gun-tow steeped in
carbolic acid, I had it hanging up in the
verandah for months, by its legs from a rafter;
the stock joke being that I had just shot it,
as each caller noticed the beast.

As a matter of fact, I do not think it is in
the least established that the eagle owl is the
4 Ulama,' or Devil-bird, of the Cinghalese; but
that is rather beyond me now. It certainly had
huge red eyes, and I well remember the diffi-
culty of getting the skin over the back of the
skull sufficiently far to remove them from their
sockets. Figuratively speaking, it looked the
size of a turkey as the Boy brought it in; while
its carcass seemed more like a mallard's, when
I cut its neck free after skinning it.

HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS. 143

HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS.

THE ROMANCE OF FLY FISHING— WEEK END

PLEASURES — THE BLACK GNAT TIME — AFTER THE

THUNDERSTORM.

Perhaps it would imply an excessive egoism
if we were all to set ourselves down to
think out the order in which we should
place our pleasures . . .
. . . There are moments that stand out in
one's life memories as the best and brightest,
and these in my own mind's vision, have
the serene yet sparkling face of a river
for their background.

HORACE HUTCHINSON.

COMPARISONS are ungrateful: more so
in angling perhaps than in other sports,
for the reason that so many circum-
stances and surroundings are ancillary to the
day's pleasure. To plash through the water
meadows of the Avon or Itchen, to crouch
behind the giant rushes or dock leaves at the
water edge, to peer over and see whether the
two pound trout, or grayling, is rising beyond
the waving weed patch, need not be considered
in any way a joy superior to that felt by the
angler making his way up a Northumbrian
burn or a rocky stream in Derbyshire. Nor

144 HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS.

indeed to that felt by the same angler fishing"
with a wet fly upstream with a success that
speaks for itself of his knowledge of where the
fish lie and how they can be attracted to feed.
The style and equipment of all forms of fishing
may be different : but not the spirit of the sport.

To catch fish is no more the sole object of
fly fishing than to get from one seaport to
another the sole object of yachting; or to steer
a partner round a ball room the sole object of
dancing. Mere dead reckoning in either case
is not the whole story. Even in the shadows
of the beeches — or the palms — sitting out counts
for something. The frame of mind induced by
a river winding through a water-meadow is
that of the sleek cows with contented eyes
which breathe upon the canvasses of Mr.
Arnesby Brown.

The season opens in mid April, or a full
month later than the preserved water of South
Devon ; a plan which perhaps removes all idea
of fishing with a wet fly. In the ten rod club
to which I have had the pleasure to belong for
the past eight years, wet fly fishing although
by no means barred on the ticket has hardly
been practised; whether from custom, agreement,
pride, or etiquette, I cannot say. If one is
forced to make comparisons I should say that
there is less emulation among the members to
count the number of fish in their creels at the
end of the day. Hours are spent in sauntering
up the bank or splashing through the flooded
meadows, albeit the majority of the * rods ' live

HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS. 145

at a distance, London, Brockenhurst or
Southampton.

A charm one hardly likes to dilate upon in
naked print is that Sunday fishing is not for-
bidden which means that a few of us, more
unprincipled and perhaps less scientific than the
others, are able to spend every hour of a week-
end out of doors; using all the tact we can to
avoid giving offence to church goers by getting
away across the public meadows before ten
o'clock and remaining as much out of evidence
as we can until seven in Spring, or until dusk
in the summer evenings.

Curiously enough, although the river is in
many places not deep, wading is seldom or
never resorted to. The banks are mostly
unstable and fibrous, composed of chalky mud
overhanging runs and channels of two or three
feet deep into which I should be very sorry to
step for fear either of sinking waist-high or of
being carried bodily down stream.

Shallow portions occur mostly in mid stream
where islands of waving weed or celery beds
afford secure cover for all the most cautious
trout. It is among the glittering openings
between these retreats that one looks for the rise
of a feeding fish. Having found it, plans must
be laid for approaching the bank behind the
rushes to a place from which one may hope to
cover the spot with an upstream cast.

No straight forward approach or good long
cast avails for a fair sized fish. The sight or
shadow of a full length figure, the wave of the

L

146 HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS.

arm or even the glint of the rod, the splash of
the line, each and all are too tell tale tactics to
practise with any hope of success. They merely
cause the rise to discontinue and the weeds to
wave like mermaids' hair over the place where
it had been noticed. As to thrashing away at
the spot, well, you might just as profitably
walk about an open field with a gun and expect
the wariest woodpigeon to circle round you and
be" fired at.

Many years ago I remember a man telling
me that in Scotland trout are counted by
pounds, on Dartmoor by dozens, and in
Hampshire by brace. North Country anglers
would I think be surprised if the truth were told
to them of the total bags that many of us
secure on the Itchen. A Southampton friend
wrote to me one October that ' he had enjoyed
a very fair season, just fifty trout averaging
i to ij Ibs., and twenty five grayling; his best
trout being just under, and his best grayling
just over, three pounds.'

This would probably mean forty half days
spent upon the water, allowing for his absence
on holiday abroad during the entire month of
August. Here then is a fairly practical answer
to the question * Is that good enough ?' My own
answer I will give at once, very much in the
affirmative as Cabinet Ministers are so fond of
saying. Thankful indeed shall I be if any
future season will yield so satisfactory a total.
Under the conditions of mens sana in corpore
y and pleasant weather, I will be content

HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS. 147

with half; knowing that the enjoyment to be
obtained therefrom will outbalance that of any
other form of sport which is likely to be
presented to me.

During the opening fortnight of the season
the fish are not in anything like the game con-
dition that they acquire after a fine week in
May. The red quill is one of the favourite and
most effective flies particularly on the side
streams where the smaller trout — our limit is
three quarters of a pound — are mostly taken.
For the last two years I have more or less
discarded the winged patterns finding that hackle
flies float quite as well, and are more likely to
hold when the strike is made.

For some reason too a gold-ribbed Hare's ear
dressed with reversed wings has gained a great
reputation particularly on windy days when one
has to pick and choose a likely place according
to the various bends of the river. Fortunately
this can nearly always be managed even with
a nasty north or north-west wind which some-
times prevails week after week. For the idea
of the reversed wing dressing we are all
indebted to Mr. H. K. Grierson who had them
made to his fancy by Messrs. Cox &
Macpherson of Southampton, from whom they
can no doubt be obtained. What the insect
may be which they imitate, others must guess
or explain; but it will sometimes take good fish
when nothing else will.

I must frankly say I prefer softer weather,
and less good sport, seeing that there is very

148 HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS.

little cover or protection on open water meadows
such as one gets on streams which are bounded
by a steep bank or cliff on one side. It is for
a fortnight prior to the mayfly that I have
during each year always obtained my best
baskets, a black gnat, alder, and Welshman's
button being at that time the most killing flies.
The twenty seventh of May is a date I cannot
help always associating with red letter luck.
On the twenty seventh of May, on a Devon-
shire river, the best angler of that district
caught twenty seven trout, * several of them
pounders,' a catch which was the envy and talk
of the club at the time and first caused a limit
(six brace) to be fixed by the owner of the
water.

On the twenty-seventh of May, on the Itchen,
I had the best day's sport I ever enjoyed in
point of size and number. During the entire
morning the fish rose and accepted nearly every-
thing that was nicely offered to them so much
so that when a thunder storm brewed up at 2
p.m. the opinion of each man passing down the
water was * all is over for to-day.' Everyone
left the river but myself. For some dogged
reason — chiefly that being out for the day I
wanted to have my full measure — I made up
my mind to stick it out until the storm was
over.

It proved a thoroughly nasty time; the
thunder storm working round and round with
many alarming lightning flashes and torrents of
rain which made me feel a fool for my pains.

f

HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS. 149

Fortunately I did not know at the time that
some cattle had been struck by lightning. At
five o'clock being far up the water I made for
the only small inn there was, some three
quarters of a mile away, arriving to tea with a
rainproof coat in a state of liquefaction. After
an hour's rest I set off down the river wishing
I had taken the advice tendered me.

The rain still continued but the storm had at
last grumbled itself out. Half way home a
change came, the rain showed every sign of
stopping while the sky to the westward became
so much brighter that it looked as though the
sun intended to peep through before setting
behind a heavy bank of cloud. There was a
long and broad stretch of water between two
bends where both banks were edged with dense
rushes, a deep and weedy place where sport as
a rule was only good on August evenings with
sedge flies. While watching to see if the river
was coloured after the rain I saw a rise, then
another in mid stream, — small grayling no
doubt. The fly I had on was a medium sized
Welshman's button quite good enough for any-
thing under the unfavourable conditions.

Going down to the lower end of the rushes
I faced upstream to see whether anything could
be done. Within the space of a few minutes
several rises occurred all of them far out in
mid stream. At the first cast a fish took the
fly instantly, sprang out of the water and was
off, a splendid yellow trout. Above him was
another rise, the fly pitched badly to one side

150 HAMPSHIRE WATER MEADOWS.

but he rushed at it was struck, and was on; a
good trout. After some really violent behaviour
he was landed and laid on the path (i Ib. 7
ounces). On coming back to the rushes, or
rather into the rushes, I could see as many
as a dozen fish mostly out of reach rising in
all directions but, being in a foot of water, I
was so low down that it was difficult or impos-
sible to get out a long line. Each rise that
was covered was taken instantly and apparently
rejected the very next second. Two more I
lost, one small, the other a heavy fish. Then
I landed one of just over a pound, lost another
and caught the next a pound and a quarter.

All this half hour the rain was having its
final patter, just blurring the surface sufficiently,
while the sun was doing its best to cast a
shadow. It certainly seemed the most ideal
evening to come out. The only drawback in
my personal case was soaking wet clothing.
No other angler reappeared or it would have
interested me to know whether the trout were
rising in other parts of the river in the same
frantic manner.

THE MAYFLY. 151

THE MAYFLY.

OLD STYLE AND NEW STYLE — SHAKESPEARE

AND GILBERT WHITE — THE MAYFLY — ITS LIFE

AND HISTORY — MAYFLY FISHING.

Now with religious awe, the farewell light
Blends with the solemn colouring of night ;
Soft o'er the surface creep those lustres pale,
Tracking the fitful motions of the gale.

WORDSWORTH.

IF telegraph operators ever give thought to
the meaning of messages that they read off
the wires, I have often wondered what they
think in London Offices of those which tell the
busy men of Lloyds or Lincoln's Inn that ' the
mayfly is up ' ; and which as a rule defer this
piece of news until the first two days of June.
Gilbert White, in his Naturalist's Calendar,
relating chiefly to the years near 1768, whfen he
noted the dates on which flowers opened, or
migratory birds arrived, gives " Angler's May
Fly (Ephemera Vulgata) June 3rd to I4th."
As the year 1768 happened to be somewhat

152 THE MAYFLY.

backward, one may perhaps put the usual date
two days earlier. Even this makes good the
misnomer by placing the mayfly festival in the
month of June.

THE ELEVEN DAYS.

Of course we are all supposed to know about
the change in the calendar from Old Style to
New Style, and the consternation it caused by
the loss of the eleven days. Well, equally of
course, we all do not. I, for one, had forgotten
about it, but I have now ' read it up/ so
cannot resist giving my rehash of this educa-
tional morsel.

Scotland, it appears, changed its calendar in
the year 1600, but sleepy old England waited
for another hundred and fifty years before she
made the reform ; just as she may wait another
hundred and fifty before she adopts a decimal
coinage system, such as Ceylon enjoyed long
before I used to live there. Russia, as we
know, still keeps to the Old Style, so is now I
suppose some thirteen days wrong, by not
omitting the leap years at the beginning of
1800, and 1900.

The change was made here in London in the
autumn of 1752, by the suppression of all the
days between September 2nd and September
I4th; which caused such a commotion among
the ignorant, that they petitioned the Government
to * give us back our eleven days/

Well, it is interesting to note how the dates
of seasons and festivals differ between the time

THE MAYFLY. 153

of Shakespeare and Gilbert White. All
Shakespeare's flowers and seasons seem described
as being ten days too early. Shakespeare's
month of April was really the period from about
April nth to May loth. His spring sounds
far more genial than ours does now. The
mayfly time then was from May i8th to May
28th instead of that given in the History of
Selborne.

Similarly, Shakespeare's autumn and early
winter give us the opposite impression. They
sound more rigorous than nowadays. His
November began on November loth or nth,
and his Christmas Day on January 4th or 5th.
Many of the old weather proverbs, about April
showers, or hawthorn, become far more correct
than they appear to be when we consider that
dancing round the maypole, instead of taking
place on our May ist, was held ten days later.
The saying ' when the days begin to lengthen
et cet,' is true under either style, as the process
is not much -noticed until after mid January.

THE MAYFLY.

The following paragraphs are taken from
Chambers' Encyclopedia, as being useful and
descriptive.

Ephemera (* day fly ' or May-fly), a genus of
well known insects which appear in vast numbers
on summer evenings from rivers, canals, and
ponds, and after a short merry life disappear
as suddenly as they came. The genus
Ephemera is type of the family Ephemeridce or

154 THE MAYFLY.

May-flies in the wide sense. The family is
often ranked within the Pseudo-neuroptera sub-
order of Orthoptera, not far from Dragon-flies.

A thin delicate body, with filmy wings, of
which the anterior are much the larger and
sometimes the only pair : rudimentary mouth-
parts in the adults, which fast throughout their
short aerial life : a long lived voracious larval
existence in the water, with so called tracheal
gills for aquatic respiration, are stFiking features
of the Ephemerids.

The antennae are short and awl-shaped; the
eyes of the males are very large; the head-
shield is enlarged, covering the rudimentary
mouth-parts; the middle ring of the thorax is
exaggerated ; the legs are delicate ; the thin
abdomen ends in two or three long filaments.

The life history of these delicate ephemeral
insects is very interesting. The eggs are laid
in the water and give rise to aquatic larvae,
which live sometimes two or three years,
moulting many times.

They prefer running water, hide under stones
or make burrows in the mud, have well
developed mouth-parts, and feed hungrily
enough on other insects. The tracheae or air-
tubes are expanded in plate-like or tuft-like
paired structures down the sides of the posterior
body.

A pupa stage eventually follows, during which
the larva acquires wings and other adult
structures, but the insect which emerges and
leaves the water is, curiously enough, not yet

THE MAYFLY. 155

ready for its short adult life. Though it has
wings, it is still encumbered by a delicate robe.

This sub-imago, as it is often called, finds
some resting place on grass stem or tree trunk,
gets rid of its last encumbrance, and begins its
life of a day.

The cast-off ghost-like exuviae are found in
great numbers. In the summer evening the
males and females enjoy a brief merry love-
dance. The females are fertilised, the eggs are
dropped into the water, and then sometimes in
a single day the bright crowd is gone. It is
literally true that at the moment of their climax
they die.

The most familiar species is Ephemera vulgata,
the common may-fly, the green drake (sub-
imago) and gray drake of anglers.

MAYFLY FISHING.

As a rule, the mayfly week offers an ideal
holiday to the angler; giving to many a man
his first real summer outing in the water
meadows. My earliest experience of it was
vastly different. Keen disappointment, accom-
panied by equally keen north wind, was the first
introduction I had to the so called carnival of
mayfly fishing. Wind swept meadows, bending
rushes, and a cold gray river hurrying towards
you in waves and eddies, formed the conditions
and prospect of the glorious first of June in
that year; and continued, with slight changes
of a more favourable nature, until the sixth.

Facing the wind on the opening day, I

156 THE MAYFLY.

looked in vain for the mayfly, which I was
told might appear between eleven and twelve
o'clock. It was impossible to find any turn or
curve in the bank where the water was quieter,
so after two hours of waiting in the driving
rain, I speared my rod in the rushes, stood in
its shelter, and shivered. Later in the after-
noon a few mayflies could be seen, carried
along in midstream like dead leaves in October,
but no attempt at a rise broke the surface.

As a matter of fact, even in favourable
weather, trout are rather chary at making such
a mouthful as a mayfly appears to them ; but
after the first day or two they put this feeling
aside, and only temper their extreme greediness
by an aggravating caution as to how, when,
and where they shall indulge themselves. It
was three days before I saw a mayfly taken —
perhaps by a smallish grayling — and although
I thrashed different patterns over the place he
never rose again.

Not only did I not catch a trout, but neither
did anyone else on that part of the river.
However it is no use dilating upon so chilling
an experience, excepting just to show that those
who use rosy-hued ink in describing their
holiday sport have had, like many better men,
to go through the mill of adverse conditions
during a previous season.

It is the enthusiasm engendered by certain
matchless half hours that prompts us to spend
half days, or even half weeks, by river banks
under almost hopeless circumstances.

THE MAYFLY. 157

Looking back on it now, I had of course
acted as the young man in a hurry; for,
although the greater part of the mayfly season
that year was a failure owing to the weather,
yet between the sixth and twelfth of June
numerous two and three pounders were killed —
I never like this word applied to trout : it
always sounds more applicable to spearing eels
or flat fish — on spent gnat late in the evening.

Other seasons, other conditions. The very
next year the * Fly is up ' telegram came at
Whitsuntide; and on the second of June the
thermometer touched 80 in the shade. In
making my way to the small hut by the river
side, the long grass, the air, and the water
were literally swarming with mayflies. They
were on one's bare neck and arms, almost in
one's mouth. They danced up and down in
thousands. Those that fluttered on to the water
were not taken by the fish, who possessed their
appetites in patience until between four and five
o'clock.

I knew little or nothing of their various
stages or life history, but kept affixing and
changing * gladstones,' l grey-drakes,' and
* straddle bugs ' ; continually throwing over rises
in feverish excitement until it was dark, with
the only result of a pound grayling — the first
I had ever seen. Other rods were more
successful of course. A trout of 3J Ibs. was
laid on the side bar at the inn where * no four-
penny beer served here ' secured comparative
privacy. I touched it, or rather worshipped it,

158 T(HE MAYFLY.

with mournful envy, wondering if I should ever
land such a prize — and I never have yet.

The next day, I was upon the water soon
after eleven ; taking up a position just where a
double turn in the narrows formed some
tempting green glides close under the steep
bank. After a short time three fish were
located, evidently trout, from the determined
snap which caused a mayfly to disappear as
though it had trodden on a steel trap. On the
opposite side, luckily well away from the water,
beyond a clump of brambles and reeds I had
an audience, two men ; who not only meant to
stop, but had spotted the three fish and pointed
them out to each other. ' You see, he'll get
'em all ' I heard the one say ; a remark which
so touched my pride that I determined to live
up to this prophetic reputation in spite of the
fact that I had never caught a trout upon a
mayfly in my life.

Nothing went wrong : I was able to get fairly
close below the upper fish, cast my gladstone
at the head of the run, and before realising
quite what had happened, tightened into a nice
trout, netting him almost at my feet (i Ib. 6
ounces) to the huge satisfaction of the chief
actor, and the audience on the bank. Both the
others followed his greedy example at the first
cast, i Ib. i ounce, and i Ib. 4 ounces — the
best trio I had ever taken consecutively.

Never did the words ' I told you so ' sound
so sweetly in anyone's ears as on that occasion.
Inwardly I vowed the reward that mugs of

THE MAYFLY. 159

flowing ale should moisten the lips of the
utterer.

After this the fly was only taken by the very
largest grayling, which, on being hooked, bore
down stream like small salmon in their first
rush. It soon became easy to tell them from
trout. They constantly missed the fly, and
always left a bubble on the surface after doing
so; besides showing their large back fin as they
turned away. If they took the fly and were
held hard, a constant wriggling motion, as well
as their persistent pulling down stream settled
all doubt. As I had a distaste to landing and
unhooking them, I found after a few days, that
the easiest way was to let them get well below
one in the current, and then give the line a
sharp tweak, which usually brought about the
desired parting.

One rise, where a long cast had to be made
upstream, over some rushes, and right into the
sunlight, was followed by a gollop, a strike,
and a course downstream that made the reel
seem a humming top until the line was out to
its last few yards of backing. Although I had
hurried after it with the rod bent down to the
water — quite a wrong position for the situation-
he was round the bend into a deep channel, and
strong current, before I could check him.

For fully five minutes I could do nothing but
hold on; standing out in a tongue of mud at
the end of the rushes, where a deepish dyke
came into the main stream.

The strain on the rod was so great that I

160 THE MAYFLY.

held it straight out, and slowly ground him up
from the reel foot by foot, unable to put the
rod down and handline him. As he came
near, all I could see was a large rush, apparently
on the fish's back, with both fish and rush
athwart the stream.

It was the largest grayling I have seen,
hooked foul right through the spines of its
great dorsal fin. It was so completely done
up that, when released, it floated away round
the bend with only a gasping movement.

The spring-balance I had in my bag only
drew out to two pounds and it was obvious
cruelty to impale the wretched fish on so useless
a gauge as this. Had this grayling been taken
in season, he should certainly have been
mounted, for only once have I seen his equal,
in a glass case, caught by a Southampton
angler, and labelled as an ounce under four
pounds.

On rivers where one can secure a piece of
water to oneself after tea time towards the end
of the mayfly season, and in the exact spot
where the memories of bygone Junes recreate
the sport and successes of previous years, the
fascination of again watching the water causes
one to think how little human nature, and
human instincts, have changed during the past
few thousand years.

How old Horace would have loved fly fishing :
that is if trout abound in the Bandusian stream,
as they do in the Bidassoa. How he would

THE MAYFLY. 161

have sat upon the bank on a summer afternoon
waiting for the shadows to lengthen, and have
conjured up the ivory forms of Cloe or of
Lalage glancing under the deeper water, or
sitting in a shallow with wet hair clinging to
their supple-moulded backs.

How he would have recalled their voices —
* dulce ridentem dulce loquentem ' — babbling
among the stones; and then have grasped his
willow rod, as a deep-toned ploop told him that
a trout had begun to suck down flies under the
tallest clump of iris close to the opposite bank.

These thoughts of naiads of the stream come
over us all — so strongly indeed at seasons, that
it is some time before we can rouse ourselves
to focus our eyes and realise that it is time
to be up and doing, if we intend to discard
these waking dreams, and take full advantage
of that delicious half hour between sunset and
dusk which the gods have provided. Horace
must have loved the birds, as he loved nature's
changing face, and the fleeting seasons that
passed over his whitening head on the Sabine
farm, but left his heart as ruddy as Falernian
wine.

162 THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE.

THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE.

THE FIRST HALF OF JUNE.

It seems a day

(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days which cannot die.

WORDSWORTH.

The lovely toy so fiercely sought
Hath lost its charm by being caught.

BYRON.

IF one were to eliminate the charm of the
weather during early June, when the
pleasure of the lengthening days still
asserts itself, and prolongs the evening until
nearly nine o'clock, I must own that I should
not care so much for mayfly fishing.

The season however, when it is kind, brings
such good sport, and affords so perfect an out-
door holiday, that no one need wonder at the
worship of the mayfly : particularly by men who
have not taken up dry fly fishing young enough
to love its very difficulties, or who honestly
say they prefer a heavy creel after three hours
fishing to an eight hour day spent by the river.
What surprises one at the first introduction
to mayfly tackle is the comparative strength of
the cast and size of the fly. There is no

THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE. 163

denying, from what one hears about the bags
made on privately owned water, where the fish
will take readily, that it must be an easy
process to attract, hook, and land them. Even
in boat fishing on a lake, stories are frequently
told of the cast blowing overboard, and being
at once seized by a good fish. This experience
too has befallen more than one beginner about
to fish from the bank or a bridge.

Of recent years mayfly tackle has become
more delicate. The casts are finer, and the
flies smaller; the result being that the style of
fishing approximates far more to plain dry fly
as practised with red quill, or black gnat, during
the preceding month. I am quite sure that the
man, who has never thrown a mayfly until he
has graduated in all the troubles and blanks of
several previous seasons, becomes more success-
ful than his friend who perhaps boasts of the
fish he caught the first day he ever received an
invitation to good private water in a favoured
first week of June. As a rule, one is I think
prone to cast far too quickly, carelessly, and fre-
quently with the mayfly : to take too little
trouble in approaching the water and the rising
fish. The tendency is to underrate your enemy
before he is hooked, and to overrate him after
you have done so.

In spite of seven or eight years experience, I
often find it more difficult to attract a good
feeding trout with a mayfly in June than with
a sedge in August or September. No doubt,
much depends upon the individual craftiness of

164 THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE.

the fish. Should he have been hooked and lost
under weeds, we can well imagine that the
adventure has made more than an ephemeral
impression ; as the process of hauling at a
trout of two pounds, which has managed to
twist the line round rootlets or tendrils strong
enough to cause a break, must be lengthy and
alarming.

To strike and prick the same fish a month
earlier with a small fly is a very different matter.
The tiny barb catches in the side of his horny
lip, he shakes his head — perhaps jumping out
of the water at the same time — and is free.
He may hardly realise what happened, beyond
that his power of movement was curtailed for
a second. He need not necessarily associate
this with the fly he rose at : therefore you may
get him the same afternoon. As trout feeding
on spent gnat in the evening are well able to
take as many as twenty in the space of an
hour, it becomes obvious folly to cast at any-
thing in a hurry.

Choose a turn in the river if possible, where
the current takes all floating matter quietly
against the opposite side. If some nasty
bushes or stakes protrude from the somewhat
overhanging bank, rendering the pitch of an
artificial fly extremely awkward, so much the
better; for it may easily be that some other
rod has rejected the place on that account,
finding it too difficult. Depend upon it that
is why the ideal places, which catch the eye on
a first walk upstream, prove so often delusive.

THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE. 165

There is no drawback to them : consequently
they inherit an unlucky name among the more
superstitious trout, who have missed too many
relations from the tempting spot to be keen
about annexing the run as an easy food
provider.

It is a time full of suppressed excitement.
You have been fortunate to get the place to
yourself. The fly is coming down, and you can
locate two, at least, thoroughly good trout who
are taking it confidently and with relish. A
very noticeable fact also is that the flies which
give the faintest movement or flutter are always
the first to go. Many that lie motionless are
allowed to drift along, first over riser number
one, and then over the lower fellow. Both of
them are old hands and have so far kept their
places for several days, despite the tramp of the
passing angler.

You must wait for a time, and make quite
sure that you can hit the distance exactly with
your fly. Time it, if possible, so that it comes
over the lower fish just after he has taken one.
Two throws, if correctly made, are ample if he does
not respond. You stand uneasily in the chalky
mud, trying to double some rushes under your
feet to delay the sinking process. You can
already feel, and hear, your boots settling down
in the ooze. You can even smell the sub-
sidence as well, so if inclined you can light
your pipe by way of passing the time and
changing the odour from miasma to nicotine.
Provided you think your pattern is right do not

166 THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE.

trouble to change the fly. Much may have
depended upon how it sat on the water when
you made the previous casts. One never knows
in what light the trout regards the fly looking
up from below. His point of view can be
rudely imitated by placing flies in an uncut
finger bowl half filled with water.

He has risen again ; after a longish pause.
You make your throw : it narrowly misses a
nasty prong of bush : the current carries it
right under the clump of docks, far closer to
the bank than where the fish rose : for a
moment you almost lose sight of it as the eddy
turns it edgways to you : but this turning move-
ment has seemingly endued it with life, for
there is a suck, you strike, and the line is taut
with a throb, throb, that bends the rod in
earnest.

He is on : hold him for all you are worth or
he will bolt under the overhanging blackberry
bush, which touches the water, and will ' saw *
himself off on the edge of a spine. He is a
trout all right — no grayling pulls so viciously
as that. It is a glorious minute of pulsating
suspense, a minute well worth the sixty mile
journey, or a cost of a penny a second. He
can stick it no longer but comes to the surface
at last preparatory to another vigorous dive.

He has got below you, just where you cannot
move and follow him. He is in a clear pool,
fortunately, and must be given no law. The
cast, fly, and attachment are all in favour of
the net doing its duty. Nearer he comes with

THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE. 167

no disposition to lie over on his side. He is
dipped out still protesting breathlessly. One
pound nine ounces, a short golden fish as firm
as rubber, and as handsome as paint.

The obsequies are over. You are back in
the same place; but number one is not. Or if
he is, he has dined well and wisely and is
taking his siesta afterwards. Perhaps it is no
good moving : all depends upon one's tempera-
ment. Probably I should; and do less well
than by stopping. One great advantage in the
place is that there are no grayling. It is
distinctly a trout beat. Number one, or a new
one, may appear any moment.

By an effort that nearly leaves your boots in
the mud, you emerge to try elsewhere — with the
result that you come upon grayling. No :
number one must be revisited. The deep tone
of his swallow sounds as though it came from
a capacious throat. After all, he is there; and
as to his caution — well, any man on a sub-
scription water after a week of mayfly thrashing
knows what to expect. Besides, fancy if you
leave him, and the place is taken by another
rod, who gets him.

You once more wedge yourself into the old
position, arrange the rushes round you, oil the
hackle of your fly, straighten out the landing
net, stick it butt end into the mud, and fix
your attention upstream. Some more fly comes
down. There is a new riser, a trout certainly,
just in the middle between the two weed patches
taking fly after fly. You can see his broad

168 THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE.

tail doing its work in the current. Get your
fly to head the next real one that is coming
down. Habetne?

He has got it, is being firmly held as he
comes all the way to the net right on the top
of the water, splashing like a moorhen. He is
hooked as securely as a trace, with the cast in
addition right round his head and under both
gills. As exactly a pound fish as one could
draw to scale, smallish but game. He ought
to have had a more open chance; but war is
war with woe to the vanquished.

Now I cannot describe the capture of number
one : for I -did not get him. I saw him rise
frequently, and am convinced to this day he
was the real three pounder for which I am
waiting. All I can say in my favour is that
he not only declined my flies — for I tried several
at intervals — but many and many a real one;
selecting only those which gave a movement as
they passed. He had a sailor's eye for rig,
had overheard some conversation, had taken
hold of something that stuck in his head, and
had formed a resolution of ' no flutter no rise '
which he was adhering to.

All the same I got another that evening,
though with a downstream cast, in the dusk at
what I really thought was a rat. He bored to
the bottom and stuck there, seemingly in weed;
but after I had shortened up below him, he
gave way easily and got into a clump of muddy
rushes. After a considerable amount of pulling,
lifting, and struggling the fly came away. His

THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE. 169

way back to the water was easy enough : my
way towards him extremely difficult and dirty.
Groping about in the mud I at last felt his
form and managed to get him out; altogether
a clumsy and unsporting proceeding, as he had
to be well washed before taking his place with
the others.

On the way back I got entangled in a clump
of that huge weed or plant that resembles
rhubarb ; the great prickly leaves being well over
my head as I stumbled knee deep among their
boggy roots. Afraid to push on for fear of
getting into still deeper ground, I had to back
out, and strike a better line home across the
ditches, hot, itchy, dirty and wet.

Speaking of mayfly fishing in connection with
the eyesight or discernment of trout, I had an
example the next morning that was rather
interesting. There is a deep and unused lock
in one of the side branches of the river, indeed
part of an old canal, the lower end to which is
blocked by large bushes, growing at either side
of the masonry; with a dense and deep muddy
pool between them. No one, even with thigh
boots or waders, could venture into it, so that
the place is practically unfishable excepting from
the lock wall some ten feet above it, in both
senses of the word. Walking up to the edge
of the lock, as I had often foolishly done on
previous occasions, one usually caught sight of
a good fish who doubled under a bush or a
weed before his size could be estimated.

170 THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE.

On the morning in question I had ample
leisure; so, before approaching the lock, I lay
down on my stomach just behind a weed clump
with chin on hands, and peered over. To my
disappointment nothing moved or showed itself.
Above me — upstream — was the deep pool under
the rotten old lock gate, and I thought once
or twice that I could make out the waving tail
of a monster fish, but agreed it was probably a
shadow or a large water plant. While engaged
in this speculation a mayfly appeared, circled
round the pool, and then was carried over to
the opposite side into the very narrow run that
connected the two pools. I saw it going along
and meant to watch it when it got slowly
drifted down to the place between the two large
bushes.

All of a sudden, up the narrow run, from the
very place named, the form of a fine trout
appeared, paused for a second — I thought because
he had seen me — and then came on with a
flash, took the mayfly, turned, and ran back to
between the bushes.

Now it is all a question of distance. That I
both estimated, and measured as nearly as was
possible, making it at least twelve or thirteen
yards. The mayfly was in a little trickle not
nine inches deep nor two feet wide which
extended for several yards below it. The trout
was under the heavy bushes in the pool below.
Yet he was obviously attracted by the movement
of the fly, saw it, and made that special run
right out into the shallow open lock to secure

THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE. 171

it. He was a fish of a pound and a half, very
dark and thick looking, judging from his form
as he turned.

I remember thinking of sacrificing a loose
mayfly, an artificial one, oiling it well and
allowing it to float down the same channel; but
the guilty look that the trout gave as he seized
the real fly and bolted, made me think he would
not be taken in. Instead of that, I spent the
next hour in trying to get at his holt from
below; holding on to willow bushes, that refused
to support any weight, while attempting to feel
a firm spot for the sole of one's foot. At last
by persisting in this I managed to do one thing
effectually, caught my fly in the top of the bush
and after dragging at it, left just half the cast
in the same place.

Below me, still among almost unapproachable
mud and high rushes, there was another pool
in which I thought I heard a rise, so after
affixing a new length of gut and a fly, I threw
on chance over the rushes and heard it taken
by what was a lively trout of just under a
pound, who again had to be hauled through
mud and weeds in a degraded manner.

That same evening, and the two following
ones, several fine fish were taken by other rods;
one of two pounds and three quarters which I
saw, as well as others which I did not. The
really large trout rarely appeared to give anyone
much chance until fully nine o'clock; so that
the only plan of perhaps securing a brace is to
take up a stand and remain immovable for half

172 THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE.

an hour, which is rather trying, besides making
one feel a bit of a poacher as it grows, dusk.

One cannot pretend that trout caught when
the fly cannot be seen, give much pleasure to
the angler; excepting in the sense of mere
possession. So long as one can see, not only
the rise but also the fly after it has pitched,
all is fair and above board in the matter of
skill. Where the rise can be seen, and the
fly cannot — which so often is the case in this
evening fishing — the strike is a matter of guess
work to a great extent, depriving the whole
sport of its dry fly character.

The rule of * an hour after sunset ' is no
doubt a good one; but I am too well aware that
in many places it would spell a reprieve for each
and all of the old cannibals that haunt the deep
turns of many a river.

AUGUST ON THE ITCHEN. 173

AUGUST ON THE ITCHEN.

A DIFFICULT MONTH — THE BANK TO ONESELF —

SEDGE FLY STALKING — THE KEEPER — THE BEST

TROUT OF THE SEASON.

The day is dying. I shall see him die,

And I shall watch the sunset, and the red
Of all that splendour when the day is dead.
And I shall see the stars upon the sky.

ERIC MACKAY.

PESSIMISM must be kept far removed
from anything to do with angling.
Otherwise, I should be thinking of the
cynical proverb quoted to me by a fly-fishing
schoolmaster, * God sends nuts to those who
have no teeth to crack them.' He was
answering the congratulation of some City men
who envied him his three months' holiday a
year. He wanted to exchange January for
May — very naturally — and the first half of
August for the first half of June. The three
weeks at Easter, he conceded, were sometimes
well timed; but cited, as a leaden lining to the
silver cloud, that hotels were crowded and prices
advanced, that full trains meant empty creels,

174 AUGUST ON THE 1TCHEN.

and that boys with their rat-sniffing terriers
were too much in evidence along the river
banks.

Now as regards the space of time occupied
by the Public School summer holidays, I have
always been on duty : having already by that
date enjoyed to the full the long days of June
and early July which are gilded by the midging
trout of sultry afternoons, as well as by the
true evening rise that plays the prelude to
summer nights. Yet August week-ends have
always kindly allowed many of us to snatch a
fearful joy, when able to leave the City, in a
fast train for Salisbury or Stockbridge after 3
p.m. on Friday afternoon, knowing that before
six o'clock we can exchange our London clothes
for the old flannel suit, as well as the grit of
the baked pavement for the cool squelch of the
water meadow.

No one who can enjoy this can truthfully
deny the patent fact that his lines are cast in
pleasant places. The walk to the station, at
seven o'clock on a lovely morning with a brace
of good trout ensconced in wet rushes, knowing
that a few hours will again bring the pleasure
of the westward journey in ample time for the
evening fishing, is crowded not only with a
general feeling of thankfulness, but also with
the plans for the capture of the specimen trout
which has for years past been before one's eyes.

The chaos again at Waterloo at two o'clock
on an August Saturday, in the days of old
* Number one main line,' was in itself an

AUGUST ON THE IT CHEN. 175

experience. A company of Territorials, and a
batch of Swedish emigrants behind a barricade
of luggage, a couple of frightened horses and
a brace of coffins, were common objects of the
platform. To book to Clapham and be carried
to Winchester without a stop, after having
escaped from a corridor boat train for
Southampton, has befallen a belated traveller
whose trustfulness in hurried porters has made
him take his seat in a crowded carriage.

Almost everything has its compensation.
Saturday evening, which brings such a turmoil
even to Hampshire stations, draws nearly every-
one away from the river bank. Luckily for
anglers, people on holiday like each other's
company better than the silence of the river
side. They prefer the band to the bank, and
the cinemas to the sedges. Consequently, by
the time one passes through the village with
rod and creel raincoat and landing net, after
a peaceful tea at the cottage, and a desultory
chat with the two patient mill pool anglers who
fish with wasp grub, and who so often catch
a two pounder only a few minutes after you
leave them — which you hear about with
chastened envy the following week — the prospect
of the cool evening is everything that can be
desired.

On the hatch stile are urchins, either running
about in wet nudity or dressing hurriedly after
their swim, each one telling the other how he —
the other one — will catch it from his father: or
mother for being so late. Above them again

176 AUGUST ON THE ITCHEN.

draggling home are more children, two little
girls of eight and nine, each in charge of a
diminutive brother, who has taken to their
boots, carrying the pickle bottle known so well
to minnows by a string round its neck. You
watch them cross the slimy plank bridge; the
river on one side ; a ditch quite deep enough
to drown all four on the other, if they chanced
to trip on it.

Beyond that is the now deserted bank ; the
sun low in the heavens on the left, the terraced
garden with its discordant peacocks on the right.
Sedge flies are crawling about the rushes and
fluttering between them. The surface of the
stream is unbroken by any trout rise, though
in certain shallows small grayling pop up at
intervals. You are too abstracted, too
magnanimous, or too magnificent to cast for
them. Your plan is to move up to the
peninsula under whose heavy fringe of rushes
there were two trout this time last year whose
places you know to a foot. Their time is not
due for an hour or more, so you pass up, after
depositing some of your kit on the rail of the
plank bridge where you so well remember a
sovereign dropping out of your pocket into the
ditch as you stooped to pick a dock leaf.

The keeper comes down the meadow with his
handsome setter, and sees you looking at the
place. No, he never found it : although he
had a try one winter's day. Perhaps one of
the ditchers will years hence. There was no
other rod out. The Captain he had ketched

AUGUST ON THE IT CHEN. 177

a good trout last week, about a pound and
three quarters — over there below the rhodo-
dendron bush. He had had his eye on him
and tried all the previous evening, so was very
pleased when he got him. Nothing was
moving above, but it was early yet and
promised to be a good evening. There was a
good trout just below the lock, and ought to
be there still on the far side just by the
•moorhen's nest.

There was another fine trout right down the
water by the boat house — so the Captain had
told him — but of course he might have got it
and said nothing. The Captain didn't always
show him his fish. He had sent the photo-
graph you took of him to his married daughter
in Toronto. No, she didn't like the place much :
she had always lived on these meadows : she
would give a year of her life, so she wrote to
the missus, to walk up the river with him now
and mind the hatches. But he was sixty five
and his asthma troubled him a good bit now,
so probably he would not be seeing her again.
Well, it sounded a great country and her
husband was getting on well but they never
seemed to put nothing by. Yes, there were
boys bathing above, but they would be gone
soon he expected.

I can see the photo now, although it is
mislaid, and wish I could reproduce it here;
the kindly figure in gaiters who had never been
photographed before in his life (he told me)

178 AUGUST ON T,HE ITCHEN.

standing against a background of bullrushes
with my rod in his hand. It is pleasant to
think that he is still at his post, and will I
trust remain there to the end of his days in
the pretty cottage on the other bank of a side
stream — the * keeper's stream ' — with its wicket
gate leading over the wooden bridge. How
long his vocation will last, how long the trout
in the river will last, are thoughts that must
not be allowed to cross one's mind.

The boys had left their bathing place before
I crossed to the upper meadows, so I wandered
down the peninsula to its extreme lower end
until I came right over the moorhen's nest he
had alluded to. Its eight hot eggs were almost
pulsating with life, and the mother with
expectancy, as she jerked about uneasily among
the rushes. I moved twenty yards away to
leave her in peace, faced upstream, and sat
down on a tussock to light a pipe. There was
a small open space between a tangled weed
bed and the bank, in which a trout ought to
be content to feed on sedge flies.

As there was nothing to be gained by walking
about I might just as well wait for the moun-
tain to come to Mahomet. The cinnamon sedge
fly I had mounted was a pattern calculated to
appeal to the most capricious appetite. I dared
not even allow it to wave in the air lest a
swift should take it, so it was impaled on a
rush ready for immediate action.

Beyond the weed bed a rise occurred — a rise
which said as plainly as facts can speak * if you

AUGUST ON THE ITCHEN. 179

throw for me you will be hitched up at the
very first cast.' I did not do it but puffed away
discontentedly. Another ten minutes, a quarter
of an hour went by, and then patience was
rewarded. In the deep run close under the
bank there was a quiet rise. What was more
it was repeated at quick intervals. It was
beyond all doubt a trout that had just begun
to feed.

My cast was made ; it was taken down : it
was taken further down as I struck — and there
the situation ended. The line was firm and
fast into something; but that something was
itself equally firm and fast, well under an over-
hanging ridge of mud bank or rock, apparently
wedged in. Nothing would stir it. The fly
might as well have been in a sunken log as a
sulky trout. Hand lining would not move it.
A long rest did not alter matters. In spite of
all the expedients tried the inevitable break came
at last.

Another story of a lost three pounder. One's
estimate, I notice, is in such cases always just
fifty per cent, beyond one's best fish. He was
an old campaigner no doubt and had his holt
adorned like a wigwam with the relics of past
escapes, artificial sedges and mayflies — perhaps
even a contraband minnow — being the scalps
he affixed to its walls. Trout such as these
remind one of thieves who never move far from
the alleys or courts up which they can escape
the moment they have snatched a watch or
purse. They do not intend to venture into the

180 AUGUST ON THE ITCHEN.

open King's way : they know their business
and their danger too well for that.

A three pounder — yes, perhaps he was a four
pounder. All sorts of foolish thoughts are
driven through your mind from sheer exaspera-
tion. Visions of the specimen trout of the
river set up in a glass case over your office
desk with your prowess and skill set out in
pounds and ounces for friends to admire, doubt,
or envy.

By the time I had growled over my bad
management and sulkily affixed another sedge,
I moved up the bank, saw the back fin of a
large grayling appear in a shallow and refused
to throw for it. To-night trout was my game.
A good one might easily be got, though of
course nothing approaching one half of that lost
five pounder.

Above the shallow is another deep run under
my own bank, so I knelt down where I could
obtain a clear view of the twenty yard curve
which had so often yielded up its monsters of
the deep, determined to wait for something.
All sorts of plans were laid as to how I would
manage the next fish which was hooked. He
should at least bring about the break in open
water whatever happened. I would let him
pull me in rather than give way a single inch.

After so long a pause that the water began
to ooze through the grass over my knee pad the
coveted moment came. A rise ahead, which
must be crawled to carefully as there was very
little cover. It was a curious rise, recurring at

AUGUST ON THE ITCHEN. 181

short intervals, just as though an acorn had
dropped into the water. It might of course be
a tiny fish, though I did not think so. It
might of course decline the sedge altogether.
At any rate I warned myself not to make a
mistake in the opposite extreme by pulling the
fly out of his mouth before he had time to
take it.

In spite of a state of breathless excitement
the fly pitched fairly well : and, as it came over
the place, disappeared. As I rose from my
knees I struck firmly, held the line in my left
hand and backed downstream. There was a
splendid resistance, a case of rod versus fish
which lasted for a few seconds. Then he
moved away from the bank as though making
for the weed-beds of mid stream. He had lost
several yards in doing so. The bank was high
but not overhanging. Below us was a channel
of deep but open water into which he was free
to dive and disport himself until exhausted.
After a further struggle I caught sight of him
and got the net out for action.

The first tim'e I reached him the rim of the
net only touched his middle. I was afraid of
the bank giving way by venturing a foot closer.
Each time the net touched him he dived down
with his head upstream. Had tie only behaved
like a grayling and run down there was a weed
bed below that could have spelt disaster to the
gut. Three tim'es he had the edge of the net
nearly up to his gills, but he managed to slip
over it. The fourth time he fell inside and the

182 AUGUST ON THE IT CHEN.

next moment we were both in the meadow
quivering with excitement.

I got out my spring balance. He ran the
index to its full limit of two pounds and asked
for more. Weighed later, on cold butcher's
scales, he was two pounds two ounces and a
fraction — the best trout of my season, much
admired by myself on the bankside, by the
habitues of the bar side where he was exhibited,
as well as the next evening at the home supper
table.

Well, sedge fly fishing is often like this.
You may wander about the banks, spot various
fish and capture two brace on an August
evening. Or you may do the wandering with-
out this result. Or, without any result.
I have however always found it best to
roam as little as possible after seven
o'clock; but to choose a place which offers say
a hundred yards of promising bank above you.
Then take your stand — or your seat — at the
lower 'end and slowly work it up. On good
evenings the plan turns out well. If four fish
are hooked, with only one lost, you have been
dealt a fine hand. If three are hooked, with
two lost, you have had good sport.

As already remarked, there is something very
luxurious in finding yourself alone upon the
water for three consecutive evenings. To know
that a fish you have tried for, and failed to
attract, will be in his place twenty four hours
later, gives you a quickening step and an object
in life as you near the place. One feels almost

AUGUST ON THE 1TCHEN. 183

inclined to say * good evening ' to a trout with
whom you have been on terms of such
intimacy. You have offered him your wares,
while he on his part has given you the pleasure
of his company, although accepting no favours.

It reminds you of dances where you looked
out to see the same pretty girl in the room
although you had not been introduced to her.
It was enough to know she — or the trout — was
there. An introduction, even an attachment,
might come later on.

That the sedge fly is the only one to use on
such occasions must not be supposed for a
moment. A large Wickham or a Silver Twist
will attract feeding trout often quite as well,
sometimes indeed better. Very small flies on
fine gut are frequently a mistake, even as
regards rising the fish in fast moving water.
There are times when they like a mouthful, or
think they do, take it with considerable pre-
cision, and on a short line nearly hook them-
selves as they turn down.

Sedge flies ought to be the best as they
imitate the real insect to a nicety. For some
reason too they are usually mounted on stronger
and better tempered hooks than other large flies,
besides being well tied. I must own to a great
preference for a pronounced side bend; indeed,
from experience of disaster in the past, I do
not care to fish with any other shaped iron.

Where trout are actually taking the flies off
the rushes, as anglers have told me they have
seen them do, it must be difficult to attract the

184 AUGUST ON THE ITCHEN.

fish with an artificial. I have however on many
an evening been successful by throwing right
against the rushes, you can hear the rap it
makes as it hits them and falls back on to the
stream. In such places it is of course advisable
to let the cast be made well above the fish.
Do not necessarily take it off the water directly
it has passed the rise, for trout will often follow
it downstream. Large grayling in September
do this still more. You can often see one with
its nose against the fly until it catches sight of
you watching the process.

On September afternoons it is as well to be
upon the water soon after five o'clock; when,
under shaded banks, good trout are well dis-
posed to rise at small flies in preference to
sedges. The most sparsely dressed hackle flies
are quite as useful as winged patterns. Gray
Quill gnat and Pale Watery Dun have been
taken by many of my early September trout
just after tea time, although I cannot pretend
that they were the fly on the water. It all
goes to show what chance or caprice governs
the taste of a rising trout.

The modern experiments made by photo-
graphs from tanks under water will no doubt
gradually effect changes in the tying of
artificial flies. But even these experiments only
show us what the fly looks like to human eyes.
It cannot pretend to enlighten us as to how it
looks to the fish. We have no conception of
a fish's sense of colour — very little conception

AUGUST ON THE ITCHEN. 185

of his perception of size. Nor again do we
know whether he intends to swallow, as palat-
able food, everything which he takes into his
mouth by rising at. It may be some pleasure
to him to take hold of strange objects, just as
it is a pleasure to a dog to snatch at an old
bone, carry it a yard and drop it. He will
do this again and again knowing quite well
that it is of no use to him as food.

186 THE ANGLER'S BIRDS.

THE ANGLER'S BIRDS.

BIRDS OF THE ESTUARY — SUMMER MIGRANTS-
WINTER VISITORS — AN OUTDOOR NATURALIST,

E'en in the spring and playtime of the year
That calls the unwonted villager abroad
With all her little ones, a sportive train
To gather kingcups in the yellow mead
And prank their hair with daisies.

COWPER.

AS it is almost impossible for anyone to
take up trout fishing without noticing
the birds that haunt rivers, swamps, and
estuaries, I have transcribed the following notes
relating to those which anyone may hope to
see after a few seasons' observation, either
during his summer sport with rod and creel,
or his winter walks with dog and friend.

It need hardly be said that when speaking of
birds'-nesting, one does not mean the robbing
of nests. Any careful person, who wishes to
take a specimen egg for a collection, naturally
prides himself upon being able to do so without
causing the bird to desert; while should he even
want the nest itself he can wait until the parents
have placed it in the agents' hands.

Some few birds an angler is not only certain
to see, but is liable to catch. The swallow,

THE ANGLER'S BIRDS. 187

martin, sand martin, and swift will all take his
fly as it blows out in the wind — a most
distressing 'experience. In the case of the swift
it is painful to both parties, for in holding the
poor bird to release the hook he drives his
sharp claws into the tender skin between your
ringers until the pain is almost unbearable.
Another experience, which it is pretty to watch
and does no harm to the bird, is to see a
swallow lift your mayfly off the surface, carry
it just a yard, and drop it again. It may even
have occurred to some angler that the fly was
dropped in front of a good fish out of casting
distance.

On some days the most familiar birds are
the sandpiper, the water ousel, and the king-
fisher. . On others, the peewits circling over
the meadows or the marshes. Perhaps the
most ubiquitous of all is. the moorhen; though
not all anglers can pretend to be specially
pleased with its company. Their sudden
starting out of the rushes at your feet, with
the totally unnecessary splashing and skurry of
their flight across stream, leaves a wake of
general disturbance and anathema. It most
effectually puts down the fish you have been
watching; besides causing a general uneasiness
to all others within sight and hearing. Moor-
hens too are always deceiving one as to a real
rise. You think the noise you heard, or the
ring you saw, was a trout, whereas it has been
caused by a moorhen suddenly diving. Where
you cannot actually see the water under your

188 THE ANGLER'S BIRDS.

own bank, the ' plop ' of a rat or a moorhen
is annoyingly deceptive.

THE MERLIN.

For several years in succession, I have tried
to discover a merlin's nest upon the heaths
and moors of South East Devon, but have not
as yet succeeded; although, from the persistent
manner that two birds frequented one spot
during the latter end of May, it is certain that
their eggs could have been found by anyone
able to devote time to watching them through
good field glasses.

I found a nest once as a boy — or rather a
stable lad named Jesste did, who was* with me,
and who was the arch bird's-nester of the holi-
days— at the edge of the Hermitage Wood, near
Woking. He merely called it a little hawk,
but I had no difficulty later on in identifying
both nest and eggs as a merlin's. The eggs
I have still, though rather faded from the rich
red brown they were when freshly taken and
blown. The merlin breeds far more freely in
the north, the bird being by no means
uncommon in Derbyshire ; but during winter it
is forced, like many others, to follow its food
supply and migrate Southward even to the sea
coast during severe weather.

Only a few years ago a friend showed me
two birds which he had brought down with one
shot, neither of which, he said, he had ever
seen before. The one was a merlin, and the
other a lesser spotted woodpecker. This was in

THE ANGLER'S BIRDS. 189

the second week of July. They were, he said,
scuffling upon the ground on the East Devon
Golf Course fully a quarter of a mile from any
copse, so that the woodpecker must have been
chased and flown down in the open.

In winter, the merlin can be counted as one
of the rarer birds to be seen near the estuary.
More than once I have come across its
shambles or larder — a flat stone half way up
the hillside, where odd feathers and bones bear
evidence to the varied nature of its victims.
It is a graceful little falcon, hardly to be mis-
taken for any other species if seen in near
flight. On Woodbury Common, Black Hill,
and the high ground between Sidmouth and
Honiton, the sight of a merlin will often be
one of the rewards of a morning's walk. The
tail, when extended, has a broad dark bar at
the end while the upper parts are not unlike
a house-sparrow in colouring. All the under
parts, the throat and belly, incline to creamy
white.

THE MARSH HARRIER.

Among the really rare birds of the estuary
and marshes, the Marsh Harrier may occasion-
ally be seen usually towards evening; a large
but sombre grey form, diligently beating over
the ground in a methodical manner on the out-
look for a young rat, moorhen, or even a frog.
As I have only twice seen it — once so close
within gunshot that it could not have been
missed — the species is probably very uncommon
excepting in the fens of East Anglia. A little

190 THE ANGLER'S BIRDS.

more drainage, with a little more pheasant
preserving, and the Marsh Harrier in company
with the bittern will exist only in museum cases.

The first time I saw the bird, he was sitting
motionless on a small mound in an open part
of the swamp. It was a dull forenoon with a
suspicion of mist across the marshes. I took
it at first to be a huge pigeon, but managed
to get so close that its identification was certain,
apart from the opinion of others who had seen
the bird on previous occasions. As it rose,
and beat away, it looked very large, its fan
shaped tail being a distinguishing feature. It
is very probable that a single pair of Marsh
Harriers continue to frequent the estuary ; and,
I only hope, manage to breed there.

On the second occasion, I was walking up
the ditches with a dog who was doing his best
to turn something out of the rushes. Some
distance behind him a large grey bird was
beating along in his track, but it suddenly
dropped to the ground behind a tall stack of
dry rushes and never reappeared. I have no
doubt it was my friend or his mate.

THE WAGTAILS.

THE PIED WAGTAIL. — Of the three species
which are most commonly seen while fishing,,
the pied wagtail is almost too familiar to
describe. Although migratory birds, they are
found, at any rate in the South of England
all the year round. As the wagtails are
insect feeders they may be taken as a good

THE ANGLER'S BIRDS. 191

omen in the matter of fly upon the water; their
hovering and undulatory flight across the
stream often directing one's attention to a
place where flies are playing round an over-
hanging willow, and where as a consequence
a watchful trout is lying in wait below them.
The nest is not at all difficult to find being
usually on the side of a bank, or an ivy-clad
wall to a cart shed, or against a hay rick;
containing four or five eggs of an opaque white
finely speckled with pale grey or greeny brown.
If, on looking out of the inn window on an
April morning, the familiar pair of wagtails
are hawking at flies in the road, you may
expect a good day. If on the other hand you
see them drop into the small dyke that skirts
the garden, and paddle among the gravel and
stones, do not be surprised at a blank forenoon.

THE GREY WAGTAIL. — Some confusion often
arises over the name chosen for this bird whose
dominant colouring on all the under parts of
the body is a pronounced, but not a bright,
yellow. The term Sulphur ea so well expresses
it, that the Sulphur Wagtail would be a far
easier term of recognition.

Although a partial migrant the Grey Wagtail
is to be found on trout streams all the year
round, more particularly in the winter and
spring. Indeed the Grey Wagtail and the
Dipper are usually the two first birds to greet
you in March, as you stand on the bridge and
take your rod from its case, the one dropping

192 THE ANGLER'S BIRDS.

you a feminine curtsey and the other bobbing
a bachelor bow.

This species is the most truly aquatic of the
three, seldom leaving the immediate vicinity of
the water, which it crosses and recrosses with
the same joyous and jerky flight. Not only
will they wade out freely in the shallows
looking for minnows, but will move about like
yellow mice on floating masses of weed and
rubbish where they can only obtain an insecure
foothold.

In Devonshire I have not come across the
nest, although I know a certain ledge teeming
with primroses, on the other side, where a pair
build every year. It is too deep to wade across
and too far round to prompt the walk in early
spring. On the banks of the Itchen a young
fellow who used to walk up the river with me
found several, both in May and June, which
shows that two broods must often be hatched
out. These nests were invariably among the
tangled herbage on the steep bank and could
not possibly have been mistaken for those of
either the pied or the yellow wagtail. Besides
which the" birds themselves were in constant
evidence, feeding busily on the small islands
of cut weed that floated downstream day after
day. The eggs number five or six; whitish,
clouded and mottled with olive colour.

THE YELLOW WAGTAIL. — This is Ray's Wag-
tail, as he is properly termed, quite unmistakable
from the preceding bird when once both of

ANGLER'S BIRDS. 193

them have been seen, being from throat to the
under part of the tail a brilliant canary yellow.
Apart from this it is altogether more delicately
formed having somewhat the appearance of a
yellow swallow or martin ill fitted for any
north wind or rigorous frost.

It is a summer visitant; arriving in Devon
towards the middle of April and departing in
September. They are far less dependent upon
streams, or indeed upon water of any kind for
obtaining their food supply, than the Grey
Wagtail. So far as I have noticed they are
usually attendant upon cattle, running back-
wards and forwards with a great many
unnecessary airs and graces, every now and
then stopping to let their tails nearly wag them
off their legs, as they hawk the insects that
surround fat and lazy cows. In ' Yarrell's
British Birds,' the yellow wagtail is stated to
be pretty numerous in summer; and, with the
exception of Devonshire and Cornwall, to be
found in suitable places throughout England.
Yet it is in Devonshire that I chiefly associate
the birds on the meadows on hot June and
July afternoons, which shows how the partial
migration of birds changes according to certain
seasons. As a matter of fact for the last few
summers they have not been in the meadows
referred to. I cannot remember ever having
seen the three species actually together, although
it must often occur.

The nest of the yellow wagtail is always
upon the ground, and usually softly lined. It

194 THE ANGLER'S BIRDS.

contains four to six eggs of a gray white colour
very closely mottled with brown and olive
green, and occasionally streaked at the thick
end after the manner of a yellow hammer's.
Two broods are reared as a rule.

THE WATER RAIL.

A long, wet, wounded bird trying to escape
up a ditch, is the impression given by the
first sight of a water rail. Even if a stone
manages to induce him to rise as he is slipping
through the rushes, he still does so in a be-
draggled manner, with legs hanging down,
taking the first opportunity of dropping into
cover. You may drive one under a long low
cattle bridge which crosses a boggy dyke, but
if you have no dog with you, it will never
come out the other side. On the water too
he will plop under the surface as soon as he
sees you — generally before you have seen him —
and apparently never come up again. If there
is anything in sexual selection, it seems difficult
to account for a water rail ever attracting a
mate. He has the demeanour of an unsuccess-
ful felon with the plumage of an unfashionable
dowdy.

The Water Rail is an all the year resident
on the estuary, skulking about the marshes at
all times and seasons; seldom seen, and seldom
molested. Its nest, like itself, is inconspicuous
besides being very well concealed, a loose bulky
structure composed of all the surrounding
rubbish ; placed just where foothold on the ooze-

THE ANGLER'S BIRDS. 195

bank is treacherous and evil smelling, and is
additionally protected by an overhanging
tussock of grass or rush — just the place in fact
which one would pass by. The eggs are
smaller than a moorhen's, in number six or
seven, the colouring being almost identical, buff
white, speckled with darker brown or mauve.
As nests with fresh eggs can be found in June
it is probable that two broods are reared in
the season.

At the end of May, a few years back, I
came across a mother with her young chicks
on the lower Itchen among some rushes in a
shallow embayment. In her desperate hurry
to collect them all and escape observation, one
was left behind, a little fluffy black urchin,
which took a wrong turning and struck out
into the current, cheeping dolefully. The
mother made a half turn towards it, but
catching sight of me, retreated after her family
leaving the straggler to its fate.

Once in the swift current it could do nothing,
so I got the landing net and ran down the
bank meaning to intercept it at the next bend;
but, unluckily, it had sufficient strength and
sense to paddle away just out of reach as the
net made a sweep for it. As I watched it
carried away I wondered whether a Jack would
take it, but the keeper afterwards said a rat
probably swam out and seized it within the
first hundred yards.

In adult plumage the water rail is a dull
bird, its back a decayed brown and its under

196 THE ANGLER'S BIRDS.

parts a muddy grey, both blending exactly with
the rotted rushes above and the bare swamp
beneath. It must furnish poor sporl with a
gun and cannot be very appetising at table.
Altogether it is a depressing and low spirited
bird, given to freakish flights in the dark just
when the solitary angler is picking his way
home between the sleeping cattle on the path
and the iris clumps at the river bank. These
circular flights both of water rails, and coots,
can be for nothing but exercise, as they never
appear to leave the swamp.

THE LITTLE GREBE. — Imagine what our life
would be like, if a Krakatoa eruption, a
Naini-tal landslip, a San Francisco earthquake,
or a fire of Chicago, were weekly occurrences
or contingencies. Yet the daily life of a Little
Grebe (or Dabchick) may offer any of these
diversions. A weed-cutting machine may tear
its home up by the roots, or a flood carry it
down through a hatch hole ; to say nothing of
the hourly terrors of dogs, pike, hen-harriers
or water rats.

The desperate and self sacrificing courage of
this bird, displayed at any moment, puts all
human exploits of bravery in the shade. To
pause when flushed by a spaniel, gather four
tiny chicks under its wings, and then dive off
the nest with them, is as ordinary an action as
a man stepping aside to avoid a motor car.

The normal existence of half the animal
world appears to be sudden death or starvation
with interludes of the keenest enjoyment.

THE ANGLER'S BIRDS. 197

Early in May the nest of the dabchick can
be found on almost any of the lagoons and
ponds that occur in the marshes. It is a
loosely compiled structure generally formed on
a floating island of weeds and rushes, con-
structed so as to rise and fall with the water
level, while moored sufficiently well to keep its
place in the current. As however it chooses
backwaters in a river there is seldom much
danger of the nest being carried away. The
bird while sitting always manages to slip off
the nest into the water without splash if dis-
turbed, after covering its eggs with weed. To
such a pitch of perfection has modern obser-
vation been brought that I saw the whole
process of a mother feeding its young, on a
cinematograph in London, far better than any
ordinary observer could succeed in doing by
the waterside with Zeiss glasses. A second
brood is hatched out as a rule, for I have
seen the little chicks in Hampshire in August
on more than one season. They can swim
as soon as they are a day old, their educa-
tion in diving being complete perhaps a week
later.

198 RIVERS,- AND HOTEL FISHINGS.

RIVERS AND HOTEL FISHINGS.

THE COQUET, NORTHUMBERLAND — EGGESFORD—

NORTH AND SOUTH DEVON — DULVERTON—

EXMOUTH — SPRING FISHING — WEATHER AND

HOLIDAYS.

And meet your warmest welcome at an inn.

POPE.

FOR those who care for the experience of
others when it is at any rate disinterested,
and without the object of advertisement,
I should like to mention a few rivers and
fishings that have come either within my own
practical knowledge, or of which I can speak
from the letters and accounts of accurate angling
friends. It does not in the least follow that
anything named here is better than others which
are not. It merely means that the others are
less well known to me.

To begin with a very northern river, the
Coquet can justly claim attention, and can be

RIVERS; AND HOTEL FISHINGS. 199

coupled with the name of the County Hotel,
Rothbury, Northumberland. The charms of
the Coquet has impelled several local bards to
write verses in its praise, while as for the
trout their colouring must be difficult to match
from other rivers.

The Coquet rises in the Cheviots between
Northumberland and Roxburgh, its course being
for the most part eastward. Of its tributaries,
the Usway and the Alwine may be mentioned,
while at Thropton it is joined by the Wreigh.
No one can do better than peruse the short
account of the Coquet in the small pamphlet
issued by the Northumberland Anglers' Federa-
tion. In that, they tell us, the river is most
carefully watched, 'the poacher deterred and the
true angler encouraged.' Would that this
could be said of scores of other good fishings.

Permits are issued at almost a nominal charge
by the Coquet Committee of the Amglers'
Federation, so that it is possible to take one
out for a day, a week, or a month. The trout
season extends from 4th March to the 3Oth
September. Monthly tickets cost ten shillings;
weekly, seven and sixpence; and daily, half a
crown. At the County Hotel, Rothbury, the
fishing is free to visitors. Mr. Garvin the
manager writes to me under date of January
1 8th this year (1912), that the largest yellow
trout he has seen captured was 6J Ibs. caught
by Mr. Benbow of Edinburgh in August, 1910.
As a rule in April good baskets of from two
to three dozen are secured, but this last season

200 RIVERS; AND HOTEL FISHINGS.

(1911) there were several catches of between
three and four dozen.

To jump a matter of four hundred miles —
which is nothing to a really enthusiastic angler
with a sufficient length of holiday — I should
like to name the Fox and Hounds Hotel at
Eggesford, North Devon ; where the proprietor
has some fifteen miles of good trout fishing.
The size limit is eight inches, and the number
limit two dozen a day. Wading is not
necessary but is an advantage. The season
opens from i March to 30 September and
fishing is free to all the hotel visitors. The
terms of the hotel are three guineas a week.

In a letter this year, as to recent doings, the
proprietor Mr. Littleworth gives me the
following extract from his visitors book of
last season (1911). ' March 28th 20 trout
weighing nine pounds; March 29th 20; March
30th 10 ; April 3rd 9; 8th 8; i2th 6; i5th 4;
1 7th 7; i8th 5; igth 13; 2ist 6; 22nd 13; 24th
8; 26th 18 (weighing nine pounds) and April
28th 12; — a total of 206; the heaviest fish being
fourteen ounces, with several of a full twelve
ounces.

Of the Axe in Devonshire, and the Dove in
Derbyshire, I have already spoken.

On the River Otter, South Devon fishing
can be obtained either by staying at the
Imperial Hotel, Exmouth, or the Rolle Arms
Hotel, Budleigh-Salterton. A limited number
of Day Tickets, which are not transferable, are
issued from the Rolle Estate Office, Exmouth,

RIVERS; AND HOTEL FISHINGS. 201

by Mr. E. Chamier. These were, for last
season, six shillings between mid-March and
mid-May; or three shillings afterwards, until
the close of the season on 3ist August. The
conditions cited are, that A/rtificial fly only is
to be used; that no fish under nine inches is
to be killed, or more than one dozen to be
kept; and that no wading is allowed.

During the past ten years the average size of
trout on this river has been seven ounces,
taking the whole year round. Of course during
the summer months individual catches have far
exceeded this; having often approximated three
quarters of a pound, while in nearly every
season a specimen trout of about two pounds
has been taken by some fortunate rod.

On other early Devonshire rivers the Car-
narvon Arms Hotel at Dulverton can be
recommended, where five miles of preserved
water on the Exe and Barle are open to the
hotel visitors.

With the full list of Anglers' Hotels and
Fishing quarters described or advertised each
week in the Fishing Gazette there can never be
any real difficulty of where to go, provided one
has the necessary time and keenness when one's
holiday comes round.

Something may be said upon the question of
expense : for it is no use pretending that
fishing is every man's sport; or that everyone
can afford a three guinea weekly bill at a
hotel, in addition to the cost of a long journey.
In naming the hotel bill and railway ticket, one

202 RIVERS; AND HOTEL FISHINGS.

can claim at least to have named almost all.
The temptation to spend money on side issues
is removed. There is no pier, no concert hall,
no cinema palace, often indeed no billiard room.

The holiday angler therefore, unlike the
visitor at a fashionable seaside resort, should be
able to work to the strictly moderate estimate
he put down, for contingencies, before starting.
Whether the river he fishes in is good or bad,
whether the days are cold or kind, whether his
hand is ' in ' or not, whether his health at the
time is normal or below par, the man who
returns from a fly fishing holiday to the City
generally does so with his head full of the
improved plans he will elaborate for his next
holiday. Nothing is quite like it. Nothing
is so restful. Nothing is so exciting. Nothing
so delightful to look forward to — or to look
back upon. Of course a distinct pull that the
fly fisherman has is his indifference to wet
weather. During the whole of a drizzly spring,
when hardly a day passes that can be termed
anything but doubtful, we are as happy as the
cattle, provided the river is not in flood. When
the tennis court or the cricket pitch is sodden,
the water is often in its finest condition, and
trout in their most generous mood.

Devonshire rivers with gravelly beds are often
most favourable for wet fly fishing, during
March and April, when the water is beer
coloured. On such days between ten o'clock
and three I have seen many takes of twenty
trout, averaging a full seven ounces; which

RIVERS; AND HOTEL FISHINGS. 203

means that a basket contains a few of three
quarters of a pound. I have caught a full
pounder on the opening day (March 4).
Generally the result of early downstream fishing
is that one catches a fair proportion of fish
but little over the nine inch limit — fish if
weighed will often be found to be barely five
ounces.

How one can manage at such a time to
select one's trout so as to obtain a good
average weight in pure downstream angling is
a problem that others must solve. Only this
last season as I looked at my dozen fish — three
having been put back which were oversize in
order to allow of three better ones being taken
—I could see that they averaged between six
and seven ounces, and were fully up to the
usual run of catches made at this season in
many former years. The next morning I met
two other strange rods, whom I had seen
fishing the same water. I answered the usual
questions as to number and commented on the
small size of March trout. Neither of them
agreed to this. The first man had got his
dozen * and they weighed ten pounds at the
hotel last night/ 'Did you put back many?'
I asked. ' No, only three or four.'

A little bit later, on thinking this over, I
saw the other man who had caught seven.
4 Your friend's catch was very good : was it
twelve fish weighing ten pounds ?' ' Yes, that's
right, we weighed them at the hotel last evening,
a full ten pounds.' ' Well, that is a record

204 RIVERS; AND HOTEL FISHINGS.

for this river, I have known it for fifteen years
and never seen such a basket.' * Ah, very
likely ' he replied ' my friend is a splendid
fisherman.'

The river the preceding day was full and
highly coloured. I myself had seen both men
fishing downstream, apparently with three flies;
casting them out in the orthodox March manner,
and allowing them to come round under one's
own bank, then stepping forward a pace and
repeating the process. How the art of being
a splendid fisherman preserved those flies from
being taken by the five and six ounce trout,
which had so readily come to mine, is beyond
any theory I can advance. But the two men
had seen the fish weighed at the hotel. Mine
I never thought of weighing, but would have
bet a sovereign they did not exceed five pounds.
Here then is one of the disappointments one
has to put up with, to find all records of a
river, even its summer records, broken in early
March by a comparative stranger to the water.

At Easter last year a friend who owns perhaps
the best mile of the river saw * four fish
caught in one day each one over a pound *
taken by perhaps the best known angler —
either wet or dry — in Devonshire. The same
rod, later in the year, * caught twelve averaging
nearly three quarters of a pound in July.' The
largest trout caught on his water to his know-
ledge was 2 Ibs. 2j oz.

CHOICE OF FLY. 205

CHOICE OF FLY.

LEGENDARY FAVOURITES — A FISHERMAN'S FETISH

—THE BLACK GNAT — ADVENTURE WITH AN

ALEXANDRA.

What is there they will not choose ?
If only you will but oppose their choice.

BYEON.

REMEMBERING in the early days of fly
fishing how exercised I was over this
subject, I had intended tabulating month
by month a list of flies recommended for use.
This however seems to me quite unnecessary
and probably confusing.

In the first place such a list could not but
read as an evident crib from other far better
books, as well as from the excellent coloured
catalogues of Messrs. Hardy Brothers and other
first rate tackle makers. Nor has my experience
of rivers been sufficiently diverse to attempt to
lay down any law upon so wide a subject.
With some men a particular fly is a fetish.

206 CHOICE OF FLY.

They have found it prove a charm on days
when their catch headed the list of Hotel
takings; so that no amount of subsequent
failure can displace the memory of those
triumphs. With other men a fly is a legend.
They have been told by friends that it is the
fly to use in certain months. They therefore
continue year after year to * put it up,'
assuring themselves that if the fish will not
take this they will take no other.

There is all the vexed controversy of colour,
of size, of wings or hackle, of gut flies or eyed
flies, of turned up eyes and turned down eyes,
of patterns which are best fished wet or fished
dry; so that the subject becomes altogether too
involved to be useful to a beginner. He should
listen very little to anything dogmatic; which,
even if correct, may be applicable to other
rivers, and not to the one he is fishing. After
his very first season the beginner must learn
by experience; not being in the least ashamed
to try any fly which he thinks may tempt
either trout or grayling.

Then again it is impossible, when mentioning
a particular fly by name, to convey much idea
of its appearance unless dressed in the same
way all over the country. If different dressings
of certain flies bear the same relation to the
parent type that the varieties of pigeons do to
the wild Rock pigeon, then it is no wonder
that anglers understand something quite different
from each other, when they recommend a
particular species of artificial fly for use on a

CHOICE OF FLY. 207

certain river. However, I must not drift into
a Darwinian theory on the evolution of fly
tying : but will quote a paragraph from a
friend's letter to whom I applied for assistance.

He replied, ' to speak of Silver Twist or
Blue Upright conveys no meaning to the
angling mind, elementary or advanced, because
flies called by these names are dressed in such
different ways. The Dun which the * blue
upright ' is supposed to imitate, is very dark
in February; so the so called scientific ones
dress the artificial lure with a dark, almost
black, hackle. Towards March and April the
same natural insect gets paler and browner, and
is eventually imitated by the fly we know as
the 'Red Upright'; and so on. Therefore,
unless the dressings of each pattern are carefully
given, the scientific fisher is not enlightened
any more than the ignorant novice.'

From another letter I quote the following :
* my plan about advising beginners on the
question of flies, is to tell them to go to a
reliable local tackle maker, in the absence of a
competent friend on the spot to advise them,
and to take his selections. Thus for Devon-
shire streams, such as the Exe, Dart, Teign,
Otter, Axe, Taw and Torridge, good flies, suit-
able for the different months, may be had from
any of the leading tackle shops in Exeter,
Barnstaple, or Torrington ; if he is not satisfied
with the coloured catalogues. I always advise
hackle flies for wet fishing in the early months,
February, March or April ; and will name as

208 CHOICE OF FLY.

my favourites February Red; Blue Upright
(male and female), Half Stone, Hare's Flax,
Middle Blue, Silver Twist, and of course March
Brown, without which no beginner thinks he
is complete.'

4 I think the sizes of the patterns should be
according to the weather and water : on a coarse
windy day with heavy water a large pattern ;
for a fine day with low and clear water, a
small pattern. This ought to be quite enough
for a beginner to start with. One can only
give the flies which you found to be * good
medicine ' when you were a tyro.'

In wet fly fishing it is important to choose
a hackle fly which does not resolve itself into
the shape of a wet camel's hair paint brush—
unless you find that it ' takes ' in that form.
The hackle of a fly is of course intended to
imitate the legs of the real insect, especially
those of a drowned one. It is advisable there-
fore to look at your fly as it lies in the water
and see the kind of resemblance it bears to
what it is posing as a counterpart. You will
not trouble to do this if it is attracting fish.
So long as the fly is successful, pay no atten-
tion to its shape — not even if part of the
dressing has come away. As to a winged
sedge fly, or an alder, it is frequently most
killing when half the wing is hanging off or
half the hackle so untwisted that it presents
the appearance of two flies. Even a badly
rusted iron is no drawback, provided the point
and barb are effective.

CHOICE OF FLY. 209

The first really nice trout I ever caught came
to a Greenwell's Glory. I have its tracing
now on two sheets of note paper, thirteen
inches, and thirteen ounces. As, before that
auspicious evening my record trout was under
seven, and was hooked foul, the joy of this
monster can be imagined. Every enthusiastic
angler has felt the same. Those who have yet
to experience this pleasure are to be envied
also*. The successful strike, the dreaded strain
on the line and rod, as the fish gets down the
stickle on a long line, the terror of his escape,
the momentary sinking of heart when you
believe he has done so, the clumsy winding up
of the reel, the jumping among the stones of
the huge form, the breathless dives made at it
with the net as it got into another pool, where
at last it was dipped out; all these form the
links in the chain of intense pleasure which
culminates — at that period of one's fishing
experience — in the possession of the thick and
slippery prize that hitherto had only been seen
in other men's baskets.

A fly I have personally never done good with
is the March Brown. Indeed I have got to
regard it as one of the legendary favourites;
though, being when well dressed, a most
accurate imitation of the real fly upon the water,
there is no doubt as to its efficiency. On
early rivers a ' Blue Upright,' rather sparsely
dressed with hackle the colour of a Dipper's
back, a sooty brown, retains my faith for hours
together. I have some with a distinctly yellow

210 CHOICE OF FLY.

body, to which I can get no two anglers to
put the same name, that appeal to me, and
my favourite runs or pools, better than any
other patterns. * It is a kind of Blue Upright
I suppose.' * It certainly is not a Blue
Upright.' ' It looks a likely fly any way.'
These are the varying verdicts of its species,,
or variety, given by different friends on the
meadows. Of late years I have had it made
to pattern, from sheer inability to define it.

As May progresses towards the fifteenth of
the month, the Black gnat, in various shapes
and sizes, must be in the angler's fly box.
The very prettiest form of dry fly fishing is
generally enjoyed with this neat little lure.
To hook and land a pound-and-a-halfer on a
nought-nought black gnat, from a well whipped
Club water, brings the same satisfaction as a
stroke at billiards, which, under no circum-
stances, would be regarded as a fluke even by
the bitterest opponent. How some of these
tiny hooks manage to hold a trout, whose maw
could compass a tangerine orange, is a marveL
Yet they do, most effectively, burying them-
selves in some tough piece of sinewy or bony
substance often far down the fish's gullet.

Another much vaunted fly — one which is
barred on certain waters as being hardly a fair
one to use, is the Alexandra. On its silver
shanked hook surrounded with peacock's harl
it must gain its efficacy from being mistaken
for a minnow as it is drawn through the water.
One proof of this exists in the fact that large

CHOICE OF FLY. 211

Alexandras are made with a small metal spinner
at their head, a pattern which, under no method
of sportsmanlike argument, can be fairly reckoned
as an artificial fly.

My own success with an Alexandra was con-
fined to one memorable evening fifteen years
ago. Having heard it said that * the fly ought
to be barred,' I naturally determined to obtain
one. It was all done in such secrecy that I
wrote up to Town for the samples; and kept
the envelope containing them as carefully as a
rouleau of notes, almost next to my skin.

I laid plans not only for the day, but also
for the very pool and hour, arranging to sleep
at an inn so as to be able to stay out until ten
o'clock. The place was known as the Elbow
pool, the river making a sharp and deep turn
under the red cliff just there. During the
evening rise, although the yellow snouts popped
up in the broken water of the run above it,
I only managed to hook four, none of them
being over nine ounce fish.

At 9.30 the rise ceased : so now was the
time for the fateful Alexandra. It had already
been affixed to a new two yard cast which lay
coiled in damp blotting paper, like a deadly
snake, ready for action. The pool had a steep
stony beach on two sides of it, while against
the cliff was an enormous blackberry bush
touching the water.

After casting straight down stream three or
four times, in the manner of the ordinary
duffer, I was just reeling it up when it was

212 CHOICE OF FLY.

seized. I had wound up the line quite short,
so could see that the fish was very close to my
feet. I gripped the line firmly to the rod,
resisting the most determined tugs. It felt
exactly the same as a large pollack on a sea
line. The next minute he came to the top,
giving a heavy jump that just showed me his
full outline in the dusk — quite the largest trout
I had ever seen.

The tugs grew so vigorous that I thought I
ought to give him a little line to save a break :
so doled out a few yards grudgingly, assuming
of course that he would use them to take down
to the bottom of the pool. But no : he did
not. To my horror I found that he had just
slipped to the side and was well up under the
overhanging blackberry bush. Never had I
dreamed of such treachery. You must guess
the rest.

The break occurred, leaving the Alexandra
and a foot of strong gut in his bony jaw,
and leaving me with the rest of the tackle.
How near the whole of that followed him into
the pool I will not say. He was the size of
a three pound pollack. Nothing will now
persuade me that he was less than two and
a half.

It is no use piling up the agony of rage
and disappointment. I had bungled him
grievously. One more half minute of struggle
on that short line would have finished him.
I should have dipped out the prize of the
season : taken, too, precisely in accordance with

CHOICE OF FLY. 213

the plan. The loss of that trout cast a gloom
on my fishing mind for years : partly because
I felt no one would realise his size — partly
because I did not like to tell the full story of
the Alexandra. So I do now, for any
beginner it may interest.

214 BIRDS OF THE ESTUARY

BIRDS OF THE ESTUARY.

THE DUCKS IN WINTER — WIGEON — TEAL — THE
BITTERN — RARER BIRDS.

DURING a really hard winter, such as we
have not had for the past dozen years,
the estuary and flats are alive with many
kinds of duck; they being of course driven
to the coast, or the brackish water, owing to
the freezing of their inland meres and marshes.

Dr. C. Butler, of Syon House, East Budleigh,
has shot Pintail duck and grey goose, in
addition to the regular winter visitants such as
wigeon, teal, and mallard. I have myself seen
shelduck and Pochard. A pair of Tufted Duck
Were also shot a few years back : while Mr.
C. Crier obtained a fine pair of Hooded
Merganser — perhaps one of the rarest birds to
be seen on the estuary.

The mallard, or wild duck, is of course
distributed all over the country; remaining here
to breed, although the nest is by no means
confined either to river banks or to the

BIRDS OF THE ESTUARY 215

immediate vicinity of water. On long country
walks through coombes or dingles, the nest
may be found alongside any small swamp or
marshy bottom; a straggling structure, softly
lined, containing perhaps ten eggs, which have
been carefully covered by the mother before she
slipped off them on your approach.

The sight of wild duck has so far been the
only reward I ever reaped from getting up at
daylight in June in order to fish. On the
three different occasions that I tried this 'experi-
ment, I never caught a single trout, though on
the bank side at half past three; but teach time
I put up wild duck, twice well within range.

On many winter mornings, provided the
marsh and estuary have not been much troubled
by guns, wigeon can be seen along the margins
of the ponds, usually well out of gunshot.
They are so wary that it is only now and then
that a bracte are bagged after much careful
stalking. The wigeon does not breed here but
makes off north in the spring as far as the
arctic circle.

Teal are far more common on these ponds,
though they too are very shy at anyone who
might be carrying a gun. In looking at the
ponds from a quarter of a mile away it is
difficult always to tell teal from moorhens, but
after watching for a short time, you may see
one dive, which settles the question for you,
as teal never dive when feeding — in fact never
at all unless when wounded. I have never
found their nest either upon or near the

216 BIRDS OF THE ESTUARY.

marshes, but it is extremely probable that they
remain to breed in the locality.

Among uncommon birds, it is pleasant to
know that the bittern can occasionally be
included. Dr. Butler has a fine specimen
stuffed and set up, which he obtained on the
marshes, and writes under date of January
22nd, 1912, ' on referring to my game book I
find my bittern was shot on January I3th, 1909.
There seems to have been a cold snap of
weather at the time.' It may be some time
before another example either of the bittern or
the marsh harrier are seen ; although observers
with glasses are more common now than five
years ago.

Speaking of disappearing birds prompts one
to notice those which are becoming more
familiar. Two which can be cited are the
Reed Warbler and the Sedge Warbler. During
the past summer or two I have located many
nests of each species in a swamp which I will
not particularise. In the case of the Reed
warbler this place has only been occupied
lately, so that I hope to find them again next
season. The nest is quite unmistakable being
suspended between reed stalks or willow branches.

Every angler can hear the sedge warbler as
late as ten o'clock ; so much so that in Devon-
shire its song at that time probably accounts
for rumours of nightingales. But I never knew
any person thoroughly familiar with the
nightingales' notes who could make such a
mistake.

BIRDS OF THE ESTUARY. 217

I quote the following brief lines pencilled
for me by A;lderman C. E. L. Gardner, J.P.,
of Clifton who has a residence near the estuary
and who, in addition to the finest powers of
observation with field glasses, has acquired a
reputation as an outdoor naturalist superior to
that of many scientific ornithologists.

' A few years ago on an August bank
holiday I found my first Ringed plovers' nest
at Budleigh-Salterton. I noticed the bird
creeping up over the beach and settle down.
On going over to the place I found the nest
with one egg. I say nest, but there was really
none, as the egg was on the stones. Unfor-
tunately the place was crowded with people and
the egg was either stepped upon or taken :
although I believe the Herring gulls are the
worst enemy the Ringed plovers have.

I have since found a number of nests — the
earliest date May lyth — and watched many rear
their young ones in safety. Occasionally the
bird selects a patch of tide refuse for its
nesting spot; but usually I have found the
eggs on the bare beach. Although a heavy
pebble beach and very extensive, yet I once
found the eggs in precisely the same place
two years following, as proved by a peculiar
stone by which I marked the spot.

This reminds me that I once found a
Butcherbird's nest (Red backed shrike) three
years following in the same bush. The first
on'e contained five eggs on June 2nd — the next
year on May 27th. On the first occasion after

218 BIRDS OF THE ESTUARY.

the young birds had flown I removed the nest,
and finding the birds built again the second
year I again removed it. In the third year,
for some reason, the birds deserted nest and
egg; and never came back to the same tree.

I had an unusual experience (April iQth,
1911) with a Golden Crested wren. Seeing a
nest which I could not reach I got a boy to
climb up. He brought me down one egg
although he had broken another in the nest
which he said contained a lot. I naturally
concluded that the birds would desert, so a week
afterwards thought I would secure the nest for
the Bristol Museum, but strange to say found
eight eggs in perfect condition, the old birds
evidently having removed the broken egg. Near
by I have found both Chiffchaff and Willow
Wren's nests.

A pair of Shelducks usually build near the
estuary although I have never located the nest.
Two years following I found a Kestrel's nest
in the cliff by the river side, also several King
fishers' and dippers'.

Among the birds I have seen are Land rail
and water rail, once a pair of Eider ducks,
Great Northern Diver, Oyster catcher, Red-
shank, Dunlin, Tern, Puffin and Curlew. Of
the latter, twice a pair built at the bottom of
the railway bank near the marsh, but I only
discovered them as the young ones were clearing
off. On the common one of my little ones
called out, and I found a Nightjar showing
fight : on my coming up it flew off leaving a

BIRDS OF THE ESTUARY. 219

slight nest and two eggs. In Otterton Park
besides many woodpeckers' I have found one
nest of the Ring ousel.

Unfortunately too many people have dis-
covered that the Ringed plovers nest upon the
beach; and take the eggs. Consequently, the
birds have left the locality. Last year I
counted a large flock, about eighty, in the
spring; and yet there was not a single nest
this year. I hear the same applies to Exmouth
warren. Years ago there were dozens of nests,
now only one or two.

In 1909 I located during the season a total
of 156 birds' nests containing in all 416 eggs,
and 103 young birds : in 1910 133 nests, with
373 eggs and 131 young; and in 1911 197 nests,
44° eggs and 170 young birds.'

220 THE GRAYLING.

THE GRAYLING.

(Salmo thymallus).

THE AUTUMN GRAYLING

There is in woods a solemn sound
Of hollow warnings whispered round.

Shuddering Autumn stops to list,

And breathes his fear in sudden sighs,

With clouded face, and hazel eyes

That quench themselves and hide in mist.

Yes, Summer's gone like pageant bright,

Its glorious days of golden light

Are gone — the mimic suns that quiver,

Then melt in Time's dark flowing river.

HOOD.

ONE of the nicest traits we know about
grayling is that they require purer
water than trout. Where drainage and
dye works are reduced to a minimum, as in
the hill streams of Derbyshire or Yorkshire, or
the old world alluvial pasturages of Hants, one
finds the grayling in full vigour.

In the Hampshire waters especially they lie
in open pools, where they can be detected like
pale mauve green shadows against the mauvfe,
grey chalk deposit. Often they consort
together in some dozens, so that were they
elephants they could be grouped into herds
rather than shoals.

When water has run low owing to a mill
stream diversion or the opening of flooding

THE GRAYLING. 221

hatches on a Sunday in September, really
magnificent grayling are occasionally seen — a
Cabinet Council as it were, all of two and three
pounders; eight or ten lying sulkily within
a few yards of each other in a pool the size)
•of a board-room. Needless to say, they will
no more rise on such an occasion than a
politician challenged by the opposite party.
The water is not to their liking in current or
volume; and they either avoid weed cover, or
are in reality sifting some form of food off
the chalky mud. If watched through opera
glasses they appear to have a constant swaying
motion, or parallax, within a foot circle while
keeping station like a fleet of battleships at
anchor.

Walk up to another part of the same river
and there, in a sparkling run or a swiftly
moving shallow, small fish — maiden grayling—
of from seven to ten ounces will be found
rising freely ; so much so that, as a species of
pretty practice, one can keep on throwing for
them with the left hand for an hour at a time,
rising dozens and perhaps only hooking three
or four.

There is this difference between trout and
grayling in the matter of surface food — that a
trout far more means business as a rule. His
rise is either hunger or savageness. He is the
dog with the bone. The grayling is the
kitten with the cork.

Then again, the trout appreciates the old
fashioned solid imitations of the natural flv.

222 THE GRAYLING.

They are to him as the pabulum of beer and
whisky to the average man. The grayling is
the girl at the restaurant. She is to be
tempted with sauterne or constantia, pink
noyeau or green chartreuse. The trout is the
man attracted by tweed in the roll : the grayling
the debutante whose head is turned — very
literally — by the tinsel and feathers of the hat
shop.

Trout will rise or sulk; and if really well
put down, as by the constant thrashing of the
water above them by a persistent duffer, are
no more likely to come to his fly than they
are to creep into his creel. Grayling on the
other hand are capricious, and it is always
worth remembering that if once a fish has risen
to you you may find it successful to make
another fifty casts, or to change your fly five
times.

A grayling which has once done you the
favour of rising to your fly is more, likely to
do so again than other untried ones you may
see lying in the deeps or shallows.

Usually their annoying plan is to pay no
attention to really well presented flies; small
duns or olives coming down the water like
gossamer, indeed almost preening their dry
wings as they are wafted along. These, the
grayling will let goi by, and will continue to
shoot up to the surface and pretend to take
something else that is not there, and that she
knows is not there. After you have exhausted
your niceties and compliments, have risen from

THE GRA YLING.

your knees, and have executed a clumsy cast
that made a cart whip ripple through your own
shadow, she will come and take that fly on the
drag as though it had been previously invisible,
will hook herself without a strike on a semi-
slack line, will come through or over the weeds
like a girl after an actor, and literally throw
herself at your feet.

Of grayling taken out of season I have
nothing to say. It is done persistently, and
those to whom it appeals as sport must continue
to practise it. The reputation of the grayling
has suffered immensely by its being hooked
played and landed during the may-fly season.
That is when so many of the two and three
pounders are ' captured.' A dusk June evening
— a large spent gnat — and tackle strong enough
to cut weeds with.

We will not insult the sex by repeating
judgments given in May and June, any more
than one would gauge a season's beauties by
their appearance when approaching their bathing
machines after a long swim attired in hired
dresses. A person publishing a snap shot made
on such an occasion deserves to have his
pleasures curtailed. It brings its own punish-
ment in loss of appreciation for what is sporting
and beautiful.

Let grayling fishing be reckoned with part-
ridge shooting and its real pleasures, actual and
sentimental, are doubled immediately.

For my own part, September has been the
only month — indeed in Hampshire only the

224 THE GRAYLING.

first fortnight of September— when trout and
grayling are in together. Even on August
evenings, when sedge-fly fishing becomes so
attractive, it is far better to keep to trout : to
make no cast at any rise which you know to
be a grayling's. By thus giving her the very
fairest play she will give you the very fairest
sport. She will jump out of water for you
when struck, in a manner utterly beyond her
power in April or May, when taken by accident
on trout tackle. Grayling fishing par excellence
dates from the time when trout is finally
barred — after 3oth September.

Anglers who honestly cannot afford, cannot
get access to, or cannot get away early enough
in the year to take up or keep up trout fishing,
may look forward keenly to their opening day
in October, when they first visit a river on
which they have acquired the right to fish.
As schoolmasters know, the weather in October
is sometimes perfect; and during every day
there is a full hour as a rule during which
grayling are taking surface food in a thoroughly
meaning manner. Therefore it is necessary to
keep on the water from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.,
if one wants to miss nothing. I have generally
had my best baskets after an early tea : that
is to say I have found the deadest part of the
day to be between half past two and four, so
have acted in accordance.

Excepting with the dry fly, my practical
experience is nil. The wet fly lure may be
far more successful.

THE GRAYLING. 225

On this of course one can only come to the
material comparison of results, and think how
a dry fly catch on a bright October day has
shown up, or paled, beside that of another
angler who has taken them down stream. I
have had a blank on the Dove and Manifold
in a heavy water, when others have taken
perhaps two brace ; but on the other hand have
been fortunate in Dovedale in attracting a few
specimen fish when the wet fly had only been
swallowed by quarter pounders. In Hants I
have never seen downstream fishing practised.

On a good day the dry fly method is
valuable enough to take more grayling than
any fair sized creel will hold.

It will sometimes enable you to drop a twenty
ouncer into a tussock of grass or dock leaves
every half hour, or quarter of a mile, during
one's way up stream ; to be picked up in the
dusk on the way home, or even the next
morning. An entry on the back of a last
year's trout license gives Trafalgar Day, nine
grayling : fifteen and a half pounds. That
too had never counted a full dozen of small
fish, either put back or given to similar sized
urchins on the banks — whales to be placed head
foremost into their pickle bottles, which they
or their parents had for supper. Nor did it
count two brace well over a pound each I
can remember giving to four navvies on the
railway bank, who were cooking something on
the line at their midday meal.

That was a typical grayling day — almost too

Q

226 THE GRAYLING.

good — when every condition was favourable;
when knowledge of the water at that particular
season aided one immensely, and when a series
of lucky incidents was experienced from start
to finish.

For actual fishing for grayling I will try
and treat in the next chapter.

FLY FISHING FOR GRAYLING. 227

FLY FISHING FOR GRAYLING.

CHILL OCTOBER DAYS.

Since body of mine and rainy weather
Have lived on easy terms together.

COLERIDGE.

They have no song those sedges dry

And still they sing.
It is within my breast they sing

As I pass by.
Within my breast they touch a string,

They raise a sigh,
'Tis but the sound of sedges dry,

In me they sing.

MEREDITH.

RANKING well behind trout fishing as
regards excitement and expense — just
as the trout in all these particulars
ranks behind the lordly salmon — yet angling
for grayling in October and November, with the
fly, can bring a pleasure to the man of
moderate means who has a capacity for enjoying
open air sport, which too many of us are apt
to overlook.

With the end of September he as likely as
not puts away his fly rod and sighs over the
early autumn fire in the evening, regretting
that shooting is beyond his means and attain-
ment. Similarly, many who find a subscription
to good trout water is annually growing more

228 FLY FISHING FOR GRAYLING.

expensive, quite disregard the fact that a rod
on grayling water can be had for a third of
the money and will afford them for two months
or more a delightful pastime.

As I have already observed, the grayling
is a maligned fish ; as often as not judged
from his appearance either in the early
spring or a little later, when he succumbs to
the mayfly, and to men too who would at once
exclaim at the unfairness of estimating the
behaviour of a trout when caught on a fly during,
or just after, his spawning season. I can never
forget my first experience in this way. A
promising rise had attracted my attention, and
a small red tag which fell above it was taken
immediately, by a fish too which felt heavier
than the half pound grayling which had been
bobbing up at intervals and teasing my fly.
He felt double the weight as he moved away,
but there was no life, no rush ; nothing but a
sluggish wobbling under water occurred, and
all the undervaluations of grayling fishing ran
through my mind while reeling in something
as lifeless as motionless as a played out bream.
Netted and upset upon the grass it looked dark
and slimy, and it was with almost dismay that
I slowly recognised it was a trout. So
uncanny was its appearance that even unhooking
it was distasteful and when put back into the
water it ' regained its freedom with a sigh.'

The fact is that trout are not so often seen
out of season. Grayling are: and are freely
taken more is the pity by anglers who ought

FLY FISHING FOR GRAYLING. 229

to know better. The tyro with his new outfit
in mid May frequently finds the trout too much
for him. All he can attract are out of season
grayling. Well, the October grayling is vastly
different; and when hooked in a Test or Itchen
shallow on a drawn gut cast can show a
prolonged fight equal to and sometimes better
than a trout. That from the nature of the
tackle he requires far nicer handling to avoid
a parting in mid stream is undeniable, owing
to the tenderness of his mouth in a great
measure. Once let him set up a paddle wheel
splashing in sight of the net and unless well
hooked through the lip he will be free, perhaps
floating away so exhausted by this last
successful effort that it is even worth while
trying to net him out a yard or so lower down.

In early October grayling may be found on
the rise in suitable places almost the whole
time, although on a cloudless day from 10 a.m.
to 2 p.m. will probably account for the bulk
of your catch. They do not feed as well in
the dark as trout, but when they do not only
are they heavy fish but are more decided about
it than at other times. Anyone more desirous
of taking home a full two pounder than of
scoring in the matter of quantity, should make
up his mind where to . go from five to six
o'clock. That is a time when larger fish will
come close into the bank and take sedges or
their imitation with confidence.

Treat them just as you would a September
trout by making a careful stalk, expecting the

230 FLF FISHING FOR GRAYLING.

fish to take the first cast. If he does not then
wait and try to learn his periodicity — that is
to say do not throw just after he has risen,
but just before he is due to rise again. He
lies lower down in the water than a trout and
consequently is less fitted for that double snap
which a hungry trout will occasionally give.

It is best to make up one's mind to use
nothing but a dry fly, a tapered cast with a
3 x drawn point, and a nought oir two nought
hook. It has been said that grayling are more
tolerant of drag than trout. So they are-
small or moderate sized grayling — but no, not
the good ones. During the last seven seasons
I have only twice had a grayling of over i Ib.
7 oz. affix himself or herself to a dragging fly,
and in each case it was to one which was racing
across the stream in a semicircle.

That they do not stipulate for the same
neatness or accuracy of casting is true enough.
If feeding in a shallow however, a bungling
cast or a sight of the angler will bring about
the same furrowed rush into the open which
we all know so well.

When in mid stream as they mostly are, and
when rising in two or three feet of water, a
grayling approached from below is very kind to
the angler. She will sometimes allow him to
float all the hundred best patterns over her
head without taking the least alarm or offence.
A well informed trout would not like this. He
would move; and even then not keep his tongue
quiet as he went. But grayling continue to

FLF FISHING FOR GRAYLING. 231

rise often at nothing visible to ordinary eyes,
and are occasionally hooked foul in the back
fin while doing so.

The only way with such fish is to persist; as
well as keep on using smaller flies, until one
gets down to the tiniest black spider on which
I remember catching a fine grayling (2 Ibs.
i oz.) that had given me many walks back into
the meadow to disentangle previous patterns.
Two flies I have been especially lucky with
are the orange-tag and the ruby-wickham :
the one in deepish water and the other in
shallows immediately above a run or stickle.
The latter is so easily drowned owing to its
tinsel sheath and its sparse dressing, that it
needs to be well oiled, and kept for a very
short time on the surface. Indeed half its
efficacy appears to depend upon its
impressionism.

Another hint I remember giving myself was
' dark flies in the morning, light flies in the
afternoon.' But no one can be dogmatic who
has fished for grayling long; and it may well
be that some angler's diary contains the same
formula with the two adjectives transposed. We
are all inclined to form hasty rules from a
particular run of luck at fishing as at whist.

A tiny red ant with semi invisible split wings
— a Halford pattern fly bought at the Civil
Service Stores — once effected a remarkable
change upon a whole shallow full of medium
sized grayling that I and a few others had
thrown over until we were all tired. Sitting

232 FLY FISHING FOR GRAYLING.

on the hatch stile for a leisurely smoke after
2 o'clock one Sunday, I noticed a small pale
red fly fluttering on the water, and although
he had not been taken by anything, but dis-
appeared under the fringe of floating weed which
dammed itself against the hatchhole, I looked
in my box to match it, and found the one
described. The iron had a very distinct side
bend, was desperately sharp, and in some way
or other either the fly or the atmosphere
resuscitated a feeling of confidence.

One specially dour fish, which had spurned
everybody's Fancy and anybody's Glory, was
still to be seen in a chalky opening between
two long peninsulas of weed. I felt sure he
would take it — and he did. The gut was finer
than ever : the fly so small it seemed scarcely
able to keep a secure hold. As he ran up I
took the opportunity of crossing the stile and
moving down to where the bank projected into
a sort of cape, thus obtaining a straight course
for him to come without troubling to call in
at the dam of floating-weed. He was a long
time on while the line was out to the taper at
the reel end, but nervousness as to the gut and
the small fly saved the situation. He was
cajoled down with gentleness and persuasion
and landed, a game and handsome fish of i Ib.
9 oz.

I lost the next two, neither of them much
over a pound, and then got one of a pound
and a quarter before the fly snapped off. It
was a pretty hour's sport because with the two

FLY FISHING FOR GRAYLING. 233

lost fish one could see them rise, turn, follow
the fly and reject it time after time, always the
moment it dragged. Yet they ended moth like
in singeing their wings.

On wide and shallow stretches of grayling
water where the fish can be seen rising at
frequent intervals for hours at a time on a
bright October or November day, one will
usually find that this tempting prospect is
tempered by a steady downstream wind. I said
some time back that I had never seen grayling
fished for downstream. This is a mistake, as
in the very place described, I watched two rods
one morning doing everything they could to
circumvent these fish and all in vain. After
they had gone I tried, with the same result,
until I was sufficiently snubbed and was forced
to retire to the hatch-stile and watch them
through field glasses.

Seven or eight good fish could be located
which at intervals of about half a minute came
up in an easy manner, took a fly in a whisper,
and then popped down again. One could see
them lying above the grey bottom, evidently
scanning the surface from its under side most
carefully. From the hours — I might say weeks —
spent upon that stile I became convinced that
the sight of the angler is the sole reason for
the grayling rejecting the artificial fly, and that,
so long as their caution is not thus aroused,
their mere sense of discrimination between the
natural and imitation insect can be deceived.
Since then I have always treated them as care-

234 FLY FISHING FOR GRAYLING.

fully as the shiest trout and have been amply
rewarded.

On these days of a persistent downstream
wind, when the fish appeared to feel themselves
secure, the plan I found best was to approach
the place from below upon a morning when no
preliminary casting over them had taken place,
and then make up one's mind either to counter-
act the wind and the drag of the long line, or
else to leave them alone. With much high
grass behind it is almost impossible; but in
the place referred to the water meadows were
smooth and close cropped.

It is important to vaseline the line well, not
only the taper end but all the centre thick
portion, as this enables it to fly through the
rings easily.

Then uncoil a sufficient quantity to effect a
cast of a full twenty yards — say the length of
a cricket pitch. Indeed this is all I found I
could manage without a hitch up in the grass
behind. By coiling a portion of the line on
the ground just at one's feet, and retaining
another five or six loops in the left hand it is
easy enough to begin making false casts
upstream against a quiet wind, each time
increasing the length of the line. By the time
three quarters of the necessary line is in the
air you are ready for the fish you have spotted.

Continue to throw so that the heavy portion
of the line will fall upon the water upstream
in a curve well above the fly; then, just while
the line is travelling towards the desired place,

FLY FISHING FOR GRAYLING. 235

let go the loops from your left hand which will
slip through the rings with quite a rush and
effect exactly what you want, namely a curve
with its convex presented to both wind and
current. The wind has retarded your fly, which
has pitched above the rising fish, while the loop
of line has time, first to straighten, and then to
curve downstream, before it begins to drag the
fly. Draw in the line with your left hand in
loops of a few feet while this is taking place.

During the process the grayling will rise,
look at the fly, and take it.

Day after day in such places they will reward
a successful cast when there is a soft down
stream wind, and when they have not seen an
angler.

The whole thing is a little trouble of course —
flies snap off et cet — but I don't know anything
that is not a trouble — that is if you look upon
it as a trouble. Regarded as a sport requiring
a favourable day, and then good planning and
good casting, I have of late never found it to
fail altogether, but have on several occasions
hooked, lost, or landed two and even three
brace within as many hours.

236 LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING.

GRAYLING FISHING.

LATE OCTOBER — CLOUDLESS DAYS AND GOOD
SPORT — THE FINEST GUT — AN UNCANNY
CAPTURE.

The heart is hard in nature and unfit

For human fellowship . . .

. . . that is not pleased

With sight of animals enjoying life.

COWPER.

'Twas in November when fine days are few
And sober suns must set at five o'clock.

BYRON.

IN trout fishing It is very commonly said
that fish rise all along the river at about
the same time, that is, if two men compare
notes, they find that between nine and ten
neither had risen a fish, and that during the
next hour each had enjoyed good sport.

Now with grayling — in season — my experience
has been quite the reverse. They will have
their favourite times for surface feeding, but at
no period of the day can the whole stretch of
a four mile water be condemned, so long as the
weather conditions are reasonably favourable.
Barring storms and floods it is difficult to enjoy
that absolute blank which trout will occasionally
demand of us.

LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FIStflNG. 237

Sometimes, after wandering up or down half
the water, one comes upon a turn or a pool in
which a handsome couple are rising enchantingly.
If you do not succeed in getting one with the
first few casts, they may afford an hour's
strenuous sport before they have finished with
you. And what is more, if you are thoroughly
beaten, there is the added dissatisfaction of
knowing that a more suitable fly, or a better
style of casting at the right moment, would have
turned the tables.

Never leave a pool of rising grayling because
you fancy that in some other part of the river
there are better fish.

As likely as not you lose the bone for the
shadow, and find that the coveted spot has been
deserted. If it be November, take what the
Gods send you and be thankful, for at any
time of the day a nasty cold wind may spring
up and handicap your chances badly. An
excellent fly to put up thus late in the year is
Bradshaw's Fancy; its straggly form seemingly
corresponds to the shape of some rare insect
whose figure has been disarranged by gusty
weather. It is a fly which grayling are more
likely to follow a foot or two downstream than
any other I know.

Only this last season I had two fortunate
week-ends late in October. Nearly everything
in the way of tackle was new : a new reel — with
no adjustable check : a new double-tapered line
which had not lost its stiffness; and above all
some new eighteen inch points of so-called 6x

238 LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING.

gut. I can answer for their length while as
for their other quality they seemed finer than
any I have ever used. I had left everything
to be put together at the bank side, with the
exception of damping the points.

After breakfast I started out under a misty
but cloudless sky. The sun, which shone out
early in the forenoon, lasted until two o'clock
and even reappeared at teatime. I crossed the
deep lock and passed up the private water, in
which a man on the bank pointed out a jack
of perhaps nine pounds lying in full view just
below a weed bed. I asked about the wiring
process, but he adroitly changed the subject
owing to modesty in the matter of expert
knowledge.

Above this is the island or peninsula opposite
the lawn that fronts the large open pool. Two
or more grayling were rising with that freedom
which comes from the thought that they are out
of casting distance from this side and are quite
protected by overhanging garden bushes on the
other. Then the river narrows and at our
opening stile the opposite bank is reachable.
While sitting a few yards back I saw two
grayling in the faster water, each of them
seemingly poised for a venture on the surface,
so continued threading my line through the rod
rings with one eye upon their movements.

My attention was soon distracted by the very
prettiest weasel which slipped out of a large
thorn bush and peered round the neighbourhood.
It stood up, lengthened its body out almost like

LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING. 239

a cobra and then dropped down again to move
forward. As it left a good distance between
itself and the bush I thought I could manage
something with the landing net by cutting off
its retreat, but although it was quite twenty
yards beyond the bush on the other side, and
I was barely ten on this, he made a dart back
like a trout and gained his undergrowth before
I had moved a few paces.

Well, the grayling : they continued in view
all the time I finished tackling up, never actually
coming to the surface although it was easy to
see what they were thinking of. The lower one
looked up, rather than rose, at a Bradshaw's
Fancy which floated down over her. You
could see she was sorry to have missed it. The
second time too, she made a movement of
attraction. The next cast she took it lightly
in her lips and turned down. I had to play
the fish, or perhaps allow her to play me, right
through another man's water; but fortunately
met him in the process and explained the
position. I felt glad that he accepted the fish
(i Ib. 12 oz.) after netting it for me in the still
pool above the lock.

Above this is the bend opposite the boat-
house, well reputed for its large bath-like pools
where a few good grayling are always rising at
intervals, but which are so constantly cast over
by anglers who put up their rods at the stile
that they are almost dry-fly-proof.

At the time of my visit the river had enjoyed
a considerable period of rest; indeed, so far as

240 LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING.

I could gather from the keeper, no rod but
mine had been out for a fortnight. In spite of
it being a public footpath I thought it worth
while to sit down on the bank if necessary for
half an hour and think what could be done. I
made a resolve to cast very seldom and then
only for fish which had already risen several
times. The Bradshaw not proving a grayling
fancy I watched for the fly on the water and
dipped a sample out. It was a small grey
midge not unlike a sparsely dressed blue upright.

By standing in a foot of chalky mud I at
last got a comfortable seat on a tussock of
rushes and waited. Every now and then a
passer by would come, usually downstream,
would look at the water, stand and watch a few
rises, and then intimate the fact to me by
pointing at the grayling with his stick. It was
only polite to thank each one in the same
vacant manner while continuing to smoke as
abstractedly as though I had managed to get
out without my keeper. After a time they felt
nervous and moved on.

What a feeling of relief it is when this
happens, and how short the interval seems
between their attentions. Fortunately it is
sometimes a female who merely praises one's
virtue of patience to her companion in a faint
hearted manner as they pass out of earshot.

Towards twelve o'clock there is an hour or
more of perfect quiet : the fish are still on the
feed and pop up more confidently. The little
grey fly is impatient for action, drops on the

LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING. 241

pool, thanks to the fine points, as softly as
thistle down and is so delicately taken that it
must be by something very small. But the
strike alters all this. A fine run right up the
inlet at the head of the" pool carries plenty of
line with it, as well as the conviction that the
grayling which is ' on ' — for the time being-
may be heavier than he seems.

Being a case for gentle treatment I sat down
where I was and held up quietly to give him
ample time for tiring himself out. Away he
went right over to the deeper far side : then
ran rapidly down stream, obliging me to get
up and follow as the line was got in. In every
pool he would stop, turn, and bore down to the
bottom. After fully five minutes of this treat-
ment I got the net under him and dipped him
out, a game fish of exactly two pounds.

At no time in his life does a large grayling
show to better advantage than when he smells
the net. Although pretty well worn down, he
does not give in just at the last, as a trout will
often do, but sets up his great cinereous back
fin and always keeps it at right angles to the
pressure on his mouth. It therefore becomes
the greatest folly for the angler to attempt to
pull the fish over the rim of the net; as he does
with careless confidence when mayfly fishing for
trout. More fine grayling have been lost in
that critical position than at any other period
of the playing process.

From the same pool I got three others without
moving more than a yard or so up the bank.

R

242 LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING.

The still air, the stiff line, and the new fine
points favoured long casts, while the small fly
was certainly to trreir liking. None of the three
were equal to the first, but all were over a
pound and a half, and all behaved most
sportingly. Neither the fly nor the point failed
during some two hours of casting. Only one
fish got off, from not being struck quickly
enough ; and he was perhaps the smallest of
the lot.

Had I roamed up the meadows in the fore-
noon I doubt whether I should have obtained
anything as good as the two brace which lay
on the grass alongside me — for they were much
too pretty to squash into the canvas bag — caught
upon the opening sixty yards of water. The
sun was hot on my back, the air as still as in
a room, and the smoke from a cigar which I
found in my pocket had scarcely the energy to
move away. I arranged those grayling, and
rearranged them, head and tail, opening out
their dorsal fins and sprinkling them with water,
until they shone mauve and golden in the sun-
light. All jealousy of passers-by disappeared :
indeed the sight of the fish and the flattering
comments as to their size became quite pleasant.
' Did you ketch those out of the river mister ? '
asked one lanky youth. ' No, Juggins 'e
bought them at the fish shop ' answered his
friend, who had a fine taste in sarcasm.

Where does the name thymallus come from?
I remember on that occasion trying my best to
extract any sniff of thyme from these freshly

LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISPIING. 243

caught grayling, but with no vestige of con-
viction. So often does one provoke the odour
of thyme by treading on it in the rushes, that
the very smell of mint sauce with cold lamb
always brings a flash of some grayling day
across the cinematograph of memory.

I never mind missing luncheon when out
fishing : but to miss tea is quite another matter,
so at three o'clock I returned to the inn parlour
and ordered the usual tray of good things, which
always makes one start out again with hope and
confidence. At four o'clock the broad open pool
above the hatch stile spread out invitingly,
though not a movement broke its surface. The
water was so clear that in several openings
among the weeds, which were hardly within
casting distance, I could see grayling swaying
as it seemed from side to side.

The reason always given me for grayling
preferring the shallow water in mid stream is
that they are well away from jack. Certainly
the ones in the position I mention are there
from year to year, in all seasons ; and what is
more, they are usually quite disposed to rise
for many hours at a time, sometimes in the
morning, sometimes only during midday, and
sometimes just at about sunset. They are the
most knowing, perverse, and attractive coterie
of grayling I have ever met, unless it be a
small group near the tea house in Dovedale.
Report says there is a syndicate at Hungerford
of two pounders who have also passed a resolu-
tion barring artificial fly from their menu.

244 LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING.

After waiting for half an hour I decided to
move on to a nice glide under the left bank,
where large fish are often taken at this time of
the evening. Almost before I reached the place
I saw a rise — so close to me that I had to stoop
and back into the rushes. The very moment
the fly touched the water it was taken. The
strike suggested that it was a heavy fish but
a sluggish one. Had not the river been very
free from weeds just here the gut could not
have held, for after a desperate splashing on the
surface, I netted out a large trout of perhaps
two pounds and a quarter, seemingly in good
yellow condition, very fat and I suppose full
of spawn.

I am ashamed to say I do not know the one
sex from the other. Anyhow I did not detain
him, or her, for long. The hook had caused
no pain or inconvenience; and he sailed back
into mid stream as though none the worse for
the adventure. A poor grayling caught out of
season often receives different treatment.

After wandering higher up to a turn in the
river which we called ' duffer's corner ' and only
catching one insignificant fish, I came slowly
back to the hatch stile, wondering all the way
down what sort of luck a man would have who
was allowed to ' swim the worm ' or the maggot,
as he walked down stream. Not that I had the
slightest desire to do so; for, apart from never
being able to put a worm on to a hook, I should
not fancy handling or eating the fish that came
to so distasteful a bait. It is merely a case of

LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING. 245

what the eye does not see. Grayling may dote
on gentles of course, as a nice looking girl may
on stout or onions, but there are times when it
is not pleasant to think of. During the next
three days I had very similar sport, including
one grayling which I shall always remember
with apprehension. It was at the extreme upper
boundary of our water, where a small ditch and
post marks the line across which we must not
step. Needless to say, I ended by leaning
against the post and gazing upstream, like
the donkey in Bewick's woodcut who thinks the
grass on the other side of the hurdles is better
than his own field. Close under the steep bank
there was a rise. A bubble floating down
suggested a feeding fish.

However, one or two rising below me looked
equally attractive; so I dropped back and cast
for them, getting two or three but none of any
size. For a long time I tried to break myself
of the idea of casting into water above our
boundary, arguing jesuitically that so long as
my feet were not trespassing there was nothing
illegal in it. Strictly speaking (I murmured)
the law does not allow a man, who owns one
bank, to throw for fish beyond the middle of the
stream; yet everybody makes a speciality of the
opposite bank whenever and wherever he fishes.

Once again I was up with my hip against
the post; and again a large dark fin broke the
surface — but so high up that it seemed quite out
of casting distance. That of course decided it.
Vanity and the devil conquered. If the fly

246 LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING.

could not reach the rise there was no harm in
throwing just for practice; as wild horses would
not have dragged me to put a footprint on the
other side of the dividing ditch.

Gradually the line was got out; loop after
loop added yards to the false casts without any
suspicion of a hitch up behind. There were
still two loops of heavy line in my left hand as
I made the throw, and never did they slip
through the rings more glibly, or shoot out in
a more perfect manner. The fly pitched a full
foot above the last rise — and, to my terror, it
was taken.

As I struck, the grayling jumped clear out
of the water — higher and more vigorously than
ever one did before or has done since — made a
swift semicircle across to the opposite side, far
away under the rushes of the broad pool, and
then went down stream. As I stood and wound
up the coils of slack line, I honestly prayed
that he was not on. But he was. Hurrying
round the bend, I got him on a very short line
and began to walk down the bank, feeling so
guilty that I longed each moment for a parting
to be naturally brought about, yet all the time
treating him so judiciously that it did not occur.
Into every deep pool and current he dived and
wriggled : then lost ground, swam down stream,
and turned again to worry.

By this time I had come over four hundred
yards, and worse than all, had passed another)
angler who was walking up. Twice I tried to
net the fish, knowing full well he was not ready

LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING. 247

for it. The bank was high, the current deep
and strong, so I still walked on. Had he been
fairly taken I should have got him; but I still
had the discomforting feeling about his owner-
ship. Making a last dip at him with the net,
the rim touched the cast — and he was off.
Never was there such a sense of relief in the
atmosphere; although never has a grayling made
anything resembling the prolonged fight that he
did. Here was a fish of perhaps two pounds
and a quarter, free after a run of over six
hundred yards from where he was hooked.

Whenever I think back on it, I inwardly
thank goodness that he escaped, for I dare not
have returned him to the water after landing
him ; as the other angler would have guessed
my guilty conscience at putting back such a
plucky prize caught fairly on a fly on the first
of November. Nothing has made me a firmer
believer in the wiles of the wicked one than this
bad quarter of an hour's sport. Even the vain
curiosity of wanting to measure the length of
the cast could never tempt me to make the
necessary number of paces into the meadow
above that ditch. I prefer to regard it as an
infernal record.

The final wind up after the last day of a
grayling season is somewhat sad to a man who
has no chance of shooting. Rapidly shortening
days, the curtailment of outdoor exercise, and
the inevitable four months of winter, make one
look forward to the coming spring and its early

248 LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING.

trout fishing prospects with something like
apprehension, lest anything should occur to
render this day the last of rubber boots and
flooded meadows. Yet this is an ungrateful
feeling to harbour, seeing that one has all the
pleasant memories of a good season to dwell
upon, while less lucky men have put away their
rod and reel some two months previously,
without ever experiencing the aftermath of
autumn enjoyment that the grayling season
affords to those who can take advantage of it.

THE CURVED MEADOW. 249

THE CURVED MEADOW.

PARTING REMINISCENCES — A CONFIDENCE —

THE HABITAT OF POUNDERS.

THE TRUE EVENING RISE — PLEASURES OF LIFE —

CONTRABAND THOUGHTS.

non sine montium

Clamore vicinseque silvae
Cum fera diluvies quietos
Inritat amnes.

HORACE.

Where the huge Pine and Poplar silver lined
With branches interlaced have made

A hospital shade,

And ( where by curving bank and hollow bay
The 'tremulous waters work their silent way.

Translation of HORACE.

THE price of the identity of the curved
meadow is, in my valuation, above
rubies; and I must trust to any one of
the few chance readers of these lines who knows,
or who guesses the secret, not to disclose it.

Let him and I, or even at the very worst
them and I, keep this knowledge between us,
and hold it inviolate; not even mentioning it in
our wills, lest when we arise with rod and creel
in the happy hunting ground state, we should
find its marge and rushes trodden over and

250 THE CURVED MEADOW.

defaced by the iron heels of the profanum
vulgus.

It lies surrounded by copse — or by hangers,,
as dear old Gilbert would have termed it, had
it existed near Selborne — which as we know,
you and I, that it does not. It is approachable
by one path only ; up, up through the bracken and
brambles, the wild roses and the foxgloves, a
steep and slippery footway even in day-light,
whose ascent must be unhurried if one's rod is
set up, where the top joint has to be poked and
guided under the broad beech boughs; until,
hot and breathless, we reach the rough fence
leading into the steep meadow overlooking the
river.

The time is nearing eight o'clock in June.
The shadows of the larches have lengthened
until they cross the grass like trenches, and
are merged into the brushwood at the lower
end. Below on the right is the hanging wood,
where huge beeches, some of whose tops one
can look over, hold on to the steep red cliff and
preserve it, and the river below, from unsightly
landslides season after season. Through the
branches one can see the full glow of the
sunlight on the opposite valley, its well defined
purple shadow creeping up the hillside minute
by minute.

A hundred yards further on there is the only
gap. Our meadow dips down, and the curved
meadow below rises on tiptoe to meet it, under
an old hawthorn tree to which the fence is
nailed. For seven years those same nails have

THE CURVED MEADOW. 251

held good and borne the weight of the fortunate
angler, while plucking at his garment, who
expects a crash and a tumble each time he has
laboriously climbed over; until in his mind the
fence has seemed to grow more secure each
succeeding summer.

And now, fifty feet below, the vista of the
curved meadow brings back the same feelings
of absolute enjoyment, — of journeys ending in
lovers meeting — that it did on the first evening
you discovered it. Looking across the river
you may see a fisherman pass by, like the
Levite, on the other side; and you shrink under
the sheltering nut bushes, with the rabbits you
have disturbed, until he is out of sight and
hearing. Not that he could actively or passively
interfere at that time of the evening, but lest
he might discover the narrow path and occupy
your sacred ground on some other occasion.

Well, he has gone, so you are free to make
your way to the lower end, where the deep
water comes down towards you under the beech
roots; and the trout, who never intend to be
caught by anything but a dap, are already busy
sucking down flies with a sense of security not
only fancied but actual. How it would surprise
one of these specimen fish to find itself hooked
were such a scheme possible; but, with the
network overhead of protective roots and
branches, they will remain to excite envy and
admiration for many years to come.

From this point to the half mile higher up
stream, where the river escapes from the large

252 T(HE CURVED MEADOW.

pool and leaves the wooded cliff, the curved
meadow extends; its lower hundred yards fringed
with rank rushes on this side, growing on a
black bed of squelchy mud, against whose
clinging affection even knee-high rubber boots
are hardly proof, if one is trying to land a
fish struggling frantically among the rushes.

Over the meadow, at intervals, are clumps of
yellow iris, their glory now for the most part
faded and fallen, like that of the pink chestnuts.

The opposite bank is edged with thorny
bushes like dwarf sloes, and the water under
them is deep and smooth, with oily eddies
wherever the small openings occur, the holt of
cautious pounders who rise only once or twice
in the evening, and then usually at real flies
which flutter as they glide.

Then the river — walking up — becomes open, a
gravelly run of broken water, not very deep,
with trailing weed of brilliant green, hiding
free rising trout of more moderate dimensions —
eight, nine, and ten ouncers; less shy as to
showing themselves, yet withal desperately sharp
sighted in matters of knowing a hawk from a
hern saw.

Above this, is a long glide very open and
shallow with a narrow but deep channel close
under the elders of the opposite bank, all of
which is well nigh unfishable from that side.
That is why the Levite passed along, you under-
stand, on his way up to the big pool; because
he could not throw under the overhanging
bushes.

T\HE CURVED MEADOW. 253

This continues for the rest of the way,
terminating in fifty yards of the most perfect
deep run, just below the gravelly and stony
stickle leading from the dam pool under the
jackdaw rock. For a final half hour of down-
stream fishing at dusk, with a sedge or palmer,
this run and shallow offer a generous solatium
on days when no dry fly has charmed ever so
fruitlessly during the preceding hour, and when
disappointment and vexation have done their
worst.

Thus the features and figure of the curved
meadow offer every variation of beauty; and
hardly a summer passes that it does not give
the angler at least two hours of memory which
he will store to the westering of his days.

It is not always that a short beat offers such
diversity of angling : each furlong, as it were,
asking for its particular change of fly
and for its special tactics. In early spring,
for downstream success, the upper portion is
unrivalled; in April and May the middle stretch
affords ideal water for quick up-and-across
casting; and in summer, the lower end harbours
just those experienced trout whose wits are best
circumvented by the small dry midge after
sundown.

Having dealt at some length on the theory
and practice of blank days, as enjoyed by myself
and hundreds of others; I would like to tell
you, if I may, of my first successful evening
spent upon this enchanted ground.

I had reached the river, where the wire bridge

254 THE CURVED MEADOW.

crosses to the farm, at seven o'clock, and had
done all I could in the way of careful fishing
from there to the open dam, above which the
copse commences. Two fair sized trout had
taken a detached olive, and were brought to
bay and to bank ; while a third — needless to
say a better one — hooked in a glassy shallow,
had got off by jumping among the stones, so
that I had the first brace well before that
twilight of the Gods — the true evening rise,
which I always agreed to be content with.

It was ten minutes to eight, and to lose no
chance whatever, it seemed best to sit down at
the foot of the copse path, and eat the supper
I had brought with me, a leg of cold fowl in
a paper bag full of mustard and cress. By
thus securing, or rather booking, the entrance
to the meadow I should make sure of it, in
case another angler appeared on the scene.

But no one came; a fact for which I felt
selfishly grateful. To have to explain to a
friend that you do not mind where you go, after
you have made certain elaborate plans and day
dreams of their result, is both inconvenient and
untruthful ; and one can luxuriate in solitude
with the thought that he is doing better else-
where, and that you and he can enjoy talking
about it at another time and place. The animal
instinct of possession asserts its most pleasur-
able force under such conditions.

From the way the path was overgrown, it
was clear that no one had been up to it for at
least a fortnight, and to make the descent two

THE CURVED MEADOW. 255

hours later in the dark a little less risky, I
bent back several nut branches so that the
underside of the leaves showed up whiter, as
well as hitching two pieces of paper upon them,
to give a clue out of the labyrinth.

My first two visits had been very unfortunate;
but then I had, as advised, fished the water
* down ' on each occasion, and had also lost
four good fish in succession, by the stupidity
of continuing to cast with a barbless fly. This
evening however, while climbing the hawthorn
fence, the plan of campaign was different, and
more deviceful. I had at least learned not to
hurry; so sat down and contemplated the water
until the shadow on the hill opposite crept right
up the stems of the larch trees on the eastern
sky line.

In the opening glide below the rushes two
fish rose in a tempting manner, and the
detached olive seemed as good as anything that
could be offered to them. To get below them
was practically impossible, as the overhanging
branches threatened to catch the fly at every
attempt to get out more line. To throw a foot
or so below them was easy, but the very first
try to put it above their noses fastened the fly
round a beech leaf, and obliged me to stand
up and unhitch it. The gut was weakened so
was changed for a new point and fly.

I determined to leave this couple alone,
thankful that they continued to rise, instead of
running up and spreading the alarm. They
knew all about the casting distance from below,

256 THE CURVED MEADOW.

and were far too wide awake to accept any
downstream cast at this time of day. Crawling
to the lower end of the rushes, I thought for
some time I would avoid treading in the mud;
as, having on ordinary nailed boots, I shirked
the ordeal of wet feet. That bogey however
soon disappeared, and the cool trickle inside first
one boot and then the other, followed by a
warm glow as the water changed to tepid
round thick lambswool socks, made me indepen-
dent of soft places for the rest of the evening.

The first pronounced rise of a feeding trout
in such an ambuscade is very exciting. I could
more hear than see it clearly, as the rushes were
high, and I did not want to give anything
away. It came again, and a third time, before
the olive was placed somewhere near it. Nothing
happened for a few casts, beyond that the fish
was put down. For a long five minutes not a
ring occurred, excepting from my two friends
far below me, at which I felt tempted to make
a long downstream sweep.

I moved very slowly a shade higher up,
where I heard another promising ploop in mid
stream. He rose again. I could see him take
a fly : and the next moment he took mine.
After a disturbing spring and splash he made
for the opposite side, just where peace and quiet-
ness ought to reign; so he was given a tight
line, pulled into the current, until he ran close
in to the rushes, got the cast round one, and
kicked and splashed on the surface. I managed
to slide him over the rim of the net, but had

THE CURVED MEADOW. 257

great difficulty in freeing the gut without fraying
it badly. Gradually it cut the rush up its
entire length, enabling me to reel in and lift
out my capture. He was a golden beauty, full
of life and vigour; not three quarters but near
it, a fish to raise the average . of a catch and
not lower it — that is always a satisfaction.

The gut was smooth and round. A touch of
the oil brush quite restored the disarranged
coiffure of the fly, and made her as attractive
as ever. There were two other midstreamers
rising, but they sounded too noisy to be of
any size, so I kept my eye on the deeper water
under the sloe bushes.

In one little embayment there was a tiny
ring, the suck down of a larger fish probably,
and after a false cast or two the olive came
slowly over the place. He would not have it,
nor again, — nor again. I felt that the second
and third casts were a mistake; for though I
waited, and watched, like a toper at an inn
door, that trout never showed his nose above
the surface. The same thing happened in the
next opening : this time two flies were taken,
and mine offered him a third, but he too
treasured some experience of bygone days, and
retired a cheerful but wiser fish.

The time was getting on ; I looked at my
watch with apprehension, a quarter to nine, and
only one as yet. The next promising rise
occurred so close under an overhanging prickly
branch, that I had to move up opposite to it
before a cast was possible. The fly drifted

s

258 THE CURVED MEADOW.

over the spot : then a foot lower down was taken
well, whether by my riser or another below, I
cannot say. Not a sign was made and I could
not remember whether I had struck him at all.

Something was * on,' and that something
heavy, quiet, and uneasy. Getting the line in,
I moved quickly downstream before attempting
to feel the fish's pulse. He had not weeded
me, and the vibration of the line showed that
it was round no obstruction. For perhaps a
minute nothing happened. Then, up he came,
showed himself to be a real pounder, and began
a series of desperate tugs that looked as though
he had seen a friendly root to make for. Both
hook and gut held : he was in midstream, losing
ground at each struggle. Not until he had
been worked into the shallow water below the
rushes could he be netted; a solid lumper, one
pound one ounce, with the fly scarcely barb
deep in the horny roof of his mouth.

Here was a prize that made me thirst for
more; but I wonder whether other anglers suffer
from the same disturbing want of resolution.
Much as I wanted to move up, I had to linger
and see whether there was a dimple to be
imagined under the sloes.

Where the water became shallower the evening
rise was in full play; so pushing up to the end
of the rushes I took stand under the high bank.
It had then always been given me as an axiom,
that when trout are rising in the stickles they
mean taking; so acting on this, presumptuously,
I began throwing for fish after fish, and found

THE CURVED MEADOW. 259

that there are several exceptions to the rule ;
for, after being touched by some of no size, I
only hooked and landed two, both of which
were more found drowned, as a coroner would
say, than wounded by malice prepense. I
grudged every second that went by, even the
time occupied in taking them off the hook.

It was now less necessary to take cover, and
as the larger fish seemed well above me in the
smoother water, I cut off the fly, and tied on a
fair sized hare's ear with gold ribbing, mounted
on rather stronger gut which if it survived
could be used at first dry and ultimately wet.
Right over on the far side a trout rose
repeatedly, almost savagely, and yet would not
see it. The shadow of a large elder bush made
it difficult to judge the exact distance, though
from the desperate gulps he was giving every
half minute, it was certain he could not resist.

I got right opposite at last, threw across, a
yard above him, and simply knew he would
come. A snap, a strike, three ' rugs ' and he
was on, bolting down stream as though he were
on fire. A vision of the catch of the season,
a two pounder, added excitement to the noise
of a stridulous reel. Then I thought he was
foul hooked in the tail. Anyhow, his attach-
ment was secure, and after taking me back to
the rushes again, he was collared, an ugly
black headed chap of fourteen ounces with the
expression of a bull dog.

Moving up again to the smooth water the
fishing was perfect. An unruffled expanse of

260 THE CURVED MEADOW.

yellow surface, hardly a foot deep, with the
best of the waning light showing up every rise,
most of which required an uncommonly long
cast. After several refusals, I fortunately
decided that the hare's ear was too large and
sodden to float well, so cut it off and tied on a
small blue quill gnat, which was already
attached to a fine point. As with grayling-fishing
on drawn gut, this makes one far more careful
both in throwing and striking.

Straight above me, near my own bank, a
good trout was rising at intervals : the only
drawback being an intervening tussock of grass
and weed on which the line would have to rest.
Behind, all was clear; so that, provided the fly
pitched right the first time, he ought to take it.
I edged as near as I could, but being almost
in the water was fearfully anxious not to send
up a warning ripple, and then threw well above
him. He waited for it to come down, and so
did I. He took it with unconcern, making a
diagonal furrow right across the shallow towards
the opposite bank, and was more than surprised
at receiving any check whatever. As there were
no stakes or holes I deemed best not to be too
rough, so kept a very gentle pressure and
gradually got Him on a manageable length of
line; but found I had overdone matters by
winding in the knot of the cast. However, he
never jumped from first to last, and was
gradually tired down, though I had to wade out
to net him — over fourteen ounces and well
shaped at that. In the same water I lost

THE CURVED MEADOW. 261

another by striking too soon, and caught two
more of nine, and ten ounces, after a great
deal of cautious stalking.

And then at half past nine the rise suddenly
stopped. As the light was failing, and the
trout had been laid on the grass in different
places, I thought I would collect them before
having a final try downstream during the later
rise, which usually occurs from 9.45 to ten
o'clock. I found all but one, which a rat or
a heron must have made off with. A slight
white mist crawled over the upper part of the
meadow, making it look like the edge of things,
and brought with it a sense of nervousness, so
that I did not go up across the grass but came
back to the rushes and made casts over them at
hazard.

As I knew I must put down the rod, before
leaving and going through the copse, I voted
just another dozen casts, and after making a
few of them found my fly in something heavy.
Getting a short line and feeling it boring slowly
down stream, I followed quietly until there
seemed the risk of the fish getting under the
beech roots. Putting on a strain it came
slowly up, then gave a dull pull, and again
made for the bottom. The water was specially
dark and deep. Nothing I could manage
effected any good. How the gut held, and
why the fish did not kick, was so strange that
I peered close to the water, and at last made
out the fly tight into a long floating branch or
bramble, which had a way of turning over in

262 THE CURVED MEADOW.

the current. It was rather an ignominious
ending to so good an evening's sport, but it
made me reel up quickly and start away to the
fence and upper field.

It was dark and eerie under the trees, and
half way along something rushed out of the
fern close under my feet. What it was I do
not know, but it sounded the size of a fox.

Down the steep path at last, probing into
ferny vacancy at each step with the landing net
handle — even gratefully clutching brambles;
thankful for nailed boots, and for not sliding
through the brushwood into the river below;
thankful for the guiding bits of paper which
showed up nobly, I reached the bottom in a
sitting position, with a sense of prickly relief,
and hurried on the last half mile towards the
ladder stile where the narrow cart road
terminates.

The moon was getting up, and the white cob
walls of the few thatched cottages stood out
coldly in its half light, while the cypresses
round the church were correspondingly black in
the shadow.

From that point I had, on two previous
occasions, walked the five or more miles home,
a rather severe tramp after an unsuccessful day;
but this time a trap had been ordered at the
church for a quarter past ten. It was now
past that; the road was painfully silent, and the
prospect of the walk not alluring. A sound of
hoofs in the far distance : later on, a glimpse
of two friendly lights soon dispelled all mis-

THE CURVED MEADOW. 263

givings on that score. This time it was con-
gratulation,— too often it had been sympathy —
that followed the question of ' Have you had
any luck ? '

The drive back that evening was made under
the pleasantest circumstances one could desire.
The cool night air after the warm day, the
heavy rug round wet feet, and a long deferred
smoke and talk about the evening's adventures,
the smell of the hay in the meadows and
presently the sight and smell of the moonlit
sea, with the muffled roll of the heavy shingle
on the beach, all helped to canonise the
meadow and the date.

Many other successful evenings have been
spent there — with the hope of others to come-
but this one, so far, still stands out as perhaps
the kindliest of all.

For seven consecutive seasons the trout on
this half mile of water have maintained their
exact stations, showing most clearly that their
notions of etiquette as to feeding places are
conservative. Not only does one get to know
the positions selected by the best fish, but even
the places in which they will almost always
refuse, or accept, a well pitched fly.

Another experience too is interesting, which
is that these good evenings have not been and
cannot be attributed to some special pattern of
fly, but embrace fully half a dozen; so that it
is impossible to name any particular favourite
to conjure with. On the last visit of all the

264 THE CURVED MEADOW.

fly put up was a ginger quill, dressed so
sparsely that the hook appeared in attractive
nudity; odourless paraffin taking the place, upon
its rounded form, of the gauze-like raiment
which encases the cool arms of a summer syren.

At other times a black gnat, in the garb of
a crepe-clad widowy girl, has brought its
followers quite as freely : while a floating
Wickham, with its gilded corsage; a sober olive,
with its artistic green drapery; or a pale
watery dun, have added fish after fish to the
bank behind the rushes. Nimium ne crede
colori, is here as good a motto as any.

On disappointing evenings you may change
from fly to fly, and effect nothing. Fish are
there, and are rising, but they are not in the
mood for eating hooks; and no dressing or
ribbing is able to provide the sauce or to change
their sullen demeanour.

I have always promised myself — and never
kept the promise — to try dapping under the
beech roots. There is an ideal seat, backed
by the red cliff, and carpeted with harts'
tongues, exactly over the deep water, where two
and sometimes three special young bloods take
every fly that passes — even those you catch and
throw down to them.

To attempt anything on an ordinary cast,
attached to a rod top, must be useless. A dive
of a few feet would wind the gut round a net
work of roots and effect a break in record time.

THE CURVED MEADOW. 265

Some day — perhaps one Sunday evening — I
mean to attach a foot of strong catapult elastic
to a walking stick, fasten four feet of gut to it,
with a winged olive at the point, and then just
see whether it floats.

Imagination paints these fish as ones which
have been severely pricked in seasons gone by,
which have given up the open water and taken
refuge with Tityrus. Not only are they con-
firmed surface feeders, but they continue at it
the greater part of the day. It sounds
desperately unsporting not to leave them in their
hermitage; and yet — I suppose I must do so.

Perhaps a solemn vow to restore the possible
victim to his asylum, would meet the case. If
they had just some sense of shyness, one would
not mind so much; but they rise inordinately,
while staring you in the face, and gulp like
gourmands who adjust a dinner napkin under
their triple chins before wallowing in turtle
soup. And, all this time, their fellows are
taking chances in the open water, braving a
casualty list during the long evenings of each
summer campaign, with the risk of having their
weights and fighting qualities mentioned in the
leaves of an angling despatch. It does not
seem fair.

Do you ever find you are apt to put certain
places as it were upon pedestals, just as one
puts certain friends? There are times when
one calls up the small panorama of a favourite

266 THE CURVED MEADOW.

scene of river bend, and slowly paints in every
detail with all the accuracy of a softly toned
picture, just as one recalls a familiar face or an
evening's conversation upon topics never likely
to be referred to again excepting in the company
of that particular person.

You did not know, at the time, how they
would be treasured, or what an effect they had
exercised upon retina or memory. You long to
be in certain places in certain moods; just as
you long to talk to a special friend, and would
gladly travel two hundred miles to enjoy a few
hours exactly as you have planned in your
daydreams.

Why is it too that although perhaps you have
always fished fairly — possibly from never having
had the temptation of departing therefrom placed
before you in practical form — the account of a
contraband experience, graphically and amusingly
recounted by a companion, always sounds so
fascinating? There must be some analogy
between fly fishing and intrigue. The stealing
down through the leafy copse, the lonely
meadow, the hour after sunset, the dewy grass,
the churr of the fern owl, the excitement of
anticipation, the disappointment of success, the
haunting memory of failure.

Well, it is time to reel up and say goodbye.
You and I have never met — probably never
shall — but I sincerely wish you all the moderate
good luck, and immoderate pleasure, that I am

THE CURVED MEADOW. 267

enjoying. If we still retain enthusiasm, I trust
that you, and I, may both have another twenty
years of such enjoyment.

Let us grow young early if we would keep
young long.

And, if we cannot have quite that same eye-
sight and activity, we can retain the old keen-
ness unabated; with nothing to be ashamed of,
nothing to renounce, nothing to regret, if any
untoward accident should take away tiy fishing
from us, we can only bow in resignation to the
epitaph on Hasdrubal

occidit, occidit

spes omnis et fortuna nostri

FINIS.

POSTSCRIPT.

POSTSCRIPT,

The pleasure of receiving letters whose con-
tents have no odour of money about them,
and which often come from anglers at home or
abroad is one that all of us appreciate. I am
fortunate enough to belong to a small mutual
coterie who write periodically to each other
about our riverside doings or failures; and
should be only too willing to hear from new
correspondents — especially such as are beginning
to take up fly fishing, either at the age of
twenty or forty — if they think I am able to
be of assistance to them. The glamour
round my own angling apprenticeship has
never been dissipated. Days, when the total
bag was a lost half-pounder, are still delightful
to remember; and to hear about from one who
sincerely enjoys all the surroundings of the
stream and who realises he has much to learn.

R. H.

April) 1912,

Comerade I will give you my hand,

I give you my love more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law,

Will you give me yourself?

Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

WALT. WHITMAN.

INDEX. 273

INDEX.

PAGE

Abstraction of River lands 93

Age, as regards fishing 3

Alder, the, as a fly 134

Alexandra, Killing nature of the 211

Alice in Wonderland ... 43

Angler's Birds, the 186

April, fishing in evening ... ... ... 80

Arbrook Common, Birds of 183

Ashbourne in Derbyshire ... ... ... 105

274 INDEX.

PAGE

Association waters ... ... ... ... 84

Autocrat's, the, first walk 103

Average of trout in Devon ... ... ... 201

Axe, the Valley of the 100

Axminster, Fishings near ... ... ... ... 101

Backwaters, Trout lying in ... ... ... 77

Baker's Chop house, Cornhill 105

Bandusian stream, Horace's 160

Barking Creek 83

Barnstaple, Tackle shops at 207

Beaching a trout 82, 83

Bewicks ' British Birds' 96

Bidassoa, Trout in the ... ... ... ... 160

Birdsnesting as a pleasure ... ... ... 186

Bittern, the, good specimen of 95

Blackbird's nest and owls 48

Black Spider as a fly 85

Blank Days, suggestions for 77 — 80

Blue Upright, the female 79

Brackish Rivers, fishing in « 124

Brambles, catching in the dark 261

INDEX. 275

PAGE

Brambles near the water ... ... ... ... 118

Bree's ' British Birds ' 131

Brooks near London ... ... ... ... 95

Brougham and Macaulay ... 126

Brown Owl, history of 46 — 50

Brown, Mr. Arnesby 144

Butler, Dr. C., of East Budleigh 214

Burberry, flap fishing cap 9

C

4 Carnarvon Arms ' Hotel 201

Casting with mayfly ... 163

,, too frequently 163

Casts, the making up of 7

Chard Junction 101

Chemical works killing fish ... ... ... 97

Children on the Itchen 176

Choice of fly 205

Cinghalese superstitions ... ... ... ... 140

Cinnamon Sedge Fly ... ... ... ... 178

City men and holidays 98

Claygate near Esher, birds at 134

Coly, the River 100

276 INDEX.

PAGE

Colyford, the village of 100

Colyton, East Devon ... 99

Competition, absence from fishing 2

Coot, the bald 96

Coquet, the river 114 — 198

,, largest trout on 199

Cover, trout bolting to 179

Crier, Mr. C., and rare birds 214

Crossbill, as a visitant 133

Curlew, nesting on estuary 218

D

Dapping under beech roots 264

Dart, the river 207

Dipper, description of the 39

Dove, the river 104, 105

Dovedale in Derbyshire 104

,, beauty in autumn 104

,, grayling fishing in 105

Drainage of swamps 94

Drawn gut 53, 54

Dry fly fishing 24, 25

Dropper, value of as fly 8

INDEX. 277

PAGE

Dulverton, fishing at 201

Dusk, eyesight in the .. 119

i

Easter Fishing ... ... ... 21

Eddies, trout lying in 77

Eggesford, Devon, fishing at ... .,>. ... 200

Egyptians, knowledge of rivers 88

Ephemera or mayfly *.. 153

Esher woods, birds in ... .„, ... ... 133

Evolutionists and Bree 131

Exe, the River ... ... ... 207

Exeter, Journeys towards 99

Expenses of Fly fishing 201, 202

f

Farms, Fishings on small 105

,, food and lodging at 109

February rainfall, its value 92

Feeding of trout, to watch 77

' Fishing Ganette/ The 201

Fishing quarters 201

Flood Lands and Water supply 88

278 INDEX.

PAGE

Fluttering of flies almost necessary 168

Fly, my own favourite 210

Footlights and stalls 116

' Fox and Hounds ' Hotel, Eggesford 200

Free in the net 72

Free Waters, the charm of 122

c

Gardner, Alderman, C.E.L., of Clifton 217

Giant trout and whiskey 120

Ginger Quill, upright 67

Goatsucker, fallacy of name ... ... ... 131

Gold Ribbed Hare's ear 85

Golf Links and bird life ... ... . 133

Gray Goose in the swamp ... ... ... ... 214

Gray Quill gnat, the fly 184

Grayling, Caprice of ... ... ... ... 222

„ Black Spider for ... ... ... 231

„ Habits of ... ... 220

,, in the Manifold 105

„ October, the 227

,, Out of season ... 223

Greenwell's Glory, efficacy of 209

INDEX. 279

PAGE

Grebe, the little or Dabchick 196

,, Its nest and dangers 197

Grierson, Mr. H. K., reversed wings 147

Gut, the treatment of ... ...53 — 56

H

Hardy Brothers', Fly catalogues 205

Hawfinch in Surrey 134

Hawking, dying out of ... ... ... ... 97

Hercules Casts, merits of ... ... ... ... 52

Holidays, School, for angling ... ... ... 173

Honiton tunnel ... ... ... ... ... 101

Hooks, various shapes of 206

Horace's love of the country 161

Inns, haphazard choice of... ... ... ... 98

,, the old Parlour 75

Inquisitiveness of strangers 108

4 Isaac Walton ' Hotel, the 3, 104, 105

Itchen, the River 59

,, grayling fishing in ... ... 220 — 222

280 INDEX.

I

PAGl

Judson's dyes for gut ... 11

June, the first half for mayfly 162

July days, difficulties on 85

K

Keeper, the River 176

Kestrel or Windhover, the ... 133

Kingfishers, note of 39

Kneeling position, value of ... ... ... 116

Knots and knotmaking ... ... ... ... 8

Kotmali district in Ceylon ... 142

Kotmali-Oya, river in Ceylon 74

L

Lathkill, stream in Derbyshire ... ... ... 96

Left-hand banks, value of 115

,, ,, casting, advantages of 115

Light, value of, behind angler 15

Long Ditton in Surrey, birds of 134

Loss of water by drainage 94

INDEX.
M

PAGE

Mallard or Wild-duck 215

Marsh Harrier, occurrence of .. 189

Marsh Marigolds ... . 101

May Fly, description of ... .». ... 153 — 155

Merlin in Devonshire ... ... 188

Miller's Water, the , ... 64

Minnow, prohibition of ... ... ... ... 112

Moonlight, fishing by ... .., 86

Moorhens, a disturbing factor ». 187

Morris ' ' British Birds ' 42

N

Naboth's Vineyard < 47

Naumann the ornithologist 132

Nest of the Dipper ... ... ... ... 44

Net, fearing the sight of 63

Newton, Alfred, on Birds 132

Nightingales in Surrey 134

„ and Coleridge 127

Nightjar or Fern-owl 127

„ Eggs of 129

Nightshade on the river banks 70

282 INDEX.

PAGE

Nile, management of the 88

Northern Anglers' Federation 199

Northumberland rivers 114

November a month for grayling ... 247

0

Olinea, as a good line 7

Opening of season in Devonshire ... ... 5

Orchards deserted 101

Otter, Valley of the 102

,, The River, Tickets for 200

Otters lying in shallows ... 74

Ottery St. Mary Church 102

Outfit for a beginner 6

Owl, the Brown or Tawny ... ... ...46 — 5Q

„ Horned, the 13a

,, White or Barn 102

Oxshott Woods, birds of 131

P

Pale Watery dun, the fly 184

Pall Mall Gazette, the 97

Parent Birds and progeny 41

INDEX. 283

PAGE

Peal, the peal pool 80

' Peveril of the Peak ' Hotel 104

Phases of pleasure in angling 117

Pike a danger to grayling 243

Pintail Duck on the swamp 214

Playing and netting ... ... ... ... 62

Preserved water, privately stocked &

Prohibition of worm ... ... ... ... 112

,, of minnow 112"

Q

Quinquennial period of rains ... 90-

R

Rainfall, extremes of 90,91

,, value of conservation 92, 93

Record catches, alleged 204

Reed Warbler, its nest 216

Reel, best kind of ... 6

,, cost of 6

Restocking, the avoidance of ... ... ... 38

Ringed Plover eggs on beach ... 217

Rod, cost of greenheart 6

284 INDEX.

PAGE

Rod, Split cane 6

Rolle Estate, Fishing tickets ... 201

Roman England, swamps and rivers 95

Rothbury, The County Hotel at 199

Rubber boots, usefulness of ... 47

S

Salisbury, train service to , ... 174

Sandpiper, the Common 187

„ its note and flight 187

„ on the river ... 39

School boys and nature study ., 114

•

School masters' holidays for angling 99

Seaton Junction 99

Sea-trout on the Axe 101

Sedge flies, different dressings of 183

Sedge Warbler, its nest and song 216

Seebohm 's ' British Birds ' 95

Shelduck nesting on estuary 214

Shrike, the Red-backed ... 133

Shute Arms Hotel, Axe Valley 99

Smite Estate, the Shute stream 101

Sidmouth, Sunday trains 102

INDEX. 285

PAGE

Sidmouth Junction for fishing ... ... ... 102

Simpson's Chop House, Cornhill 105

Size of trout in hostelries 120

Sparrow Hawk, the 133

Spent Gnat, as a fly 135

Spike to rod, usefulness of 6

Stakes and obstacles, with dropper 116

Starlings as common birds 42

Stickles, fish feeding above ... ... ... 114

Stockbridge, size of grayling at ... ... ... 105

,, train service to 174

Strangers, behaviour of, on bank 30

Striking, hints on 58

,, folly of furious 83

Struggling fish, to net 63

Sunset, rules for fishing after 172

Swift taking artificial fly 187

T

Tamil coolies 107

Tar refuse killing fish 97

Taw, the River 207

Teal on the ponds 214

.

286 INDEX.

PAGE

Teign, the River ... 207

Teme, the River and Tenbury 114

Test, Trout in the 58

Thames, rise of the river 91

Thorpe Cloud in Derbyshire 104

Thorverton on the Exe 105

Tide, influence of 124

Tipton St. John , village of 103

Torridge, the River 207

Torrington, N. Devon 105

„ Tackle shops at 207

Turtle Dove in Surrey ... 133

u

Ulama or Devil Bird 142

Undrained land, value of ... ... ... ... 89

Undrawn gut ... ... ... ... ...54, 55

Upstream casting 23

V

Vaseline for line ... 234

Vision, power of, in trout ... ... ... ... 29

,, of trout and grayling 169, 170

INDEX.

287

W

PAGE
113

Wading, prohibition of ...

,, birds and drainage 95

,, description of 112 — 114

Wagner's music

Wagtail, Pied 190

,, the Sulphur or gray 191

Ray's 193

,, Yellow, with cows 66

Water Companies' reservoirs 90

Water meadows in Hampshire 143

Water Rail, the 195, 196

Waves, warning of upstream ... ... ... 116

Weighing fish, test of 87

Welshman's Button, the fly 134

West-bourne, disappearance of, in London ... 95

Western sky behind angler 115

Whitsuntide for mayfly fishing ... ... ... 157

Wickham's Fancy 183

Wigaton, hamlet of 103

Wigeon on the flats 214

Wimbledon Common, birds of ... 131

Wind upon the shallows 82

288

INDEX.

Windblown meadows
Woodpecker, Lesser Spotted, the
Woodstock Lane in Surrey

PAGE
79

133—188
134

Yarrell's ' British Birds >
Youth and age for fishing

95
3

C53,949— £. B. Horwood&Co., Ltd., 87, Leadenhnll St. , E.C.

ru