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BY THE

MARQUESS OF GRANBY

AND MR.

GEORGE A. B. DEWAR

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FLY
FISH ING

BY

SIR EDWARD GREY

LONDON

J. M. DENT <3rf CO., ALDINE HOUSE
29 i2f 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C
1920

First Edition, April 1899

Second Edition, July '^99

Third Edition, February 1 901

Fourth and Cheaper Edition, May I907

Reprinted August 1919, May 1920

GENERAL PREFACE

In bringing the Haddon Hall Library to
the notice of the public, an explanation
from me of its scope and aims would seem
necessary. Probably more literature in re-
lation to British sport, natural history, and
country life has appeared during the last
decade than has been produced at any
previous time. Several excellent series of
illustrated books, dealing v^ith sport in
its various branches, have been published
during that period, and may seem at first
sight largely to cover the ground v^hich the
editors hope that the Haddon Hall Library
will occupy: whilst the delightful writings
of such authors as Mr. Warde Fowler and
'* A Son of the Marshes,'* among many
others, have brought home to a multitude

vi GENERAL PREFACE

of readers the fact that, in spite of the growth
of cities and the reclaiming of wild and
waste places, there still exist in this coun-
try abundant opportunities for those who
are wise enough to study and take delight
in natural history.

If therefore this Preface should some-
what overstep the usual limits, my apology
must be that the editors are desirous of
making quite clear the position which the
Haddon Hall Library will aspire to take in
the already extensive field of literature bear-
ing on English country life. They hope
that the Haddon Hall Library will not
only help to fill up such gaps as there may
be in the mass of practical information on
wild creatures and on sports, contained in
the books already published, but also that
its contributors will succeed in describing
their different pursuits with the true sym-
pathy of those who love the open air,
and who decline to regard sport solely
from the destructive point of view, whilst

GENERAL PREFACE vn

greatly valuing it as a healthy feature of
our country life.

Almost every kind of sport and athletic
exercise has been ably described from the
technical standpoint by the many experts
w^hose books have been published of recent
years. The best methods of obtaining
the best results have been so fully stated
that one feels one ought to be able to
become an accomplished shot, fisherman,
bicyclist, horseman, and indeed all-round
sportsman, merely through the study of
these works ! How to remain on a horse :
how to throve a fly : how to crumple up the
highest pheasant — have not all these and
other arts been set forth by many an ac-
cepted authority ? Indeed in various series of
sporting books, each branch of these subjects
has been admittedly v^ritten of in a tutorial
and educational spirit. As I have intimated,
the Haddon Hall Library, while by no means
neglecting this aspect of the matter, is not
at all intended as a series of technical books.

viii GENERAL PREFACE

Numerous pens have been engaged dur-
ing the last few years on the subject of fly
fishing, but the editors feel sure that the
volume by Sir Edward Grey, with which the
Haddon Hall Library opens, will not be re-
garded by anglers as superfluous. Gardens
and gardening, too, are to be treated of,
and will again receive the attention of one
who has never yet failed to enrich English
literature when he has taken up his pen to
write on the well-loved theme.

Much indignation has been aroused of
late years by the destruction of wild crea-
tures often wrongly classed as vermin by
game preservers and keepers, and as this is
a subject which will no doubt be touched
upon in one or two volumes of the Had-
don Hall Library, I take the opportunity
of saying a few words about it. The
wisdom and humanity of preserving Eng-
lish wild birds are becoming very gener-
ally admitted, and I am glad to think that
from time to time steps have been, and

GENERAL PREFACE ix

are being taken, to educate people on this
question. The public are, I believe, be-
ginning at last to really understand and
appreciate the usefulness and the beauty
of the birds, resident and migratory, which
delight us by their songs and plumage.
Many landowners now issue strict orders
to their keepers and woodmen to prevent
the nests of wild birds being despoiled,
and forbid the ruthless destruction of the
birds themselves.

Of course I am bound to admit that
the over-abundance of any grain or fruit
devouring species is certainly not a good
thing ; but I trust that the farmers and
rural population generally will see that, as
a matter of fact, nearly all our smaller
wild birds deserve protection by reason of
the vast numbers of insects and grubs
upon which they feed, thereby helping
largely to preserve grain crops, fruit and
vegetables.

This also applies to some of those species

X GENERAL PREFACE

of birds which keepers have hitherto re-
garded as harmful to game by destroying
eggs or young. Owls were commonly
singled out for slaughter. Now, an owl
may occasionally seize a young pheasant or
partridge ; but, whether it be the white
or the brown owl, its usual food consists
principally of rats, mice, moles, with
beetles and other insects. In fact the
value of the owl cannot be better stated
than in the words of Mr. Morris — " He
who destroys an owl is an encourager of
vermin." Hawks have suffered severely at
the hands of both sportsmen and keepers.
" Shoot it : it's a hawk," is a shout often
heard during a day's shooting. Now if
the hawk happens to be a kestrel it is
almost a crime to kill it ; for the kestrel
is a vermin-destroying bird, and but rarely
attacks game. It lives on mice and in-
sects, such as beetles and caterpillars, and
consequently its life should be spared.
Those beautiful birds, jays and magpies,

GENERAL PREFACE xi

do undoubtedly poach a little ; yet surely
their total extermination would be a griev-
ous error on our part. On none of the
winged inhabitants of this country is more
marked and brilliantly coloured plumage
to be seen than on the jay and magpie,
whilst the quaint flight and notes of these
birds add much to the interest and variety
of our woodland scenes.

It may be asked which is the bird that
is really most destructive to the eggs and
young of pheasants, partridges, grouse, &c. ?
It is, I believe, the carrion crow. One of
the most capable and knowledgeable head
keepers I know — he has had fifty years of
keepering — writes to me : " I consider the
carrion crow the most destructive bird for
game, eggs, and young birds. The magpie
is equal in destroying eggs, but I never
knew one take young birds." In this view
I concur.

In regard to vermin traps, I hope that
the knowledge as to which are the most

xii GENERAL PREFACE

humane ones to use will continue to in-
crease ; and that before long so infamous
a contrivance as the pole-trap will be a
thing of the past.

I have long exceeded the bounds of the
space which a Preface should occupy, and
in conclusion shall only say that if these
books succeed in imparting some new ideas,
and in making some fresh suggestions to
those who take an interest in the country
life and sports of Merry England, or better
still, convert people who have hitherto not
regarded these country pursuits in a favour-
able light, I shall feel that the Haddon
Hall Library has gone a long way towards
attaining the ends for which it was de-
signed.

GRANBY.

March 1899.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. INTRODUCTORY 3

II. DRY FLY FISHING 32

III. DRY FLY FISHING (continued) .... 67

IV. WINCHESTER 103

V. TROUT FISHING WITH THE WET FLY . 121

VI. SEA TROUT FISHING 150

VII. SALMON FISHING i8z

VIII. TACKLE 211

IX. EXPERIMENTS IN STOCKING ... 236

X. SOME MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS . . 247

INDEX 27s

*^* A few passages from an article of the author's,
printed in the N'fzv Revieiv some years ago, are incor-
porated in the chapters on Dry Fly Fishing.

Kiii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Dry and Wet Flies {^in colour) .... Frontispiece
Hampshire IVater Meadonv . . . Facing page j^

From a Dra-vin^ by Jessie Macgregor.

St. Catherine's Hilly IVinchester . . „ 1 1 8

From a Drawing by William Hyde.

Where Sea Trout Run . . . . ,,150

Front a Drawing by J ESSIE Macgregor.

Salmon and Sea Trout Flies . . . , , 2 1 4

y/ Northumberland Burn . . . , ,, 248

From a Drawing by Jessie Macgregor.

The two plates of flies have been copied from specimens supplied by
Messrs, Hh'RDY of Ahiwick

FLY FISHING

,iltjb.<i«; V^ • 93

CHAPTER 1
Introductory

It would be delightful to write about plea-
sures, if by doing so one could impart them to
others. Many of us, if we had this gift, would
no doubt take the world by storm to-morrow,
with an account of the delights of living in
the country.

Unfortunately, nothing is more difficult than to
convey any strong impression of pleasure which
has been felt within us, and probably it is only
some unconscious egotism which ever prompts
us to suppose that it might be easy. The in-
superable difficulty lies in the nature cf people
and things. We do not all care for the same
pleasures, and do not want to hear about those

4 FLY FISHING

of other people. There are even men and
women who do not care to play golf, and prefer
to avoid the subject ; and all of us, in talking
about a hobby, run the risk that our words may
fall upon unwilling ears. Sympathy will not
flow unless interest is felt, and this latter is a
slow growth. The interest that springs up on
the spur of the moment is not intelligent ; to
be satisfactory either to listener or speaker, it
must have a firm root in remembered feelings
and associations. Nor must it be taken for
granted that an interest felt by people in
the same subject necessarily implies a common
pleasure. One man may care for flowers be-
cause he likes to live amongst them and loves
the efi^ects of landscape gardening : another
because he studies the life and growth of a
plant, and takes infinite pains to bring indi-
vidual plants to perfection and produce a perfect
bloom : a third may care less to grow the
flower than to examine it scientifically ; and
so the pleasure may vary through all degrees,
from the highest and driest botany to the most
anlearned sensuous appreciation of colour, scent
and form.

INTRODUCTORY 5

As a rule, we find our pleasures in our own
way for ourselves, and do not take or learn
them from others. What we really care for
we have at first hand, the beginning of the
feeling being within us or not at all, though
what we read or hear from others helps and
stimulates it. It is indeed almost impossible
to justify a particular pursuit to som^ one else
who has not got the sense of it. One man
has a hobby and may talk about it to another
easily, or even with eloquence and power ;
but if that other has not shared the hobby,
he will not understand the language, and the
speaker has no right to expect that he should.
On the other hand, to any one who does share
it, even a little imperfectly told becomes inte-
resting, and weak words begin to stir kindred
memories. When a man has a hobby it is to
be hoped that he will learn reticence ; that he
will never go into the world at large without
a resolve not to talk about what he cares for
most ; that in society and places where they
talk, he will carry his delight within him like
a well guarded treasure, not to be unlocked
and disclosed in all its fulness on any slight or

6 FLY FISHING

trivial inquiry. Rather let him not use his
own key for himself, being sure that the test
of any really kindred spirit will be the posses-
sion of a master key which will open this special
door of his mind for him. It is seldom enough
that this happens. Most of us live wherever
circumstances decide that we should, and live the
life that our work requires. We think of our
pleasures in night watches, in passing from one
place to another, upon the pavement, in trains
and cabs ; but the prospect on any given occa-
sion of meeting such a really kindred spirit seems
almost too good to be true. If, then, books are
written about a pursuit like fishing, it should
be not to preach, or to convert, or to dogma-
tise. Books about sport and country life should
be written and read, partly perhaps for the sake
of hints, information and instruction, but much
more in the hope that the sense of refreshing
pleasure, which has been felt by the writer, may
slide into a sympathetic mind.

There remains yet another difficulty, that of
expressing pleasure at all. It may be that
language lends itself more easily to forms of
argument and thought than of feeling. An

INTRODUCTORY 7

argument is something which can be caught and
held down and strapped into sentences, but after
reading an account of a day's fishing, it is con-
tinually borne in upon one that, when all has
been said, the half has not been told ; it is not
because there is really nothing to tell, as some
cynical and unsympathetic mind may suppose ;
rather, I think it is because of the nature of joy.
Feelings of delight come unsought and without
effort — when they are present they are every-
where about and in us like an atmosphere ; when
they are past it is almost as impossible to give an
account of them as it is of " last year's clouds,"
and the attempt to analyse and reconstruct the
sense of joy that has been and may be again,
seems to result in rows of dead words.

It is worth while to consider some of the
different ways in which authors of repute have
written about angling. Walton, of course, stands
first ; his book has become a classic, and has
been read and remembered now long enough
for us to be sure that it will remain so. This,
no doubt, is due to his literary skill, and to
that distinguished something called style, which
Walton had, and without which no book lives

8 FLY FISHING

long. There is no definition of style which is
satisfactory, or which tells how it may be ac-
quired, for when a man has it, what he has is
his own and no other*s : without him that
particular style would never have been, and no
one else can produce the same effect by imitat-
ing it. It must therefore in some way be the
result of the man's personality; and the charm
of Walton's '* Complete Angler " is at any rate
partly due to the simplicity and purity of nature,
which find expression in his book. There is a
quiet and benign light in his writing, which
draws us to it, and makes us choose to linger
over it. It must not, however, be forgotten
that Walton wrote other books not about
angling : these, too, are of literary excellence,
and we still have to account for the fact, that
it is by the " Complete Angler '* that Walton
is best remembered. It may be that the others
would not have been forgotten ; but unless he
had written the " Complete Angler," Walton
would never have been as well known as he is.
It is his best book, and I like to think that it
is so, because the happiness of the subject was
specially suited to his kind and quiet spirit.

INTRODUCTORY 9

Walton took a wide view of the pleasures of
angling ; he was of too sensitive a nature to
neglect what was to be seen and heard around
him, and the object of Piscator is at least as
much to teach his scholar to enjoy the spirit
of places, times and seasons, as to catch fish.
None the less is Walton careful of instructions
in the art of angling, in writing which he had
at any rate the advantage of believing that what
he had to teach was new, and he enters into
details of baits and tackles and methods, with
a zest and confident interest which are hardly
possible now. There is an impression of fresh-
ness and leisure which never leaves us as we
read. The delight of days spent by the river
is described as if Walton felt himself to be the
teller of good tidings, in which whosoever wished
might share. There is a detachment of mind
about him, a sense of freedom and length of days,
to which it is less easy to attain in these times
of trains, letters, telegrams and incessant news.
There were years in Walton's life of civil war,
of great disturbance, public misfortune and ex-
citement, but it was at any rate more possible
in that age to have long intervals undisturbed

lo FLY FISHING

and to feel remote. With the exception of
Gilbert White's " Selborne," I know no book in
which it is so easy for a tired mind to find refuge
and repose as in the " Complete Angler."

As a contrast to Walton it is interesting to
consider Charles Kingsley. He, too, has written
delightfully about fishing ; there is an onset of
enthusiasm in such a piece as " Chalk Stream
Studies," which must stimulate the keenness of
any angler, and Kingsley has a good store of
knowledge of plants, insects, birds and all the
life about a river. Who would not have kindled
at the thought of a day's fishing with Kingsley ?
Who would not have been the better for it .? but
any of us might have been somewhat exhausted
at the end of it. Kingsley was nobly keen, and
he never for one moment leaves us in doubt of
the strength and sincerity of his affection for
all that was interesting and beautiful out of
doors. Every one should know more and fish
better after reading him, but he was a strong
mind in earnest, and he wrote so strenuously
that in reading him I tremble a little, for fear
he may strike too hard, if a big fish should rise.
The time, too, in which Kingsley wrote, was so

INTRODUCTORY ii

different to Walton's ; so much more was known
that knowledge seemed to have a sort of com-
pleteness. It is never really so. New discoveries
are being made as frequently as ever, but for
all that, the edges of our knowledge seem now
more clearly defined. Walton has much to tell
us; but close round all his knowledge is a
border land of mystery, of things left uncertain
and still to be revealed. His Fordidge trout
belongs to another world than that in which we
move : we feel as if, were we in his place, we
should long to set out upon our travels to find
it. It is not even certain whether a winch
should be used, and if so whether it should
be placed upon the butt or the middle of the
rod. Walton feels that all he has to tell us is
visibly leading to some new discovery, which any
man with a good will may hope to make in
his lifetime. In Kingsley*s time, and still more
now, this delicious sense of impending discovery
has gone. Fish and flies are classified and
indexed. We may still argue some points, such
as the number of different species of salmonida^
or whether fish have a keen perception of colour ;
but we know enough to be dogmatic and to

12 FLY FISHING

make even things which are still uncertain appear
not to be open questions. As to rods, tackle
and landing-nets, we are almost weary of the
number of inventions, and hardly wish for any-
thing new.

I have taken Walton and Kingsley as two types
of appreciative writers about angling : Walton of
course, because he is the best of all ; and Kingsley,
partly for the sake of contrast in time and
temperament, and partly because his vigour as
a writer makes it interesting to see how he treats
the subject which he loved. Of those who pre-
ceded Walton, or were his contemporaries, an in-
teresting and excellent account is to be found in
" Walton, and the Earlier Fishing Writers," by
Mr. Marston. Of writers in the earlier part of
this century there are names to which many of us
are grateful, while in later years one instructive
book has followed another, showing more and
more tendency to deal separately with each special
branch of angling. Many men are good all-
round anglers, but these are the days of experts
and scientific study, and we write not of all that
we know, but of that which we know best,

I do not profess to have acquired enough

INTRODUCTORY 13

scientific knowledge to enable me to give com-
plete instruction, but even if I could do this
there would be no need for me to attempt it
now. There are so many splendid manuals of
instruction, that any angler, who wishes to get
technical knowledge, can learn the very best and
latest that is known from more than one recent
book about each special branch of angling. It
is not therefore my object to teach the art of
angling. But if I am ambitious to be an expert
at all, it is with regard to the pleasure of angling.
I am ready now to yield the palm for skill to
whoever chooses to claim it, but I do cherish a
belief that I am entitled to rank high amongst
those whose reputation as anglers is measured, not
by skill, but by their devotion to angling, and
by the delight which they have in it. A chief
object of this little book will be to express some
of this pleasure, to explain some of its qualities
and virtues, and to say how it is that we who are
anglers congratulate ourselves upon having one
of the best and most wonderful recreations that
have ever been known to man.

There may be some natures whose work is
pleasure, and who have therefore neither care nor

14 FLY FISHING

need for any things but work and rest. It is
possible at any rate to imagine that the pleasure
and the work of a poet or an artist may be so
interdependent that one cannot exist without
giving a direct impulse to the other, that the
feelings for instance of a poet, when heightened
by pleasure, lead so continually to efforts to ex-
press them, that they themselves seem to be but
a motive or preparation for the work of life
rather than a thing apart from it. The same
may be true of some men of science : there have
been men who have seemed to value leisure and
energy solely for the sake of observation and
research, who have asked for nothing in life
except that they should not be interrupted in
the pursuit of knowledge. But few people are
made entirely like these, and most of us do
some work, not from choice, but being either
compelled by necessity, or else urged to it by cir-
cumstances or some stern inner motive. If work
be worthy or noble the greatest satisfaction of
life is to be found in doing it well ; the exercise
of his highest powers or qualities is the glory of
man*s being, and the discovery or development of
them by use transcends all pleasure. But not all

INTRODUCTORY 15

work is of this kind, and in most if not in all
of it, there is n\uch drudgery, so that we are
tormented from time to time by a strong desire
to get away from it ; we seem to be doing it, not
because we have any genius or gifts for it, but
because we are not better suited for anything else.
Men whose task is imposed by necessity may well
feel that the struggle for something which is not
work, for opportunities of recreation, is not only
legitimate and just, but imperative. On the other
hand, if complete idleness be possible, we are
again tormented by the sense of waste or of
power unused, by the thought that everything
leads to nothing, by the "weight of chance
desires" increasing till it produces intolerable
restlessness, and the curse of the wandering Jew
seems to be working in our nature. Therefore
it is that most of us endeavour to divide our
lives into three parts, work, rest, and recreation ;
and it is with the management of the third part,
and the place of angling with regard to it, that
this book is concerned.

We probably wish our recreation to be not only
apart from our work, but in contrast to it, and
those who labour with their brain indoors seek for

i6 FLY FISHING

exercise and open air, use for the body as well as
freedom for the mind. Youth asks for something
more, and finds it in excitement. These are the
three great requisites for the recreation of healthy
vigorous boyhood — exercise, open air and excite-
ment. They are to be found in fine quality in
games and in sport, and in both it is probably
excitement which at first we care for most con-
sciously. As we grow older a change takes place.
Let us analyse, for instance, the pleasure in games.
At first we desire only to win — we think only of
that ; we play the game as boys read an exciting
story, with a feverish anxiety to know the end.
The next stage, as we grow older, is more intelli-
gent, and we begin to understand the qualities
of good play. We improve year by year, and
take pride in the increase of our own physical
prowess, of which the limit is not yet seen.
Then from understanding we pass to an artistic
admiration of good play for its own sake ; we
become judges of how the thing should be done,
and we are critics of style. Competition is then
desired, not solely for the excitement it provides,
but as a stimulus to good play ; we no longer
seriously expect to improve in our own play , but

INTRODUCTORY 17

we take pleasure in doing our best. The last
stage may be a long one; it begins with the
admission that we are past our best. Strength
is not diminished, and indeed we may even have
more sheer strength than ever, but the effort of
using it has become greater. The first sign of
deterioration is when our powers seem as great,
but it becomes more exhausting to use them, and
when in a hard game we do not last so well.
The next symptom follows very soon ; we cannot
do so quickly what can no longer be done so
easily ; our performance suggests retrospect ; the
personal element wanes, and we find satisfaction
more and more in contemplation and less and
less in excitement and competition ; at last we sit
amongst the onlookers, and are advised by our
friends to practise golf. There is much that is
analogous to all this in the pleasure which is
found in sport.

It would be tedious and perhaps invidious to
enter here upon a comparison of angling with
other sports. Each man sees special advantages
in his own favourite pursuit, and possibly pays
for this by overlooking some advantages which
are to be found elsewhere. One thing I must

i8 FLY FISHING

claim, at any rate for fly fishing, that it involves
less pain than is inflicted in any other sport.
A.11 experience and observation go to prove that
what the fish suffers from most is fright, and
this is an objection which may be brought
equally against netting, and indeed against any
possible method of killing fish except by poison
or dynamite, of which the former is repulsive
and horrible, whilst the latter causes wholesale
and ruthless waste of life. Wordsworth calls
angling " the blameless sport," and with his
opinion on such a point any one may be content.
Having said so much, I will for the rest make
an appreciation of the pleasures of angling as
little comparative with other sports as may be.

In angling, as in games, the earliest obvious
characteristic is the desire for success and the
consequent excitement. To those who are born-
anglers, this excitement presents a peculiarly
attractive and irresistible aspect. There is first
the expectation of a bite or a rise the sudden
thrill when it comes, and directly a fish is hooked
the overwhelming rush of anxiety as to whether
it will be landed. There is more than this ; there
is the spirit which seems to enter into the rod

INTRODUCTORY 19

and line in playing a fish. They who do not
feel these things will never care much for fishing.
Probably it is some subtle quality of temperament
which makes the difference between men in this
respect, but those who are anglers will probably
admit that in early boyhood, or at the first oppor-
tunity, they felt the excitement of these things,
and were captivated by it. For myself I know
nothing which equals the excitement of having
hooked an unexpectedly large fish on a small rod
and fine tackle. One instance, which occurred
not so long ago, comes often to mind. I hap-
pened one September to be fishing for sea trout,
with a single-handed rod, in a long stretch of
deep still water, peat coloured, but fairly clear.
The day was bright, one of those fine summer
days with a light east breeze, enough to make
some but only a little ripple. It was necessary,
therefore, to use as fine gut as I dared, and small
flies, and even then my success was not great.
One good sea trout of nearly four pounds was
hooked and landed, and several fish were seen,
but only occasionally would one rise, and then
always very shyly. Late in the afternoon, when
the breeze had nearly died away, and hope was

20 FLY FISHING

getting less, there was a great and sudden boil in
the water, one of my flies was seized most un-
expectedly, and I knew that either a salmon or
grilse was hooked. The river at this point was
not very wide. There were two alder bushes
growing on the bank, one above and the other
below me, over which no rod could be passed,
but the space in between them must have been
quite 200 yards of still water, and the fish being
about in the middle of this stretch, there was
no immediate cause for dreading a catastrophe.
But there were formidable difficulties : one was,
that there was no shallow water to which the
fish could be taken ; another, that the bank was
steep and fringed with rushes ; and a third was,
that I had only a landing net, not large or
strong, and with a weak handle. There came on
me a grim consciousness that the whole aff^air
must be very long, and that the most difficult
part of all would be at the end, not in playing
the fish, but in landing it. By slow degrees
the fish came under control of the rod, but the
nearer he could be brought the more were
matters complicated by the rushes at the edge.
Time after time he passed under my eyes,

INTRODUCTORY 21

swimming upright though slowly, so that 1
could see shape and size and the marks on the
body, but the end seemed as far off as ever.
Not till he was at the top of the water, and it
was possible to keep him quiet there, must any-
thing be risked. The fish could not be brought
within reach of my hand owing to the rushes.
The bottom of the river was too soft, and the
water too deep at every part for wading. The
small net was the only chance, and the risk of
using it was so great that I hardly dared to
try. It seemed as if any attempt to land the
fish with this net would precipitate a catastrophe,
which I could not face. More than once I failed,
and each failure was horrible. The fish was got
partly into the net, but moved and splashed out
of it, and the nearer each attempt came to
success, the greater was the danger. At last, not
only the head but enough of the bulk of the
body sank into the net. I lifted it ; there was a
feeling of weakness, a sound of something giving
way ; the handle bent and the net drooped. I
dropped the rod, and somehow with both hands
carried or dragged everything up the bank
The salmon weighed eight pounds ten ounces,

22 FLY FISHING

and it had taken perhaps half-an-hour to land it.
There was no physical reason for being exhausted,
and yet for a little time I could do nothing.
All power had gone from me ; my limbs were
trembling, and there was a looseness of the knees
which made it difficult to walk. Such are the
great times of sheer excitement which happen in
fishing.

It is the plain indiscriminating desire for
success which leads us to the second stage in
angling, that of taking the pains and trouble
necessary to acquire skill. In early years we are
content to catch fish anyhow, even with a worm
in flooded water. But rivers are for the most
part not in flood ; on most days in the season, if
trout are to be caught at all, it must be in clear
water, and we find, too, except in a certain part
of the season, that the greatest number can be
hooked by using artificial flies. It becomes our
object to learn this art and to improve in it by
practice. At first the young angler, wholly bent
upon success, may value his skill chiefly for its
results : he dwells upon these, compares each good
day with his own previous records, is probably
competitive and anxious that on any given day his

INTRODUCTORY 23

basket should be as heavy as those of others who
have been fishing the same water. Whenever his
basket is heavier than his rival's, he is delighted,
and is probably not a little disappointed if, when
he thinks he has done well, he finds at the end of
the day that some one else has done much better.
There is an age at which nearly every one who
is keen must be competitive, but as long as
this lasts an angler has not yet attained to the
greatest enjoyment of his sport. He is missing
more pleasure than he gains ; and he is prevent-
ing himself from having that detachment of mind,
and freedom and independence of spirit, which
are among the charms of angling. An angler
who is keen will work hard, but he should do it
without the sense of strain which comes from
trying to beat his own records, or those of others.
By all means let us find satisfaction to the end in
having a heavy or the heaviest basket, but do
not let us make this the prime object of the day.
Rather let each day's enjoyment stand upon its
own merits without being made comparative

As our skill increases we reach the third stage,
that of caring for skill more for its own sake and
less entirely for the results. There comes to be

24 FLY FISHING

some satisfaction in doing things well, even when
the results are not great, in continuing to throw
a long line straight and lightly even when fish
arc rising badly, or in putting a dry fly perfectly
to a trout in a difficult place though he refuses
to take it. Some measure of success, of course
is always desired, and a man must surely be a
pedant, or a prig, to be content to fish all day
without it ; but for all that, there is a certain
delight in fishing water well, which for a time
at any rate is independent of results. This is
especially the case at the beginning of the day,
when, for the first hour or so, to know or to
think that we are deserving success contents us.

What are the qualities which a man most
needs to become a good angler } Let us assume
that he starts with keenness, that the prospect
of hooking a fish produces in him that feeling
of excitement which is the motive for a desire
to succeed, is the beginning of delight in angling,
and, like a first element, cannot be analysed.
What are the other qualities which he must
possess or cultivate in order to become really
skilful ? He must, in the first place, have
enough strength and aptitude of body to enable

INTRODUCTORY 25

him to do a fairly hard day's work and manage
both a rod and a fish cleverly, though he will
not require the same exceeding quickness of
limb, accuracy of eye and strength, which are
necessary to the greatest success in the finest
games. Quickness and delicacy of touch, and
a certain power of managing a rod and line,
akin to that individual cleverness or genius
which men show in the use ot tools or instru-
ments with which they are experts, are necessary
to success in angling. The art of throwing a
fly well cannot be taught by description ; it may
be seen and watched, but it can only be acquired
by practice and a capacity for taking persistent
and well-ordered pains. An angler must never
be flurried by the perverseness of the wind, by
the untoward tricks which the fly or line will
sometimes play, or by the peculiarities of the
stream ; he cannot overcome these by sheer
strength, and he must learn to dodge them and
defeat them unobtrusively. Quiet, steady, intelli-
gent effort is needed to become a master of the
rod and line, to be able to do with them the best
that can be done.

To throw a fly well is one step, and it is essential,

26 FLY FISHING

but not by itself enough. A habit of attention
and observation is at least equally important, and
this observation must have a wide range. It
must take notice of the ways of fish at all times,
especially when feeding and when hooked ; of
different conditions of weather and water, and of
the effect of these, till by degrees the angler will
have at his disposal a little individual store,
peculiarly his own, of suggestions, hints and
probabilities. Things that he watches, or sees
happen season by season, come to have meanings,
and are signs which suggest expedients as the
result of former experience. The attention of
an angler must not be a barren but a fertile
attention. His observation should add to his
knowledge in a manner which has a direct bear-
ing on his sport. He should make guesses
founded upon something which he has noticed,
and be ever on the watch for some further
indications to turn the guess into a conclusion.

We have now arrived at two main qualities —
the first being a certain physical cleverness, and
the second an attentive and suggestive mind. But
there is a third which seems to me important
It is self-control ; for if an angler is really

INTRODUCTORY 27

keen, he will have many struggles with himself
in early days. The greater the keenness the more
bitter the disappointment, and the more highly
nerves have been strung by excitement the more
likely are we to collapse under disaster. And
yet it is a pity, and a waste of good things, that
the loss of even the biggest fish should make the
other pleasures and successes of the day of no
account. In angling, as in all other recreations
into which excitement enters, we have to be upon
our guard, so that we can at any moment throw
a weight of self-control into the scale against
misfortune, and happily we can study to some
purpose, both to increase our pleasure in success
and to lessen the distress caused by what goes
ill. It is not only in cases of great disasters,
however, that the angler needs self-control. He
is perpetually called upon to use it to withstand
small exasperations. There are times when all
small things seem adverse, when the hook is
perpetually catching in inanimate objects, when
unexpected delays and difficulties of various kinds
occur at undesirable moments, when fish will rise
short, or when they feed greedily on natural
flies, and will not look at artificial ones. These

28 FLY FISHING

sorts of things tend to hurry and exasperation,
which lead certainly to bad fishing, which in turn
ends in a small basket and disgust.

People talk sometimes as if a sort of still slow
patience were the great quality exercised by
angling. It ought much more properly to be
called self-control, and if another quality essen-
tial to success is to be added, let it be endur-
ance. Hard work and continual effort make a
tremendous difference to the basket in fly-fishing,
and though the amount of strength required
for any given cast may not be great, yet eight
hours* fishing even with a single-handed trout
rod is, if the most be made of the time, a hard
day's work.

There is not, it is true, the same glory of
physical strength and prowess in angling as in
games ; but, on the other hand, the skill required
is as difficult and various, and can be maintained
unimpaired long after the highest point of physical
activity has been reached and passed. When,
moreover, as the years go on, reflection and
observation begin to take the place of competi-
tion, a wider pleasure in angling opens out.
The extent to which we appreciate this is, I

INTRODUCTORY 29

suppose, again a matter of temperament. It is
not everybody who cares for the independence
and comparative solitude of angling ; and there
are probably some people who would consider
either of these as a drawback. Nor are we all
equally attracted by the charm and changes
of the season and by natural beauties, nor all
equally interested in the life of the country.
The gift of being pleased by these things is
one of the most precious possessions that a man
can have within him, but it is rare to find it at
an early age. In boyhood it is generally dor-
mant, and it is not this that we think of when
we first begin to fish ; but presently there comes
a time when we realise that angling is often
taking us to the most beautiful places of the
country at the very best times of year, and then
we feel a new sense of gratitude and a crowning
delight. From now onwards we look at more
than the river. There come times when the
beauty of the day or of the place seems to
possess us, so that the thought of angling ever
afterwards becomes full of beautiful associations,
of delightful meadows and woods, of light upon
water, of the sound of streams, till in the recol-

30 FLY FISHING

lection of days that are past, the vision of these
things perpetually rises up and fills us with joy.
Then there comes the longing, which is intense,
to escape and be again amongst the surroundings
that we remember, and we plan to set apart our
leisure for angling, partly for its own sake, but
partly also because we cannot let the season go
by without revisiting chosen places, when we
know that spring or summer is there. One
thing perhaps should be borne in mind to pre-
vent disappointment, and that is not to ask too
much of Nature suddenly, when we have been
strained by overwork ; at such times we are out
of tune, and more fit for rest than for enjoyment.
If we are to enter into the moods of Nature, we
must bring with us some vigour and elasticity
of spirit. A feeble mind looking upon fair
scenes with a languid eye will not feel the joy
of them, and it is with Nature as with friendship
— we cannot take all and bring nothing. On
the other hand work, if it be of an interesting
sort and not crushing in amount, is a fine pre-
paration for the country. Such work is stimulat-
ing, and when we make our escape we do it with
faculties erect and active, with every sense alert

INTRODUCTORY

31

and eager for sights and sounds and all joys,
which are not to be met with in cities. Then
we bring with us such an uprising of the spirit,
that we seem to be fit companions for Nature
even on her finest and best days in spring.

It is with much diffidence that any attempt
can be made to describe the delights of
dry fly fishing. Those who know and practise
the art best are the epicures amongst anglers ;
they have carried both the skill and pleasure
of angling to a height of exquisite refinement,
and to them I fear that any detailed account
of a day's dry fly fishing must seem inadequate.
There are, however, other less fortunate anglers
whom circumstances have prevented from becom-
ing acquainted with the use of the dry fly on

DRY FLY FISHING 33

those rivers which are most perfectly suited for

it, and as these anglers are not only many in

number, but are probably a very large majority

of anglers, I will endeavour to describe some

of the days, the events, the places, the rivers,

the seasons, which are to me typical of dry

fly angling, in the hope of finding readers to

whom these things are not already too familiar.

If the written words can convey to them even

a little of what dry fly angling means to us

on the Test and the Itchen, of the affection we

feel for these rivers and their water meadows, my

object will be gained and my hope fulfilled.

First, let us take the season. Every season

has its claim upon the attention of men whose

recreations are in the country and in open air,

but in the case of the dry fly angler this claim is

paramount, for the season which is the very best

for the use of the dry fly is also the very best of

the whole year. It consists of the months of

May and June, when Nature does her utmost

on a scale that is magnificent, and with a variety

that seems infinite, to persuade us that we live in

a beautiful world. The extent to which this

appeal, which Nature makes to us, is admitted

c

34 FLY FISHING

or felt by different persons, varies within very
wide limits. A large number of people leave
their homes, and make considerable pecuniary
sacrifices, in order apparently to spend the best
part of the spring and early summer in London
and out of the country. There are others, on the
contrary, to whom it is a calamity to be shut up
in a town for the whole of the months of May
and June ; and whom no purely self-regarding
misfortune, except perhaps the complete loss of
liberty or of health, could make more wretched
than this. It is, however, not only the season of
the year, but the places for dry fly angling, that
add to the attractions of the sport. It would be
arrogant to say that the valleys of the Test and
Itchen are better than any other part of the
country in May and June, but I do say that no
part is better than they are. The angler who is
fishing in one of these rivers at this time of year,
is seeing the most beautiful season at its best.
This is the time of blossom and promise, every-
where there should be visible growth responding
to increasing warmth, a sense of luxuriant and
abundant young life all around us. All this is
assured every year in the valleys of such rivers

^5^CTW«r:si#ti»<>-

HAMPSHIRE: WATER MEADOWS

DRY FLY FISHING 35

as the Test and the Itchen, There may be,
and too often is, a spring drought in other
countries, and on the great downs of Hampshire
itself. Other rivers may shrink, and leave their
banks dry, but the Hampshire chalk streams run
brim full,^ and their valleys are all of water
meadows, intersected by streams and runnels
and channels and cuts of all sorts and sizes
carrying over the land the bounty of water.
Hence it is, that on the way to our river we
have no thought of what order it will be in, or
of what rain there has been lately. The river is
sure to be found full and clear. North country
rivers are fed by constant tributaries. Down
every glen comes a burn, and after heavy rain
there is a rush of surface water, which swells
them all. A true chalk stream has few tribu-
taries. The valleys on the higher ground near
it have no streams ; the rain falls upon the
great expanse of high exposed downs, and sinks
silently into the chalk, till somewhere in a large
low valley it rises in constant springs, and a full

1 Undoubtedly this is generally the case, but an exception must be
made in regard to the angling season of 1898. The upper Test, for
instance, was far lower in April 1898 than in the June of the preceding
year, when it was gloriously full. — Eds.

36 FLY FISHING

river starts from them towards the sea. There
is always something mysterious to me in looking
at these rivers, so little affected by the weather
of the moment, fed continually by secret springs,
flowing with a sort of swiftness, but for the most
part (except close to mills and large hatches)
silently, and with water which looks too pure
and clear for that of a river of common life.

And now let the season be somewhere about
the middle of May, and let there be a holiday,
and the angler be at the Test or the Itchen,
and let us consider a day's fishing, which shall
be typical of many days in this month. The
wind shall be south-west, a perceptible breeze,
but with no squalls or rough manners; and
there shall be light clouds moving before it,
between which gleams of sunshine fall upon the
young leaves and woods — for there are many fine
woods by the sides of water meadows. Granted
these first two conditions, it will follow that
the day is warm, with a temperature reaching
62° in the shade, the mean temperature for
midsummer, but a very suitable maximum for
a day in May. It is almost certain that there
will be a rise of trout at some time during the

DRY FLY FISHING 37

day, and it is all important to know at what
hour it will begin. The chances in my experi-
ence are something as follows : It is not certain
that there will be no rise before ten o'clock,
but it is very improbable that there will be any.
After ten o'clock the rise may begin at any time.
The most likely time for it is between eleven
and twelve, but there need be no disappoint-
ment if it does not begin till twelve o'clock.
On a day such as this I do, however, become
anxious if at one o'clock there is still no rise.
Taking then these chances into consideration,
desiring earnestly not to miss a minute of the
rise, and leaving a fair margin for uncertainties, -
the angler will probably be at the water by 9.30.

If this forecast of the time of the rise proves
correct, and there is at first neither fly nor fish
to be seen, the angler has at any rate the satis-
faction of feeling that the day is all before him,
and that he has so far missed nothing. If he
is very impatient to have an outlet at once for
his energy, he may put on a medium-sized hackle
fly and use it wet in the rough water of hatch-
holes, but he can do no good — and perhaps he
may do some harm — by attempting to fish the

38 FLY FISHING

river at large. Even in the hatch-holes he will
probably prick more fish than he hooks, and if
one or two are landed they will either be small
trout, or large ones in inferior condition. The
fact is, that attempts to anticipate success in a
chalk stream before the proper rise begins are
unsatisfactory ; however resolutely the angler
may have made up his mind to expect nothing
from these attempts, yet if he labours at them,
some sense of disappointment will insensibly steal
over him, and take just a little off the edge of his
keenness. In my opinion, it is better to keep
this unimpaired till the rise begins. It is not
hard to wait for an hour or two on such a day ;
one need only watch and listen to the life about
the river. To read a book at this time is not
so easy, for the eyes are continually being lifted
to the water. On the other hand, there is not
much to be gained by wandering up and down,
and the best plan is for the angler to go to
the lowest part of the water he means to fish,
and there sit down to watch some particular
bit of it, which is known to be a good place
for free rising trout. The first sign of the
coming rise will be a few flies upon the water,

DRY FLY FISHING 39

cither olive duns or some near relations of theirs.
These are generally noticed by the angler before
the fish begin to take them, but sometimes it is a
trout which first notices a fly, and then a rise is
the first sign seen. When this is so> the angler
becomes alert at once. The pleasure of the day
began for him, let us hope, hours ago, when he
woke to the consciousness of what sort of day
it was ; but now there is suddenly added to his
happiness the delight of endeavour and excite-
ment, suspense ends, action begins, and hope is
raised to the height of expectation. He does
not, however, cast at once, but gets quietly within
reach, kneeling if necessary to be out of sight,
and waiting for the fish to rise again. This first
trout should at any rate be risen, if it is in a
convenient place where the fly does not drag.
In a little time it may have made up its mind
not to take any flies on the surface, or its
appetite may have become less keen, or its sense
of what all natural flies look like more exact ;
but just at first, at the very beginning of the
rise, there is most probability of finding it
hungry and ofi^ its guard. By the time the
first fish is done with, it should be easy to find

40 FLY FISHING

others rising, and if there is a free rise and
plenty of fly, the angler will in May get the
best conditioned fish in comparatively quick
running water in the main stream. The first
half-hour will decide what kind of rise there is
to be, whether it is to be a good taking one
or not: if it is a good one, the angler should
feel for the next two hours that there is at any
rate a fair chance of his having a rise whenever
he can succeed in floating his fly satisfactorily
and accurately over a rising trout. Should the
rise last as much as four hours, it is a long one
and ought to result in an exceptionally heavy
basket. I have generally found, however, that in
the last hour or so of the rise the trout become
very fastidious and particular. Sometimes they
can be seen still in their feeding places, keeping
close to the surface of the water, but only taking
a fly occasionally, and the angler may, till he is
weary, float his own fly over them continually
and get no response whatever. As a rule, on a
fairly warm day the rise of fly will be over by
three or four o'clock. The trout will by then
have disappeared, and the angler may leave off.
Bad luck or good luck may have made the dif-

DRY FLY FISHING 41

fercnce of one or two brace to his basket, but ten
pounds' weight of trout should make him content,
fifteen pounds may be considered very good, and
twenty pounds and upwards exceptional.

The number of trout in different parts of
the Itchen and Test is in inverse proportion to
their weight ; but in the parts of these rivers
where the trout are not overcrowded and average
from a pound and a half to two pounds, they
rise freely and their appearance in a good season
is splendid. The extraordinary fatness to which
they attain, and the brilliancy of their colour
and condition in May, June and July, surpass
anything it has been my good fortune to see
amongst river trout, and anything I could have
believed, if I had fished only in north country
rivers. On the other hand, the chalk stream
trout do not fight so strongly in proportion
to their size as the trout in rocky or swifter
rivers with rougher water and no weeds. It
is not that the southern trout is less strong,
but it thinks too much of the weeds : it is
always trying to hide itself instead of trying
to get free by wild desperate rushes, for which
indeed the presence of the weeds and the gentle-

42 FLY FISHING

ness of the water make these rivers less suited.
Sometimes the first rush of a chalk stream trout
when hooked is as sudden and wild and strong
as that of a fish of the same size in any other
river ; but in my experience this generally
happens with a south country trout when its
feeding place is far down on a shallow or in
a long mill-tail, and its home is in the hatch-
hole or under the mill above. In such places I
have known a trout of one and a half pounds
leave very few yards of line upon the reel before
its first rush could be checked, and the line to
be run out as swiftly and as straight as any one
could wish. Twice during the last season did
it happen to me to have fine experiences of
this kind. In the first case the trout had some-
thing over twenty yards to go for safety, and
nearly succeeded. Had the distance been two
or three yards less it would have been accom-
plished in the first rush, but in the last few
yards the trout had to collect his strength for
a second effort. There was a moment's break
in the impetus of the rush, and a struggle
began in which at first the trout gained ground,
but very slowly, while every foot was contested

DRY FLY FISHING 43

with the utmost pressure that I dared put upon
the gut: then there ceased to be progress, and
at last within close sight of his home the trout
had to turn his head. The rest was easy, the
mill-tail being fairly clear of weeds, and both
time and stream being against the fish.

In the second case the result was different.
I was wading in a shallow where I could see
the trout, which, as it turned out, was never to
be mine. It was a light-coloured fish feed-
ing actively and recklessly on the flies, which
were coming down freely, and it took my fly
at once with perfect confidence. It sometimes
happens, however, that these active, reckless,
easily hooked trout are more surprised and
desperate when hooked than any others. I
never saw anything more mad and sudden than
the rush of this trout. It gained a pool below
some hatches, where no doubt it lived, and
took the line under the rough main stream
into a fine whirling back-water : then I felt
the confusion of having lost touch with the
fish, for there was nothing but the dull sodden
strain of a line hopelessly drowned in the con-
tending currents of the hatch-hole. The trout

44 FLY FISHING

jumped high in the middle of the pool, and
showed me that, if under two pounds, he was
certainly very thick and strong ; I dropped the
point of the rod without being able to give the
least relief to the fine gut at the end, and the
stream swept downwards a useless length of
submerged line without a fly.

Those anglers, who are used to thinking that
a day*s fishing means fishing all day, may ask
whether it does not make the pleasure less when
the actual fishing is concentrated into a space of
sometimes only two, and at most four or five
hours, as is the case on a chalk stream in the
month of May. The answer is, that the pleasure
and excitement are highly concentrated too, and
that the work while it lasts is very hard. To
be amongst plenty of large trout, with a small
fly and fine gut, when there is a good rise, is a
glorious experience. Before it is over the angler
will have had thrilling and exciting incidents,
enough to provide much reflection, and let us
hope satisfaction too, and if the rise lasted all
day we should be apt to miss much of the glory
of the month.

There is so much to be seen and heard in May.

DRT FLY FISHING 45

There are the separate and successive greens of
the fresh young leaves of different trees, perhaps
the most tender and the most transient of all the
colours that leaves or flowers give to any season.
Then there are the great blossoms of May, of
which I especially value six, all so conspicuous in
colour as to compel one's attention, and three of
them wonderful in perfume. They are the lilac,
hawthorn, gorse, horse-chestnut, laburnum and
broom. Not to spend time in the country while
all these things are at their best, is to lead a dull
life indeed ; and yet, if we are not to miss some
of them, we must spend a part at least of every
week of May in going about the country with
attention free and eyes afield. Dry fly fishing
leaves many hours free for this. The first half
of May, too, is the most favourable time for
making discovery of birds. The summer birds
have nearly all arrived, and all birds are singing ;
but the leaves are not thick yet, and both in
brushwood and in trees it is comparatively easy
to see the different species. They are active
with the business and excitement of the breeding
season, and it is just at this time that they most
attract the notice of eye and ear. A little later

46 FLY FISHING

on the air will still be full of sound and song,
but it will be much more difficult owing to the
leaves to get a good sight of any bird that
has attracted attention or raised a doubt of its
identity by its song.

May is a good month on a chalk stream, but
to my mind the perfection of dry fly fishing is
to be had on a good day in mid-June, on water
where the May-fly never appears, first to excite
the trout and the anglers, and then to leave the
fish without appetite and the angler too often
discontented. The May-fly is a fine institution,
and where it comes in enormous quantities, as
it does on some rivers such as the Kennet, it pro-
vides a fortnight of most glorious fishing; but
elsewhere it interrupts the season, and unless the
trout are very large, or there is a great lack of
duns and small flies, I would not attempt to
reintroduce the May-fly where it has ceased to
exist in any numbers.

And now let the pleasure of this June day be
heightened by the contrast of work and life in
London. This is not the place in which to write
of the deep human interests of London, of what
great affairs have their centre and of what issues

DRY FLY FISHING 47

are discussed and decided there. All that follows
is written without any thought of denying or
minimising the attraction of these things for
men's minds ; but there is an aspect of London
which is inevitable and becomes most oppressive
in hot June days. There is the aggressive stiff-
ness of the buildings, the brutal hardness of the
pavement, the smell of the streets festering in the
sun, the glare of the light all day striking upon
hard substances, and the stuffiness of the heat
from which there is no relief at night — for no
coolness comes with the evening air, and bedroom
windows seem to open into ovens ; add to these
hardships what is worse than all, the sense of
being deprived of the country at this time and
shut off from it. Perhaps you own a distant
garden, which you know by heart, and from which
occasionally leaves and flowers are sent to you in
London ; you unpack these and spread them out
and look at them, spelling out from them and
recalling to memory what the garden is like at
this time. There were the young beech leaves
and the sprays of double flowering cherry in
May, and now there come the first out-of-
door roses and the first of other things, perhaps

48 FLY FISHING

the flower of some special iris lately planted.
You see these things, you know the very trees,
bushes, and places from which they were taken ;
you know the very form and aspect which the
beauty of the season is taking in your garden,
and you have the knowledge that it is passing
away, that you are missing for all this year things
which are dear to you, both for the delight of
seeing them afresh each season and for many old
associations of other years. At such moments
there surges within you a spirit of resentment
and indignation, kept in abeyance during the
actual hours of hard work, but asserting itself
at all other times, and you pass through the
streets feeling like an unknown alien, who has
no part in the bustle and life of London, and
cannot in the place of his exile share what seem
to others to be pleasures. Work alone, however
interesting, cannot neutralise all this, because it
is only partly by the mind that we live. Mental
effort is enough for some of the satisfaction of
life ; but we live also by the affections, and
where out-of-door things make to these the
irresistible appeal, which they do make to some
natures, it is impossible to live in London with-

DRY FLY FISHING 49

out great sacrifice. Happily it is possible to
go away, if not to home, at any rate to some
country retreat at the end of the week, and to
combine the best of dry fly fishing with this on
Saturday. Where this can be done, the prospect
of the escape on Saturday till Monday is a great
consolation in all moments of leisure during the
week. It is borne about with us like a happy
secret ; it draws the thoughts towards it continu-
ally, as Ruskin says that the luminous distance
in a picture attracts the eye, or as the gleam of
water attracts it in a landscape.

If our work will let us escape on Friday even-
ing, it is luxury ; but even if we belong only to
those in the middle state of happiness, who work
till midnight or later on Friday, and can have the
whole of Saturday and Sunday in the country, we
may still be splendidly well off, provided that we
are careful to miss nothing. The earliest trains
leave Waterloo, the usual place of departure for
the Itchen or Test, either at or just before six
o'clock in the m.orning. To leave London it is
possible once a week, even after late hours, to get
up in time for these early trains, and if you have
no luggage (and you need have none if you go

50 FLY FISHING

to the same place week after week), you will not
find it difficult to get to the station. There are
places where hansoms can be found even at these
hours of the morning ; they are not numerous,
and they seem quite different from the hansoms
that are abroad at more lively hours, but they
can be found if you will look for them at certain
places. The best plan, however, is to live within
a walk of Waterloo, and as you cross the river
in the early summer morning, you may feel more
reconciled to London than at any other time,
and understand Wordsworth's tribute to the sight
from Westminster Bridge. I pass over the scene
at Waterloo station, which at this hour is very
different from the usual one, and the journey on
which perhaps one sleeps a little, though I have
found that, while it is very easy to sleep sitting
up in the late hours of the evening, it is necessary
to lie down, if one wishes to sleep in the early
hours of the morning. At some time between
eight and nine o'clock, you step out of the train,
and are in a few minutes amongst all the long-
desired things. Every sense is alert and excited,
every scent and everything seen or heard is noted
with delight. You are grateful for the grass on

DRY FLY FISHING 51

which you walk, even for the soft country dust
about your feet.

Let me again be free to choose the day, and
let it be bright and cloudless without wind this
time. A warm day with a maximum tempera-
ture of 75° in the shade; rather trying weather
for a wet fly angler, but not at all bad for dry
fly fishing at this season, and the sooner the
angler can satisfy himself with breakfast and
be by the water the better. On such a day in
mid-June some fish should be found rising at
any time after eight o*clock, and this is said with-
out prejudice to what may happen before eight
o'clock, of which I have no experience. There
are thirteen hours of daylight after eight o'clock
in the morning, and that is enough for a full
day's fishing. But the rise will probably be
quite different in character to the rise in May.
It will be much more prolonged, but more quiet,
and the beginning and end of it will not be so
clearly defined. You may expect the fish to
take best, and to find most fish rising between
ten o'clock and two o'clock in the day; but
both before and after these hours, there should
be some trout feeding. The rise of fish corre-

52 FLY FISHING

spends of course to the rise of fly, and there will
probably be some duns upon the water all day,
but at no time in such quantities as during the
few hours into which the hatching is concen-
trated earlier in the season and in colder weather.
This is what makes June such a good month :
the fishing is spread over a much longer period
of the day. It is true that the trout are not
so greedy, but on the other hand, partly for
this very reason and partly because the flies are
less numerous at any one time, they are not so
likely to do nothing but rush about after larvae^
and it is better to be casting over the most
fastidious trout which is taking flies on the
surface, than over the hungriest one that is
" bulging." On a bright warm day such as this,
the angler will go -very quietly, watching the
water, always expecting to see a rise, but know-
ing that a trout may be well on the feed and yet
rising slowly at comparatively long intervals of
time. The little light coloured places with a
gentle swirl of water immediately below a patch
of weed are very favourite spots, and in these it
is often possible to see a fish very clearly. On
a bright day, the angler should therefore not only

DRY FLY FISHING 53

look for a rise, but look also for the fish, and
many a trout will be discovered lying on the
watch for flies before it is actually seen to take
one. There is not much difficulty in telling by
its attitude in the water, whether a trout is worth
trying for. Between the appearance of a trout
that is resting motionless and dull upon the
bottom, and one that is poised in the water near
the surface, there is all the difference in the
world ; the very attitude of the latter, still as
it may be for the moment, seems to have some-
thing watchful and lively about it.

In June the trout should be at their very
best and strongest, and the angler should be
ambitious and go to the water, where he knows
there are large ones, to match his skill and his
fine gut against them in bright weather. Many
a big trout will be seen, risen, and hooked, but
the weeds as well as the fish are strong now,
and where two-pounders are common and taking
well, there are sure to be catastrophes in a long
day's fishing. On the other hand, except on
very unlucky days, what triumphs there are !
what moments of suspense as the fly is floating
to the place where one feels sure, either from

54 FLY FISHING

the sight of the rise or of the very fish itself,
that a great trout is feeding ! Often in the case
of these large trout my rod trembles visibly as
the fly comes to the spot, perhaps after all not
to be taken. I cannot say which is the more
exciting, to have seen only the rise, or to be
watching the movement of the fish. The crisis
of the rise at one's own fly comes more suddenly
when the body of the trout is unseen, but when
the fish itself is visible there is a tremendous
instant of expectation, as he is seen to prepare
to take the fly. The next feeling with me is
generally one of downright fear as to where the
first rush of the fish will end. This rush may
have nothing deliberate about it, in which case all
may go well, and in a few seconds the angler may
be on equal terms with the fish, and before a
minute is over fighting with the odds on his side.
On the other hand, there may be in the first rush
a horrible set purpose, on the part of the trout,
to gain some root under the bank, or to plunge
far into a thick bed of weeds, in which case the
angler is likely to have the worst of it, for during
the first few seconds after being hooked any good
conditioned trout of two pounds or upwards can

DRY FLY FISHING 55

be the master of fine gut. Nor is fine gut the
only difficulty : there is another risk owing to
the smallness of the hook. It may be possible
to succeed with a fairly large imitation of an
olive dun on dark days early in the season, but
on these days in June a rather small red quill will
be the best fly. A small fly, if it is to float well,
must be tied on a small hook, and a small hook,
unless it should fasten in an extra tough part of
the mouth, can have but a weak hold of the fish.
The angler must therefore be prepared to lose
a large fish every now and then — oftener probably
than he thinks quite consistent with good luck —
by the hook losing its hold. In this matter of
losing fish we are more at the mercy of luck in
June than in May, and there are times when the
luck seems so bad as to turn what promises to
be a record day into a comparatively poor one.
Sometimes this luck comes in runs. I remember
on one day in the height of the summer having,
with small red quills and fine gut, the best and
the worst luck combined. There were not great
numbers of fish feeding, and the trout that
were rising were not rising fast. It took a little
patience to find a rising fish, and then more

56 FLY FISHING

patience to fix its exact position by waiting for
its next rise. When these things were discovered,
however, each fish took my fly confidently, and
it seemed as if only the biggest and fattest trout
were rising. With each of the first seven fish
hooked there was a moment when a catastrophe
seemed imminent, and yet all were landed. They
averaged just over two pounds apiece,- and after
each one the sense of triumph and success
mounted higher, till it produced a feeling of
confidence in my own skill and luck, which I
knew was not justified, but which was irresistible.
Then everything changed and one disaster suc-
ceeded another. I lost more than seven large
trout successively. Some broke my tackle, in the
case of others the small hook lost its hold unex-
pectedly, whilst others again went into weeds and
there freed themselves from the hook. Indeed
I had a very bad time all round. At the end of
the rise my basket was heavy, but I had a sense
of being much chastened, and I could have
wished that the luck had been more evenly
distributed.

After two o'clock on this June day the angler
will probably find that it becomes increasingly

DRY FLY FISHING 57

difficult to find a rising trout, and that when one
is found, it is not nearly so ready to take his fly.
By working hard all the afternoon he may add a
brace moie to his basket, and he must decide for
himself whether this extra brace is worth two or
three hours of watching and walking and crawling
and kneeling and effort. If he has done pretty
well by two o'clock, and if the rise has then
become very slack, he may find it more pleasant
to leave off for a few hours and arrange the rest
of his day so as to come fresh and strong and
keen to the evening rise. One difficulty about
the evening rise is to settle the time for dining.
After various experiments I have found it best
to have dinner, if possible, between five and six.
Two conditions are essential for this, one is, that
there should be some place near the river where
dinner can be had, and the other, that the angler
should not have eaten much luncheon. The
latter of these conditions is not only always
possible, but easy out of doors : the former one
is generally present on the Itchen or Test, where
numerous villages with inns are to be found all
along the river valleys. Having dined, the angler
can call the whole of the long June evening his

58 FLY FISHING

own, and may enjoy that sense of perfect free-
dom, strength and patience which is so valuable,
and which in fishing is destroyed by hunger or
the thought of a fixed dinner hour ahead.

I must own that I do not appreciate the
evening rise so well as that in the morning ; and
there are various reasons for this. In the first
place, there is a more definite limit to the end of
the evening rise. It is often nearly eight o'clock
when it begins, and you know then that the light
cannot last for more than an hour. Now part of
the charm of the morning rise is the prospect of
indefinite length. It may only last a short time,
but it may go on for hours, and you feel at the
beginning that its possibilities are unknown.
There is nothing of this with a late evening
rise. On the contrary, you feel in a hurry
because the time must be short. If a rising
trout will not take your fly, you begin to fidget
as to whether it will be better to stick to that
fish or to try another, and if half-an-hour passes
without any success, the threat of an absolutely
blank evening makes itself felt. There is a
story of a thrifty and anxious housewife, who
used to call her household early on Monday

DRY FLY FISHING 59

mornings in terms like these, " Get up ! get up
at once ! to-day's Monday, to-morrow's Tuesday,
next day's Wednesday, here's half the week gone
and no work done ! " It is some such fidgety
anxiety that comes over me, if I do not get a
fish soon in the evening rise. I seem to have
the anticipation of complete failure. The time
is so short; the beginning and the end of the
rise are so near together, that failure in the first
part seems a presage of failure in the whole.

The look of the evening rise is so often the
best of it. Numbers of trout appear to be rising
frequently and steadily and confidently, but when
the angler puts them to the test, they disappoint
him. On some evenings the trout cease to rise
after an artificial fly has once been floated over
them; on others they continue to rise freely,
but will take nothing artificial, and the angler
exhausts himself in efforts and changes of fly,
working harder and more rapidly as he becomes
conscious of the approaching end of the day.

But all evenings are not alike disappointing,
and on a warm still evening in June we may
expect some success. A few fish may be found
rising very quietly and unobtrusively at any time

6o FLY FISHING

after six o'clock. The angler will probably find
that these trout are not feeding in the same
way as they fed in the morning. They may be
the same fish, but their manners and behaviour
are different. They are apparently taking some
very small insect, are much more easily scared,
and are apt to rise very short, if they rise at all
to an artificial fly ; still they are feeding, and are
worth trying for. If the angler can get one or
two of these fish before eight o'clock he will
have done well. Soon after eight the evening
rise proper should have begun. More rises
will be seen than at any previous time of the
day, and as the light fades the easier it is to
get near the fish, and the more chance is there
of hooking them. Yet in my experience it
is comparatively seldom that one has a really
successful evening, and feels that everything has
gone well. Now and then one gets two or
three brace, or even more, of good trout, but
more often, either because the trout rise short,
or because too much time is spent unsuccess-
fully over A. stubborn fish, the angler seems to
be always on the point of great success without
attaining it.

DRY FLY FISHING 6i

Anglers differ as to how late the evening
fishing should be prolonged. Night fishing with
a large wet fly should not be allowed on good
dry fly water. It is poor fun to haul out of
the river by main force in the dark, on thick
gut, a trout that might give good sport in day-
light. Before it gets dark, however, there is a
half-hour in which it is just possible to see
where a fish is rising, but just not possible to
see one's fly. It needs both skill and judgment
to put an artificial fly properly over a fish in
these conditions, but during this half-hour a
skilful angler may expect to get a brace of good
trout with a floating sedge fly. This is perfectly
fair fishing, but it has not the same interest as
the finer fishing in better light; it needs skill,
and yet it is comparatively clumsy work. The
angler strikes at sight of a rise without being
sure whether it is to his fly or not. He can,
and indeed must, use stronger gut, because, when
a trout is hooked, he cannot tell accurately what
it is doing, or follow its movements adjusting
the strain carefully to the need of each moment
as he would do in daylight. In short a great
part of all that happens, both before and after

62 FLY FISHING

he hooks a trout, is hidden from him, and he
has in the end to rely more upon force, and less
upon skill to land the fish. All this takes away
much of the pleasure, and if the day has been a
fairly good one, I would rather forego the last
brace than kill them under inferior conditions.
On the other hand, if luck has been very bad,
or the trout have been particularly exasperating
and successful in defeating the angler, or have
refused to rise all day, then the sedge fly in
the last half-hour of perceptible twilight gives
a very satisfactory opportunity of trying to get
even with them. After a fair day, however, it
seems to me better to leave off when I cease to
be able to see a medium-sized quill gnat upon
the water at a reasonable distance.

Very pleasant the evening is after a success-
ful day in hot, bright weather in June. Let us
suppose that the angler has caught some three
brace of trout in the day, and a brace and a
half in the evening on good water. He will
then have had plenty of interest and excitement,
moments of anxiety and even of disappoint-
ment, but all contributing at the end to give
a delightful satisfactory feeling of successful

DRY FLY FISHING 63

effort. Some great events, some angling crisis
there will have been during the day, to which his
thoughts will recur often mvoluntarily. Some
incidents will seem to have been photographed
upon his mind, so that he can recall clearly not
only the particular things done or seen, but his
own sensation at the time. What he thinks about
in the evening will not be only of angling, but
of the scenes in which he has spent the day.
I am often ashamed to think how much passes
unnoticed in the actual excitement of angling,
but the general impression of light and colour,
and surroundings is not lost ; some is noted at
the time, and some sinks into one*s mind un-
consciously and is found there at the end of
the day, like a blessing given by great bounty
to one who was too careless at the time to
deserve it. May is the month of fresh leaves and
bright shrubs, but June is the month in which
the water meadows themselves are brightest.
The common yellow iris, ragged robin and
forget-me-not make rough damp places gay,
and the clear water in the little runnels amongst
the grass sparkle in the sun. Of wild shrubs
which flower in June, there are two so common

64 FLY FISHING

that they seem to possess the month and meet
the eye everywhere. One is the wild rose, and
the other is the elder, and great is the contrast
between them. The commonest sort of wild
rose is surely the most delicate of all shrubs in
spite of its thorns. It is exquisitely delicate
in the scent, colour, form and character of its
flowers, and there is nothing more graceful in
nature than the way in which a long spray of
wild rose in full blossom offers its beauty to
be admired. I am not so fond of the elder;
when one is close to it there is a cerrain stiffs
thickness about the bush, and a deadness of
colour both of leaves and flowers, and the scent
is heavy and spiritless. But masses of elder
flower at a distance have a fine foamy appear-
ance, and I always feel that they are doing their
best to honour the season. Though the sun
may be as hot as midsummer, everything in the
first half of June seems young and fresh and
active. Birds are singing still, and for a week or
two it seems as if the best of spring and summer,
warmth and songs, luxuriance and freshness, were
spread abroad so abundantly that it is almost
too much. The cup of happiness is full and

DRY FLY FISHING 65

runs over. Such may be one's last thoughts in
the quiet of approaching night after sounds have
ceased, and in the perfect enjoyment of "that
still spirit shed from evening air."

As June draws to a close, and during the
whole of July, the rise during the day becomes
more uncertain and feeble. There are many
days in July when the dry fly angler spends
more time in watching and waiting than in
active fishing. His best chance before the even-
ing will be between ten and one o'clock, and
though he must be prepared for very light
baskets, yet there are mornings in July when
trout are to be found feeding slowly and quietly
here and there, and when they will take a red
quill gnat if it is put to them attractively. I
have known days in July, when the result of a
morning's fishing has been unexpectedly good,
equal in total weight to that of the very best
days in other months, and equal also in regard
to the size and condition of the individual
fish.

In August I have only once had a morning's
fishing which could fairly be compared, as re-
gards the total weight of trout landed, with the

66

FLY FISHING

good days of earlier months, and it always seems
to me that the condition of the trout in this
month ceases to be quite first-rate. Of Sep-
tember, on dry fly rivers, I have had no experi-
ence. Anglers who write of it agree in saying
that the trout rise better, but that their con-
dition has fallen ofF, and that an unduly large
proportion of female fish are killed.

CHAPTER III

Dry Fly Fishing

{^continued)

Anglers who desire to leam the art of dry
fly fishing should read and study such a book
as "Dry Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice,"
by Mr. F. M. Halford. I do not for a
moment pretend to be able to give instruc-
tion of value and completeness equal to that
contained in Mr. Halford's book, and still less
to improve upon it ; but there is so much variety
in angling and in individuals that each record
of personal experience has something new, which
may be interesting and perhaps even suggestive
or useful to others. The difficulties of dry

fly fishing are common to us all, but we do not

67

68 FLY FISHING

all deal with them in the same way. We make
various experiments of our own, and each of
us after some years of experience has a little
store of conclusions which he believes in
and endeavours to apply. Some of these con-
clusions may seem to other anglers to be mere
foolishness, but wherever they have been applied
for years with moderate success, they are worthy
of record. I have, however, at various times
started in my own mind so many theories which
have been suggested by experience and after-
wards upset by it, that I do not desire to press
any one to accept an opinion, unless there is
anything in his own experience which goes to
support it. There is only one theory about
angling in which I have perfect confidence, and
this is that the two words, least appropriate to
any statement about it, are the words " always "
and "never." Theories, rules, creeds and hypo-
theses are constantly forming in the angler's
mind. Trout seem to make it their object to
suggest these only to upset and destroy them.

There are three successive objects before the
angler : the first is to rise a trout, the second
to hook it, and the third to land it. All are

DRY FLY FISHING 69

essential, but the first is the most important,
and in dry fly fishing the most interesting. To
achieve the first of these objects the angler tries
to make sure, (i) that the trout shall see his
fly bearing the greatest possible resemblance to a
natural fly in appearance, position and motion ;
and (2), that the trout shall see nothing of the
angler's person and nothing else of his tackle
save the fly. The effort, in short, is to make
the trout notice the fly without noticing any-
thing else. It is in this that the fine art of dry
fly fishing consists. The fly is a tiny insignificant
thing, the angler with his apparatus is more or
less bulky and obvious ; but he has to display
the insignificant and conceal the obvious. This,
however, does not explain more than half the
diflficulty, for the fly which is so small must not
only conceal a hook, but also support the weight
of the hook floating on the surface of the water,
and must do this without any appearance ot
eflFort ; a fly lying on its side as if tired by the
weight of the hook is not nearly so attractive
as one sitting upright. In fact, the fly must
float as if it were buoyant, cheerful and in the
best of spirits — natural flies having the appearance

70 FLY FISHING

of being very frivolous and light-hearted. Even
now there is more to be said, for the fly must
float as if it were unattached to a comparatively
heavy line, some yards of which are lying upon
the water; and to this it must be added that
the fly must float with perfect accuracy to the
exact spot, where one particular trout has been
seen to rise some moments before. In good
dry fly water trout are extremely quick to mark
anything that is amiss, so that all these matters
must be attended to.

The various positions in which a trout may
be rising, fall roughly under two heads. The
first includes every position under or near the
angler's own bank; the second includes any
position near the middle or on the opposite
sides of the stream, though in a very narrow
stream all positions may be regarded as coming
under the first head. A trout under or near
the angler's own bank must as a rule be given
the chance of seeing the gut before it sees the
fly. If the trout's body is clearly visible in the
water, it may be possible in theory to make
the fly alight at just such a spot over its head
jtjkat it can see the fly and nothing else, but J

DRY FLY FISHING 71

doubt its being possible in practice, for it must
be a matter almost of hundredths of an inch,
and the angler had better make up his mind
that the gut must float over the trout first, and
make his plans accordingly. If the trout is
rising close under the bank and directly in a line
above me, I have found the better plan to be to
make the fly alight only a few inches above it :
in this position some of the gut must not only
float, but fall directly over the trout, and it is
better that only the finest of the gut should do
so. Sometimes a trout is attracted by seeing the
fly actually alight upon the surface, but person-
ally I do not think it is advisable to pitch the
fly as a rule very close to the fish, and however
lightly the cast may be made, I would rather that
the fish did not notice the fly at all, till it
arrives before him floating without motion of
its own upon the surface.

If the trout is not close under the bank, but
only near to it with a space of open water be-
tween, it is better to throw the fly a yard or more
up stream, sometimes two yards above is not too
much, for the further the fly is cast with a slant-
ing line above the trout, the less near to its head

72 FLY FISHING

does any portion of the gut fall. There arc
days, however, when with all these precautions
trout will not stand the sight of gut, and if
so, as a last resort the angler must try to float
his fly down stream over fish in these positions.^
A whole chapter might be written on the draw-
backs to this particular method. It is neces-
sary first to make an ugly slack cast, but so
that the fly falls free at the end, and floats in
a direct line above the fish ; then the angler, by
lowering the point of his rod and crawling
along the bank, does his utmost to ease the
line down stream and to prevent it from
dragging the fly back. If everything goes well
there is a really good chance of a rise, but
also a good chance of the hook being pulled
straight out of the fish's mouth when the strike
is made. Sometimes very shy trout are caught
by this method, but sometimes they do not rise
to the first cast, or the fly floats rather to one
side of them, and then all is over. When once
the fly is past the trout, there is nothing left

^ The delicate and difficult device of thus fishing down stream is
often described by anglers as " drifting " the dry fly. It is often the
only way, especially in strong, rapid waters such as the Derbyshire
Wye, of avoiding the drag. — Eds.

DRY FLY FISHING 73

for the angler to do, but to scare the trout by
dragging the fly and gut up stream over its head
in the most unnatural manner. This, how-
ever, applies only to trout that are rising in a
direct line below the angler ; with others there
are modifications of the down stream method
which are possible and more satisfactory, and
which I think are too much neglected. It is
obvious that with all its drawbacks the down
stream method has this advantage, that the fish
sees the fly before the gut, and when the angler
is casting to a fish under the opposite bank,
or on the further side of a fairly broad stream,
he should use as much of the down stream
method as he can. By kneeling down as far
back from the edge of the bank as possible,
the angler can get opposite or nearly opposite
to such fish without frightening them, and if
having done this, he can make a cast so that
the last foot or more of gut with the fly at
the end of it is curved down stream, while the
body of the line is either straight or convex
across the stream, he will have combined the
advantages of the down stream method, and at
the same time have got rid of its drawbacks.

74 FLY FISHING

It must be admitted that it is not possible to
make sure of this cast, but it is surprising how
often it can be done with success, especially
if there is a light wind down stream. There is
one corner known to me on the Itchen, where
good trout are constantly rising under the
further bank. The corner receives in conse-
quence special attention from every one who
fishes there. The stream here is slow and
smooth, and the fish become very shy : so much
so, that it is on many days very difficult to
cast over them at all without putting them
down. I have noticed at this place that when-
ever conditions are favourable for arranging the
drift of the fly in the manner just described,
the chance of rising one of these fish is very
much improved, and on still days in the summer
it is seldom that I can get a rise from one of
them in any other way.

The choice of the fly to be used precedes the
making of the cast in point of time, but is second
to it in importance. It is better to throw and
float the wrong fly really well than to bungle
with the right one. In common with most
anglers I carry about with me a much larger

DRY FLY FISHING 75

variety of flies than I ever use, but successive
seasons tend to diminish the number rather than
to add to it, and in practice I should be content
(exclusive of the May-fly and sedge-fly, which are
for special waters or exceptional occasions) with
four sorts. In May these would be a medium-
coloured olive quill gnat, neither very light nor
very dark, and the iron blue. The first of these
is the one for general use, but the latter is
essential also.^ As a rule, if the rising trout in
May will not have the olive quill, the angler
will not have very much success with anything
else, and he will find that the trout are either
bulging or in some state of preternatural sus-
picion. But there are times when the iron blue
comes on the water and is taken, to the exclusion
of the other flies. On such occasions the angler
will easily notice the presence of iron blues, and
change his fly. Sometimes it happens that the
trout begin rising at olives, and the iron blue
comes up later on. I have notes of days when
this has happened, and when the olive was quite
satisfactory for the first hour or so of the rise,

1 The author is here evidently speaking of Hampshire rivers only.
One rarely sees a considerable hatch of the iron blue in the Hertford-
jliiire trout streams^ and not verj often on the Derbyshire Wye, — Eds.

76 FLY FISHING

till the iron blue appeared ; after which the olive
failed, and an imitation of the iron blue suc-
ceeded, though natural olive duns as well as iron
blues continued in numbers on the water.

In June, or perhaps even in the latter end of
May, a red quill becomes the more successful fly,
and a medium size, neither large nor small, is the
best. The trout have a tendency to prefer the
smaller sizes, and when their appetite has become
very delicate in hot summer weather the smallest
possible size^ of red quill, not the smallest usually
offered for sale in tackle shops, but one specially
tied on the smallest hooks of all, is the most
attractive. This size may do very well with
trout up to one pound or one pound and a half,
but the hook is too small to hold strong fish of
a large size. The fish lost after being hooked
on these tiny flies far exceed in numbers those
which are landed, and it is better to rise fewer
fish with a medium-sized fly than to hook and
scare the best ones without getting any of them.
The same objection applies to imitations of that
troublesome little insect the " curse."

The fourth kind of fly is a plain black hackle,

^ I.E., No. 000.

DRY FLY FISHING 77

tied with soft hackles, and on the same sized hook
as the duns. It is always worth while to float
this over an obstinate trout, and on many days
at all seasons it has taken one or two brace of
trout, which I am convinced I should not have
succeeded in rising with the winged flies. There
are occasions when the black hackle will take
trout one after the other. I have a note of one
evening, June 16, 1894, after the trout had taken
a red quill well in the day-time. I had left oflF
about two o'clock, and returned to the same
meadow about six o'clock. The fish were rising
again, but very quietly, and they persistently
disregarded the same red quills that had been
successful before. The black hackle was off^ered
to them dry, and six fish were landed with it.
One cannot of course expect the same success
with this fly on every evening, but on many
evenings, when the trout have been rising in
their quiet evening way between six and eight
o'clock, I have found the black hackle used dry
better than any other fly.

I once had a remarkable experience with this
fly. It was on July 16, 1892. There was very
little rise in the morning ; a few fish were seen,

78 FLY FISHING

but as each one only rose about once in ten
minutes fishing with the dry fly was very inter-
mittent, and up till one o'clock nothing had been
landed. It seemed that nothing more was to
be done, and I sat gazing listlessly at the water.
A fairly broad straight bit of river was before
me, smooth in places, but with small ripples
of stream here and there. The thoughts of
other rivers and of salmon fishing came into
my mind, till at last in a state of sheer despair
and idleness it occurred to me that I would try
a wet fly, and in salmon-fishing phrase "put it
over " the piece of water before me. The black
hackle, a very favourite north country fly, was
chosen and used as a salmon fly, that is to say
it was cast across and down the stream at an
angle and kept moving gently, till the action
of the stream brought it round to my own
bank. The trout took it like salmon take a
fly, sometimes under water, sometimes with a
fair head and tail rise, sometimes with a plunge,
but nearly always either when the fly was
midway across the stream, or when it had come
well round and was nearly straight below me;
and the fish that rose took firm hold, hardly

DRY FLY FISHING 79

any being lost or only pricked. Now and then
an isolated rise would be seen some way below
me, and when the place was reached the fish
nearly always came up well to the wet black
hackle. At three o'clock I had six trout, and
four more were added in the same way during
the evening rise. The weather was not excep-
tional, being an ordinary fine summer's day with
only a little breeze, some clouds, and intervals
of sunlight. The part of the river in which this
method had succeeded was not a hatch-hole or
any exceptional place of that kind, but a clear,
steady, even-flowing, well-fished stretch of the
Itchen. It seemed that a great discovery had
been made, and that the only difiiculty was how
to use it with moderation henceforth. Anglers
are sanguine men, and are easily transported by
unexpected success to heights of confidence ; so
they will, I trust, sympathise with my simplicity.
I have on many occasions tried this fly in the
same manner, in the same water, at the same
time and also at difl^erent times of the season
since j' but never again has it succeeded to any-
thing like the same extent. Perhaps in some
seasons, when the yearly rainfall has ceased to

8o FLY FISHING

be deficient, when this oppressive series of
droughts has come to an end, and chalk streams
are flowing strong, full, and clear above the weeds
in midsummer, there may come another day such
as July 1 6, 1894; but for the present I have
ceased using the black hackle as a wet fly on
chalk streams, not because it catches too many
trout, but because it catches hardly any, and its
record is classed in my mind with that of " Single
speech Hamilton," " The Lost Chord," and other
illustrations of amazing and isolated success.

To hook a trout which has risen to a floating
fly, it is necessary to strike^ for the simple reason
that a fish cannot be hooked on a slack line,
and that it is impossible to float a fly natur-
ally without allowing the line a certain degree
of slackness. The line may be straight upon
the water, but a floating fly cannot be kept
in touch with the point of the rod in the
same way as a wet fly, which is being jerked
through the water or being swept round at
the end of a line kept extended by the stream.
The rise of a trout is sometimes described as
though the fish took the fly with a dash from
below, and then turned sharply down and hooked

DRY FLY FISHING 8i

himself by his own weight. This may be the
case with a wet fly moving under water, but
it is as a rule not the way in which a large
chalk stream trout feeds. He lies close to the
surface of the water, and takes by preference the
flies which pass exactly over him, taking them
with the smallest possible eff^ort and change of
position ; often he does little more than just put
the end of his mouth to the surface and with-
draw it, taking the fly with the mere tip of
his lips, and rejecting it instantly if it is not
what he expects. It seems to me better there-
fore (though authorities diff^er about this) to
strike directly the fly is seen to be taken. There
must in every case be a perceptible interval
required to overcome the slackness of the line
before the strike takes effect, and where, as
often happens, the line owing to the manner
of the cast or the action of the stream is not
perfectly straight upon or in the water at the
time, this interval is sometimes too long rather
than too short. Large trout, which have probably
had some previous education, are apt to feed
very carefully and to take the fly so delicately,
that the angler often has only half a chance

82 FLY FISHING

of hooking them at all, and that only at the
exact moment when the lips close upon the
fly. Any angler may notice how many of his
large trout are hooked in the very edge of
the mouth. I have sometimes, when I could
see the fish in the water, intentionally abstained
from striking in order to see what happened,
and the result has been that, though very small
and innocent trout have sometimes taken the
fly with a confident gulp, and have had ap-
parently a little difficulty in expelling it under
water afterwards, the larger trout have rejected it
in an instant. Where, however, the movement
of a trout can be watched in the water, great
care is needed to avoid striking too soon ; for
if the approach and opening of his mouth — the
sure signs that he is going to take the fly — are
mistaken for the fact of his actually having done
so, the trout will certainly be missed and probably
be scared.

The art in striking is to use the greatest
amount of quickness and decision that can be
combined with gentleness ; personally I prefer
to strike with the hand upon the line, rather
than to be dependent upon the nice adjust-

DRY FLY FISHING 83

ment of resistance in the reel ; and whatever
may have been the case in early and more
excitable days, I do not find much difficulty
now m preventing myself from striking too hard.
But nothing is more annoying than to lose a good
trout by striking too hard ; the fish then often
gives a heavy plunge in surprise and alarm,
which increases the idea of its size, and the
angler overwhelms himself in consequence with
bitter self-reproach. When the gut does break
it is generally at the knot which holds the fly,
and to guard against this misfortune there are
two precautions which no angler can impress
upon himself too much. The first is, to soak
the end of gut well, not merely at the beginning
of the day, but also on every occasion before
tying on a new fly; without doing this he
cannot be sure of tying a sound knot. The
second is, to examine the gut at the head of
the fly carefully from time to time. Sooner
or later the constant flicking will weaken fine
gut, even when the smallest flies are used.
Sometimes the gut at the head of the fly be-
comes untrustworthy in five minutes ; sometimes
it lasts a long time unimpaired. The length of

84 FLY FISHING

time the gut lasts depends upon the angler's
manner of casting and drying his fly, which in
its turn will vary with the position of different
fish and the angle of the wind. In old days
before the use of eyed hooks this weakening
of the gut at the head of the fly was a real
nuisance ; on some days fly after fly had to be
thrown away (if it was not actually whipped
ofi^) after a little use, but now it is an easy
matter to tie the fly on again. It should,
however, be remembered that a new fly is more
perfect in shape and more attractive than one
which has had much whipping to and fro, and,
where trout are large and shy, it is better to
put on a new fly pretty frequently, and to do
so always after landing a fish.

The moment after hooking any trout of two
pounds or upwards is generally one of great anxiety.
Sometimes the fish pulls steadily from the first,
but one in really fine condition generally goes
ofi^ with a rush, as if it realised in a flash the
full horror of the mistake it had made. Fine
gut cannot stop such a trout at first, and all
the angler can do is to handicap it by putting
on as much strain as he dare. This is the great

DRY FLY FISHING 85

crisis : the rise, the strike, and the rush succeed
each other in a moment, and the angler's
emotions are an exquisite blend of- joy and fear.
If the trout is clearly making for a bed of
weeds it is best to let it go in rather than to
risk a break : if it is lightly hooked it will
free itself from the fly in the weeds, but it
may do this in any case. On the other hand, if
the trout is firmly hooked, it is surprising how
often the angler is able to extricate his fish by
lowering the point of his rod, keeping the line
tight and working it gently with his hand.
Time after time I have known fish, apparently
buried in weeds, be perfectly immovable by the
strain of the rod and give no sign of feeling
it, and yet become restless and yield to the
direct play of the hand. It is, of course,
essential that the strain should be applied from
below the weeds. It is, in my opinion, an error
to suppose that the idea of a trout is to roll
itself up in weeds and thus to offer resistance :
its first object is probably shelter out of sight,
but a trout's method of resisting in weeds
is, I am convinced, to lay hold of them with
its mouth. For years I had noticed that there

86 FLY FISHING

were generally pieces of weed actually in the
mouth of fish that were landed after being hung
up in weeds, but it seemed to me unlikely that
they really seized the weed with their mouths de-
liberately. One day, however, I happened to be
playing a trout on a clear shallow, where there
were no large patches of weed, and where every
movement could be seen : the fish came near a
small piece of weed and stuck there, and the
strain on the rod became that of a dead weight.
The thing looked absurd, for the weed was much
too small to conceal the fish, and only the head
was in contact with it. There was nothing but this
ridiculous little patch of weed and the trout — a
fish of not much over a pound — and yet I could
not move it ! When the fish was landed, there as
usual was some weed inside the mouth. It will
of course occur to any one as a possible explana-
tion (and so it did to me), that the line may have
got round the little patch of weed, and so caused
the feeling of pulling at a dead weight ; but it ap-
peared to me at the time that this was not so, and
subsequent experiences of the same kind in shallow
water, where I have been wading close to the fish,
and have been able to examine the situation at

DRY FLY FISHING 87

leisure in every detail, have convinced me that
trout do attempt to resist the strain of the tackle
in the way described.^

Weeds are the great and universal difficulty
with chalk stream trout, and there are times
when large fish break the gut by carrying the
line right through patches of them, and so
arranging matters that they and not the angler
settle how much strain the gut has to bear, but
on the whole, considering how many and how
thick the weeds are, less fish are lost than
might be supposed. Trout differ very much in
the use they attempt to make of weeds, and
every now and then a good fish will appear to
neglect the weeds altogether, as if it were too
chivalrous to take so great an advantage of the
angler. When a fish is bent on doing some
quite fatal thing, such as going down a hatch,
the angler must decide, according to his idea of
the strength of his tackle and of the size of
the fish, whether he had not better at all costs

1 It would surely be hard to over-estimate the importance to the
angler, and the interest to the naturalist, of this theory of Sir Edward
Grey's. The resistance often offered by trout of a moderate size when
they have reached a small patch of weeds in a chalk stream is quite
mysterious. — Eds.

88 FLY FISHING

have the fight out then and there and risk
being broken at once. He should make up his
mind quite clearly about this, and if he thinks
he cannot possibly hold the fish by force, he
had better slacken the line. The sudden free-
dom from the strain sometimes changes the
intention or tactics of the trout.

I suppose that nowhere else, and never before,
have so many large fish been caught on such
fine tackle and small hooks, as have been caught
on the best dry fly rivers in recent years, and
the anglers who fish these rivers know very well
that directly a trout is hooked no possible
advantage must be neglected. The chief point
is to keep below the fish and fight always
with the stream on your side. After the first
few moments, you should be able with skill and
care, first to guide and then control any trout
up to three pounds' weight, if you work steadily
down stream with it. There is no need for
hurry, for time is then on the angler's side,
but there comes a point at which the landing
net should be got ready for possible chances.
A moment of apparent exhaustion generally
seizes a trout before it is really exhausted, and

DRY FLY FISHING 89

if this happens when the fish is within reach
it is well to take the opportunity of landing it.
On the other hand, at the actual moment of
getting the net off the strap, the angler may
be taken at a disadvantage, and he should not
expose himself to this risk till he is pretty sure
that the trout is no longer capable of anything
very sudden or violent. With a very large
fish — the thought of losing which is really
dreadful — I always have a secret fear of getting
the net ready too soon, lest the act should be
noticed by some unseen influence, and treated as
a sign of that pride which deserves a fall. No
attempt should be made to net a good fish till
it has turned on its side, and ceased to struggle
or splash, and till the net is right under it.
The best way is to draw the fish over the
net, not to push the net under the fish.
In practice there is often a combination of
both these movements, but the net should be
kept as still and unobtrusive as possible, until
the final act of lifting, or rather receiving and
drawing the body of the fish to land, and this
should be steady, even, and certain. I prefer
to keep the rod in the right hand, because the

90 FLY FISHING

management of the fish with the rod is more
difficult and delicate, even at the last moment,
than the act of netting.

The dry fly angler on chalk streams has less
reason to pay attention to the weather than any
other. To those who fish for trout on north
country rivers, still more to those who fish for
sea trout or salmon, there comes a certain day
or days after rain when the rivers are in such
perfect order, and when the chance of a very
good day's fishing is so excellent, that it is
really imperative to take advantage of it; but
on the chalk streams of Hampshire this is not
so. The rivers are always clear and in order
as far as the water is concerned. It is true
that the springs which feed them have been
seriously diminished by successive droughts and
deficiencies of rain-fall since the beginning of
the summer of 1887, but the system of hatches
and mills maintains the level of water at any
rate in some meadows, even when the flow of
water is lessened, and no amount of rain has a
sudden eflFect upon the condition of these rivers.
The main difficulty of the dry fly angler is
with the wind, and he devotes all his efforts to

DRY FLY FISHING 91

making himself independent of it. A stiff rod,
a fairly heavy line, a short length of gut, and
the underhand cast will do wonders m the
teeth even of a strong wind; but the dry fly
angler cannot compromise with the wind, and
if it is down stream he must face it and do
his best. It happens from the nature of things
that the cold spring winds blow down stream
in the valleys of the Itchen and Test. These
winds in the early part of the season seem to
delay the hatch of fly without in the least im-
pairing it : on the contrary, the best hatches of
fly and rises of trout often take place in a cold
east wind and on a dull, cheerless day. Some-
times the hatch of flies is delayed till well into
the afternoon, but never in May, however cold
the wind, need the angler despair of having a
really good basket. On the other hand, I have
sometimes in warm weather in May seen the
hatch of flies weak and the rise of trout soon
over. It is not always so, and I do not mean
to say that a cold day and a down stream
wind are to be wished for, but only that the
angler, who starts on such days with a feeling
of disappointment, will often get far more con-

92 FLY FISHING

solation than he expects. One piece of advice
may be given to all anglers, who begin dry
fly fishing when they are young, and that is to
make themselves ambidextrous, to be able to cast
with the left hand as well as with the right. To
my great regret I can only use a single-handed
rod with the right hand, but I have seen one
man at least, who could use either hand equally
well, and the advantage of being able to use the
left hand when fishing up the left bank of a river
against the wind is enormous.

On any day in May and June there will
almost certainly be some sort of a rise at some
time of the day, but rises are of all sorts. Some
of the best seeming rises are the most disap-
pointing, and some of those which seem poor
turn out to be good taking ones. Whatever
the kind of rise may be, it is well to bear in
mind that there are some trout which seem to
be set as decoys in certain places to attract the
angler's attention and make him waste his time.
These trout begin to rise soon and leave oflF
late, and refuse to take an artificial fly. The
angler who knows the water well, probably
knows most of these fish or the places which

DRY FLY FISHING 93

they frequent, and does not spend much time
over them, if there are other fish feeding ; but
on strange water it is well to be on the look-
out for this class of fish, and not to spend too
much time over an obstinate trout unless the
extent of water at one's disposal is very limited.
In the water at Winchester all the trout were
more or less of this class, but that was excep-
tional. On days when the trout are feeding, but
ignore the artificial fly, it is best to give special
attention to trout in difficult situations, where
they are likely to be not so well educated ; and
if even these are obstinate, the angler had better
settle down where most trout are feeding, and
stick to them doggedly, changing his fly as
often as he likes. A trout which continues to
feed will make a mistake sooner or later, if the
angler's patience and his wrist and arm hold
out long enough. " Bulging " trout in particular
are generally not shy, and will stand any amount
of fair fishing without ceasing to feed.

The days when I have had most difficulty with
the shyness of trout have not been at all bright
days, but quiet dull days with an even mono-
tonous light. In this light, and in the evening

94 FLY FISHING

light before sunset, the trout are often very shy,
both of the angler and the gut. Trout differ
very much in this respect on different days, and
on all days individual trout differ more or less
from each other.

A great deal may be learnt of the behaviour ot
trout on bright days, when they can be seen in
the water. Let us suppose that a good fish is
seen feeding where the angler can get into posi-
tion and prepare to cast without disturbing it.
The fly is thrown above the trout, which may
of course take fright at once and rush off to
Its shelter, and if so there is an end ; but short of
this the trout may drop slowly down stream and
go quietly away, or may just sink in the water
and cease feeding. Assuming, however, that the
trout takes no offence at the first cast, it may
then take the fly with hesitation, as if it were
making an experiment, or with confidence as if
the fly were exactly like a natural one, or with an
appearance of rapture, as if the angler's fly were
the one thing for which it had been waiting ;
or finally, the trout may take a middle course
between the two possible extremes of fear and
confidence, and either take no notice whatever

DRY FLY FISHING 95

of the fly or move to it and refuse it. It is
desperate work to continue to cast over a fish
which never takes any notice, but as long as a
trout makes any movement towards the fly it is
worth while to go on fishing for it and to try
a change of fly. Sometimes a new fly of the
same pattern will succeed where a much used
one has failed, and a change of the size of fly
may be as important as a change of pattern.
Now and then the trout is so interested in the
fly that it leaves its place and comes down stream,
inspecting the fly closely as it floats : sometimes
this ends in the trout taking the fly, at others
in its coming down stream till it sees the angler.
Occasionally it neither sees him nor takes the
fly and goes slowly back to its feeding place ;
and in any case the angler's only chance is to
keep perfectly still and make no movement,
unless the fly is actually taken.

Most trout are scared by rising at an artificial
fly, even when they are not touched by the hook.
They know when you strike that something has
happened, which they did not expect, and they
either cease feeding or refuse for some time to
rise to the artificial fly again. On the other hand,

96 FLY FISHING

I have occasionally been clearly conscious of touch-
ing a trout in striking, and seen it continue to
rise afterwards. With one trout I had a curious
experience — it was a fish of at least two pounds*
weight and apparently in very good condition.
It rose to my fly at the first cast ; I struck, and for
a just perceptible moment the rod bent, and I
thought I had the trout, but the fly came back to
me, and I saw the fish drop down stream and lie
at the bottom, apparently meditative rather than
frightened. Very soon it began to work up stream,
and in a few minutes was rising again in the same
place as before. Again I made what seemed to
me a cast much like the first one, but this time
it had the eflfect of putting the trout down
altogether. On more than one subsequent day in
the same season, though there was a fish, which I
believe to be the identical one referred to above
rising in that spot, I never covild get a rise from
it, and it generally disappeared at the first cast.
I have given this instance of an individual trout
having found safety in education, because on
the first occasion I never for a moment lost sight
of the fish, and could be sure of its identity
during the whole time. There would otherwise

DRY FLY FISHING 97

have been no certainty of its being the same fish
that rose a second time in the same place on
the first day. It is astonishing how soon the
exact position of one rising trout will be taken
by another as soon as there is a vacancy :
sometimes if the angler gets a trout quickly
down stream after hooking it, he may on return-
ing to the place after the first trout has been
landed, find a second already occupying the
vacant place and feeding there, as if it had
known the advantages of this particular spot and
been waiting for an opportunity of occupying it.

In writing of dry fly fishing, the expression
" good water " has frequently been used, and it
may be well to give some idea of what the
expression means in the mind of the writer.
Good water must be neither over-stocked nor
over-fished, and must be water which is naturally
capable of holding and fattening trout up to at
least three pounds in weight. In the smaller parts
of chalk streams, near the source, there is gene-
rally water which holds quantities of trout, and
where a very large total weight may be killed with
a dry fly in a day, but the fish in these places are
as a rule satisfactory neither in size nor condition.

98 FLY FISHING

In some cases perhaps this is so because the water
is not fished enough, but in others it is simply
because the water itself is more suited to pro-
duce quantity than quality of trout. An angler
who wishes to enjoy the real excitement of dry
fly fishing should try to get water where the trout
average at least one and a half pounds in weight.
In such water two pounders will be fairly common
and three pounders not unknown. Where trout
average two pounds in weight the fishing may be
better still, but I am doubtful of the advantage of
having a heavier average weight than two pounds,
if the angler has to rely upon one stretch of water
only for his season's sport. Where there is no May-
fly the trout up to three pounds in weight may
be expected to rise more or less all through the
summer. Trout above that weight are, taking
the season all through, bad rising fish, and the
angler has to rely for his sport either upon the
May-fly or upon late evening fishing.

An ideal piece of water would be one with
broad shallows here and there, but with plenty
of deep stretches, not stagnant, but with a good
current all down them ; its breadth in the deeper
parts should be about as much as can be cast

DRY FLY FISHING 99

across by a single-handed rod, and considerably
more on the shallows where wading is possible,
and it should be fairly well fished, to prevent it
from becoming over-stocked. On such water
in a pure chalk stream if there is no May-
fly, it should be possible, all through May, June,
and July, to have good days with trout averag-
ing nearly two pounds and in the finest condition,
and this may be done without relying upon the
evening rise. It is not meant by this that every
day in May and June, and still less in July, will
be a good one, but that there will be several
days in May and June, and some days in July,
when a good basket can be made before the
evening. It will have to be done with small
flies and fine gut, and the angler, who lands in
this way from five to ten trout, averaging two
pounds apiece, on a fine summer's day, need wish
for no more delicate and exciting sport in trout
fishing. One often reads of days with many
three, four, and even five pounders on parts of
the Test or Kennet, but I gather that these
splendid baskets are made with the May-fly, or
with a large fly late in the evening, and that
the waters in which they are possible do not

100 FLY FISHING

give good fishing in the day-time after the
middle of June.

In these days of artificial rearing and careful
preservation, there is always a danger even on
club waters of over-stocking. I doubt whether
there is much risk of this being done by the
most lavish distribution of fry, but I am sure it
is easily done by turning in too large quantities
of yearlings or two-year-old fish, and I have
known or heard of instances where the average
weight and condition of the trout has been
injured in this way, and the sport has suffered
in consequence. Any given stretch of river,
well preserved and free from pike and coarse
fish, will keep alive a much larger total weight
of trout than it can fatten ; and now that good
dry fly water is so carefully looked after, there is
a tendency to try to increase both the number
and total weight of trout that can be taken
in each season from each piece of water. It is
easy to do this at the expense of the condition
of the fish, and so to ruin the sport for the
time being.

The condition of trout varies in difl'^erent
seasons. One cannot expect the average condi-

DRY FLY FISHING loi

tion of trout of two pounds and upwards to be
first-rate before May, and all through the season
some fish will be landed which are not first-rate,,
but the proportion of these seems to me to vary
in different years. In some years the trout
seem to thrive better than in others. I am
not thinking now of whether they are forward
or backward in condition early in the season,
but of the average excellence of condition which
is reached by the middle of June, after which
trout cannot be expected to improve. In May
1887 I noticed that the average condition of the
trout landed during the month was exceptionally
fine. After that year it seemed to me that,
though some fish were as good as the best in
1887, there was not the same universal excel-
lence, and in some seasons there was a real de-
ficiency of condition, though the number of the
trout in this particular piece of water did not
increase. Now in 1887 there was a very good
supply of water in Hampshire chalk streams
at the beginning of the season : it fell oflF greatly
towards the end of the summer, and in no subse-
quent season have we started in May with as
good a head of water as in 1887. So, at least,

102 FLY FISHING

it seemed to me, and I was inclined to think
that the condition of the fish was affected by
the flow of water : that they throve better, were
more active, and had better appetites in a good
flow of fresh water. But the year 1898 entirely
upset this theory, for in that season in May
and June the average condition of the trout in
the same water was again exceptionally fine,
though the head of water in the river was excep-
tionally low. The first suggestion of course will
be that the abnormally mild winter of 1897-98
accounted for this, but the winter which pre-
ceded May 1887 was not very mild, and other
observations have not given me any support for
the theory that a mild winter ensures good condi-
tion in chalk stream trout.

CHAPTER IV
Winchester

Many things are taught at public schools,
but Winchester is probably the only school
at which the most scientific and highly de-
veloped form of angling can be learnt. The
art was not taught at Winchester in my time,
but there were opportunities for learning it,
which a few of us did not neglect. Some
energy was required to seize these opportuni-
ties, for though fishing was not discouraged,
no special facilities were given for it ; the hours
both for work and for games were arranged
without any consideration for the time of the

I04 FLY FISHING

rise, and this fact alone made our Winchester
fishing different from any other. For the per-
fect enjoyment of sport the hours of daylight
should be all our own. "You cannot compel
fish/' as an old Scotch keeper used to say when
salmon fishing, and an angler needs to have
such freedom that, if need be, he can wait for
hours upon the will of the fish, and be ready
to take advantage of their mood at any moment.
This freedom to fit one's own time to suit
the changes of sport is essential to the very
fullest enjoyment of a day's angling. Every
angler should take some pride in being able
to satisfy the often prolonged demands made
upon his patience, but to appreciate this exercise
of patience he ought to feel that there is no
reason for hurry, and if he has only one hour
to spend by the river, this is just what he does
not feel. At school the hours are rigid : it
cannot be otherwise, and so far from having
any complaint to make, I hope to show that
we were at Winchester more fortunate in our
opportunities for fishing than might, all things
considered, have been expected. I will not say
that we always thought so at the time. The

WINCHESTER 105

mature judgment of retrospect is perhaps not
the same as the opinions which were expressed
under the impulse of youth and ardour and the
pressure of the moment.

There must have been about a fortnight of
the trout fishing season left when I first went
to Winchester in September 1876, but I was
not then in a position to take advantage of it.
Most boys probably look forward to the first
days at a public school with alarm and awe.
It certainly was so with me, and I remember
very well discussing this feeling with a con-
temporary at a preparatory school. He and I
had both reached that position of comparative
ease and security which can be attained by
older boys even at private schools, and we
agreed that we looked forward with dread to
exchanging it for the plunge into the unknown
which entrance into a public school appeared
to us to be. Nothing stands out more clearly
in the memories of boyhood than the first days
at a first school, and after them the first days at a
public school. One is bewildered by novelty and
apprehension, and it is not only the outward
incidents, but one*s own inner self and its sensi-

io6 FLY FISHING

tiveness that are clearly remembered. In look-
ing back to Oxford and other first experiences
of later days, it is but a dim and blurred outline
of feelings that I can recall, but very clear
and distinct are the outlines of a very real self,
moving amongst unfamiliar surroundings, in
the first two or three weeks at Winchester. In
these weeks I did not even think of fishing ;
everything about me was so strange ; but there
were not really any hardships, and as the sense
of strangeness wore away, as knowledge came of
what might and what might not be done without
offending against customs and unwritten laws
of opinion, I soon began to rejoice in the com-
parative freedom of a larger world, in the
greater scope of work and games, in the anti-
cipation of all that was before me. I made
many plans during the winter for the opening
of the next fishing season. The trout could
be watched in the Itchen much more easily
than in northern streams ; they were there
before our eyes. On mild autumn days we
could watch them feeding, and numbers of them
were larger than any I had ever hooked. Warn-
ings were given abundantly that these trout

WINCHESTER 107

were not to be caught easily, that with few
exceptions no one at school ever had caught
any : the traditions were of general failure to
which there had been one or two remarkable
exceptions, but even in naming these, hints
were not wanting that it was very unlikely that
any one would succeed again. Nevertheless
the trout were there plain to be seen, taking
flies, and nothing but experience could have
destroyed my hopes or confidence. So on the
opening day of the season, at the beginning of
March, I hurried as soon as possible into the water
meadows. Surely no one ever fished the Itchen
with greater anticipation and with less chance
of success. I must have been a strange
uncomfortable figure, in a large white straw
hat, a black coat, trousers and thin ungreased
boots, splashing in the meadow (which was
under water at the time), and stumbling in
haste into the unfamiliar maze of runnels and
water cuts. None of these drawbacks were fatal
to success. The real obstacle was that I knew
nothing, and had heard nothing of the dry fly,
and was setting to work with a whippy double-
handed rod of some thirteen feet in length, and

io8 FLY FISHING

three flies, probably a March-brown, a coch-y-
bondhu and a Greenwell's glory, which I generally
used in those days. I remember making straight
for a particular spot, which I had often marked
in winter as a likely-looking place; it was one
where the current flowed from me under the
further bank and made a ripple. There was
no thought of looking for a rise, but the water
was fished steadily. No trout showed a sign
of paying any attention to my flies, and at the
end of the allotted hour I left the river, wet
and unsuccessful, but keen and reluctant to leave
off. The same thing happened day after day,
nothing occurred to break the monotony of
failure, and my friends ceased even to ask
whether I had caught anything : but it was at
any rate a drawn battle, for I had no more
thought of leaving off fishing than the trout had
of taking my March-browns and other wet flies.
At last one day at the very bottom of the water
a trout did take my fly at the end of a long
line down stream, but it was a tiny thing, hope-
lessly under the limit of size for the Itchen, one
which might have been counted amongst northern
dozens, but could not be brought home alone.

WINCHESTER 109

During those early days of the season hardly
any other anglers were out, and I saw nothing
hooked ; but as time went on, one or two local
anglers, who understood the Winchester trout,
began to fish, and by watching them and asking
a few questions I came to understand their
method. Some flies were then bought from
Hammond, who was in those days the great
authority upon the Itchen ; they were not tied
with a divided wing, as is the rule now, but it
was possible to make them float, especially the
hare's ears, and it was with one of Hammond's
flies that I had my first success. This was a
long time in coming, for it was not till June
that I caught a trout of reasonable size, and that
was the only one I caught during my first season.
I can see the place and the rise of that trout
now, and recall the anxiety and excitement after
it was hooked ! It was indeed a morning never
to be forgotten : all the deferred hope, all the
keenness of many weeks, found satisfaction
and reward in a moment, the great gulf between
failure and success was passed, and I stood on the
right side. I had seen now how the thing could
happen, and I was sure it would happen again.

no FLY FISHING

The trout weighed a little over a pound, and
was hooked with a red quill gnat. It was
carried home proudly by hand, for I had no land-
ing net in those days ; and though there was no
more success for me that season, it was hence-
forth possible to give a willing answer to the
question whether I ever had caught anything.

A small annual payment gave us the right
to fish in about half a mile of the river on the
part known as " Old Barge," and the Winchester
trout here had ways of their own, the result no
doubt of special education. Day tickets, as well
as season tickets, were issued for this piece of
water, and I have seen as many as eleven rods
fishing it at once, the average number of rods
in the best of the season being probably four
or five a day. The effect upon the trout was
curious but logical. They had become very
difficult to catch, or else none would have
survived ; there were plenty of them, and it
was only partly true to call them shy. As a
matter of fact, it was not nearly so hard to
approach them as it is on many waters much less
fished; nor did they take ofli^ence very readily
at clumsy casts. It was possible tc go on casting

WINCHESTER iii

for hours over rising trout without putting them
down, but it would be a mistake to infer that
they were indifferent to bad fishing. I suppose
habit had made them patient of many faults in
angling, which would have been resented at once
by fish of less experience. The presence of a
figure on the bank, the coming and going of
the gut and of an artificial fly, became to most
of these trout incidents inseparable from their
feeding time. These things must have seemed
to them attendant on every natural rise of
fly, features not altogether welcome possibly,
but on pain of complete starvation not to be
treated with indiscriminating fear. So the trout
rose ; they rose freely, and to some extent imper-
turbably, but they discriminated. To the end
I never was quite sure on what success depended
most on this wonderful piece of water. Fine gut
and a perfectly floated fly and exact casting must
have been of use here as everywhere, but these alone
were not enough. A Winchester trout might
disregard them all, and there was no magic attrac-
tion for it in the first cast ; on the contrary, I
came to look upon it as an exception, if a trout
rose at my fly before it had been often fished over.

112 FLY FISHING

Perseverance and continuous rapid work seemed
to have most effect. There was one man who
understood those fish better than any one else,
and who caught far more ; he fished nearly
every day, and from watching him long and often
I became aware of certain peculiarities in his
style. Of course he knew the water very well
and generally managed to be at a very good
place when the rise began, and once there his
plan was to stick to his fish and to cast quickly.
He dried his fly harder and more rapidly than
any one I ever saw, and brought it floating over
the fish oftener in a given space of time. His
rod and line used to make a very busy sound
in the air, as he dried his fly. It was not pretty
fishing to watch, but when he made a cast, the
line went out straight and accurate, and he once
to my knowledge landed in one day from this
much-fished part of the river seven brace of
trout, all above the limit of size. We used to
find him fishing when we came out, and to leave
him fishing when we had to go in, but his plan
was always the same, to move very little, to
watch the river closely when fish were not rising,
to cast quickly and incessantly while the rise

WINCHESTER 113

lasted, and to change from one fish to another,
rather than from place to place, all day. He
was also a very silent angler, as if his business
was solely with the trout, and what he was,
besides being the best resident fisherman at
Winchester, remained unknown to me. I was
so struck by his success in fishing that it
never occurred to me to ask about anything
else.

One or two of the men who fished this portion
of " Old Barge " occasionally, were anglers of
renown. There was, for instance, the late Mr.
Francis Francis, at that time probably the best
known of all authorities on angling; my recol-
lection of his fishing on the Itchen is that he
used a double-handed rod, and threw a small
fly with it more accurately than it seemed easy
to do with so large an instrument. Sometimes
too, but not often, we saw on " Old Barge "
the greatest angler I have ever met. One could
not say which was the more instructive, to
watch his fishing or to listen to his talk ; no
one had more information to give, no one was
more generous in giving it ; his knowledge
seemed the result not only of observation and

H

114 - FLY FISHING

experience, but of some peculiar insight into
the ways of trout. In the management of rod
and tackle he displayed not only skill but genius.
Such at any rate is my recollection of what I
heard and saw in days long ago, and I gather
from many tributes, which have appeared in
print since then, that the genius of the late Mr.
Marryat was widely recognised, and most highly
estimated, and most willingly deferred to by those
who knew him best.

To enable our school fishing at Winchester
to be understood, it is necessary to give some
account of hours, for the management of time
was most important. As a rule school arrange-
ments did not set us free till twelve o'clock,
and my object of course was to be by the water
and fishing as soon as possible afterwards. My
house — fortunate in all other respects — was un-
fortunate in being the farthest but one from the
river. To have gone there and back after school
was over would have been to lose at least ten
minutes. This clearly could not be endured;
nor must more precious time be lost in putting
together a rod. It was necessary to make ar-
rangements by which one could rush from school

WINCHESTER 115

at twelve o'clock without a moment's delay, with
a rod and tackle ready for immediate use, and
with things of some kind on one's feet and legs,
which, even when the water was *' out," would
with ordinary care keep a dry inside in the
water meadows. Wet feet may be wholesome
enough under proper conditions, but even at the
age of fourteen it is not good to eat dinner and
spend several sedentary hours in wet boots and
socks on every afternoon. By various expedients,
all these difficulties were satisfactorily overcome,
and if nothing untoward happened "up to books"
to delay one, and if " dons " were punctual in
getting work over, it was possible by running
to begin fishing at about five minutes past
twelve. Here let me explain how fortunate this
was for us, — and by "us " is meant those few
of us who cared for fishing, the rest being un-
conscious of the special good fortune of having
this hour from twelve to one o'clock free. It
is, on the whole, the most likely hour in which
to find trout rising. In cold weather it is
often too early; in warm weather it is some-
times too late, but in the best of the fly fishing
season, and indeed in any month of the season,

ii6 FLY FISHING

on water where there is no May-fly, it is often
the best hour of the rise in the day — using
the word "day" as distinct from "evening."
If I were forced to choose one hour, and
only one, in which to fish daily throughout
the season, it would be this hour from twelve
to one o'clock. Soon after one o'clock we
had to leave the water to go up to house for
dinner. It was a compulsory meal for which
one might be rather — but not very — late with-
out notice being taken, and the adjustment of
this point in one's mind, when fish were rising,
was a very distressing business. There are ways
my feet have often trod, but in which I have
seldom gone at a walking pace ; they are those
which are the shortest from different parts of
the river to the house in which I once was,
and many many times have I sped along them,
sometimes full of the joy of success, sometimes
in exasperation and despair, but nearly always
rather late, a rod at full length trembling and
shaking in the air as I ran. The best method
of making a good use of this hour on " Old
Barge" was to choose quickly an unoccupied
place where fish were rising, and to stick to it.

WINCHESTER 117

There would, as a rule, be no success at first, and
the trout would go on feeding, apparently with
a fixed determination to pay no attention to an
artificial fly, but every now and then one of
them after much casting would lose his head
or make a mistake and be hooked. To land
one fish not below the limit of size was satis-
factory ; a brace was a real success. The result
of the best hour which I ever had was two
brace and a half, but that was very exceptional
It happened at the end of May, on a day when
the water was made rough by a strong wind up
stream, and when there was a great rise of full-
sized duns, which the trout were taking greedily.
On whole school days it was impossible to get a
full hour's fishing in the afternoon, and though
there was more time on half-holidays, it was very
seldom that there was a rise at that time. In
the same meadow as this part of " Old Barge,"
there was another stream, known to the outside
world as the mill pond. It was a very dull bit
of water with hardly any current, and though it
held larger trout than the main river, they did not
rise till comparatively late in the season, and then
generally in the evening only. These trout were

ii8 FLY FISHING

in their habits altogether different from those in
" Old Barge." It once happened to me to have
a great triumph and land one of them, which
weighed three pounds and a quarter. This
fish took a grey quill gnat at about five o'clock
one afternoon, but as a rule, all we could do
on the mill pond was to see occasionally the
first signs of the beginning of the evening rise.
In summer we could fish early in the evening,
but we had to be indoors punctually at eight
o'clock, and this was just too soon in June
and July to let us have much chance, either in
" Old Barge " or the mill pond, though we saw
other and freer anglers coming to the water as
we left it. There was more discipline to be
learnt in this way than in any other at school.
To have a passion for fishing, to spend an hour
by the river evening after evening watching
intently for a rising trout, and invariably to
tear oneself away just as the rise began was a
curious experience. There were other parts of
the Itchen, where we used to fish — on "New
Barge" along the old towing path, and from
one side under the old elm trees at St. Cross,
but these places were farther away, and we

WINCHESTER 119

generally went there on free afternoons, and
then only when, after finding no trout rising
in " Old Barge," we roamed about in the
vain hope that they might be rising some-
where else.

These Winchester trout taught us the necessity
of using fine gut and small flies, and of floating
the fly accurately over a rising fish ; but they did
more than that, they taught us to expect success
only as the result of patience and hard work.
This was a valuable lesson, which made the
fishing in other waters seem easy by comparison.
A day on private water, where a feeding trout
might reasonably be expected to rise to the
first accurate cast was a glorious delight ; some-
thing to be thought about for days beforehand
and remembered long afterwards. In fly fishing,
except on very rare days, or on waters which are
really over-stocked and little fished, hard work
is needed to make a good basket ; and to have
been used to work hard and to expect little is
the best of training. The record of trout above
the limit of size (three-quarters of a pound)
caught by me on the water described at Win-
chester, was in 1877 one trout, in 1878 thirteen

I20 FLY FISHING

trout, in 1879 thirty-two trout, in 1880 seventy-
six trout, figures which show how severe the
training was at first, and how my dry fly educa-
tion progressed under it.

It would not be suitable for me to attempt
to tell here the full tale of my gratitude to
Winchester, for to do this would lead me into
many reminiscences which have nothing to do
with angling. It will be enough to say that the
memory of those days is altogether happy, and
that the Itchen and its trout played a part in the
happiness of them.

CHAPTER V

Trout Fishing with the Wet Fly

The enthusiasm which was the result of dry
fly fishing led at one time, amongst those who
were fortunate enough to be able to enjoy
it, to a tendency to disparage the older art of
using the wet fly. A comparison of the two
methods is always interesting, but it must never
be forgotten that it is not necessary, nor even
appropriate, to exalt the one at the expense of
the other. It is true that there are rivers on which
the two methods overlap, and where each can be
used, but even in such places it will be found that
the weather, the season, or the character of the
water decides from time to time in favour of one

122 FLY FISHING

method or the other. It is the habit nowadays
for nations to divide maps into what they call
spheres of influence ; a division which sometimes
accords with geographical and natural conditions,
and at other times is arbitrary. Something of
the same kind is possible between the wet fly
and the dry fly, but with this advantage as
applied to angling, that the division of spheres
of influence is not arbitrary, but prescribed by
natural conditions, and likely to be maintained
by them. Roughly it may be said that the dry
fly method possesses the South of England, while
the wet fly is superior in the West and North
ot England, and m Scotland. In the Midlands
and in part of Yorkshire there is a disputed
territory where both are used, and where there
may be a real competition between them.

In late years the literature of wet fly fishing
has not kept pace with that of the dry fly.
There is nothing known to me in angling
literature which for scientific information com-
pares with the books of Mr. Halford and some
other authors on dry fly fishing, but that is
partly because no such uninterrupted and ac-
curate study of the life of a river is possible

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 123

in typical wet fly streams. In the clear water
of a gentle chalk stream the habits both of the
trout and of the flies on which they feed can
be studied almost as in an aquarium : not only
can more be seen, but observation can be more
constant ; no floods change the conditions of
the river and disturb the fish, while the constant
and abundant supply of food has produced a
greater tendency to regular habits on the part of
the trout. There is nothing in this to detract in
any way from the merit of the authors referred
to, but it does to some extent account for the pre-
eminence of scientific research and knowledge in
the books devoted specially to dry fly rivers.

When, however, we come to discuss the skill
required for one method or the other, com-
parison is not so easy. Some dry fly anglers
may have spoken of wet fly fishing as a *' chuck
and chance it " style, by which small fish are
caught easily in coloured water on coarse tackle.
Some wet fly anglers, on the other hand, may
have expressed a belief that all the talk about
dry flies is superfluous, and that large well-fed
trout in clear and smooth water, can be caught
by the methods, skilfully applied, which are

124 FLY FISHING

successful in north country rivers. If there be
any angler on either side, who still holds such
opinions, he can but be advised to put them to
the test in practice, and so bring himself to a
more just frame of mind.

My own fishing was first learnt amongst
northern trout with a wet fly, but from early
years it happened to me to spend all the best
of the fly fishing season, year by year, upon
chalk streams, till the use of the dry fly became
much more familiar to me than that of the
wet. I have known and tried enough of the
wet fly to be sure that the use of it has very
narrow limits in a pure chalk stream well
fished, where the season does not begin till
May ; and also to discover that the experi-
ence of dry fly fishing has • not been gained
without sacrificing something of the knowledge
and skill which might have been acquired in
the other. Any one who can catch a Winchester
trout should be able to use wet flies with some
effect in riveis proper for them, but his basket
will not as a rule be so heavy as that of the
expert, who has made a special study of the
use of wet flies. It is easier to lay down rules

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 125

for catching chalk stream trout than for catch-
ing those of north and west country rivers ;
neither the flies nor the fish in the latter can
be so constantly and clearly watched, and it
is not possible to describe so accurately the
motion of the one nor the actions of the other,
and therefore to say with so much certainty
what should be done. In dry fly fishing there
is an ideal way of presenting the fly to a fish,
and the angler knows when he has succeeded
in doing this : in wet fly fishing this process,
from the moment the flies alight upon the
water, is out of sight, and even the rise itself
is often unseen. This is an instance in which
the pleasure of the two methods difi^ers. In
wet fly fishing the rise or the coming of a fish
is more unexpected. Surprise is a perpetual
element of the day's work. The angler must
be ready to strike at any moment, and it is in
this constant readiness to strike quickly that,
other things being equal, the great difficulty of
this particular method of angling seems to lie.
Time after time the rise of a quick, active,
north country trout comes upon me like an
emergency for which I am unprepared. I fail

126 FLY FISHING

in the incessant watchfulness of hand and eye
that are required, not as in dry fly fishing at
an anticipated moment, but at all moments,
when the unseen flies are in the water. A
double watchfulness is needed. The hand must
be ready to receive the message from the eye,
but must not wait for it, and the least touch
under water needs even quicker action than a
visible rise. We fish both by sight and by feel-
ing, and many a day there is at the end of which
the number of fish in the basket bears a very
small proportion to the number of those which
have been touched, and which might have been
hooked and landed, by greater promptness in
striking. My own belief is, that in wet fly
fishing for trout the more quickly the strike can
be made the better, and that nothing but constant
practice can give a high degree of efficiency in
this respect.

It follows from what has been said that every
inch of water should be fished with as straight
a line as possible ; in still water this is not
difficult ; in fishing across and down stream it
is easy, except in rough broken water, or where
the stream is uneven, in which cases a line,

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 127

which was cast straight, may do all sorts of
curious things in the water, and the flies turn
out to be in unexpected places ; in fishing up
stream great care is always needed to prevent
the line becoming slack. Here is another
difficulty, for assuming that a fairly skilful dry
fly angler can throw his wet flies lightly and
accurately with a straight line, the management
of the line in the water will still be unfamiliar
to him. The art of keeping in touch with
his flies in rough water is not learnt by the
angler m chalk streams. In wet fly fishing,
if the line becomes slack, the flies will sink
deeper in the water. There is then less chance
of seeing the rise of the fish, and the probability
is that any trout, which takes the fly, will not be
hooked or even felt when the line is slack. At
the end of a day's fishing we know of the fish
that have been touched or risen, but who can say
how many trout have taken the fly and rejected
it, unfelt and unseen ? Here therefore is another
piece of skill required besides that of striking
quickly, namely, that of keeping in constant touch
with the fly without interfering with its motion
in the stream. This is essential to success,

128 FLY FISHING

but not easy to attain. In still water no doubt
a motion must be given to the flies by move-
ment of the hand, but except in still water
and in very slow streams it is probably better
to let the flies float down and sweep round
with such movement as the stream may give
them. So much for two respects in which a
wet fly angler must be especially skilful to be
very successful. He can only acquire this skill
by long experience, and my own opinion is, that
he can only maintain it by constant practice.

To this must be added, amongst other quali-
ties, a knowledge of the habits of trout living
in strong and rocky rivers with streams and
pools and shallows. The biggest trout live in
deep water, but it is not there that they will
be caught with fly in the best of the fly
fishing season. In a good day in April or May,
trout, which are well on the feed, move up to
the shallower broken water near the head of a
pool, or to the wide rippling shallows, and it is
in water knee deep, or even less, that not only
more trout but the best trout will be caught.

Let us take an April day on some northern
river. It is a day's fishing that is before us, and

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 129

the first thought in the morning has been " what
sort of a day is it ? *' Probably that is the
first thought of every one' who lives out of a
town and cares about the country. It is always
some sort of a day in the country, not always
the sort that has been expected or desired, but
one to be looked at, studied, recognised and
made the most of in an appropriate spirit. Now
and then, but very rarely, there comes a day
which is fit for nothing but to sit in the library
with one's back to the window. I am sure I
have known one or two such days, but I cannot
describe one of them. Directly one begins to
think of any past day, some feature of weather or
light or sky is recalled, which seems to prove that
the day had some interest, if only by contrast.
The least interesting day is perhaps one with a
dull unbroken sky, a very cold but not very
strong east wind, the thermometer ranging only
from about 32° to 35° in the twenty-four hours,
and with neither sun, nor rain, nor snow, nor hail,
nor frost, nor indeed anything violent or remark-
able. As for great gales and storms there is a
fearful joy and excitement about them not to be
missed in the country, and rain is delightful. But

130 FLY FISHING

the day that I am remembering now is a fine April
day — one of the very best. April is not a warm
month, but it has some warm days, and if an
angler, who cannot fish all through the month,
happens to choose these days for fishing, he
ought to count himself a fortunate man. Such
days may come at any time of the month,
in the beginning, middle, or end, but in the
north, at any rate before quite the end of
April, trees will still be brown and bare. That
does not matter. There will be a spirit in the
air, an appeal, a promise, a prophecy, to make
a man's heart leap up within him. There is
a feeling of rising sap and reviving life. It is
as if by some great effort of sympathy, a new
sense had been discovered within us, such as has
been imagined for fairies.

*' Fairy ears a-listening,
Hear the buds sprout in the spring,
And for music to their dance
Hear the hedgerows wake from trance ;
Sap that trembles into buds,
Sending little rhythmic floods
Of fairy sound in fairy ears.
Thus all beauty that appears
Has birth as sound to finer sense
And lighter clad intelligence.'*

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 131

This sense alone would be enough, but there
are outward and visible signs too. Green is
rising from the earth, and in some places is as
high as the tops of shrubs. There are scents
in the air and sounds of birds' songs ; not the
delicate songs of summer warblers, at any rate
not in any quantity, but the more robust songs
of birds which have spent the winter in the
British Islands, and know the difference between
the winter and the spring. On such a day in
early April these birds will sing as if this were
the day for which they had longed and waited, as
if the highest bliss had come. Though some of
our feeling about the conscious enjoyment of birds
and other forms of life may be mere fancy, it is
altogether true that there is an ecstasy about the
first warm days of spring which cannot be resisted,
and we cannot tell how much comes from within
and how much from without us. There is a
spirit stirring abroad. We know that we share
it, and that it is not ours alone. This is what
may be felt on the way to the river, knowing
that the day is all before us and that all the day
is ours. Time was when, eager to begin to fish,
I used to hurry this part of the day, but that was

132 FLY FISHING

a wasteful and irreverent habit. Fishing is to be
enjoyed, but it will not be enjoyed any the more
by hurrying past what Nature has to give us on
the way. There is no need to hurry, for if the
start is made in proper time, the rise will not
have begun before the water is reached. On
the bank the first thing noticed is the height
and colour of the river, two things which are
taken for granted on chalk streams, but which
vary very greatly on northern rivers, and make
a great difference not only to the result, but to
the method of fishing.

In April the water will probably be low rather
than high, for February and March are on the
average the driest months of the year, and April
is not generally a month of heavy rains. On
the other hand, the winter rains should have pre-
vented the river from being as low and as clear
yet as it may become in midsummer, though the
water should be cleaner and free from the small
particles of vegetation, which come from the
stones and banks and pools in warmer weather
later on. A fish may be seen to rise now and
then, but it will be nearer the middle of the
day before the rise becomes at all fast and lively,

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 133

and what first attracts attention are likely bits of
water. Some corner or bit of stream will catch
the eye, and stir a keenness which makes one
impatient of preliminary things that have to be
done. It is a right and happy thing to linger
over a walk or drive to the river on such a
morning ; but be the weather what it may, there
is no added pleasure to be gained by spending
time over putting on waders. An angler cannot
even take pride in the way he does this as he
may in the care with which he tests his tackle
and ties his knots. When all is ready I like to
stand either in the water or on a level with it.
Besides the increased risk of being seen by the
fish it always seems to me in trout fishing that
the work is not so well done if the angler is
standing much above the water, and that he casts
better, fishes better, and strikes better when more
nearly on a level. It is of course possible to
cast a longer line from a height, but it is not
possible to fish so well with a very long line
as with one of moderate length.

And now perhaps for some time not very
many trout are hooked. If only a few trout of
average size for the river, and in good condition,

134 FLY FISHING

are landed In the first hour or two, there is no
reason to be disappointed ; all these are so much
to the good : the real rise must not be expected
till eleven o*clock or later, and any slackness of
sport, at any rate up to twelve o'clock, need
not be regarded as prejudicing in the least the
prospects of the day. Presently the signs of life,
both of flies and trout, will be evident enough,
and then the true test will begin. There are
days when the trout will rise everywhere and
take badly, but a very short time will show
whether this is such a day or not. If the rise
is really a good one, and choice of water can be
made without interfering with the sport of any
one else, the angler should so have arranged
matters that he is now, as the rise is beginning,
not far from a really good pool, which has
not yet been fished. At such times I prefer
a good stream at the head of a long deep
pool to any other place. A heavy basket may
be made, especially if there is some ripple,
on broad shallow reaches of a good river
where trout are plentiful, but there is more
chance of an unusually large trout where there
is deep water not far away, and there is a

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 135

separate character of its own about a pool, which
is attractive and gives a sort of personality to
it. One such comes often to my memory. It
is a pool in a north country river, just large
enough to hold salmon, yet not so broad that
the best of it cannot be fished easily with a
single-handed rod by wading ; one bank is the
edge of a grass field, the other is fringed with
bushes, and the stream slopes from the field
towards the bushes. The rough broken water
at the top is fairly shallow, and full of good
trout when they are feeding. There are special
places at the edge of the bushes in which to
make a point of throwing a fly after the nearer
part of the stream has been fished. Each trout
that is hooked fights desperately for the shelter
of the bushes, or for the deeper water below,
and the angler may work slowly down, rising,
hooking and landing fish of all sizes, till he
gets into deep and quite smooth water. On a
good day a dozen trout at least, none of them
less than a quarter of a pound and one or two
weighing one pound each or upwards may be
expected from this piece of water alone.

By two or three o'clock the best of the rise

136 FLY FISHING

will be over, and during the last hours of the
day not very much will be added, but it is
always worth while to fish steadily with a wet
fly, both before the rise begins and after it is
over. This is another instance of the difference
between wet and dry fly fishing. On a Hamp-
shire chalk stream a day's fishing may mean
that the angler has spent a day by the river,
but it generally does not mean that he has
fished all day : on a wet fly river it should
mean both, unless there should be some violent
interruption from the weather, or unless the
water should rise quickly or be in flood and out
of order.

In April I do not fish on into the evening,
but leave off about the end of the afternoon:
after a good day it is pleasant to sit a little
on the bank after all signs of trout have
ceased, listening to the sound of the water, and
thinking with content of what has passed —
leaving till a later hour the anticipation of
other days that may be yet to come.

Other days there are indeed in April of a
very different kind : bitter days when savage
gusts smite upon the water and whirl the line

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 137

about, and hard showers come pelting down
from clouds of fearful blackness, and hands are
in pain with cold. Even then there will
probably be some time in the afternoon
during which the trout will take, though one
may have to fish on for many hours before it
comes. I have seen the rise delayed till nearly
four o'clock. One day I well remember at the
end of April, when a basket which after some
five hours' fishing at three o'clock was light
enough, was heavy and full soon after five
o'clock. The day was cold and the rise was
very late in beginning, but when it did begin
the trout took greedily.

Early in June a passion for taking small red
worms seizes the north country trout : the lower
and clearer the water, and the hotter the weather,
the better do they take. This lasts till the end
of the first week or rather later in July, and is,
so far as I can see, quite inexplicable. There is
nothing apparent either in the condition of the
water, or in the natural supply of food, to excite
this violent appetite at this particular time of
the year. There is of course no month in which
trout may not be caught with a worm, but it

138 FLY FISHING

is certain that for these few weeks of the season
worm fishing for trout is altogether a different
thing from what it is at any other time. It is
an art of which I have had little experience. It
needs special skill in casting the worm up
stream, a knowledge of when to strike, and, for
great success, a practised rapidity in baiting the
hook, when trout are being landed quickly.

After the beginning of July the angler may
have many a pleasant day's fly fishing though
his basket will not often be heavy. The natural
flies continue to hatch out in July and August,
and the trout feed upon them, but in dilettante
ways, and in all sorts of water — in deep still
water, as well as in streams and pools. The
rivers will as a rule be very small and clear, and
the fish partly for this reason, and partly because
they are now less intent at any given time of
the day upon feeding, will be more shy and
particular. It becomes desirable to cover a
larger extent of water than is at all necessary
earlier in the season, fishing one bit of water
because the light summer breeze happens to be
making a fair ripple on it ; another because
a fish is seen to rise ; and a third because it

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 139

is broken water with good sheltering stones,
amongst which fish may be lying : but neglect-
ing or passing lightly over many a stretch of
water, where at the height of the rise earlier in
the season dozens of trout would have been
hooked. In fact, at this time of the season one
has a roaming day, trying many places and many
individual fish, succeeding only now and then,
pleased with difficulties that are overcome
rather than proud of the total, and half inclined
to look upon all success as unexpected. Person-
ally on such days I am apt to spend some of
the afternoon very quietly, and to fall to remem-
bering how the river looked in the spring and
what happened then. Very small and gentle are
the best streams of many north country trout
rivers in July and August, and have then but a
tinkling sound.

♦• Like to the noise of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune."

And the woods are thick and silent at this time.

In September the trout take better, but their
condition is becoming suspect, the days are

140 FLY FISHING

shorter and the glory of the trout fishing season
does not revive.

A perfect trout fishing river is not very large.
There is fine sport to be had in great rivers,
such as the Tweed, but I would rather fish for
trout in a smaller river, where the whole of the
water can be covered by wading, and where trout
can have the main stream to themselves as well
as the shallower sides and eddies. On the broad
part of the Tweed the question will occur as to
whether it would not be better to use a boat, and
thoughts of salmon continually intrude. The
most famous trout fishing river in Northumber-
land used to be the Coquet, and any one who is
curious as to its reputation and merit will find
these set forth in the "Coquet-dale Fishers'
Garland." In size and character and variety of
water the Coquet is a perfect river for trout
fishing, but the average size of the fish is small,
much smaller nowadays we are told than it used
to be, and smaller, it seems to me, than it ought
to be. Why this should be so I cannot tell, nor
why this change, if change it be, in the average
size of the trout has taken place. There are
plenty of trout, it is the size alone that is

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 141

complained of, and this is the sort of complaint
that is very frequent on north country rivers.
Whether it is really founded upon fact, or
whether it is only an impression, I cannot say.
I have seen no actual records of average weight
in other years which enable me to make com-
parisons between them and those of the present
day, and we are apt to remember the larger and
forget the smaller trout of our youth, just as we
so often retain an isolated memory of very hot
days in summer, or very cold days and deep
snows in winter, and take these to be typical of
what the respective seasons used to be in earlier
years. Another river of which I often think,
though it is about twenty years since I have seen
it, is the Dart. Here too the average weight of
the trout is small, as it seems to be in all west
country rivers, but I did not hear upon the Dart
the same complaints of a falling off in size. It
must not, however, be supposed that there are
not large trout in these rivers. I have seen a
yellow trout, which weighed several ounces over
two pounds, landed from a clear stream in the
Coquet on fine tackle in July, but such things
arc exceptional ; and in my own experience, even

142 FLY FISHING

half-pound trout in these rivers are not very
commonly hooked by fly fishers. Apart from
this, the Coquet may be taken as typical of what
an angler might wish a north country trout river
to be. What then should be the average weight
of trout caught with a wet fly ? and how much
should a good basket weigh ? Probably answers
to these questions will diff^er. In my own
opinion, any north country river of size corre-
sponding with the Coquet, in which the trout
averaged three to the pound, would be first-rate
trout water, and as in dry fly fishing ten pounds'
weight of trout landed by fly fishing would be a
good day ; whilst fifteen pounds would be a
very good day, and twenty pounds or upwards
exceptionally good. It has been my fortune
to fish such rivers occasionally, but I am not
sure that I have ever attained on a river to
fifteen pounds' weight of trout in one day
with a wet fly. It will perhaps be interest-
ing to compare this estimate of what may be
expected or hoped for in a day's fishing with
that given by Stewart in his " Practical Angler."
Stewart probably knew the rivers of the Tweed
district as well as any one, and there was ne

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 143

doubt about either his skill or his success as an
angler. He says, " There are not many days from
May to October in which an angler, thoroughly
versed in all the mysteries of the craft, should
not kill at least twelve pounds' weight of trout in
any country in the south of Scotland, not except-
ing Edinburghshire itself." In the same volume,
in another passage, which refers to worm fishing
in July, it is asserted that "he is not worthy of
the name of angler who cannot in any day of the
month, when the water is clear, kill from fifteen
to twenty pounds' weight of trout in any county
in the south of ScoLland." It must, however,
be added that a note, at the end of the first
chapter of the seventh edition of "The Practical
Angler," tells us that before his death Mr
Stewart confessed to a necessity for lowering
this estimate, and we are warned to take into
account his " ideas and habits as to a day ;
which a jealous gamekeeper whom he had always
utterly beaten described as ' twenty-four hours
of creeping and crawling.' "

Much has been written about the proper
method of fishing with wet flies, whether it
is best to fish up stream or down stream. It

144 FLY FISHING

is easier to argue in favour of the up stream
method, and if two men of equal ability held
briefs one on each side, and argued the case
against each other before a jury who were
without experience of either method, and there-
fore presumably impartial, the verdict would
probably be given for fishing up stream. But
controversy is not always the best method of
deciding what is the truth, and in most matters
connected with angling, partizanship leads to
error, just as certainly as in other affairs. There
is no fixed rule to be given in this question
of whether to fish up or down. Every angler
had better acquire both methods, and be guided
by his own experience in the use he makes of
them. If, like Mr. Stewart, the great advocate
of fishing up stream, he discards the other
method altogether, and will not yield even to
a rough wind down stream, but prefers to
contend with it and maintain his theory in its
teeth for hours, by all means let him do so;
but it will be better that his persistence and con-
fidence should be the result of experience rather
than the result of argument or reading. He will
at any rate have the satisfaction of having chosen

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 145

the more difficult part, for it is generally more
difficult to manage wet flies well, when they
are cast up stream. It is probably as easy to
rise trout in this way, but in rough streams,
or even in smooth swift water, it is not so easy
to be sure of seeing or feeling the rise at once.
The flies sink deeper, the line is not kept so
straight, for the stream instead of extending
it makes it slack. By great care, and very
frequent casting in order to rise most of the
trout just after the flies have alighted on the
water, it is possible to avoid or to overcome these
difficulties to a very great extent, but the result
of my own experience leads me to prefer to fish
across and down stream, except when the water
is very small and clear in the summer. I re-
member one day in August in the lowlands, when
the river was full but had cleared after a flood,
and I was fishing a quiet smooth stream which ran
deep under one bank and became shallower to-
wards the other. It happened that I was on the
deeper side, and by throwing a light long line
across and down stream, and letting the flies
come round with a gentle motion, many trout
were caught, but nearly all of them took the fly

146 FLY FISHING

quite under water when the line was straight
down stream. The most successful plan that
day was to let the flies hang in the water ror a
few moments straight down stream at the end of
the cast, moving the point of the rod very gently.
Other methods too were tried by me that day,
but this was by far the most successful.

When trout are feeding freely on natural flies,
the moment when the artificial flies just touch
the water is perhaps the most likely in each
cast, but trout have curiously different moods
when feeding, and there are many days when fish
rise in the middle or end of the cast (when the
flies are sweeping round under water or hanging in
the stream), and appear not to be attracted by fre-
quent and light casting. Sometimes feeding trout
are very difficult and peculiar, and seem to be
attracted by some special attitude or movement of
the flies : it is therefore worth the angler's while
to experiment attentively and to store in his
memory for future use any suggestive experience.

Variety and independence are great charms
of wet fly fishing for trout. There is no need
of a ghillie or attendant to show the pools as
in salmon fishing, and to explain the habits of

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 147

the fish in each different river. Even on a
strange river the angler's own knowledge of
the habits of trout in general will enable him
to use his flies with effect. Intimate knowledge
and long experience of any particular river do
give the angler who has them, a considerable
advantage, and, other things being equal, should
make his basket heavier than that of a stranger,
and may well give him also a sense of legitimate
and innocent pride. But there is also a pride,
both pleasant and just, in drawing upon a store
of general knowledge, and applying it unaided to
the trout in water which is new to the angler.
If he is a skilful fisherman, and keeps all
thought of beating records away from him, he
will not be disappointed with the result. After
many years I still cannot say which is better —
to fish a new river for the first time, or to
fish on a good day water which has been long
known, on which one has the best of reasons
for expectation and confidence. Sometimes it
is novelty and the spirit of enterprise, at others
it is loyalty to old associations and the attrac-
tion of comparative certainty, that decide the
balance of pleasure.

148 FLY FISHING

Of variety of fish and rivers and pools there
is no end in this sort of trout fishing. There
are so many sorts of water, from the swift to the
still, from the rough to the smooth, and all
degrees between them. The banks and beds of
the rivers may be of rock or stones or shingle
or sand or even mud. The height and the colour
of the water . vary from time to time. Even
the difference of size in the trout is an attrac-
tion; there are rivers, where two-pounders are
at least possible, where one or two trout of a
pound or more may be expected on any day in
the best of the fly fishing season, and yet where
trout of a quarter of a pound are no disappoint-
ment. The country in which we fish may be the
wildest or the most homely — bare and barren, or
woody and fertile. If any special choice had to
be made, I would choose a river with steep,
woody banks as the most attractive of all for
trout fishing ; and strong streams in a wild,
open country for rougher sport, such as salmon
fishing. But all have their charms, and memories
of wet fly fishing call up a whole world of
varied aspects of beauty. In one element of
variety alone have dry fly rivers an undisputed

WET FLY TROUT FISHING 149

superiority, and that is in weeds. In other
things I claim for wet fly fishing a greater
variety and diversity of interest, both in country
and water. Let any one think of the different
water which he has fished in Scotch rivers ;
sometimes it has been water as colourless and
nearly as clear as the Test or Itchen ; sometimes
water which is brown, but clearing after a flood,
with small patches of thin white foam borne
down the current. For rich colour a river
coming from peat is best, and best of all when
it is clearing after a flood, and the shallower
parts have a crimson colour in the sun. Good
too is " the amber torrent " and " the granite
basin," as Clough saw them. We must still
long to cast our flies in such places, however
much we may have been blessed with oppor-
tunities of landing large trout in water meadow
rivers on a dry fly. The conclusion of the
whole matter is, that no amount of dry fly
fishing will altogether compensate for the loss
of the other, while no north country rivers can
satisfy the longing for Hampshire water
meadows in the months of May and June.

CHAPTER VI
Sea Trout Fishing

All through May and June the keenest angler

may well be content to stay by a good dry

fly river, for he is having there the best and

most interesting fishing that this part of the

season can give him. But after June is over,

good though some days in July may be, I

own that a certain feeling of restlessness comes

over me. I struggle against it, for it seems a

sort of disloyalty to the river and the country

which have given so much pleasure, but it will

assert itself, just as perhaps the migratory

instinct works in the nature of birds, some of

which leave their summer homes long before the

150

#•

WHEKF. SEA-TROUT RUN

SEA TROUT FISHING 151

warm days have come to an end, while there is
still abundance of food and everything that they
need. As the summer goes on it is felt more
and more that the glory of the woods of the
south of England is over, that they have sub-
sided into a sombre monotony and silence, which
will last till autumn. One feels too that the
water meadows are a little too soft and that
the air lacks freshness ; and so, without con-
sciously desiring a change, one begins to think
of rocks and keener air. The even-flowing
chalk stream, with its mills and dams and
hatches, the river which is so clear and gentle,
so docile and perfectly under control, seems just
a little tame, till at last there rises up before
one*s mind the full-formed images of rough
noisy streams and great brown pools clearing
after a flood. One stands in thought beside
them, and is impatient to be really there.

It may be easy to provide the change of scene,
if that is the only thing desired, but how can this
change be combined with the best of fishing from
the middle of July through August and into
September ? Some salmon rivers may, with the
help of lucky floods, give good sport at this

152 FLY FISHING

time, but the angler cannot get the best of
salmon fishing now. It is only grilse and
small salmon that he can expect to get at their
best. The bigger fish, with which it really
needs a big rod and strong salmon gut to cope,
will not, as a rule, be fresh run^ or in fine con-
dition. There is, however, one sort of angling
that is at its best, and indeed is only good at
all in the months of July, August, and Sep-
tember. These are the months in which the
sea trout run up fresh from the sea, and it is
in pursuit of them that the best sport is now
to be had. It is not to large rivers that one
generally goes in search of sea trout fishing,
and the reason for this is to be found partly
in the habits of sea trout, and partly in the
arrangements made by mankind with respect to
rivers and their rents. Large rivers, to which
sea trout have free access, will also have numbers
of salmon, and if they are let at all will be let
at rents for which the presence of salmon is
entirely responsible, and which are far in excess
of what is charged or paid for the best sea
trout fishing alone. Sea trout in a large salmon
river are not of much more account than grouse

SEA TROUT FISHING 153

in a deer forest, and are even looked upon as
a nuisance when they are running and take a
salmon fly freely, whilst the angler is expecting
salmon. If one lived always upon a large river,
and could fish all through the season, it would
be better in the latter half of July and beginning
of August to take only a small rod and fish
especially for sea trout, but at this time of
year the salmon and grilse are showing freely
in the streams and pools where they lie, and the
angler, who may only have a very limited amount
of salmon fishing in the year, generally takes the
chance of getting some of the salmon which he
sees, and disregards the sea trout. It is difficult
to fish contentedly for smaller fish and not to
try for the bigger, when the latter are constantly
showing themselves, and the result is that one
sometimes wastes the opportunity of first-rate
sport with sea trout in order to have a very
indifferent day's salmon fishing. I remember
one week in July, when sea trout were running
on a first-rate salmon river in Scotland. They
rested in numbers in a very long stream and
pool where they could easily be reached by
wading, but salmon and grilse were there too,

154 FLY FISHING

and I fished with nothing but salmon flies and
salmon gut and a seventeen feet rod. I was con-
tinually hooking sea trout of all weights from
one pound to three pounds, and of course getting
no fun with them on such tackle : if I had used
a small rod, and been content to fish the sides of
the stream and the stiller parts with sea trout
flies, I should have had wonderful sport with sea
trout, and probably have hooked an occasional
small salmon or grilse also, even though it was
impossible to cover the whole water properly
with anything but a salmon rod. As it was, my
total for five days was four salmon (none of them
large) and six grilse, besides a number of fresh
run sea trout, which were all wasted as far as
sport was concerned. The memory of that week
is one of wasted opportunities, which have never
recurred. On the other hand, if I were by that
pool again and the same conditions were present,
I should remember that once in July a friend of
mine landed fourteen fresh run salmon and grilse
in one day from the stream there, and if I gave
myself up to sea trout fishing I might be tor-
mented by the thought that I was missing an
opportunity of having such a day as he once had.

SEA TROUT FISHING 155

Such are some of the perplexities of sea trout
fishing in large rivers.

Large rivers, however, are not the most suit-
able for sea trout fishing. The sea trout is not
content to stay for days and weeks in running
water or strong streams, as the salmon is.
What it really likes is to get to deep still water
as soon as possible ; and small rivers giving
easy access to lochs, or having deep still reaches
of their own, are the best places for sea trout
fishing.

The streams and shorter pools of these rivers
give the best sport of all, when the fish are there ^
but it must be remembered that sea trout pass
quickly through the running water, and the best
river fishing for sea trout is limited to the par-
ticular weeks of the season and the special con-
ditions of the river, in which sea trout run up
from the salt water. The season during which
these fish run in the greatest numbers is in July
and August. During these months they accumu-
late at the mouths of small rivers and burns,
going to and fro in the tidal water waiting for
a flood. With each flood or spate, as it is
called, quantities of the fish move up the river.

156 FLY FISHING

and when the water is still high, but falling,
the angler has his great opportunity.

Let us suppose that he has been for some
days on a good sea trout river towards the end
of July, that there has been no rain for some
weeks, and that he has wandered about for a
few days catching hardly anything, but knowing
that fish are showing freely at the mouth of
the river and waiting to come up. At last there
comes rain. First the dust is laid ; then the
water begins to show upon the road ; and presently
little white streams appear on the sides of the
hills. Still the rain becomes heavier and continues,
and the angler goes out in it late in the evening
to watch the river beginning to rise. He listens
to the sound of rain upon the roof at night, and
with the increasing certainty of a really good
spate a sort of corresponding current of excite-
ment rises in him. If the morning is fine, small
rivers will be high but will soon be falling, and he
goes to a favourite part almost with the certainty
of good sport. Wonderful indeed is the delight
of standing by a pool which for weeks has been
too low, the stream at its head a weak trickle,
its deep part smooth and almost stagnant, the

SEA TROUT FISHING 157

end of it shallow, clear, and hopeless, and of
seeing it now full of agitation, life, and rich
colour. The stream which was so desultory
before, now sweeps right down and through
it, rough and noisy at the top, smooth and
quiet in the deep parts, but always a good
current ; and the whole pool seems full of
character. Anything may come in such a pool
as this, it may be a small sea trout or one of
two, three, or four pounds, or a grilse, or a
small salmon. That is the first charm of this
sort of fishing, after fishing for trout in a chalk
stream ; there is such great variety of size. The
average weight of sea trout caught, including
the small half-pounders, may be little over one
pound, but there is the chance, sometimes the
probability, of hooking something of five or ten
pounds or more, for grilse and small salmon are
always met with in sea trout rivers ; and even
the sea trout itself gets to heavy weights,
though fish of five pounds and upwards are not
common. While the river is high and the
stream strong the best places are in the
smooth currents at the tail of deep pools and
heavy water, and in gentler rippling streams at the

158 FLY FISHING

head of long shallow flats, but the only certain
guide to the best places on each river is ex-
perience, and if the angler has no one to instruct
him he must learn by fishing all places which look
as if they might hold fish. If he works hard
he will soon find out good places for himself.
It is especially delightful to have knowledge of
the water of a river and the ways of the fish
which come up it, when this knowledge has been
gained by fishing alone. The angler always
believes that he has discovered some special
places, which are better known to himself than
to any one else. This belief is very likely
true, but it is also true of other anglers, for
experiences differ, and each season even on a
known river adds something to one's knowledge
of it, partly because the bed of the river and its
banks are altered from time to time by floods.

There is another uncertainty about sea trout
besides the glorious one of size, and that is the
uncertainty of where the fish are. They seem
to run very much in shoals, and one mile of a
river may be full of them when there are com-
paratively few above or below. Whenever there
has been a spate which has made the fish move,

SEA TROUT FISHING 159

the angler has to find out where they are, and if
he does not get them at once in what he knows
to be favourite places, he had better try other
parts of the river at some distance. He should
always remember, however, that the fish may be
in the pools he has already tried and may come
to the fly later, and that it is easy to waste a
whole day in running about without giving any
part of the river a thorough trial. There is a
tendency in sea trout fishing to spend time in
trying to make sure where the biggest fish are.
It is well to be on one's guard against this, and
to remain where one meets with the first success,
or where fish are seen. When a river is high
and coloured the fish do not, as a rule, show
themselves much by splashing or jumping, but
whenever and wherever sea trout do show them-
selves in this way, it is an invaluable help to the
angler, whose first object is to fish where the
fish are, and whose great difficulty often is to be
sure that he is doing this. What a contrast this
is after a Hampshire chalk stream, where one
comes to have an idea of the number and size
of the trout in each meadow, and how much it
adds to the wildness and hard work of fishing !

i6o . FLY FISHING

In sea trout fishing there is no waiting about for
the fish to come on the rise, but constant fishing
and walking and experiment, and on good days
the day does not seem long enough to find out
for certain where the best of the fish are.

The sea trout is a wild mysterious animal
without a home, and its habits differ as much
from those of brown trout as the habits of wild
fowl or woodcocks do from those of partridges.
Being such a vagrant it never has the chance of
the persistent continuous education in the matter
of angling and tackle, which some brown trout
receive, and its standard in the matter of flies
and gut and casting is not so high or refined.
On the other hand, its appetite in fresh water is
more capricious, it is hardly ever on the look-
out for any special flies which can be selected,
and the angler has to trust more to the mood
of the sea trout and his own knowledge of the
river after a spate than to any superior excellence
of skill beyond the average, or extra fineness of
tackle. When sea trout are in the mood they
take as freely as brown trout ever do, but in
fresh water they are liable to longer spells of
indifference or obstinacy. I think that, as is

SEA TROUT FISHING i6i

the case with salmon, sea trout do not enter
rivers till they have stored up enough fat to last
them, if need be, till they have spawned, but
either because they still retain the power of
digestion, or because they are more active and
alert, more easily interested in what comes before
them, they certainly rise to the fly much better
than salmon do. One which I caught with a fly
in a river after a spate disgorged several of the
common black slugs, and it is clear therefore
that they sometimes bring an appetite with them
into fresh water. But for all that, sea trout
cannot either expect or need to find a stock of
food in clean rocky or stony fresh water, and
the angler must be prepared for their often
behaving like creatures that are quite independent
of feeding.

The rise of a sea trout is generally bold and
even fierce. Sometimes it takes the fly with a
silent boil, or even without any sign on the surface
if the fly is deeply sunk. The typical rise, how-
ever, of a sea trout has some sound about it.
There is a quick white splash in the dark water,
and (if the line is tight) the fish hooks itself
So violent and rapid sometimes is the sea trout

i62 FLY FISHING

manner of seizing the fly that it is not safe to
use very fine drawn gut, for tackle which may
be quite strong enough to play and land a
three or four pound fish in open water, cannot
always be trusted to stand the jerk of the sudden
rush with which even a two pound fish seizes
the fly. A sea trout is not in the habit of
feeding quietly upon flies floating at ease upon
the surface. It may do this occasionally, but it
is not used to this method of feeding as brown
trout are, and it takes a fly moving under water,
as if the fly were a thing trying to escape from
it. There are days when almost every fish that
rises seems to hook itself without needing efibrt
or attention on the angler's part ; and there are
other days — generally in bright weather when
the water is low, — when the fish rise short,
because they are shy ; they just touch the fly, and
on these days I think the angler can do a good
deal to improve his sport by striking quickly, by
using fine gut, and by fishing delicately with a
long line. There are yet other days when sea
trout rise boldly and playfully, but fail to touch
the fly at all ; and indeed " fail " is the wrong
wcrd to use, for I think that on these days the

SEA TROUT FISHING 163

fish do not intend to take the fly, and their rises
are the results of high spirits and exuberant
activity. And so the angler appears to have an
excellent chance each time of hooking a fish,
when the fish has perhaps never opened its
mouth at all. Sometimes a sea trout that has
risen and not been touched by the hook will rise
again, but they are very uncertain in this respect,
and I do not fish over one a second time with
the same expectation of another rise, that I feel
in the case of a salmon that has risen once and
missed the fly. Of course one always feels
wronged and aggrieved when a sea trout, which
has not been pricked and has no excuse, refuses
to give another chance, but there are days when
fish after fish rises once, and only once, without
touching the hook. On the whole, however, sea
trout, when they do rise, may be said to take
hold very well.

It was said just now that sea trout fishing was
especially dependent upon the state of the water,
and it is true that a falling river after a spate is
the great opportunity, but the angler need not
despair even when the water is at its lowest, if
there have previously been floods to bring fish

i64 FLY FISHING

into the river, and if there are fairly deep pools
and long stretches of deep still water. The fish
collect in these places when the water is low, and
if there is a breeze, which blows fairly up or
do\/n the stream and so makes a good ripple,
a very good basket may be made. Even when
there is no breeze and a bright sun, it is possible
to have some sport with the small class of sea
trout known as " herling " and by various other
names. These smaller fish run later than most
of the large ones, and are often met with in
shoals. They average only between half a pound
and three-quarters of a pound, but they fight
with extraordinary activity and strength, and they
sometimes rise when no other fish thinks of
doing so. I was once by a small sea trout river
on one very hot bright day in August. The
streams were shrunken and weak, the still places
were smooth as glass, and the water, as is the
case in bare rocky parts of the Western Islands,
was very little tinged with peat and excep-
tionally clear. The fish were in the river, but
there was only depth enough for them in quite
still water, and to fish in that seemed hopeless.
I sat down and opened my box of flies.

SEA TROUT FISHING 165

Ordinary sea trout flies seemed double their
proper size on such a day and by such water.
One could not think of trying them, and one
shuddered at the thickness of undrawn gut, and
yet there was the river, and the day, and the
fish, and I was alone and seven miles from the
lodge. Something had to be done. So I took
out a well-tapered trout cast ending in fine
drawn gut, and added about a yard of trans-
parent stout gut to the thick end of it. On
the fine end I put a plain black hackle fly of a
size suitable for brown trout. A really heavy
basket was of course out of the question, and I
did not rise any large fish, though there were
some to be seen at the bottom of the pools ;
but by using a small rod and this very fine
tackle, I did succeed in getting about ten pounds'
weight of the smaller fish, and though the largest
was under one pound, I had many a good fight.
The conditions made the fishing interesting,
there was enough success to keep me at work,
and if the result was not very remarkable, it
was at any rate enough to give a feeling of
having overcome difficulties, and saved what
seemed at first a hopeless situation. It was very

i66 FLY FISHING

pretty fishing too, for one could see the gleam
of the silver fish, even when they came short or
took a fly under water. In similar conditions,
but with a little breeze, I have found fresh run
fish up to a pound and a half in weight rise
freely. Fresh run sea trout are at all times ex-
ceedingly tender mouthed, and with small hooks
one must expect to lose many of them even with
the most careful handling.

Of all fish the sea trout fights the best in
proportion to its size. Its strength when fresh
run is greater than that of a brown trout of the
same size, and being, as it often is, a stranger to
the pool, or at best only a temporary visitor, it
does not so often concentrate its efforts upon
getting to some known refuge, but rushes wildly
from place to place. The fight of a sea trout
is thus stronger than that of a brown trout and,
if possible, even more active and full of quick
turns. There is no fish with which one has to
be so much on one*s guard against being sur-
prised, either by sudden rushes or by jumps in the
air, and as far as the actual playing of a fish is
concerned, for sheer enjoyment and rapidity of
sensation, I prefer a good fresh run sea trout

SEA TROUT FISHING 167

of three or four pounds in a river on a
single-handed rod and fine tackle to anything
else.

For this sort of fishing in a small river, I like
to use a single-handed rod, but one that is very
strong. One not only has more sport with the
fish hooked on a rod like this, but one fishes
more delicately, and can use finer gut than is
safe with a double-handed rod ; and finer gut
makes a considerable difference in the number
of fish hooked, except when the water is very
much coloured. With a small rod an angler,
who has nerve and patience, will land even
salmon successfully on a casting line tapered to
end with the finest undrawn gut, provided
always that the water is free from obstructions,
such as tree roots and weeds, and that the
angler can follow the fish either along the
bank or by wading.

Every now and then comes the great event
of hooking a grilse or salmon on a sea trout rod
and fine tackle, and then there is a long and most
interesting contest, to which the angler addresses
himself with every nerve strung by excitement.
At first his business is to be very modest in

i68 FLY FISHING

asserting himself, and to save his tackle by fol-
lowing the fish as much as he can, rather than
by letting out line, which may get drowned in
the current. But from the first he selects some
favourable piece of water below him, and en-
deavours to conduct the fish towards it. Often
enough, in spite of all he can do, the contest
drifts away from the desired place ; for the fish
may get there too soon and carry the angler
past it, in which case he must then select with
his eye some other place and make that the
object of his movements. The best place of all
for the last stage of the fight, when the angler
feels that the time has come to contend not only
for the safety of his tackle but for victory, is a
quiet back water with a shelving bank of gravel,
which is even, and free from very large stones.
Any smooth shallow place will do well enough,
but a back-water sometimes brings sudden con-
fusion and helplessness upon a tired fish. When
a fresh grilse or salmon has been landed on sea
trout tackle and a single-handed rod, the angler
must have made good use of his resources of
quickness, judgment, decision, patience and self-
control, and should fttl that come what may

SEA TROUT FISHING 169

afterwards the good fortune of that day's angling
has been made safe.

Hitherto angling for sea trout in rivers only
has been discussed in this chapter, but probably
more of these fish are caught by anglers in lochs
than in rivers. It is a pity that this should
have to be so, but, if a loch is accessible, sea
trout will not rest till they get to it, and there
they are content to remain, till they go up the
small streams to spawn. Loch fishing is for
obvious reasons not so interesting as river fishing.
There is not the variety and individuality of
stream and pool and condition of water ; whilst
in most cases it is necessary to fish from a boat,
drifting sideways with the wind, so that the
angler is always moving involuntarily towards
his own flies, which he is at the same time
working towards himself. Most people very
much prefer to fish from firm ground, where
they can cast when they please, move as they
please, and stop where they please to linger over
a favourite place.

On some lochs, however, the sea trout lie
near the sides, and can be reached either from
the bank or by wading. There the angler can

170 FLY FISHING

be independent, and may have very good sport,
though the advantage of covering a large extent
of water turns the scale in favour of a double-
handed rod. Except on very rough days, fine
tackle is important in loch fishing, and as in
angling from the bank one cannot make sure of
being able to follow the fish, it is necessary, not
to have a heavier line, but to have more of it. I
once hooked a grilse of nearly five pounds on
trout tackle, and a single-handed rod, when I
had only thirty yards of line on the reel, and
when I was fishing from the bank of a loch on
which there was no boat. Twice the grilse ran
dangerously near to the limit of the line ; twice
as a last resource I slacked the line as much as
I could, in the hope of making the fish think it
was free and cease its efforts, and each time it
seemed puzzled, and let me very quietly and
cautiously recover some line. Whether a catas-
trophe was really saved by these tactics I cannot
be sure, but they are worth trying in an emergency.
That grilse, at any rate, was landed.

In lochs the fish are even more capricious
in their moods than they are in rivers. One
generally attributes these moods to the weather ;

SEA TROUT FISHING 171

there always seems to me to be something in the
weather, on any given day, when the fish will not
rise, which is the cause of my having no sport;
and being of an excessively sanguine tempera-
ment— of which I hope never to be cured — I
discover that evening some change, actual or
impending, in the wind or the sky or the tem-
perature, which I am satisfied will make the
next day entirely different. I look forward full
of happy expectation. Yet with all this study
of weather, I have not been able to arrive at any
theory which is satisfactory.

The best day I ever had with sea trout in a
river was when the water was not very high,
and there was a gloomy gale from the east in
August. The best day I ever had on a loch
was bright and hot, and with only a very slight
breeze — not nearly enough in appearance for fish-
ing. Till mid-day I had not had one rise, and
had only seen two fish. Then the breeze im-
proved just enough to make a small ripple, and
quantities of daddy-long-legs came upon the
water ; the little black loch trout all under four
ounces were very pleased with these straggling
insects, and pursued and took them. I did not

172 FLY FISHING

actually see a sea trout take one, but the large
fish began to show by making boils on the sur-
face, and my belief is that the daddy-long-legs
were the cause ; and wherever the sea trout
showed, and I could reach them from the bank,
they took my fly.

There is very interesting sea trout fishing to be
had in Shetland, of which I once had some ex-
perience. It was on a property of some 12,000
acres, remote from all hotels, and so indented by
small and large voes that the actual coast line
was about thirty miles, all wild and rocky.
There were innumerable lochs, but the overflow
of most of them fell into the sea over some
precipice, which no fish could ascend, and the
sea trout lochs were practically only two in
number. Two burns flowed from these lochs
to the sea, and joined each other about a mile
from their common mouth. Very little was known
about the fish, as far as angling was concerned,
and I found myself — for I was alone in the first
days — with the delightful prospect of exploring
the possibilities of salt and fresh water, remark-
able both for extent and variety. When first
I saw the burn it was very low, and the deeper

SEA TROUT FISHING 173

part of it looked like a sulky black ditch. This
burn had so little water that it seemed impossible
any fish could have got up the rocky places at
the mouth, but even then there were fresh run
sea trout up to two pounds' weight in the black
peaty holes, and they took a fly well. When
a spate came in the last week of August, and in
other spates during September, quantities of sea
trout and grilse came up this burn, and we
always found a number of fresh run fish in its
pools willing to rise at all heights of water.

The lochs were less satisfactory. There was
no boat upon them, the bottom was of soft peat,
and the wading peculiar. After wading a few
steps into the water, one's feet sank into the
soft bottom, masses of bubbles came up with a
wallowing sound, and one had an impression of
standing upon a yielding surface, which would
collapse suddenly and let one down into an abyss.
There was no firm ground in the lochs whatever,
but we became used to the alarming feel of the
soft peat and to the bubbles, and in time lost
our fear, though we observed a certain caution
to the end. The most troublesome habit of
the lochs was that of becoming perfectly thick

174 FLY FISHING

after a night of wind and rain, and even in the
rare and short intervals of quiet weather the
water in them was always full of floating
particles. I think the fish would have risen
better in clearer water, but even as it was we
found that some fish would take so long as the
colour of the lochs remained black ; when the
colour became brown, fishing in them was
hopeless.

The third and most interesting sort of fishing
was in the voes in salt water. There was one
voe some two miles in length, with two small
burns about a quarter of a mile apart at the
head of it. It looked a likely place upon the
large map, and we walked over to it one Sunday
afternoon to see and hear what we could. There
were a few crofters near the sea at the place, and
we were told by one of them that fish were seen
jumping in the voe in September, and that some
one was supposed to have fished there once and
caught nothing. We thought this hopeful, for
where fish are seen in Shetland they may be
caught, and one day I walked over to experi-
ment. I seldom spent a more wretched and
hopeless morning. There was no sign of a sea

SEA TROUT FISHING 175

trout, and to be wading amongst sea weed,
throwing small flies in common salt water with
a split cane rod, seemed perfectly foolish and
mad. The burns were only large enough for
minnows, and I could see that there was nothing
in them. Discomfort was added to hopelessness,
for my mackintosh had been forgotten, and some
miles of rough peat hags and bogs were between
me and the house : the morning had been fine,
but about ten o'clock a series of cold, pitiless
storms began, which lashed the voe with wind
and heavy rain. This would not have been
intolerable, if it had not been for the long waders,
without which the deep water of the voe could
not be reached ; but to stand in heavy rain with
waders nearly up to the arm-pits, and without an
overcoat, is to turn oneself into a receptacle for
collecting fresh water. Desolate hills rose imme-
diately behind, and as each storm came frowning
up over the top of them, I retired from the
water and crouched behind an old boat on the
shore till the fury was past. After some hours
of flogging the sea, hooking only sea weed, and
dodging the storms, there was no spirit left
in me. Blank despair overwhelmed me, and I

176 FLY FISHING

turned to go. My back was to the water, but
I had got only a few paces from it when I
heard a splash, and looking round, saw where a
fish had jumped, the first sign of one seen that
day. I went straight to the place and caught a
sea trout almost at once, and in the few re-
maining hours of the day landed sixteen pounds'
weight of fish with fly. It may not seem a
very heavy basket, but it was something to carry
over the moor in addition to heavy waders, and
not to be despised as a contrast to the prospect
of the morning. I had a delightful reaction
trom despair to good spirits, and the satisfas-
tion which perhaps a successful prospector or
pioneer feels in a new country. The largest
fish that day was under three pounds, but I lost
one or two good fish in sea weed, and saw some
much larger.

We still had much to learn about that voe and
the trout there. They moved with the tide, and
we had to understand their habits and follow
their movements. Sometimes the burns had been
in flood, and brought down muddy fresh water
which floated on the top of the sea water. A
good wind soon carried this out to sea, but if the

SEA TROUT FISHING 177

wind was blowing up instead of down the voe, it
dammed back all the burn water at the head,
and made fishing impossible. Much time was
spent in learning these and other tricks or secrets
of the place.

Some of the trout in the sea were brown trout.
The largest we caught weighed four pounds and
three-quarters, and several were over two pounds.
They were perfectly distinct from the sea trout,
and had yellow under-sides and some red spots,
but their flesh was in colour and flavour that of
sea trout. We saw several grilse and small
salmon jumping in this voe, and in October they
turned quite red without having been in fresh
water at all, but we did not succeed in hooking
any of them. I suppose that none of the large
fish, neither salmon, sea trout, nor brown trout,
attempted to enter the little burns till they
were quite ready to spawn. They then could
have gone only a little way up in a flood, and
no doubt returned to the sea immediately after
having spawned.

We were told that there were no true salmon in
Shetland, but we certainly caught many fish from
three pounds to six pounds, which were exactly

M

178 FLY FISHING

like grilse, and would have been called grilse
without hesitation anywhere else. They were
quite distinct from the sea trout, though the
latter overlapped the grilse in size, and our
largest sea trout were heavier than our smallest
grilse. Some of the large fish, which were
jumping in the voes, were apparently salmon,
and perhaps we might have hooked some of
them, if we had used some large bait instead
of flies, but we Were always having some success
with flies, expecting still more, and experimenting
with flies of diflferent kinds, and so the time
passed away. In spite of the forked tail and
other distinctions, I cannot say that I always find
it quite easy to be sure whether a fish which I
have landed is a large grilse or a small salmon ;
but the difi^erence between sea trout and grilse
seems to me clear enough, for the one is un-
mistakably a trout, and the other is not.

Migratory salmonidte are generally divided into
three species — salmo salar^ salmo eriox^ and salmo
trutta. Of salmo eriox^ the bull trout, I have had
no experience. It has the reputation of being
a powerful fish, but a very bad riser, and in
rivers such as the Coquet of being almost useless

SEA TROUT FISHING 179

for angling purposes. As a kelt it takes a fly
well enough in the spring. Salmo trutta^ the salmon
trout, is, I believe, the best sporting fish for its
size in the world. There seem tc me to be two
distinct classes of salmo trutta. There is the
mature fish, which ranges in weight from one
pound up to five pounds as a rule, and may
grow exceptionally to much larger weights; and
there is a smaller fish, which enters the rivers
rather later in vast quantities. This latter
ranges in weight from four ounces to any size
up to one pound. It goes by various names on
different rivers, but is commonly supposed to
be the grilse of salmo trutta^ and both in its ap-
pearance and in its rash unwary nature, it has all
the characteristics of being a young fish, which
is mature neither in mind nor body. In most
rivers, however, these fish of the smaller class
seem to outnumber the mature sea trout of all
ages, which is not the case, taking all the season
through, as between grilse and salmon.

Sometimes I think that sea trout fishing is
the best of all sport. It combines all the wild-
ness of salmon fishing, with the independence of
trout fishing, and one may have all the excitement

i8o FLY FISHING

of hooking large fish without using a heavy rod
and heavy tackle. There is less rule and less
formality about it than there is about salmon
fishing, and there seems more scope for the in-
dividuality of the angler. Perhaps this is partly
because the sea trout season comes so directly
after a long period of work in the stale air of
cities, and coincides with the first burst into
freedom and fresh atmosphere. The difference
is so great in August, after a few days of exercise
in the air of the North, that there come times
when the angler, who wanders alone after sea
trout down glens and over moors, has a sense
of physical energy and strength beyond all his
experience in ordinary life. Often after walking
a mile or two on the way to the river, at a brisk
pace, there comes upon one a feeling of " fitness,"
of being made of nothing but health and strength
so perfect, that life need have no other end but
to enjoy them. It is as though till that moment
one had breathed with only a part of one's lungs,
and as though now for the first time the whole
lungs were filling with air. The pure act of
breathing at such times seems glorious. People
talk of being a child of nature, and moments

SEA TROUT FISHING i8i

such as these are the times when it is possible
to feel so ; to know the full joy of animal life —
to desire nothing beyond. There are times when
I have stood still for joy of it all, on my way
through the wild freedom of a Highland moor,
and felt the wind, and looked upon the mountains
and water and light and sky, till I felt conscious
only of the strength of a mighty current of life,
which swept away all consciousness of self, and
made me a part of all that I beheld.

CHAPTER VII

Salmon Fishing

Salmon fishing is the greatest of all the sports,
that can be had in fresh water. I say "fresh"
water, for I have had no experience of Tarpon
fishing, and though the written accounts of it
convince me that salmon fishing is a finer sport,
I am content to leave any comparison between
the two sports to those who know both. I
am not sure that we all feel for salmon fishing
that intimate affection which we do for some
other forms of angling, but the greatness of
it as a sport is indisputable, and we admit
its supremacy. The attraction of it is found
in the largeness of the fish, the size of the
rivers, the strength of the stream, and the tre-
mendous uncertainty.

SALMON FISHING 183

There is exhilaration and excitement and
mystery about it, the thought of which hurries
us towards any opportunity of angling on a
river which is known to hold salmon in any
quantity. But we come to be fastidious as we
grow older, and though the season of fly fishing
for salmon lasts from about the middle of
January on some rivers in Scotland to the end
of November on the Tweed, we do not look
forward to all parts of it with the same eager-
ness. It is on fresh run spring salmon, that
the angler of experience comes to set his heart,
and for these, on the rivers of Great Britain
generally, the months of March and April are
the best season. If I had to choose four weeks
in the year for salmon fishing, I should take
them from the middle of March till the middle
of April. It was once my great good fortune
to spend a little time in these months for several
successive seasons on one of the best spring rivers
in Scotland, and since those days I have made
comparatively little account of autumn fishing.
The glory of salmon fishing is in the spring. In
March the supplies of water are still high, from
the rain of the ^autumn or from lately melted

i84 FLY FISHING

snow, which has soaked into the ground. The
rivers are kept full, the salmon can ascend them
at will, and can be in their favourite places in
the streams ; and, unless the season be very ex-
ceptional, we can rely upon having enough water
for angling.

It is a great moment when, for the first
time of the season, one stands by the side of a
salmon river in early spring. The heart is full
with the prospect of a whole season's sport. It
is the beginning of a new angling year, and the
feel of the rod, the sound of the reel, the per-
petual sight of moving water are all with one
again after months of longing and absence.
Every stream looks as if it must hold a salmon,
and as if the salmon must rise, and one begins
to cast trembling with excitement and eagerness.
Very delightful are the first few minutes, the
supply of hope seems inexhaustible, and one
bestows it lavishly upon each cast. If the best
part of the first pool is reached and passed with-
out a rise, the angler begins to husband his hope a
little, but remains still content, reaching forward
in thought to the next pool, where he presently
begins with fresh eagerness and confidence.

SALMON FISHING 185

To me there is nothing in all sport equal to
the glory ot success in salmon fishing, but the
supreme moment is undoubtedly the actual
hooking of the fish. However great my ex-
pectation and keenness, the feel of the fish when
it hooks itself comes upon me with a shock of
surprise and delight, and there is a sudden thrill
in having to do with the weight and strength of
a salmon. A sense of complete achievement and
satisfaction is felt merely in the hooking of it.
This satisfaction in hooking a salmon remains
undiminished as years go on, but I cannot say
the same of the actual playing of the fish. I
remember being a little disappointed, even with
the first salmon which I played on a salmon rod.
It so happened that I was, when a boy, particu-
larly unfortunate in salmon fishing. For five
years from the time I was fifteen I had a few
days' salmon fishing in August or September
every year without ever hooking a fish. During
all this time I built many castles in the air, and
imagined the play of a salmon to be like that of
a trout, increased many-fold, not only in strength
and endurance, but also in liveliness. Of course
it was wrong and unreasonable to expect this com-

i86 FLY FISHIKG

bination, and when at last success came, I was
struck with what seemed to me a want of quick-
ness in the movements and turns of the salmon.
I still feel that want of violent rapidity, and
though the play of a fresh run salmon is often
very fine, I wish that it was a little less stately.
In some of the more rapid rivers of Norway the
speed and violence of the salmon seem to be
much greater than they can be in the quieter
rivers at home, and some day perhaps I may
meet with one of those fish, to land which one
has to spend hours and travel miles in the
struggle after it is hooked. I have never yet
had a fish m play on a salmon rod for more than
half-an-hour, or landed one more than 200 yards
from the place where it was hooked.

The art of fly fishing for salmon bears no
relation to any other form of angling with a fly.
If it is akin to anything, it is to working a
minnow rather than a fly, and the salmon angler
must get all analogy with trout fishing out of
his head. The most essential points are skill in
casting and knowledge of the river. In casting
the object of the angler is to throw the fly above
and beyond where he hopes the fish are lying, in

SALMON FISHING 187

such a manner that it may be brought by the
stream moving in a lively and attractive way
within sight of the fish, being gradually swept
across to the angler's own bank. To do this
successfully the angler must cast not only across
but down the stream, and the more down stream
the cast can be made the slower will be the pace
at which the fly crosses the river, the greater
will be the chance of the salmon seeing it, the
less will be the chance of its seeing the line, and
the more easy it will be for the angler to keep in
touch with the fly during the whole time it is in
the water. This is why it is so important to be
able to throw a long line in salmon fishing, even
in a comparatively narrow river : it is desirable
not only to reach the whole of the likely water,
but to cover it at a proper angle. If the cast is
made directly across the stream, the line bags in
the middle, and for the first half of the cast the
fly has the appearance of a dead thing being
towed down stream by a visible cord, instead of
something alive being jerked by its own motion
in the water. Two things especially should the
angler bear in mind when actually casting and
managing his fly : the first is that the salmon in

i88 FLY FISHING

fresh water has more curiosity than appetite,
that he is not waiting for food, nor expecting it
to come to him as he lies in the water. The fly
must rouse the attention of the fish, and must
do it attractively. It should have the appearance
of something trying with difficulty to escape from
him, and so perhaps arouse in him the passion
of the chase, even when he has no appetite to
be appealed to. This is why I think it is im-
portant that the fly should cross the stream
slowly, but with a lively motion. The second
point is that, as salmon lie either at the bottom
of the river or not far from it, the fly should
be well sunk in the water. To secure this in
heavy water it is best not to jerk the fly
violently, but to trust the stream to give the
motion to the fly ; and to use a long and heavy
line. The most successful salmon angler, of
whom I have ever had any knowledge, always
fished with a big rod and a heavy and long line
in the spring. I think his fish nearly always
took under water, but he caught more than any
one else on that river.

If we could watch salmon more in the water,
as we can so often watch trout when feeding.

SALMON FISHING 189

we should learn much that would be of great
practical advantage in angling, both in working
the fly and in choosing size and pattern of fly
for each day. After fishing for a few hours
without a rise we get the impression that the
salmon are not to be caught, and are taking no
notice of the fly at all, but the latter is probably
much less often correct than is supposed. Such
opportunities as I have had of observing the
behaviour of salmon at rest in the water lead
me to think, that the fish are continually taking
notice of the fly and following it when we do
not see them. I was once fishing with a friend
on a beat of the Spean i'n June when the river
was very low. We came to one of the best
pools and found it so low and clear that we
felt sure that it was not worth fishing, but when
standing on a high rock above the pool we saw
one good salmon of nearly twenty pounds* weight,
and four or five small ones, lying together on a
patch of smooth flat stones in the middle of the
bed of the river. It was agreed that one of us
should go down and fish the pool, while the
other remained above to observe what happened.
My friend went first, and as soon as the fly

I90 FLY FISHING

reached the fish, one of the smaller ones fol-
lowed it without breaking the water. Time
after time the fly was cast in the same place,
and one or other of the smaller fish continually
noticed it by some movement, or followed it to
the bank, but there was no rise, nor was the fly
actually touched. Then I went down and my
friend reported from above. I succeeded in
moving the big fish ; he followed my fly two
or three times, but none of the smaller fish made
any movement. Then my friend tried again
and moved more than one of the smaller fish,
but without getting a visible rise from any of
them or stirring the big fish. When my turn
came again the smaller fish never moved, but
the big fish followed the fly right round,
and at last made a rise at it with a visible
boil at the end of the cast, but without being
touched by the hook. That was our nearest
approach to hooking a fish, but we had enjoyed
half-an-hour's very exciting sport. It was impos-
sible for the person fishing to see these salmon
while casting over them, and had either of us
been alone, we should no doubt never have
persevered long enough to get the one visible

SALMON FISHING 191

rise, which we did get, and should have asserted
afterwards with perfect confidence that we had
never stirred a fish. One curious point was, that
though we changed patterns and sizes of flies,
and interchanged them with each other, I could
not move one of the smaller salmon, but only
the big one, while my friend at different times
moved every one of the smaller fish and never the
big one. We had also on this day a very good
illustration of the value of knowing a river. We
had often fished this pool before, when it was
in better order and the fish were not visible, and
we now saw that the fish were lying in exactly
that part of the pool where we had most often
risen or hooked a fish. The reason seemed to
be in these particularly comfortable looking flat
stones, on which the salmon rested, but till we
had once seen this, we had never realised the
special virtue of that one spot in the whole pool.
An old gillie, who had known a Highland
salmon river for very many years, once told me
of a similar experience. There was a deep black
stretch of the river, about a quarter of a mile
long, where the water flowed with a smooth even
current between high wooded banks. This part

192 FLY FISHING

was fished from a boat, and the old gillie told
me that for years he had known that in all
heights of water there was only one particular
bit of some six yards in the whole of it that was
worth fishing ; but he neither knew nor could
guess the reason, till there came an unprecedented
drought, and for the first time in his life he saw
the bottom of this part of the river. Then going
quietly down it all in a boat he saw the salmon
lying together at this one place on some stones
which were more flat and smooth than the sur-
rounding rock and gravel.

This sort of knowledge must be learnt, in the
first place, from those who know; we must in
salmon fishing at first profit by the experience
of past generations on each river and take it on
trust. It would need a lifetime to discover the
best places of a river afresh for ourselves. A
salmon angler of great experience may make
some good guesses at the favourite spots of a
strange river, but even he is sure to mistake
some useless places for good ones, and to pass
lightly over some of the best. Now the most
essential thing in salmon fishing is concentration
on the best places ; it is not enough to be told

SALMON FISHING 193

which are the good streams or pools, and to fish
them all with evenly distributed care. The
angler should fish all that he is told is good
water, but he should concentrate his care and
skill and perseverance on the best spots of the
good streams and pools. The most successful
salmon angler is one who feels expectation — it
is more than expectation, it is almost faith,
founded on previous experience — stir within him
as he approaches certain well-known places. It
is as if there was some magnetic influence in the
angler's confidence, which predisposed the salmon
to take his fly, and an angler who knows that he
is fishing a good pool, but does not know exactly
where to expect a rise in it, has not so good a
chance of rising a fish as the man who has
hooked salmon in that pool before, and knows
not only that it is a good pool, but what is the
best spot in it.

And yet salmon fishing is more lucky than
any of the other sorts of angling discussed in
this book. Luck does perform the most extra-
ordinary feats on salmon rivers, and plays all
sorts of tricks sometimes, but none the less is
it true, that the angler who throws the longest

194 FLY FISHING

line well, and knows the river best, will hook
most fish in the season.

I know nothing which raises anticipation to
such a pitch as salmon fishing, and nothing
which so often wears it down by sheer un-
rewarded toil. There is much monotony about
it ; each cast down a long even stream is very
much a repetition of the one before it, and
when there is no result the angler first loses
expectation, and then hope, and falls into a
dull mechanical state. In summer and autumn
salmon and grilse are often jumping and show-
ing themselves, but in .spring there are no
grilse, the salmon do not jump, and you some-
times cast all day without seeing any sign of
a fish, even when there are plenty of them
in the river. I must admit that, after cast-
ing for hours without a rise, great despond-
ency comes upon me, when it is a question of
fishing a second time over a long piece of water
that has already been tried with one fly without
success. How often have I sat on the bank
and looked at the unsuccessful fly, and
wondered whether it was too big or too little,
and then at my other flies, feeling that there

SALMON FISHING 195

was no reason why any one of their patterns
should succeed better than the one already
tried ; till at last I have looked at the un-
conscious water and doubted whether there were
any salmon there that day at all !

I have never been very successful in salmon
fishing. Another angler once caught over fifty
fresh run salmon with fly in six consecutive days
in March on a river on which I was fishing
at the same time. That is the best record for
the United Kingdom of which I know, for I
should not count any number of autumn salmon
or of salmon caught with minnow as against
these. My own total for those six days was
fifteen clean salmon. I was sharing a rod with
a friend, and in consequence only fished for
half of each day, but I felt that under no
circumstances should I have come near to my
neighbour's figures.

I once caught two fresh run spring salmon
in one day which weighed over 50 pounds
together. The actual weights were 29I pounds
and 2i| pounds. The first one rose to my fly
four times before I hooked it. After the first
rise I made a mark in the bank, walked back a

196 FLY FISHING

little and fished carefully down to the place
again Each time that I reached the mark the
fish rose, but I had no idea of its size till, after
being played for some time, it rushed to the
other side of the river and splashed and kicked
in shallow water — and a very uncomfortable
moment that was. The second fish took under
water in the middle of the river at the tail of a
rapid stream, and for quite a perceptible number
of seconds both the gillie and I thought I had
hooked a rock. But when it did move it became
lively enough. Those no doubt are no great
events compared to the success of others, but if
it is a question of competing in records of bad
days I think I can do better. I once fished
every day for four weeks on a good beat on a
good river in the Highlands in September and
caught only two salmon. They were both under
fifteen pounds, were both red, and one of them
never rose at the fly at all, but happened to foul
hook itself by jumping on the top of the gut in
a swift stream. Another season I fished for ten
consecutive days during what should have been
the very best fortnight of the spring fishing, on
one of the best spring rivers in Scotland The

SALMON FISHING 197

water was in order the whole time, but I not only
never landed one salmon, but never even had a
rise. On the last day of all my fly was taken by a
fish under water, and I landed a — sea-trout kelt !
Finally before the day was over my rod broke in
two. It is difficult to believe that it all happened
without design on the part of some hidden
power, which took delight in watching my long
blank days of disappointment, then in mocking
me with a sea-trout kelt, and which at last in
sheer hatred and malice broke my rod.

I have found the weather very interesting in
March in the north of Scotland. More than
once the river has been frozen. There was one
exceptionally severe frost in 1 891, which for a
few days made fishing impossible. In the first
days of the frost we used to break the ice at the
sides of the best pools and push it out in large
pieces into the open stream in the middle, which
gradually carried it away. By this means we
used to get a little clear water in which to fish
during the middle of the day, but every night the
frost became more and more severe, and at last
there was no open water left except just the
rough streams at the head of the pools, which

198 FLY FISHING

after a few yards plunged under a sheet of ice
unbroken from bank to bank. I have no accu-
rate record of the shade temperatures of that
time. There was a thermometer hanging on the
side of the lodge exposed to the sun in the day-
time, which registered remarkable extremes. On
one night it fell to 5° (27° of frost). The fol-
lowing day was still and cloudless, and with the
sun full upon the wall the thermometer rose to
90°. The next night it fell to 3° (29° of frost),
I remember on that day spreading a mackintosh
upon the snow, and lying in the March sun
without an overcoat in great comfort, looking at
the frozen river. In very severe frosts, when the
air is very still and cold the water freezes on the
line, the fly becomes frozen hard and stiffs, and
the line with its coating of ice becomes too heavy
for casting. The smaller rings on the top joint
of the rod then become solid blocks of ice, and
the line cannot run. You thaw the fly in your
mouth, strip the ice off the line and clear the
rings, but it all forms again, and little progress
is made. In a moderate frost, when the sun is
strong and thaws a little snow and ice in the
middle of the day, the river will rise a few inches

SALMON FISHING 199

in the afternoon. I remember one March when
this happened for several successive days, and in
consequence we invariably hooked one or two
salmon at the same hour in the afternoon. As
long as the frost lasted, this was the only good
hour of the day, but it was a certainty. The
only drawback was that the slight thaw and rise
of water brought down a quantity of small
detached pieces of soft ice, which interfered with
the working of the fly, and were often caught by
the hook.

There are other days in March which are
typical of spring, very bright, and caressing one
with warm breezes. Then one sees the grouse
in pairs walking about tamely, the cock bird
with a crimson crown, full of play and pride,
and showing off with various antics ; while the
clear air vibrates with the most wonderful of all
the notes of birds, the prolonged spring notes
of curlews, the most healing sound that ever was,
full of rest and joy.

One great charm of the actual fishing for
salmon is found no doubt in casting right out
into dark rushing water; in having to do with
the full force of a strong river instead of with

200 FLY FISHING

shallows and gentle places in small streams, as
in fly fishing for trout. Each has its charm, but
the unobtrusive delicacy of trout fishing is out
of place in a salmon river. Angling for salmon
is coarser work, but it requires skill, and the
effort and surroundings are most stimulating. In
spring, too, there is a great sense of mystery
about the water. Fresh run salmon do not jump
at all, or show themselves much in the early part
of the season. The angler may see nothing, and
yet hope for everything : the number of salmon
in any part of the river varies continually, and
each day, as the angler watches the river, the
water betrays none of its secrets ; they remain
hidden till his fly discovers them.

In May, and in dry seasons often in April,
salmon angling is apt to be spoilt by want of
water, and this difficulty remains till autumn,
though each flood ought to bring up fresh fish,
and the angler who is always on the spot may
have many good days. In July the grilse run in
numbers, and favourite streams and pools become
alive with jumping fish of all sizes and colours,
but except when there is fresh water in the river
they take very badly. I have fished on such a river

SALMON FISHING 201

as the Lochy in August till 1 have been exaspe-
rated and made weary by the sight and sound of
fish jumping, splashing, making boils, showing
heads and tails, and doing everything except take
my fly. In summer the fresh run fish are gene-
rally either small salmon or grilse, but when the
water is in order there are plenty of such fish
in first-rate condition to be caught. Very good
sport may then be enjoyed, especially on a small
rod and light tackle, but my experience has been
that August and September are very bad rising
months on large rivers. October is on the
average the wettest month of the year, and in
ordinary seasons the rivers become full again,
and the salmon that are in them take better, and
continue to do so in November, but to me much
of the charm has then gone. It is true that on
a river, such as the Tweed, fresh run salmon may
be landed in November. They are fresh from
the sea, but they have neither the liveliness nor
the hard condition of spring fish, and in all
autumn fishing, the greater number of the fish
landed are either red or discoloured. Perhaps I
have become unduly fastidious, but I cannot care
for autumn fishing with the same eagerness as in

202 FLY FISHING

past years, and cannot get away from a sense of
regret and discontent caused by the appearance of
the fish at that season. It is essential to the per-
fect enjoyment of salmon fishing that the fish
which is landed after hard work and a long
struggle should be brilliantly white, with all the
redness and strength and goodness accumulated by
rich feeding in the sea still stored in its flesh.

A Blue Book about salmon was published last
year (1898), which contains most interesting but
rather depressing information. It has given rise
to much controversy, chiefly, I think, because in
some comments made upon it the conclusions
to be drawn from the book have been stated too
absolutely. To say that unspawned salmon
never take food in fresh water at once provokes a
statement that they take worms and swallow
them. We all know this; but the fact that a
salmon will often swallow a bunch of worms
curling just in front of his nose, or has occasion-
ally been seen taking natural March brown flies
in spring, and been caught with an imitation of
them, does not prove that there is no conclusion
to be drawn from the very careful scientific in-
vestigations described in the Blue Book.

SALMON FISHING 203

The result of these seems to me to confirm,
beyond all possibility of doubt or dispute, a fear
which has always haunted me when salmon
fishing, and weighed upon my spirits during long
days and hours of eflFort without success. This
conclusion is that it is not in the least necessary
for salmon to feed in fresh water after coming
from the sea, and that we who fish for them are
dependent for our success upon their caprice,
whim, temper, curiosity, or any chance emotion
known to fish, except appetite. In angling for
trout we rely with some confidence upon their
appetite. If the fish are there we conclude that
they will feed at some time, and we expect to
succeed when they do. But that upon which we
rely in trout fishing is absent in the case of salmon
in fresh water. Salmon do not need food then at
all, and the stomach is so changed that they cannot
digest much, if anything, and presumably there-
fore do not hunger. The wonder is that salmon
should ever be caught by angling in fresh water
at all, and as a matter of fact there is said to
be one variety of Pacific salmon which never is
caught in this way ; but the rule with British
salmon is happily less absolute.

204 FLY FISHING

Apart from the angler's skill and knowledge of
the river, success in salmon angling depends more
upon the condition of the water than upon the
weather. It is better to fish in the most unlikely
weather, when the water is in good order, than in
the best of weather when the river is rising or
" dead low." The most certain time of all in
which to get a salmon is when the river begins to
rise. If the angler is then at a good stream or
pool and the salmon are there, he will probably
hook a fish ; but this favourable opportunity only
lasts for ten or twenty minutes or half-an-hour.
The more quickly the water rises, the shorter will
this happy period for angling be, and after it is
over there will be no more sport as long as the
water continues to rise. The serious business of
a salmon in fresh water is to work his way up
stream. He does this when the water is rising,
and when he is fairly engaged in doing it he
will not look at playthings. It must also be
borne in mind that fish do not as a rule take well
when they are expecting a flood, and it follows
that a day on which the river rises is likely to be
a bad day on the whole, though one on which the
angler will probably save a blank, if he is lucky

SALMON FISHING 205

enough to be at a good place at the right
moment. The best chance of having a really
good day's sport is when the river has cleared
after a flood and is falling. The salmon have
then stopped running, but are not yet thoroughly
settled in their new places. They are still active
and alert and more ready to pay attention to
salmon flies. I think it is probable, that the
more recently a salmon has entered a pool the
more likely he is to take a fly. It is not hard
to imagine that he is in good spirits at find-
ing himself in an easy comfortable resting-place
after struggling through rough water and over
shallows. In spring, when the rivers are full
and salmon can keep on moving up day after
day without being dependent on a flood, I have
noticed that a fish, which is seen to make a
boil at the tail of a pool, frequently comes at the
fly, if it is cast over the place directly or soon
afterwards. A ghillie of much experience, a
very good fisherman, first called my attention
to this, and said that he thought these were
fish which had just entered the pool, and I think
he was right.

Salmon fishing is a sport in which the angler

2o6 FLY FISHING

need not grudge any amount of success either
to himself or his friends, if they fish with a fly.
In any fair-sized river, the number of salmon
which can be caught with the fly even by fishing
all day and every day up to the end of October,
is so small in proportion to the whole of the
fish, that the stock of salmon belonging to the
river will never be impaired or unduly reduced
in this way. The salmon which are in one pro-
prietor's stretch of the river one day may not
be there the next. He need no more think of
sparing them, when they are inclined to take, than
he need of sparing woodcocks, when shooting his
covers, in order to reserve them for another day's
sport. In this respect salmon fishing has an
advantage over trout fishing. The migratory
habit of salmon gives a feeling of freedom to do
one's utmost, as well as a feeling of uncertainty
whether the fish are in the water or not.

But migration leads to great difficulties and
drawbacks. If it is true that it is not in the
power of any one owner to spoil his own and
other people's sport by fair fly fishing, if is
also true that it may be in the power of one
owner by netting, to spoil the sport of the

SALMON FISHING 207

whole river, and as a matter of fact sport on
most rivers is seriously interfered with by netting
at the mouth or in the lower waters. The
question is a very difficult one, and has led to
much legislation and litigation. It is clear that
everybody, from the fisherman in the sea to
the owners of the spawning beds at the head
of the river and its tributaries, ought to have
some share of the salmon, but I do not think
that legislation has always managed to dis-
tribute this share fairly, or in a way which is
satisfactory to the various interests, and is likely
to protect the average stock of fish. I do not
write as an expert in these matters, but it appears
to me that on very many rivers the netting is
too severe and too constant during the spring
and summer, and that it might on the other
hand be prolonged to a later date in the autumn.
At present it often happens that anglers get
practically no sport at all till the netting season
is over, and it is becoming the habit of the
salmon in some rivers to ascend them later in
the season owing to the fact that year by year
it is only the late running fish that have a
free passage. This state of things is neither to

2o8 FLY FISHING

the interest of the anglers nor of the netsmen.
The nets get fewer fish because an increasing
proportion of fish do not enter the river till
after the netting season is over ; the anglers
have most of their sport crowded into the back
end of the season, when the fish are not in
first-rate condition ; and the numbers and general
quality of the stock of salmon in the river
deteriorate. It would be much better for every-
body, if the netsmen allowed a longer weekly
close time in which salmon might run freely
all through the season, and were in return given
an extension of time in which to net fish at
the end of their season. At present the netting
season ends while the fish are still in first-rate
condition at the mouth of the rivers. It ought
not to be prolonged to the present date of the
rod fishing, which now extends to the end of
October or even November, but on most rivers
there is now a margin of two months between
the close of the netting, and that of the rod fish-
ing. This margin might very well be reduced
by prolonging the netting season in return for
a guarantee that anglers should have a larger
share of the spring and summer salmon.

SALMON FISHING 209

Let us return, however, to angling proper.
Next in importance after the condition of the
water comes the state of the weather. Every-
body concludes that there is some connection
between the state of the weather and the mood
of the fish, but we have never been able to
establish it scientifically. Perhaps some future
generation will read another Blue Book, which
will by chemical analysis explain the effect of the
weather upon the mood of salmon, and enable
us to arrange our angling accordingly. But at
present it does not appear that the united ex-
perience and observation of all anglers, past and
present, has been able to produce a satisfactory
set of rules to guide us. Heavy warm weather,
with low bits of cloud sulking about on the sides
of the mountains, is generally very bad : a gale
of wind is sometimes good, especially when the
water is low : extreme heat is much worse than
extreme cold. I do not think a high sun matters,
unless the water is very clear and low, but I
distrust a low sun shining right down a pool,
full in the faces of the fish. The angler may
be well content if there is a fresh feel in the air,
and the clouds are light and high, but the first

210

FLY FISHING

and last advice about salmon fishing is to work
hard in any light, under all conditions of weather
or water (except in a rising flood), whenever
there is good reason to believe that salmon are
in the river.

CHAPTER VIII

Tackle

Anglers have sought out many inventions in
tackle. Life is not long enough for us to be
able to use more than a small portion of these,
and it seems to me that the object of writing
about tackle to-day should be to lessen and not
to increase the amount, which we think it
necessary to carry with us. This is what strikes
me when I reflect upon the enormous variety of
flies described in books and displayed in tackle
shops ; and upon the consequent difliculty of
making a selection for the outfit for an angling
holiday : one cannot buy up the whole stock of

212 FLY FISHING

salmon and sea trout flies, but as the eye dwells
upon the patterns of flies, almost each in turn
seems so attractive as to be indispensable. How
often have I gone into a tackle shop to make
provision for a spell of fishing in Scotland, and
entered it with fairly distinct ideas of the limits,
both in number and variety of flies that were
wanted ; and how often have these limits ex-
panded and at last dissolved altogether under
the genial influence of the display of flies upon
the counter. The number of seemingly indis-
pensable patterns increases as the sheets of flies
are spread before me ; so too does the number
of seemingly indispensable sizes of each pattern,
and at last I emerge, exhausted by the struggle
of selection, alarmed at the amount of my
purchases or my order, and yet uneasy for fear
it should not be large enough and I have omitted
the one thing needful after all.

Now assuming for the moment that there ever
is such a thing amongst salmon and sea trout
flies as the one thing needful, it is true that the
larger the collection of flies in the angler's box
or boxes, the more chance is there of this one
thing being included : but, on the other hand, it

TACKLE- 213

is also true that the very large extent of choice
in his boxes diminishes the angler's chance of
selecting the right thing at any given moment.
After much trouble I have therefore come to
the conclusion, that we lose more than we gain
by carrying about a large stock of fancy flies,
and by this I mean that we lose not only in
purse, but in number of fish. I have come to
believe that in all kinds of fly fishing we get
most success on the whole by concentrating our
attention upon a few patterns of proved merit
and persisting with them, and my advice to every
young angler is to get confidence in a few
patterns by experience, as quickly as he can, and
to stick to these. He must at first use the ex-
perience of others to put him on likely tracks,
but that confidence, which is half the inspiration of
good fishing, must be gained at first hand. Being
convinced therefore that the object should be
to exclude patterns of flies rather than to include
them, and to lead us to concentrate upon a few
varieties only in the virtue of which we thoroughly
believe, let me give the results of my own experi-
ence, for what they are worth.

Of salmon-flies I will give four patterns.

214 FLY FISHING

1. Jock Scott, as the best all-round fly, excel-
lent for all seasons, weathers and waters in Great
Britain, and to be used of all sizes. I believe
the Jock Scott to be the best blend of colour
that has ever been invented for a salmon fly.

2. Wilkinson. A large size for high-coloured
water, and a very small size in low water and
bright weather.

3. Black Doctor. First-rate in summer, if used
of a small medium, or very small size in clear
water.

4. Th"; Torish, tied with a yellow and not
a blue hackle. This is an excellent fly in spring,
and as regards size, I have found it most suc-
cessful on a No. 6/0 Limerick hook, which cor-
responds to a No. 16 or 17 size of hook in the
new scale. With a box of these four patterns,
tied of, say, five diflferent sizes varying from
No. 8 up to No. 1 8 (new scale) Limerick hooks,
I should feel perfectly content, as far as salmon
flies were concerned, on the banks of any British
water at any season. Perhaps a few flies of a
larger size than No. 18 should be added for
exceptional occasions. I agree, however, with
the views which are so well expressed by Sir

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TACKLE 215

Herbert Maxwell with regard to salmon flies
in his delightful book on salmon fishing, and
am prepared to admit that there may be many-
other sets of four patterns of equal virtue.
But the accidents of personal success have led
me to fix upon these four, and therefore I give
them in the belief that, though other patterns
may succeed as well, none will do better.
For sea trout let me take the following :

1. Soldier Palmer. I have found no better fly
than this, when a river is in good order after a
spate. A good size is one tied on No. 8 Pennell-
eyed, Limerick hook, and this is the form in
which I use it ; its merits are not confined to sea
trout, for in one day on a single-handed rod,
while fishing for sea trout, I once landed five
grilse, weighing altogether 2 8| pounds, on this
fly. I do not think it has the same virtue in
smaller sizes when the water is low and clear.

2. Jay wing, black body, ginger hackle, silver
twist. This fly is not so good as the former
in highly coloured water, but is most excellent
and reliable in clear water ; the size may be
varied from No. 4 to No. 8.

3. Woodcock and yellow. Succeeds in the

2i6 FLY FISHING

same sizes and under the same conditions as
the preceding pattern.

4. Black and orange spider. I use this alone
on a bright day and in low clear water, tied
on a No. 4 Pennell-eyed Limerick hook, and
have found it in these conditions attractive to
sea trout and sometimes irresistible to herling.

In wet fly fishing for trout I am content with
March-browns, Greenwell's glories, and Mr. Chol-
mondeley-PennelFs No. i hackle fly in spring,
tied upon Nos. i , 2, and 3 hooks. As the season
advances and the rivers become very low and
clear, I change to a red quill gnat and a black
spider upon No. o hooks.

With favourite dry flies I have dealt in a
previous chapter, and I need only state their
names here. They are :

1. Olive quill — medium shade.

2. Red quill.

3. Iron blue.

4. Black Spider, Nos. 00 and o Hall's eyed
hooks are the most useful sizes for all these. A
No. 000 red quill is very successful in rising
trout on hot midsummer days ; but it is too
small to hold heavy fish satisfactorily.

TACKLE 217

As there is sometimes a difficulty in identify-
ing flies, I have in this case referred to Messrs.
Hardy of Alnwick, and have adopted their names
or descriptions of the patterns which I submitted
to them.

Gut is the most troublesome of all parts of an
angler's tackle, but less so in the case of salmon
and sea trout, than in trout fishing. I prefer in
salmon fishing to have a cast tapered with some
three feet of plain single gut next the fly, it is
more transparent than any twisted gut can be,
and it is not difficult to get it round, clear and
strong. The thickness of it must be propor-
tioned to the size of the fly, the size of the rod,
and the strength of the stream, rather than to the
size of the fish. Even a big salmon in easy-
going water can be landed on comparatively fine
gut with a light rod, but a heavy rod and a large
fly are not compatible with fine gut. No one
can play a fish so delicately with a big rod as
with a small one, and perpetual casting with a
large fly wears out the fine gut near its head.

For sea trout in clear water, when a single-
handed rod is used, a tapered cast ending in the
finest undrawn gut should be strong enough ; be

2i8 FLY FISHING

sure, however, that the gut really is undrawn, and
have some spare lengths of it with which to keep
the finer end of the cast in repair.

It is a great pity that we cannot get undrawn
gut fine enough for difficult trout fishing. The
strength of new undrawn gut is, in proportion to
its thickness, quite amazing and it will stand a
great amount of wear and tear. It is when we
come to drawn gut that our difficulties are so
great. Like all gut it has an unruly curliness
when it is new and dry ; it begins to rot when it
is kept wet or exposed ; it frays and wears thin
when it is used. Even when sound one often
breaks it when testing it : if it is not tested,
one cannot be sure that it is not rotten. All an
angler can do is to keep a pretty fresh stock of
drawn gut of different thicknesses, and put on
the finest that he dares to use, and renew the fine
end of his cast, whenever he sees that it is getting
weak and worn. It is well to remember also that
the constitution of all gut, drawn and undrawn,
differs : some casts, which are strong enough
when new, rot much sooner than others. It
may be that the amount of sunshine, or the sort
of weather to which they are exposed, causes the

TACKLE 219

difference. I prefer not to carry spare casts and
gut damp, but to soak each new piece as it is
wanted. This takes a little time, but not really
very much, and I think that the less gut has
been exposed to alternate moistening and drying
before being used the better it is.

For knotting lengths of gut together the
ordinary double knot is as good as anything.
The single knot will hold if the gut has been
properly soaked, but the gut will break at a
single knot much more easily than at a double
one. For tying small dry flies on to the end of
the cast the Turle knot, as described in Mr.
Halford's book, is the best and the generally
accepted one ; no angler need trouble about any
other. For salmon flies on gut loops, I use the
following knot : Pass the end of the gut up
through the loop, bend it over on the further
side, bring it under the loop and pass it up under
itself so as to form a loop of its own round the
fly loop. Then bend the end of the gut back
over the cast, and pass it through its own loop,
carrying it flat along the body of the fly, and
pointing towards the bend of the hook. Then
hold this end still while the knot is drawn tight.

220 FLY FISHING

This is a most easy knot to tie, even with cold
fingers; it is safe, and can be undone when the
fly is changed.

Of lines it is only necessary to say that tapered
waterproof plaited silk lines are excellent, but I
think, at any rate for trout fishing, that nothing
is better than a Manchester waterproof plaited
cotton line ; when it is new it goes into the eye
of the wind beautifully. I think the silk line is
better than the other after each has had a season's
wear, but though lines, if carefully and regularly
dried, will last a long time, they should be
frequently tested and not trusted too long. A
ludicrous accident once happened to me, when
fishing for salmon with an old line. It was a
pouring wet morning, and just at the critical
moment when the river began to rise I hooked
a salmon in a broad open stretch of water. This
salmon played sulkily; after a few minutes I
tried to reel in some line, but the fish was not
very willing ; the wet line would not run easily on
the dripping rod, and broke suddenly about half-
way up the rod. I was alone, but the fish, not
understanding the situation, gave me time to lay
down the rod, and knot the line rapidly to a

TACKLE 221

ring. What I ought to have done of course
was to join the two ends of line near the reel,
and trust to being able to play the fish without
needing more line than was already out : had I
done this I should have retained for myself the
privilege of being able to reel in line. But to
do this would have taken longer, the fish might
have made a bolt while I was doing it, and I
was in great terror and had no time to reflect.
The result was that when communications were
re-established, I was attached to a salmon about
twenty yards away, without any power either of
reducing the distance, or of allowing it to be
increased. Far below me was a broad extent of
shingle, and I fought to gain this. The river
was at least forty yards broad, but the salmon
kindly restricted all his struggles to my side, and
at last I stood upon the shingle, on a level with
the water, and with flat ground on which I could
retire from the water's edge. This I began to
do, and was succeeding yard by yard when the
hold gave and the fly came back to me. Then
followed the thought of how much better things
might have been managed, and the blank despair
of knowing that with a rapidly rising river,

222 FLY FISHING

there was no chance of another salmon that
day.

On one other occasion my reel line broke. I
had hooked a salmon, which ran up into some
water full of notorious sunken rocks, amongst
which the line got fast. I put on a strain in
every possible direction, and tried pulling by
hand, but could move nothing and feel nothing.
As a last resource I let out all my line and went
down to the full length of it in order to get a
pull as directly down stream as possible. The
line broke unexpectedly, close to the reel, and in
a moment was swept out of the rings by the
stream, and into the river, and I saw it no
more that day. But the next morning my
friend wading on the opposite side in slack
water felt something round his feet, and at
luncheon presented me with the whole of the
lost line and part of the cast still attached to it.

The lines usually sold for dry fly fishing are, I
think, made rather too heavy. It is well to have
a heavy line ready for a day with a strong down
stream wind, but the lines which are generally
recommended for dry fly fishing seem to me not
only heavier than is necessary, but heavier also

TACKLE 223

than is pleasant or desirable for fishing in
ordinary weather.

A very heavy reel line makes one's fishing
less delicate, and on days when very fine gut
has to be used, it makes what may be called the
gradient of the taper too steep, so that the fly
is continually catching the reel line in the air,
and interrupting one's casting. By all means
keep a reel with a heavy line in readiness, and
in rough weather go out to contend against an
adverse gale equipped with your stiffest rod and
a heavy line and a short gut cast, but for
ordinary days use a lighter line, and more gut
even though you continue to use (as I do) a
stiflF rod.

For many years there has been a constant
improvement proceeding in the make and pattern
of reels ; it is easy enough to get a good one,
and every angler should get one of the best
construction. It is better to have one good
reel than two inferior ones, for an unreliable
reel entails the certain loss of a big fish sooner
or later. The line is sure to refuse to run at
some critical moment, either because it has been
overrun and tangled on the reel, or because

224 FLY FISHING

the reel sticks suddenly. There should be no
temporising or working on with a reel which
has once begun to play tricks; till it has been
overhauled and made good, trust it no more
than you would a watch which has taken to
stopping at odd times.

For a first-rate rod it is generally agreed that
there is a choice of two materials — greenheart
and split cane. Nothing throws a better line,
or is more pleasant to use than greenheart, but
it has one disadvantage, that of being more
brittle than split cane, and after breaking many
greenheart tops I have taken to having split
cane tops made for a greenheart salmon rod,
and have found them last better. The cost of
each top is only about thirty shillings, and a
rod so composed is, I believe, about as strong
as one entirely of split cane.

For double-handed trout rods I know nothing
better than one entirely of split cane, and I
prefer it with a steel centre.

For dry fly fishing and single-handed work
it seems to me that a split cane rod is cheaper
in the long run than any other. It should be
in two pieces only, and in delicate work with

TACKLE 225

a dry fly, 1 think that one can fish more accu-
rately without a steel centre.

Every angler who has fished much on chalk
streams must know how impossible it is even
with the greatest care to prevent the hook
touching or catching in weed now and then,
when a line of any length is being lifted off
the water quickly. Time after time have green-
heart rods been snapped most untowardly in
this way. Mine generally broke close to the
joint, and years ago I took to diminishing the
danger by using two-piece spliced greenheart
rods. These were a little more troublesome
to put together than the ordinary rods, but
if they broke at all it had to be somewhere
else than at the splice. Even these did not
remove all danger of disaster, if, when one was
working hard and keenly, the hook caught
suddenly either in a weed in front or in a bush
3r grass behind, and at last after many accidents,
partly caused by being, I fear, a somewhat hasty
and too vigorous angler, I bought my first split
cane rod, a powerful two-piece ten foot six rod,
of Messrs. Hardy in 1884. The butt and joint
of that rod are still as sound as ever, after

226 FLY FISHING

landing many fish of all weights up to ten
pounds, and though I have worn out one or
two tops, not one has ever broken suddenly in
the act of fishing, and they have stood faithfully
against the most fearful shocks caused by weeds
or bushes in the act of casting. It is this
toughness of split cane which, in my opinion,
settles the question decisively in its favour, and
though after several seasons' hard work in all
sorts of weather and in contending against
down stream winds a split cane top may weaken,
mine have always given me ample warning :
never in trout fishing, since I have used split
cane, have I lost a minute's fishing by the break-
ing of any part of my rod. Split cane is the
most staunch of all materials ; like an old and
faithful servant, it is incapable of treachery or
sudden change, and when it fails it does so
gradually. My own original split cane rod has
become a trusted companion, used to all winds
and weathers, to burns, chalk streams and rivers of
many kinds ; to trout, sea trout and grilse ; doing
all that is asked of it, having more than once
risen to the occasion of playing a salmon, and
remained straight erect and fit after landing it.

TACKLE 227

After every season of hard work and exposure
a split cane rod should be sent to its maker
to be re-varnished, and the one or two split
cane tops, which in the course of years I have
thought it safer to lay aside, have failed owing
to my having too often in the press of other
things neglected this precaution. As there seems
to be some controversy about the respective
merits of greenheart and split cane, it may
be worth while to add, that besides the ten
foot six rod mentioned above, I have had two
others of the same size built for my own use.
The first of these did its work thoroughly,
kept its straightness in spite of hard work,
and lasted till I lent it to a friend, who rode
with it on a bicycle along an open moor-
land road. Unfortunately, on the way he and
the bicycle, with the rod tied across the handles,
fell headlong down a grass slope, and the rod's
life came to an end. I am sure that a two-piece
greenheart rod would not have survived the fall
either. The second was built to take the place
of this broken split cane rod. It has done
two seasons' fair work without a sign of weak-
ness anywhere, and remains perfectly straight.

228 FLY FISHING

After fifteen years' experience of single-handed
split cane rods, I should without hesitation claim
for mine that they have kept their straightness
and lasted better than grecnheart would have
done under the same amount of work, and they
have freed me entirely from the fear of a sudden
break of the top joint in casting a line however
long.

Years ago, when my wrist was young and weak,
I found a difficulty in getting with one hand
the full amount of work out of a ten foot six
or eleven foot rod, which was powerful enough
to throw a line against a strong wind, and I
acquired as a boy the habit of fishing with the
reel turned up and pressed against my arm
above the wrist. This increases enormously the
leverage which the arm has upon the rod, and I
find that I can in this way fish easily with a
rod, which it would be quite beyond my power
to use single-handed in the ordinary way for any
length of time. I am bound to confess that I
have not succeeded in inducing my friends to
adopt this method, but I am convinced that it
enables me to do more work with less weariness
of the arm than would otherwise be the case.

TACKLE 229

and that its advantage on the days, when one has
to contend with a strong down stream wind in
dry fly fishing, is very great.

In all angling, but especially in dry fly angling,
there is no greater misery than to be using a
whippy rod. It never for a moment lets you
forget its inefficiency : inaccurate even on still
days, it seems to take a pleasure on rough days
in watching the wind sweep away the line in the
air, or blow it back. When you attempt to
strike a fish, the silly top bends nearly to the
water before it executes the strike, and when
you have hooked a trout you are in despair at
the rod's weakness and want of control. Take
care, if a rod errs at all, that it does so on the
side of stifl^ness.

So far this chapter has dealt only with the
absolutely essential parts of an angler's equipment.
There remain other things of which some are
indispensable on certain occasions, but not always,
while others arc merely convenient. Landing
nets and gaffs present little difficulty whenever
the angler has an attendant; but one of the
great charms of angling is the complete inde-
pendence which an angler feels when fishing

23© FLY FISHING

alone, and never is this enjoyed more than when
it is possible in salmon fishing. Unfortunately
the conditions of salmon fishing make the con-
stant assistance or advice of an attendant often
indispensable. It is so when a boat has to be
used, when the angler does not know the river,
or when he has a reasonable expectation of landing
more fish than he can carry home. There is,
however, no more exhilarating experience, than
when an angler, relying entirely upon his own
knowledge and judgment, has risen and hooked
a salmon, and has to face the struggle alone
without the possibility of assistance of any kind.
For these occasions at any season of the year,
when it is lawful, the angler who is alone
should carry a gaff. Sir Herbert Maxwell
describes in his book an arrangement for doing
this, which I shall take the next opportunity of
trying, for my experience hitherto has been that
gaffs which are convenient to carry are not con-
venient to use, and those which arc most effective
in use are most awkward to carry. It takes
longer to bring a salmon within reach of a gaff
in one's own hand than it does to have it gaffed
by an attendant ; but if the hold of the hook is

TACKLE 231

good the act of gaffing in ordinary water can be
done as surely at last by the angler himself as by
any one else, and the best way is that which is
most easy and certain — to gaff the fish over the
back in the thickest part.

But in gaffing my practice is the reverse of
that when using a landing net for trout. In the
case of a fat lively trout on a small hook, the
management of the rod seems to me up to the
very end more difficult than the use of the net,
and I therefore keep the rod in the cleverest
hand — the right hand in my case. I can receive
a trout in the net and draw it to the bank as
well with the left hand as with the right. With
the gaff it is not so ; and at the moment of
gaffing the management of the gaff is, I consider,
more difficult than that of the 1 :>d. My left hand
cannot be trusted either to gaff or lift the salmon
so surely as the other, and I therefore change
the rod to the left hand as the critical moment
approaches, and use the gaff with the right. One
ought, however, to be doubly sure that the fish
is exhausted before this change is made, and this is
one of the reasons why it takes longer to gaff one's
own salmon than to have it done by an attendant.

232 FLY FISHING

In trout fishing I do not like a net which
must hang by the middle of the handle. The
net then hangs too low, and is more apt to catch
in bushes, fences, brambles, or even under one's
own feet when kneeling and crawling. There
should be a hinge, not in the handle, but at
the head of the loop of the net, which thus
hangs by its head. In this case the handle must
be short, but if a longer handle is desired, a
telescopic one may be used, with a metal clip
so arranged that the handle hangs upright, but
telescoped, on the strap of the basket, with the
net folded over at the head. This sort of net
is easily detached, and the handle and net are
both sent out straight in a moment with one
movement of the hand.

The lightest and most comfortable form of
waders for water meadows, or shallow water
free from large stones or rocks, is that with long
waterproof stockings coming well up on the
thigh, and with indiarubber soled boots, the
whole in one piece. These waders are not the
most lasting, nor do they soon dry inside, but
the convenience of being able to slip them on
and off easily is very great. A heavier kind with

TACKLE 233

more leather and nailed soles lasts longer. In
salmon fishing, and in many trout rivers, wading
trousers nearly up to the arm-pits, separate
brogues and outside socks arc needed. If one
has to walk much from pool to pool they are
a terrible discomfort. I hate the putting on of
my wading trousers, the wearing of them, the
walking in them, and the sight of them alto-
gether, but I prefer them infinitely to fishing
from a boat. They hamper one in every possible
way, but they do not destroy one's independence.
As regards a fishing basket the only essential
points are that it should be large enough and
strong enough. Fishing baskets are made with
all sorts of dodges, and every one can amuse him-
self by trying these, and may perhaps find some
convenience in some of them. I have one basket
which is fitted with so many dodges and straps,
that though they were all explained to me once
I have never been abk to remember the use of
all of them, and I sometimes spend idle moments
on the bank trying to re-discover for myself the
meaning of certain of the more mysterious straps :
but the basket holds the fish very well. > For a
basket of any size it is very important to have

234 FLY FISHING

a broad soft band across the shoulder, in order
to guard against soreness and to diminish the
aching and oppression caused at last by a heavy
weight.

Spring balances (a small one for trout and a
large one for salmon) ; boxes for flies (in the
case of dry flies one in which the flies are kept
loose in difi^erent compartments, and not fixed
with their hackles pressed upon cork) ; a soft
leather case for casts and gut lengths, with
separate pockets ; a knife with scissors, dull
neutral-coloured clothes, and a soft hat, in which
flies may be stuck when frequent changes are
necessary, with a brim above which a cast can be
wound — these complete my equipment for fly
fishing.

Some innate conservatism lurking in me has
prevented me hitherto from taking to the use
of parafiin for dry flies. I do not defend myself,
for I cannot prove that an oiled fly is less attrac-
tive to shy trout than a clean one ; but I do
not believe that — except on very wet days — I
should land any more trout by using parafiin,
and I know that whenever a suspicious trout
refused my fly I should be wondering whether

TACKLE 235

the paraffin was the cause of it. Well-made dry
flies used to float very well before paraffin was
adopted ; they do so still ; and I resent the
intrusion of the odious little bottle and oil
amongst my fishing tackle.

On the other hand, I am grateful for any pre-
paration or any dressing which makes the reel
line float upon the water. The sinking of the
reel line is a great drawback in dry fly fishing.
If the whole of the line which is cast upon
the water continues to float upon the surface,
the striking of a trout, or the lifting of the line
and fly for the next cast, are made much easier,
and the chance of the fly dragging is diminished.
In wet fly fishing a reel line which will insist
upon floating is a great nuisance, and the angler
should have at least two lines ready for use,
one for chalk streams and another for wet fly
rivers.

^^=^

Experiments in Stocking

I HAVE never had any opportunity of stock-
ing water on a large scale, but I have made
experiments in two ponds, and the results may
be of use to others who have similar pieces of
water, and may perhaps be interesting or sug-
gestive to those who have more extensive oppor-
tunities and can compare my little attempts with
larger ones.

The first experiment was made in a new pond,

which was excavated in a clay soil. This pond

936

EXPERIMENTS IN STOCKING 237

had a bottom of nothing but clay, and was
fed by a small trickle coming down an open
ditch, which became, however, a rushing turbid
flood of surface water after very heavy rain.
The pond was some ninety yards long by twenty
to thirty yards wide, and varied from two to
six feet in depth. Some weed {Char a foetidd)
appeared of its own accord, and there was a
natural supply of fresh water shrimps.

In May 1887 about 200 yearling Loch Leven
trout from Howietown were put into this pond.
By the autumn of 1888 these had grown to be
from six ounces to half a pound in weight ; in
June 1889 they averaged about eleven ounces; in
the last half of August 1889 seven trout caught
with a fly weighed eight pounds, or an average
of over one pound apiece. In August 1890
eight trout caught weighed only seven pounds
five ounces, and the average for the whole of the
season was a little under one pound. This then
appeared to be the limit of the average weight
that the trout would attain if the pond were
kept stocked.

In February 1890 I put in seventy-five two
year old Salmo fontinalis^ and with these I had

238 FLY FISHING

an interesting experience in the first autumn
flood in the following October. I had con-
structed a sort of wire trap below the pond,
in the hope of catching in it any fish which left
the pond during floods. It was a very imperfect
afi^air, for it was quickly blocked by leaves and
overflowed, but after the first flood in October
we took thirty-nine Salmo fontinalis out of it
and replaced them in the pond. As there were
at most only seventy-five fontinalis in the pond,
it was certain that more than half of them had
made a determined effbrt to get down stream, and
it is probable that several others, besides those
recaptured, had escaped from the trap and gone
away altogether. The number of trout in the
pond was about double that of the fontinalis^
and yet not a single trout was found in the
trap — a striking illustration of the difference
in the habits of the two species of fish and of
the much greater difiiculty of retaining a stock
of fontinalis.

In May 1891 the fontinalis in the pond had
reached a weight of fourteen ounces ; whilst
in August one of one pound one ounce was
caught, and the last ever seen there was in

EXPERIMENTS IN STOCKING 239

September 1891. Out of the seventy-five fon-
tinalis put in only seven were killed altogether,
and the experiment has in consequence not been
repeated.

In regard to trout, on the other hand, out of
about 250 (including the 200 yearlings intro-
duced in 1887) put in at various times up to
1892, nearly 100 have been killed with fly,
and though many have doubtless escaped during
floods, yet there still remain a few in the pond.
No small trout have appeared, and it is clear
that those which do remain are fish which have
been put into the pond artificially and not
reared in it naturally. The result altogether has
been an interesting illustration of the migratory
nature of fontinalis as compared with our own
trout, and it should be added that though one
or two of the fontinalis appeared for a year or
two in the burn below the pond, and found
their way into a larger burn well stocked with
trout, yet none of them remained there, and
they have, I ^believe, entirely disappeared.

My second experiment was tried in a different
place which was originally a quarry. It has
been disused for many years, and a natural

240 FLY FISHING

spring has filled it with water. The place is
about 200 yards in length and of varying
width, but in no part more than twenty-
five yards from bank to bank. The depth of
water on the deep side is over ten feet, and may
be much deeper for all I know. The water
is generally quite clear, and no rain ever dirties
it, for there is no inflow except from the hidden
spring, or springs at the bottom. There is no
visible outflow, but the water after reaching a
certain level must soak into the ground, and
probably finds its way into the common covered
drains of the field. There are two sorts of weed
growing naturally in this water, one is Chara
fcetida^ which carpets the bottom and is full of
fresh water shrimps, and the other is Potomogeton
Nutans^ a useless stringy thing, with leaves that
cover the surface after the middle of July, and
which has to be cut every summer in consequence.
Into this place 200 yearling Loch Levens were
put in May 1887. In the autumn of 1888
the weight of these varied from four ounces
to three-quarters of a pound; in June 1889
those caught ran from eight ounces to fifteen
ounces ; in August one of on? and a half

EXPERIMENTS IN STOCKING 241

pounds was caught, whilst the nine fish killed
in that month weighed ten pounds six ounces.

In February 1890 I added 100 two year old
Loch Lev ens. These increased to three-quarters
of a pound weight in 1891, and no more were
imported into this water after 1890, for the
trout have bred in it in spite of the absence
of any stream. This seems to me an interest-
ing fact, and it is one which, so far as this
water is concerned, is beyond all doubt. In 1892
trout of about four ounces appeared in it ; and
I have a note to the effect that in 1894, "there
are many fat and pretty half-pound trout, which
rise freely." Those small fish, it is clear, could
not be the two year old trout of 1890, for the
latter had grown into mature fish of larger size
in 1891 ; and if any doubt still remains it is
surely disposed of by the fact that a record has
been kept by me of the number of trout killed
out of this water, and now amounts to 321 trout
of three-quarters of a pound and upwards, against
a total of only 300 trout introduced. It must
be borne in mind also that my list of the trout
killed is probably not complete, for some others,
especially of the yearlings in 1887, must have

242 FLY FISHING

been destroyed either by large gulls or herons,
which occasionally visit the place, or by other
methods which have not come under my ob-
servation The secret of the breeding of those
trout in still water is, I believe, to be found in
the fact that there is a very small part of the
pool, joined to the rest in ordinary winters, but
shut off from open connection with the main
body of water in summer. The trout spawn on
the stony shallow between the two pieces of
water in winter. The ova hatch out, and such
of the fry as have taken refuge in the small
pool are shut in there, and thus protected from
the larger fish when the shallow connection
becomes dry in May or June, I have continually
found this detached pool, which is only a few
yards in length and breadth, full of small trout
up to the size of yearlings in summer, and in
the following year have noticed a large increase
of small fish in the main water. After dry
wmters, on the other hand, when the shallow has
remained dry and the connection with the little
pool has never been properly established there
has been no increase of small trout. Ova have
probably been laid and hatched on 3ther stony

EXPERIMENTS IN STOCKING 243

shallows, but the fry having no sanctuary have
no doubt been devoured by the large fish. One
and three-quarter pounds is the weight attained
by the largest trout killed hitherto, and one and
a half pounds is a common weight.

An experiment was also made with Salmo
fontinalis in the same place, and seventy-five two
year olds were put into the water in February
1890. In July 1 89 1 the weight of these ranged
from half a pound to three-quarters of a pound,
but their condition seemed much better in April
than at anytime afterwards. In June 1892 these
fontinalis averaged from three-quarters of a pound
to one pound, but they had deteriorated in shape
and condition. On the other hand, they had
evidently bred successfully, for several very fat
little fontinalis of a quarter of a pound appeared.
Up to the end of 1892 eleven of the original
fontinalis had been killed, and since then I have
never seen another in the water. Their dis-
appearance is most mysterious. They cannot
have escaped, for there is no outlet nor inlet
above ground. It may be suggested that the
water has been poached : if so, why should the
fontinalis alone have been exterminated, while the

244 FLY FISHING

trout and rainbow trout (to which I will come
presently) have survived ? There remains only
the choice of two alternatives. Either the
fontinalts have all died from some cause, which
did not affect the other fish, or else they
all, little and big, young and old, suddenly
took to living at the bottom and resisting
the temptation, not only of artificial flies, but
of drop minnows and worms, with which ex-
periments have been made in the hope of dis-
covering them.

This disappearance of the fontinalis is as
annoying as it is mysterious, for they were at
first most handsome and attractive fish in out-
ward appearance ; their sporting qualities were
excellent, their flesh brilliant in colour, and the
flavour far superior to that of the ordinary
trout.

I now come to the rainbow trout {Salmo irideus\
of which one hundred two year olds were put
into this water in February 1891. In 1892 a
few were over half a pound in weight, in 1893
they were about three-quarters of a pound and
rose fairly well. Since then they have not at-
tained to more than one and a quarter pounds in

EXPERIMENTS IN STOCKING 245

weight. They have risen badly, and their flesh
though pink is inferior. Twenty of the full-
grown rainbows have been killed altogether, but
many more have been landed. There appear to
be a fair number in the water still, for they take
a bait in the deep water better than a fly in the
surface, and in more than one year, including
1898, small rainbows of a quarter of a pound
and less have been caught, which proves that
they too have bred successfully in the still
water. The general condition of the rain-
bows landed has been very inferior to that of
the trout, but this is partly accounted for by
the fact, that they appear not to be in season
during the best of the fly-fishing time. My
rainbow trout are full of milt and ova in
April, and those we have caught in May and
June — the best rising months — have not been
fit to eat.

' I feel that the value of all these experiments,
and the inferences to be drawn from them, arc
restricted by the tiny scale upon which alone I
have had any opportunity of stocking water,
but the record of them may perhaps stimulate
others to give the result of larger and more

246

FLY FISHING

valuable experiences. Both the fontinalis and
the rainbow trout are such handsome fish, and
have such sporting qualities, that I hope efforts
to establish them will be continued for some
time by experiments made in all sorts of water.

CHAPTER X
Some Memories of Early Days

Every angler must have some account to give
of the beginning of his keenness for angling.
Some of us remember it as the great excite-
ment of our boyhood, whilst others have only
discovered its existence in later years of life."
I think, however, that the keenest anglers are
born and not made ; that the passion is latent in
them from the beginning, and is revealed sooner
or later according to opportunity. In some case\
it may be that the passion perishes unsuspected
and unrevealed, because there is no opportunity of
indulging or discovering it, till too late in life.
The longer we live the deeper becomes the groove
or the rut in which our life moves, and the more

248 FLY FISHING

difficult it becomes to go outside it. To me the
opportunity for fishing came early, and the passion
for it awoke suddenly. I remember very well
being seized with the desire to fish. I was about
seven years old, and was riding on a Shetland pony
by the side of a very small burn. A mill was
working higher up the stream, and the water was
full of life and agitation, caused by the opening
of the sluice of the mill pond above. I had seen
small trout caught in the burn before, but now,
for the first time and suddenly, came an over-
powering desire to fish, which gave no rest till
some very primitive tackle was given me. With
this and some worms, many afternoons were
spent in vain. The impulse to see the trout
destroyed all chance of success. It did not suit
me to believe that it was fatal to look into the
water before dropping a worm over the bank, or
that I could not see the trout first and catch
them afterwards, and I preferred to learn by
experience and disappointment rather than by
the short, but unconvincing, method of believing
what I was told.

For some years this burn fishing was all that I
knew. It was very fascinating, though the trout

A NORTHUMBERLAND IIURN

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 249

were so small that one of four ounces was con-
sidered a good one, whilst the very largest ran to
six ounces. These larger trout taught me a second
lesson — self-restraint. The first lesson was, as
has been said, to learn to refrain from looking
into the water before I fished it : all the trout of
every size combined to teach this. The second
difficulty was to restrain the excitement when I
had a bite. The natural impulse then was to
strike so hard as to hurl the fish into the air
overhead : this answered very well with trout of
two or three ounces, though once a small one
came unfastened in the air, flew off at a tangent
into the hay behind, and could not be found,
But with six ounce trout this violent method did
not answer so well ; neither the angler, nor the
rod, nor the tackle, was always strong enough
to deal with them so summarily. Catastrophes
occurred, and by slow degrees and painful losses
I learnt the necessity of getting keenness under
control. After I had improved in these matters
there still remained the hardest trial of all, which
has to be undergone by all anglers, namely, how
to face the disappointment of losing a fish.
Many of us must have known what it is in

25© FLY FISHING

boyhood to suffer anguish after losing an un-
expectedly large fish. The whole of life then
seems laid waste by despair ; the memory of past
joys counts for nothing ; one is sure that no
future success can ever compensate for the
present loss ; and one rails against the established
order of everything, and is indignant that any
human being should ever have been born to
undergo such intolerable misery. Even in later
years we cannot hope to face the loss of very
large fish with equanimity. Nobody can become
perfect in bearing what is unbearable, and it may
be counted to our credit if in these very bitter
moments silence descends upon us, and we pre-
serve outward appearances.

Burn fishing is not without its charm even in
later years, and is a peculiar form of angling
separate from all others. I am thinking now of
those north country burns too small for fly
fishing, which run in narrow stony channels
between overgrown banks. Here one must fish
with a worm and a short line, and the difficulty
consists in getting the worm into the water with-
out any part of oneself being seen by the trout.
The usual method is to advance stealthily, some-

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 251

times stooping, sometimes on one's knees, some-
times at full length, according to the necessities
of the case, pushing the rod in front, and at last
swinging the worm gently on a short line over
the edge of the bank and lowering it into the
water. When the angler knows the burn well he
goes at once from place to place, approaching the
bank afresh at each spot which he knows to be
suitable. If he does not know the burn he must
reconnoitre from a distance to see the sort of
water that is before him. It does not do to drop
a worm blindly over the bank without knowing
where it will fall, as the hooks are sure in this
case to become mixed up sooner or later with a
bush or a heap of sticks.

One burn I used to fish which flowed through
a wood of high trees down a steep rocky channel.
Here it was possible, at least for a small boy, to
keep out of sight by walking up the bed of the
burn itself, stooping low, jerking the worm up
into little pools and cascades above, and lifting
the trout out down stream on to the bank.
This was very pretty work. I remember once
getting several trout quickly one after the other
in this place, and then they suddenly stopped

252 FLY FISHING

taking. One little favourite pool after another
produced nothing, and a fear of something un-
known came over me ; the gloom and stillness
of the wood made me uneasy, everything about
me seemed to know something, to have a mean-
ing, which was hidden from me ; and I felt as if
my fishing was out of place. At last I could
resist the feeling of apprehension no longer ; I
left the rod with the line in a pool to fish for
itself, and went up to the edge of the wood to
see what was happening in the open world out-
side. There was a great storm coming up full
of awful menace, as thunderclouds often are. It
filled me with terror. I hurried back for my
rod, left the burn and the wood, and fled before
the storm, going slow to get breath now and
then, and continually urged to running again by
the sound of thunder behind me.

Burn trout are wayward little things. Some-
times they take a worm greedily on the brightest
days in low clear water, rushing to it directly it
falls into the pool, or seizing it as it travels
down the stream, and being hooked without
trouble. On these days all the angler need do is
to wait for four or five seconds after he knows,

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 253

by the stopping or the trembling of the line, that
the worm has been taken, and then strike sharply
but not violently. If the trout is very small it
may be lifted out at once, but if it is four ounces'
weight or heavier it is safer to let it do some
splashing and struggling in the water, to wait till
it is still, and then to lift it out with an even
movement, quickly but without any sudden jerk.
If there is a clear space without branches or bushes
in the way, this can be done without the trout
struggling in the air. It is always unsafe to lift
a fish which is in the act of struggling, for the
jerks of the fish, added to the dead weight of its
body in the air, greatly increase the risk either of
the line breaking or of the hooks coming out.
If the trout exceeds six ounces, I play it with as
much respect as if it were a salmon, and choose
a shallow landing-place, and draw it on to that
without lifting it at all. The feeling of losing a
trout in the air is familiar to burn anglers. The
fish falls back into the water with a splash, the
line flies up into the air, often becoming hope-
lessly entangled in a tree ; and before it is extri-
cated the angler has frightened all the other fish
in the pool, and is convinced that the trout and

254 FLY FISHING

the branches and the rod and line and hooks are
all in a conspiracy against him. I use the word
" hooks," as I have found small Stewart or Pennell
worm tackle much the best for trout fishing : it
is easily baited, and with it the angler can, if
he likes, strike directly the worm is taken, though
it is better to wait just long enough to let the
trout get all the worm well into its mouth, and
not long enough to let the worm be swallowed.

On some days burn trout are very aggravating,
and will take the worm and chew it without
being hooked. The angler waits and then strikes,
and feels that he has just touched a fish and no
more, and this happens time after time. He
tries the effect of waiting longer before striking,
and then finds either that he still just misses the
fish, or else that the fish has taken the worm
off the hooks or has left the worm altogether;
or that a very small trout not worth killing has
swallowed the hooks, and wasted its own life and
his time and trouble. I suppose on these days
the trout are not really hungry, and begin to
chew the worm instead of trying to swallow it
at once. They then discover the presence of
the hooks, and either reject the whole thing, or

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 255

try to separate the worm from the hooks with
their lips, which results in the angler*s touch-
ing without hooking them when he strikes.
There are other days when burn trout dash at
the worm and endeavour to make off with it
immediately at speed. On these occasions the
angler feels a quick tug and all is over before
he can strike ; he probably does strike too late,
and his line having no resistance at the end is
jerked out of the water into a bush, if there is
one near.

Three other moods are common to burn trout;
they are those of indifference, suspicion, and ab-
normal fright. When the trout are indifferent,
they simply ignore the worm, and appear not
to notice its presence : one might think from
their behaviour either that they were blind, or
that they habitually lived with worms before
their eyes. When they are suspicious, they will,
on the contrary, swim up to the worm and
investigate it as if they had never seen such a
thing before, or dash about it as if its presence
excited them. On other days, and these are not
necessarily the brightest, it is almost impossible
to keep out of sight of the trout, which seem

256 FLY FISHING

to be watching for the least hint of the approach
of an angler ; and even when the angler succeeds
in concealing himself, they fly from the sight
of the rod, or the gut however quietly it is
put before them. All these things make burn
fishing an interesting and delicate sport. The
drawback to it is that the constant stooping
and crawling become so much harder as years
go on. Joints ache and crack, and the con-
tinual effort of keeping a stiff and full-grown
body out of sight is difficult and painful. Some
of the crouching may be avoided by using a
long rod, but amongst bushes and trees a long
rod is an awkward instrument, and one cannot
guide the line so accurately amongst the branches.
To dodge bushes and leaves and twigs success-
fully, the angler must use a short stiff rod and
a short line. He can then not only guide the
line and drop the worm more accurately with
the rod, but after fishing each place can catch
the end of the short line with one hand, while
still holding the rod with the other, and so make
his way through the trees to the next pool,
without having to put the rod down and alter
the length of the line. A well wooded burn

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 257

is the nicest of all. It has places where the
angler can watch the trout and see his worm
taken, while he is hidden behind leaves, or lying
in tall meadow-sweet or some such undergrowth
of herbs. Even if he does not feel the thrill
and the rapt excitement, which he felt as a boy
when his line stopped and trembled in the stream
with a bite, or when he saw a trout open its
mouth and take his worm, he can still remember
what he used to feel in those early days, and
" beget that golden time again." He can enjoy,
too, more than he ever did before, the light
playing through the leaves upon the still water
of a clear pool, the running water sparkling in
the sun, the tinkling sound of little streams, and
the shade and the hot summer's day. And even
still there is some satisfaction, when the burn
is low and clear, in outwitting the trout, small
as they are, for it is not to be done without
care, difficulty and effort.

I need hardly add that fine drawn gut is proper
for burn fishing: in small burns two or three feet
of gut is enough, as the water is shallow, the
line is kept more perpendicular than horizontal,
and but little of it falls into the water. The

R

258 FLY FISHING

special merits of brandling worms were so im-
pressed upon me from the first that I have never
been content to use any other kind. They are
certainly good both in colour and size. The
objection to them is that they are rather soft,
but for burn fishing, where the worm is dropped
rather than cast into the water, this does not
matter so much. Brandling worms, however, are
not to be found in common earth, nor in every
heap of decaying manure or rubbish. Kitchen
garden refuse is a valuable ingredient, but it is
not the only one, and the heaps must be of the
right material in the right stage of decay ; young
anglers of intelligence and observation make
it their business to know the best places for
brandling worms, so that they may be sure of
getting a good supply whenever they want it.
The brandlings are best after being kept for a
day or two in clean moss, but trout take them
well enough when they are fresh.

Very wonderful is the perspective of child-
hood, which can make a small burn seem greater
than rivers in after life. There was one burn
which I knew intimately from its source to the
sea. Much of the upper part was wooded, and

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 259

it was stony and shallow, till within two miles
of its mouth. Here there was for a child
another world. There were no trees, the bottom
of the burn was of mud or sand, and the channel
was full of rustling reeds, with open pools of
some depth at intervals. These pools had a
fascination for me, there was something about
them which kept me excited with expectation of
great events, as I lay behind the reeds, peering
through them, and watching the line intently.
The result of much waiting was generally an
eel, or a small flat fish up from the sea ; or
now and then a small trout, but never for many
years one of the monsters which I was sure
must inhabit such mysterious pools. At last
one evening something heavy really did take
the worm. The fish kept deep, played round
and round the pool and could not be seen, but
I remember shouting to a companion at a little
distance, that I had hooked a trout of one
pound, and being conscious from the tone of
his reply that he didn't in the least believe me,
for a trout of one pound was in those days
our very utmost limit of legitimate expectation.
There was a mill pond higher up in which such

26o FLY FISHING

a weight had been attained, and we who fished
the burn could talk of trout of that size, and yet
feel that we were speaking like anglers of this
world. But this fish turned out to be heavier
even than one pound, and when at last he came
up from the depth into my view, I felt that
the great moment had come which was to make
or mar my happiness for ever. I got into the
shallow water below the fish, and after great
anxieties secured with the help of my hand a
fresh run sea trout of three pounds. Never was
a dead fish treated with more care and honour.
It had swallowed the hooks, and rather than risk
spoiling its appearance in getting them out, the
gut was cut and they were left inside. The small
trout and eels and flounders were turned out of
my basket and put into my companion's, so that
the great sea trout might lie in state. It was
felt that the expectation of years was justified,
that the marvellous had become real, that the
glory {vhich had been unseen was revealed, and
that after the present moment the hope of great
things in the future would live for ever A few
years ago there was published a delightful book
called "The Golden Age," in which the author

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 261

describes the world of childhood as it has been
to all of us — a world whose boundaries are un-
known, where everything is at the same time
more wonderful and more real than it seems
afterwards, and where mystery is our most con-
stant companion. So it was with me, especially
in the places where I fished. I used to go to
the lower part of this burn in the charge of an
old gamekeeper, and after a long journey through
pathless open fields, we seemed to reach a distant
land where things happened otherwise than in
the world nearer home. At the end of the
walk it was as if we had reached another
country, and were living in another day under
a different sky. The gamekeeper fished more
leisurely than I, and sometimes he would be lost
amongst the windings of the burn, to be found
again by the sight of the smoke from his pipe
rising gently from behind a whin bush. When
I now recall that distant land, I see always some-
where amongst the whin bushes a little curl of
thin smoke, and no other sign of an inhabitant.

In course of time there came experience of a
fine Highland river, and lochs near it and of fly
fishing in them in August. The trout did not

262 FLY FISHING

always rise very well in August, but many of
them were three-quarters of a pound in weight, a
few were even larger, and the sport seemed to me
magnificent. Three great days happened all in
different years on this river and its lochs. Once
the trout took exceptionally well in the loch,
and instead of the usual number of twenty or
less I landed forty-eight, averaging about three
to the pound. Another day there was a little
fresh water in the river, and I tried an artificial
minnow. First a trout of about two pounds,
larger than any trout ever hooked by me before,
was lost. While I was still in the agony of
disappointment, a second weighing three and a
quarter pounds was hooked and eventually landed,
and directly after that a third trout of about the
same size was hooked and lost, when it was in
full view and half in the landing net. Then
nothing more would take, and I spent the rest
of the day without further incident, trying to
think of the fish landed and not of the ones lost.
But the greatest day of all was the third. I
was standing at the end of a pier built for
salmon fishing, casting out into the smooth strong
stream, when a sort of wave seemed to come

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 263

suddenly and swallow the top fly, and a large
heavy body went down stream pulling out the
line. I shouted " A salmon ! " and the old gillie
came hurrying to my side. His first words were
"We shall never get him," against which I pro-
tested with rage, and he partially retracted and
set to work to advise me. We could not follow
the fish downward, but he hove to about twenty
yards below us and hung steady in the stream.
We turned the trout rod up stream and held it
still, keeping a steady strain upon the fish, and
waited for what seemed an age without result;
but the good old man encouraged me when
I grew faint-hearted, and kept me patient.
Eventually the fish began to yield. We gained
line foot by foot, and more than once got the
fish up stream nearly opposite the pier, but it saw
us and dropped back each time to the old place
down stream. At last amidst great excitement it
was coaxed past the pier, in a moment was in
the backwater above it, and to my astonishment
was then almost at once exhausted and landed.
It was a grilse of about six pounds, and rather
red, but the distinction between grilse and
salmon, between red fish and fresh run fish, was

264 FLY FISHING

nothing to me. That same day another grilse
of about four pounds took the same fly. This
second fish took with a splash, ran freely and
was landed without difficulty. In the course of
many seasons I must have had dozens of days'
trout fishing in that same river at the same time
of year, but never on any other day did I hook
or even rise a grilse or salmon with a trout fly.

These were the triumphs of luck, but they
came at an age when youth, not from conceit,
but from sheer gladness and simplicity, does not
discriminate between luck and skill. The first
temptation to become proud of possessing skill
came later, and after the use of the dry fly had
been learnt at Winchester. It was not on the
Itchen that any pride was felt, for I was only
a learner there, improving year by year, but with
examples of greater skill and success than mine
constantly before me. In the holidays, however,
I took away with me from the Itchen to distant
rivers the art of the dry fly, which was then not
nearly so widely known as it has come to be in
the last twenty years. So it happened that on
west or north country streams, or in Ireland, or
on dark smooth water in the Highlands, I was

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 265

sometimes the first to introduce the dry fly, with
results which astonished the trout and the local
anglers, and were very gratifying to myself. In
the Highland river spoken of above there was
a long dark stretch, bordered by rocks and trees,
where the river flowed with a deep even stream,
carrying a few thin flecks of slow moving foam
upon its surface, but without a ripple. Here,
especially in the evening, some of the best trout
in the river used to rise. You might fish every
day for a week in the rougher water and never
hook a trout of one pound weight with a fly
and be very grateful for half-pounders, but in
this smooth deep part many of the trout were
upwards of one pound, and the average weight
was about three-quarters of a pound. Often
had I tried them with March-browns, and small
Heckum Peckums and the various patterns which
are attractive in the Highlands, but not one of
these particular trout would stand the sight of
my flies. . I continued to visit that river in my
summer holidays, and the time came when I
brought with me some drawn gut, some small
olive and red quills, and a single-handed rod
with which to cast them lightly. A pupil on

266 FLY FISHING

the Itchen was a master amongst these Highland
trout, and in the still hour of sunset on many
an August evening I used to endure the torment
of the midges and find a rich reward. A struggle
with a trout of one and a half pounds hooked on
Itchen tackle in that fine flow of deep water,
amongst the rocks and trees, was no mean affair.
In the Easter holidays I went alone once or
twice to the Dart. I do not know how the
Dart fares now, for it is nearly twenty years
since I have seen it ; but in those days there
was beautiful trout water between Staverton
and Buckfastleigh, which could be fished by
ticket, and if one was not disappointed with
trout of less than half a pound, there was
very good sport to be had. I remember once
fishing a part of the river where there was a
succession of streams, which towards the middle
of the day seemed ahve with little trout, rising
actively all over the water at natural flies. It
was one of those maddening days when the
trout rise in quantities and take no notice of
artificial flies. I could do nothing, and the
other anglers above and below me, of whom
two or three were in sight, were not doing very

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 267

much better. At last in despair I waded out,
and went down to a smooth piece of the river
between wooded banks. In this place the water
was clear, and varied from a foot to perhaps
three feet in depth. No one was fishing, and
there were trout rising in shoals and very quietly.
A stout March-brown, such as I had been using
above, would have put them all to flight, but the
trouble of using a dry fly for each separate trout
seemed out of proportion to the size of the fish.
Yet as I wanted very much to save an empty
basket, I gave up the hope of counting trout
that day by the dozen, put on one small olive
quill and waded in quietly below the rising fish.
They took the little dry fly as if they were
pleased to see it, and when the rise was over I
waded out with thirty-one trout in my basket.
The old angling diary to which I have referred
gives the weight of the largest as eight ounces.
It does not give the total weight, but I remember
congratulating myself on the fact that the average
size of my trout was at least equal to the size of
those generally caught with fly in April in the
more favourite streams above. As I emerged
from the trees on the bank, I met one of the best

268 FLY FISHING

of the local anglers returning from above with a
lighter basket than usual. He stopped me and
asked what I had done. I told him, and he then
asked to see the fish. I opened my basket. " You
can't have caught those to-day with fly," he
said. " Yes," I replied ; " I caught them with
a dry fly." '* Dry fly," he said very sternly, " v/e
know nothing about a dry fly here." Then he
went on his way, with thoughts, I fear, that were
not very kind.

The next reminiscence goes back to about 1 880,
and has to do with a river in Ireland. The first
time I saw this river was late in August. There
were said to be trout, and good ones, and it
was believed to be possible to catch some with
fly earlier in the season, when the water was in
order. The river had in parts a very wide bed,
which when low it did not nearly fill. The
water ran in all sorts of channels between beds
of bright green weeds. Here and there was a
long stream with a stony bottom, free from
weeds, and now and then there would be a huge
pool, full of peaty-coloured water of unknown
depth, in which one or two salmon lay. One
could wander for miles all day about the most

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 269

extraordinary variety of water. The river was
full of pike, and it was said, probably with
truth, that the inhabitants of the district forked
trout out of the weeds in low water with various
agricultural implements. But there were trout
enough for dry fly fishing. Half-a-dozen or so
might be found rising near together, and then
perhaps one would have to go several hundred
yards before another one was found ; a little
sound would be heard presently, as if a small
pebble had dropped in somewhere without a
splash, and heard perhaps two or three times
before the rise could be seen in such a large and
curious river. Then there was a difficult stalk,
probably through water and weeds, with the
chance of going overhead into a big hole un-
awares.

I was warned that at this season of the year,
when the water was low, I must not expect to
catch any of these fish, but I cared nothing for
warnings. The trout were there, and were rising,
and though I saw at once that it was a case
for dry fly and for that only, I had by this time
Been taught to believe that any one, who could
catch Winchester trout, could catch rising trout

270 FLY FISHING

anywhere. These trout, however, at first upset
my calculations. They brought me face to face
with a difficulty which did not exist on the
ticket water at Winchester — they were un-
approachable. Never was an angler more put
upon his mettle. There were trout visibly and
audibly rising, which had never seen an artificial
dry fly, and would probably take it at once.
They were evidently also big trout. There was
splendid sport to be had, and reputation and
glory to be won in catching even one of them,
and yet so shy were they, that I could not get
my dry fly to them.

For two days they defeated me utterly. I
walked and knelt and waded and laboured and
perspired under an August sun without success.
Some of the trout were put down by my approach,
some were scared by the first waving of the rod,
and some, which had been successfully stalked,
turned tail and fled when the gut floated over
them without even the least drag ; at last, on the
second evening in a fading light, I hooked a
fish which went off up stream at once with a
mighty rush, and came to rest somewhere out
of sight at the end of a lot of line. I waded

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 271

carefully up in the twilight, keeping a tight line
by reeling up as I went till I was over a great
bed of strong weeds. Into this one hand care-
fully felt its way along the casting line, and
touched at last the side of a great fish. Nothing
could be seen for it was getting dark, and the
weeds were too thick for a landing net to be
used in them. I tried with one hand to arrange
a grip on the trout, and very broad and hard he
felt ; but at the critical moment he made the most
violent commotion in the weeds and dashed off
somewhere. When all was still I felt again and
found in the weeds only the end of broken gut.
There was nothing more to be done that evening,
and I waded out and lay on the bank in the
dusk. On the whole, I think that was the
bitterest moment I have ever known in angling.
To have come so near to success, and to have
it snatched from me at the last moment, after
keenness and effbrt had been sustained at the
very highest pitch for two whole days, was more
than could be borne.

But success did come afterwards, and in broad
daylight ; I found a place where, by wading and
kneeling in the river on the shallow side, it

272 FLY FISHING

was possible to get within reach of and opposite
to rising trout without frightening them. Then
the fly could be thrown some way above them
with an underhand cast, so as not to show the
rod ; and being opposite and not below, I could let
the fly float down a few inches on the near side
of a rising trout, so that only the fly and none
of the gut was seen. In this way I at last caught
one or two trout, and then somehow, when the
frost of failure had once broken up, it seemed
more easy to succeed all over the river.

These trout were the shyest I have ever
known. They were more difficult to approach
and more easily scared by rod or gut than any
others I ever fished for ; but if the fly could be
floated to a rising fish without frightening him,
it was generally taken. On the best day that 1
had there I caught eleven fish. None of these
weighed three pounds, but the first two were
each over two and three-quarter pounds. For
such shy fish really fine gut had to be used,
and there were many disasters in the weeds,
but also many splendid struggles fought out
in pools which were far too deep for any vege-
tation. It was the wildest and most exciting

MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 273

and most fascinating dry fly fishing that I have
ever had. My experience of it has only been
during late August or early September, but I can
imagine that in May and in June it might be the
finest dry fly fishing in the United Kingdom.

INDEX

Anglers at "Old Barge," 113
Anglers' objects, the, 68
Angling and other sports, 17
Angling under restrictions, 115
April day, an, 131
Art in striking, the, 82
Art of salmon fishing, the, 186
Authors on angling, 7

Behaviour of trout, the, 94
Blue book on salmon, a, 202
Bulging tiOut, 93
Bum fishing, 2^0
Bum trout, 252

Casting for salmon, 186
Changing the fly, 95
Choice of flies, 74
Comparisons of wet and dry, 123
Condition of the water, 204
Condition of trout, the, 100
Country in May, the, 44

Day with sea trout, a, 164, 171
Destruction of wild creatures,

Preface
Destructive birds, Preface
Disposition of the fly, the, 69
Dry fly and wet fly, 122
Dry fly on the Dart, 266
Dry fly fishing in July and August,

65
Dry fly fishing on Itchen and
Test, 33

Early days, 247
Educated trout, an, 96
Evening rise, the, 58

First days on the Itchen, 107
First sign of a rise, the, 38
First success, a, 109
Fishing down stream, 71
Frozen river, a, 197

Gaffing a salmon, 231

Gift of being pleased, the, 29

Good water, 97

Grilse on trout tackle, 170

Growth of trout, 237

Gut for salmon and trout, 217

HABITS of sea trout, 155
Half-hour before dark, the, 61
Halford's " Dry fly Fishing," 67
Highland ri ers and the dry fly,
261

Ideal day, an, 51
Individual theories, 68
Influence of Nature, the, 29
Irish river, an, 268

June trout, 53

Kingsley's " Chalk Stream

Studies," 10
Knowledge of the river, 158

»7S

276

INDEX

Landing the fish, 89
Lines, 220
London in June, 46
Luck in salmon fishing, 193

Marston's "Walton and the

Earlier Fishing Writers," 12
May fly on the Kennet, the, 46
Migrating salmonidse, 178
Migration of salmon and its re-
sults, 206

Netting a fish,, 89
Netting and angling, 207
Night fishing, 61
North country pool, a, 135
North country rivers, 140

"Old Barge," no
Overstocking, 100

Paraffin for dry flies, 234
Patterns of dry flies, 216
Patterns of salmon flies, 214
Patterns of sea trout flies, '215
Patterns of wet flies, 216
Pleasures of angling, 13

Qualities of an angler, the, 24

Record in salmon fishing, a, 195

Records of bad days, 196

Reels, 223

Requisites for recreation, 16

Rods, 224

Run of sea trout, a, 153

Salmon fishing in spring time,

183

Salmon fishing in the Spean, 189

Salmon in fresh water, 204

Sea trout fishing in Shetland, 172

Sea trout or grilse? 177

Sense of life, a, 180

Split cane rods, 225

Sport and farming, Prejact

State of the weather, 209

Stewart's " Practical Angler," 142

Stocking water, 236

Striking the fish, 82

Style, 8

Sympathy in sport, 4

Triumphs of early days, 262
Trout's use of weeds, the, 85
Two essentials, 69
Typical day, a, 36

Variety of tackle, 211

Various positions of rising trout,

70
Voes, fishing in the, 174

Waders, 232

Walton's "Complete Angler," 8
Weather and wind, 90
Well-fished water, a, 1 10
Wet black hackle, a, 77
Winchester — a successful angler,

112
Winchester reminiscences, 103
Winchester school fishing, 114
Winchester trout, no, 119

Prinled in Great Britain by
UNWIN BROTHERS, ilMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

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