An angler's season

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AN ANGLER'S SEASON

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

TROUT FISHINQ. Third Edition. Containing
a Facsimile in Colour of a "Model Book of Flies"
for Stream and Lake, arranged according to the
month in which the lures are appropriate. In
One Volume. Large Crown 8vo. Cloth. Gilt
top. Price 7s. 6d. net. Post free Js. lod.

SALMON FISHINQ. With Eight Full- page
Plates in Colour ; including, as Frontispiece, the
famous picture, " Salmon- Fishing on the Dee,"
by Joseph Farquharson, A.R.A., and a Model
Book of 74 varieties of Salmon Flies. Also Ten
Page Illustrations in Black and White, and a
Sketch Plan of Model Salmon Pass. Large
Crown 8vo. Cloth. Gilt top. Price 7s. 6d.
net. Post free Js. lod.

HOW TO FISH. Containing Eight Full-page
Illustrations, and Eighteen smaller Engravings
in the text. Large Crown 8vo. Cloth. Price
3s. 6d. net. Post free p. iod.

A. AND C. BLACK, 4 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

AGENTS

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64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, New York

Australasia . The Oxford University Press

205 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

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:

p

./<-/(<( Carrie.

JAMES STEWART, OUR GUIDE AND FRIEND.

AN ANGLER'S

SEASON

BY

W. EARL HODGSON

M
AUTHOR OF 'TROUT FISHING,' 'SALMON FISHING,'
AND ' HOW TO FISH '

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1909

TO

LADY ST. HELIER

IN
HAPPY REMEMBRANCE

Spring 1909.

M042120

H6

PREFATORY NOTE

"An Anglers Season" implies a seasons
angling; and that, in these industrious
days, may seem to call for an apology.
Perhaps an explanation will suffice. It is
that if you are a scribe you must do as
editors will do with you. You may wish,
for example, to shed light on politics; but
will they encourage you? That depends
upon where you chance to he dwelling.
Political discourses writ in the Highlands
are not in active demand. Discourses on
Angling are. The Editor of " The Times "
invited articles to be sent at regular
intervals throughout the season ; the Editor
of" The Nation" and the Editor of " The
Evening Standard " wished to have articles
now and then. What could one do but go
fishing ivith something like professional

viii AN ANGLERS SEASON

regularity t That was necessary in order
that the papers should be as real and fresh
as one could make them. Soon I found
that the subject-matter was more than
sufficient for the articles I had been asked
to write. Therefore I wrote others, which
the Editors of " The Nineteenth Century"
" The Scotsman" and " The Daily Mail "
were good enough to publish. The fact is,
I had thought of gathering materials out
of which eventually to conjure a mirage of
a season. This volume is the outcome of the
experiment. I have carefully revised the
papers, discarding a good many passages,
re-writing many others, and in many places
adding matter wholly new. In particular,
it may be mentioned that the closing
chapter, narrating what may perhaps be
considered an extraordinary adventure,
and the story, in the July chapter, of how
Haxton came to Atholl, are now published
for the first time.

PAGE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

January

At Dawn of the Opening Day — On the way to a
Famous Loch — Speculations — The Scene at
Kenmore — A Picturesque Libation — Loch Tay
Traces — Afloat — A Salmon on — Captured —
Another Battle — Trolling-Rods : a Technical
Problem — Suggested Solution — Loch Lures —
Playing a Salmon — What " Minnows" Are
—Which is the Right One? .

CHAPTER II

February

Trout-Fishing — Not much Scope for Luck — The
Edinburgh Reviews Theory of Flies — Eyesight
of Man and That of the Trout — A Case in
Point— Male and Female Insects — Some Par-
ticular Fly Always Preferred — The Southern
School of Anglers — Strange Doings in Hamp-
shire— An Unfortunate Custom of the Scots —
The Fruitfulness of Knowledge ... 18

x AN ANGLERS SEASON

CHAPTER III

March

PAGE

A Favourite Pool — Trout Not Less Game than
Salmon — Dubious Maxims — Trout Scared by
Gut and by Landing-net — Flies, Cocked-wing,
Flat-wing, and Hackle — Sudden Change of
Weather — Principles of Trout-Preservation —
Scarcity of Large Fish — How this has come
about — The Remedy — English Streams and
Scotch Streams — English Anglers and Scots
Anglers — The Worm and the Mayfly . . 48

CHAPTER IV

April

The March Browns — Time of their Rise — Variants
in Imitation — The Large Spring Duns — When
Trout are Ravenous — The Twin Trees Pool —
Three Good Pish — A Sharp Tussle — Deadlock
— Defeat — On a Welsh Stream — Unexpected
Good Fortune — Lord Stanley of Alderley —
Mr. A. G. Bradley's Query : Divination or
Intelligence ?— Mr. D. S. Meld rum's Basket—
A Lochleven Adept — Char in Perthshire —
Trout in Hampshire — A Notorious Angler —
Intellectual Development through Sport . . 71

CHAPTER V

May

The Temperate Month— Real Beginning of the
Trout Season — On Loch Derculich — Mr. W.

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

L. Wood — The Junglecock-and-Black — James
Stewart — Large Flies Mysteriously Successful
— Precedents from Bygone Times — Testimony
of Ancient Tackle-Books — On Loch-na-Craig —
Lochleven Trout in the Highlands — The
Moness Burn— The Provost off-Duty — What
Might be Made of Burns— The Evening Rise . 99

CHAPTER VI

June

Lochleven — Its Puzzling Fish — Are they Seatrout ?
—Why Worry?— The Scene at the Jetty—
System of Drifts — Punctual Flies — Dashing
Trout — Fear and Hope — "A Burst of Flies"
— Thoughts on the Weather— After all, a
Good Day — A Strange Spectacle — Is the Devil
really Dead ?— The Mayfly ! .... 132

CHAPTER VII

July

Lull, apparently — Summer Languor — Not an
Unbroken Rule — Worms are now In Season
—A Full Basket— The Water- Level : in
England and in Scotland — Mountain Lakes —
A Day on Loch Ordie — Luxuriance of Nature
on the Hills — Racial Differences among Trout
— Some Highland Lochs — Red Trout and
White Trout — Are Pike Objectionable? —
Donald Sim — Henry Haxton — Lord Tulli-
bardine — An Unrecorded Episode in the War
with the South-African Republics . . .161

xii AN ANGLER'S SEASON

CHAPTER VIII

August

page
On Loch Moraig — Unreasonable Discontent — The
Time for Midges — Varieties of the Midge —
Seatrout and Salmon — Mr. Senior's Saying —
The Lammas Flood — West-coast Rivers and
East-coast Rivers — Why their Seasons are Not
Simultaneous — The Influence of Nature —
Man's Interference 203

CHAPTER IX

September

The Tay in Flood— How Rain Differs from Melted
Snow — Soot Film on a Loch — Where to Cast ? —
Bays of Two Kinds — An Ideal Bay — Why It
is Good — Floods Which are too Fierce — Waste
of Water — How that can be Prevented . . 216

CHAPTER X

October

Early Closing on the Tay — An Unexpected In-
vitation— "Bismarck" — The Earn in Flood —
Next Day — " Whaur Peter Bides" — Peter's
Bad Repute — Apologetic Reflections — John's
Account of Peter — A Seatrout and a Snub — In
the Afternoon — The Dread Pool — At Last! —
The Spectre and the Salmon — Rash Curiosity
and What Came of it 228

INDEX 295

ILLUSTRATIONS

James Stewart, our Guide and Friend Frontispiece
Loch Tay ..... Facing page 1

The Lyon .....
Near the Twin Trees Pool : two views
Mr. T. J. Barratt ....
Loch Derculich : two views .
Lochleven : Ripple and Sky just right
Lochleven : Waiting for a Breeze
Loch Ordie : two views
Lord Tullibardine
The First Hole Pool .
Spring Flood in the Tay Valley

16
81
96
113
128
160
177
202
224
241

AN ANGLER'S SEASON
CHAPTER I

JANUARY

At Dawn of the Opening Day — On the way to a Famous
Loch — Speculations — The Scene at Kenmore — A
Picturesque Libation — Loch Tay Traces — Afloat — A
Salmon on — Captured — Another Battle — Trolling-
Rods : a Technical Problem — Suggested Solution —
Loch Lures — Playing a Salmon — What if Minnows "
Are — Which is the Right One ?

"This is just as good a First Day as
the Twelfth!" exclaimed Master Lindesay,
one of my host's two sons. He meant
that it was not less joyously exciting. A
fly bearing the heavily-coated figure of a
man and the long case of a salmon-rod
had just, in the dim dawn, shot in advance
of our carriage. At that unfamiliar hour,
in the middle of winter, it was novel and
stimulating to be off to a sport which is

2 AN ANGLERS SEASON

commonly associated with the comfort-
able leisure of spring and summer. How
eager were our speculations ! The Tay,
which runs by the side of the road to
Kenmore, had risen three feet in the
night. Was this from rain or from a
melting of snow on the mountains ? If
the flood was merely or mainly the result
of a thaw, it would be no advantage :
salmon do not move much, and seldom
take a bait, in snow-broth. On the other
hand, if the flood was from rain, it would
be highly opportune ; and Master Hubert
had heard rain lashing against his window
all through the night. My host, more
cautious in conjecture than either of the
lads, was not sure that we should find
Loch Tay above the ordinary level. It
might be, he said, that the flood had come
from Glenlyon. He was not far wrong.
When we reached the loch, within half-
an-hour of the discussion, it was found to
be not more than two inches higher than
it had been during the frost; the extra
yard of water in the river was due to a

JANUARY 3

rise of the Lyon. The Lyon, indeed, has
become rather a sore subject in the upper
part of the Tay valley. Floods in it are
more frequent and heavier than they are
in the streams which feed the loch ; they
carry much sand and gravel ; a few years
ago the silt began to form a barrier across
the Tay, just above the place at which the
tumultuous tributary joins the river ; and
the barrier is now so considerable that
many of the up-running salmon, instead
of troubling to pass it, go into the Lyon.
Thus, it is said, that stream is benefiting
to the detriment of the loch. Not many
years ago a fish of 18 lb. was a large one
for the Lyon ; nowadays much heavier
fish, salmon nearly twice that weight, are
not uncommon.

The square in front of the hotel at
Kenmore presented a bustling scene.
One grave gentleman, who had come
from London the night before, had his
rod already up, and was solemnly ensuring
good luck by breaking a bottle of whisky
on the butt. Gillies were putting up the

4 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

rods of anglers just arrived. Everybody
was asking important questions which
nobody had time to answer. Only, any
one who dared to think of fishing with
a trace of gut was unanimously rebuked
by the gillies. Gut, they said, might do for
ordinary salmon ; but it would not do for
the salmon of Loch Tay. You needed a
wire trace there. This was horrible news
to some anglers ; but they were speedily
reassured when the gillies showed samples
of the metallic trace. The wire was not
nearly so clumsy as had been imagined ;
indeed, it was thinner than salmon gut,
and almost as pliable. The only objection
that could be taken was that each of the
traces had a swivel at the end, and that
when the phantom minnow was put on
the swivel was just above its nose. " It
must be a yokel of a fish that would take
that," said Master Hubert, doubtfully,
and still anxious to be allowed his trace
of gut.

Oddly enough, this doubter was the
first to be undeceived. He and his

JANUARY 5

brother went off in one boat ; their father
and I followed immediately in the wake.
Tradition has it that, as there is often a
long time between bites, it is well to have
some subsidiary pastime while trolling on
Loch Tay. Venerable gentlemen, much
wrapped in rugs, and sometimes with hot-
water bottles at their feet, favour novel-
reading. The lads, to keep themselves
warm and their minds sufficiently engaged,
were playing picquet. Suddenly, not more
than twenty-five minutes after setting out
upon the water, one of their two gillies
shouted, " There he is ! " Both anglers
sprang to their feet, and in a minute or
so, after they had fallen over thwarts and
been otherwise in some little disorder, we
beheld Hubert's rod erect, or as nearly so
as a beautiful bend of the upper half
permitted. He had a salmon on.

The fish was no yokel ; at any rate, he
did all that could be done to be free.
Now and then he rushed towards the boat,
seemingly perceiving that, the line being
loose, he might have a chance of ejecting

6 AN ANGLERS SEASON

the hooks ; anon he would bolt, with great
valour, in order to break the barbed-wire
entanglement ; through the sough of
the west wind, as he fled, we heard the
whirr of the reel. By and by he came at
intervals to the surface, and smote the
water with his tail. This was really a
grand sight. The salmon's lashings of
the loch made even the spray -tipped
waves seem small.

All this time, of course, as our tackle
would have gone to the bottom had we
stopped, our own boat had been moving
on ; but before we were too far off to
see or hear we knew that the fish was
captured. There had been an upward
flash as of silver at the side of the boat,
which indicated gaffing, followed by a
waving of caps and jubilant shouts.

Just beyond the Otter's Rocks, about
three miles up the loch on the south
shore, we came upon another spectacle
of the same kind. A middle-aged gentle-
man was battling with a salmon. He
was the cause of some discussion in our

JANUARY 7

own boat. When the salmon dashed away,
down went the rod until the tip almost
touched the water. One of our gillies
having mentioned the angler's name,
which was that of a man highly re-
spected in the craft, I myself was
disposed to hold that the fish must
be one of exceptional majesty, perhaps a
thirty-pounder ; but my host would have
none of this.

"Even if he were forty pounds," said
he, "the fellow should keep his rod up.
The truth is, he's not a fisher ! "

The struggle was still raging as long
as we could see ; and our diverse theories
as to why that was so led to a widening
of conflict. Why was neither of ourselves
having a run ?

" It's on accoont o' thae rods," said the
elder gillie, William Macfarlane. " Fly-
rods ! Ye canna' expec' a fush if ye troll
wi' a fly-rod. Ye need a vera stiff rod
for troll in'."

My friend was disposed to flout the
notion. How did William make that

8 AN ANGLERS SEASON

out ? he asked. Our minnows, when last
seen, had been spinning beautifully.

"I dinna' ken the explanation," answered
William stoutly ; " but I ken what I ha'e
said is fact. Last spring I was fushin' wi'
an Airmy gentleman. He began wi' a
fly-rod, just like your ain, and fushed wi't
for three days, and didna' get a rug.
Then, on my advice, he tried a trollin'-
rod, a stiff rod, and got at least ae salmon
every day."

"Just luck," said my friend. "I can
understand that a fly-rod, being whippy,
may not hook a fish so neatly as a trolling-
rod ; but you don't mean to tell me that
a minnow attached to a fly-rod is less
attractive than a minnow attached to a
trolling-rod ? "

"I do mean to tell ye that," said
William ; and he told his notion over
again with some heat. He didna' ken
why it was, but was quite certain, that
a minnow managed by a fly-rod was not
so taking as a minnow managed by a
trolling-rod.

JANUARY 9

I myself was, and am, disposed towards
William's opinion. Attached to either
rod, a minnow will spin well enough ; but
otherwise the action of the minnow will
not be the same in each case. The fly-
rod bends to the wind, and to the stroke
of the oar, and to the motion of the boat
on rolling waves ; the other rod does not
bend so much. Thus the minnow which
is attached to a trolling-rod will go
through the water with a motion more
nearly regular than that of the minnow
which is attached to a fly-rod. Therefore
the question comes to be, Is a regular
motion of a minnow more attractive to
fish than an irregular motion ? There is
reason for believing that it is. On
Lochleven one June day two minnows
were put out between-drifts. One was
attached to a fly-rod ; the other was
attached to no rod at all, but only to a
reel. During the day a perch was taken
on the minnow which was attached to the
rod ; two perches and seven trout were
taken on the minnow which was attached

10 AN ANGLERS SEASON

to the reel only. Besides, my host himself
gave evidence in favour of William's
doctrine. He mentioned that he had
repeatedly tried for salmon in the Tay
with a lure spun directly from a reel, and
had on every occasion hooked more fish
than had been hooked on a similar lure
spun from a rod in the same boat. While
debating with William he did not perceive
that such incidents as those I have
mentioned go to show that a rigid
attachment of the line is better than a
pliable attachment, and that, therefore, a
stiff or stiffish rod is better than a whippy
one.

The opening day was spent mainly in
contention over the ways and means of
catching salmon. Our boat was "clean"
when we were back to the landing-stage.
It had, however, been a very pleasant day ;
and when we entered our hotel, soon
after dusk, salmon displayed in the hall,
together with tidings from other quarters
of the waterside, showed that, despite
the barrier at the mouth of the Lyon,

JANUARY 11

there were still plenty of fine fish in
Loch Tay.

At a time when it is not always easy
to be sufficiently warm within-doors one
naturally thinks with a shiver of " spring "
salmon-fishing, which begins before winter
is half over. The reality is less trying
than the imagination. Even amid wind
and frost and snow, elation of the spirit at
the chance of sport so animates the body
that the discomfort is astonishingly small.
How can you have cold feet, or be
conscious of them, when a thirty-pounder
may come on at any moment ? Note the
phrasing, please. You would not speak
of a trout " coming on," because when a
trout comes at a fly or other lure you
strike, and it is the strike that takes him
on ; but there is no other phrase for the
event in salmon -fishing. This is especially
true if it is a loch, rather than a river, you
are on. Not infrequently you raise a
salmon when fishing for trout on a loch ;

12 AN ANGLERS SEASON

but if it is for salmon exclusively you are
trying there, you do not fish with fly.
Very early in the year loch salmon, it
would seem, either do not look at flies or
look at them only to let them alone.
Thus some sunken bait called a minnow
is practically the only lure that is used on
lochs. Fifty or sixty yards off, it spins in
the wake of the rowed boat ; the rod lies
over the stern ; you sit watching for the
violent bending of the top-piece which
shall indicate that a fish has been hooked.
Crude work ? Well, it certainly leaves
the angler with less initiative than he has
in trout-fishing ; but it leads to his having
plenty to do.

One has to be alert when there is a
salmon on. As salmon in general have
no experience in warfare with man and
his tackle, we can hardly look upon the
actions of the hooked fish as having
any definite design ; but, as has been
suggested in our account of the first
capture on the opening day, some of the
actions do seem to be less haphazard than

;

JANUARY 13

purposeful. If the fish bolts far enough
he will empty the reel and break away.
If he rushes towards the boat the line
will become loose, and then he has a
chance to be rid of the hooks. If the
fish leaps, the angler is apt to "tighten
on him" while in the air, and in that
case the gear will probably snap when
the salmon falls into the water. One
or another of these crises, or all of them,
may be expected when a fish comes on.
Playing a salmon is a task that calls for
nerve and skill.

Besides, whilst the angler has but little
to do with the hooking of a fish, it behoves
him to know what lure is most likely to be
attractive. "Mi nno w " covers a multitude
of commodities. In fact, in spring salmon-
fishing the most notable thing that is not
a "minnow" is the minnow itself. A
gudgeon is a " minnow " ; so is a small
dace ; so, if one chances, illicitly, to be
handy, is a small trout ; so is each of
innumerable " phantoms," " Devons," and
other mechanisms ; the real minnow is too

14 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

small for the time of the year. On lakes,
as a rule, our list of lures to be chosen
from is curtailed by the exclusion of the
natural baits. Gudgeon, dace, and other
fish of that class would be constantly
snapped at by trout, which are not yet in
season. To an angler who with natural
bait seeks salmon early in the year,
brown-trout are as much a nuisance as
salmon-parr will be when he casts for
brown-trout in April or in May. They
seize and destroy tit-bits meant for their
betters. Thus we are obliged to choose
one of the mechanisms. Which is it
to be?

One faces the question humbly.

There is, for example, a very cogent-
looking proposition which was submitted
on the night of the opening on Loch
Tay by Mr. Peter Currie, the cheery
master of the hotel at Kenmore. A
sportsman in the neighbourhood, said Mr.
Currie, kept a convincing record. When-
ever he caught a salmon he carved on his
walking-stick an image of the successful

JANUARY 15

minnow. The strange chronicle, ex-
tending over a good many years, showed
that of all the salmon taken from Loch
Tay, 75 per cent were lured by a phantom
with a golden belly and a blue back. This
statement seemed so clearly conclusive
that nobody called it in question at the
time ; but now a doubt occurs. Did the
sportsman give an equal chance to each
of the variants of the phantom ? It
is extremely improbable that he did.
Naturally he would be biased in favour
of the pattern which, whether from luck
or for some definite reason, took the
lead early in the progress of his experi-
ment, and would give it unduly frequent
opportunities.

Still, we are not altogether without
positive knowledge as regards the dis-
position of salmon towards lures. In
certain lakes, it has been found, salmon
take phantoms of a clay-red hue more
eagerly than any others ; these lakes
hold char, which are markedly of that
colour. Therefore it is not unreasonable

16 AN ANGLERS SEASON

to infer, particularly, that the fish take
the phantom to be a char, and, generally,
that the lure which most closely re-
sembles some choice creature indigenous
to a water is the lure most likely to
succeed.

The angler on Loch Tay who was
struggling with a salmon as we passed
had something to say about the com-
ments of my companion. In a letter,
signed "Struan," to the Editor of The
Scotsman^ he explained that "several
times, when within 10 feet of the boat,
the fish made a straight dive 20 or 30
feet towards the bottom." "At such a
moment," he added, "what folly to hold
the rod in the air ! The proof that the
fish was properly handled is the fact that
a lively sixteen-pounder was gaffed in
less than fifteen minutes." Then, on the
morning of the first day of this year I
received a letter as follows ; —

W. L. Wood, junior.

thk LYON (page LO).

JANUARY 17

Dear Sie,

In view of the early opening of next
salmon season, I have much pleasure in enclosing
herewith, with compliments, one or two of the
new Telarana Nova salmon casts and traces.
By a strange coincidence, the first performance
of Telarana Nova was witnessed by yourself on
Loch Tay on the opening day of last season, and
was most unfavourably criticised in The Scotsman.
With the compliments of the season,
I am, yours very truly,

Wm. Robertson.

The packet contained three traces and
three casts, showing the grades of fine-
ness. The stoutest is at least as thin
as a wire trace ; all of them are without
knots, hardly to be seen when in the
water, and of remarkable strength. To
the eye and the touch the material
seemed to be very finely-plaited gut.
Answering a question on that point, Mr.
Robertson wrote :

Telarana Nova, I believe, is a product of the
silkworm prepared in some secret manner. It
has all the virtues and none of the faults of
single gut of equal weight, and has even been
used on the Tweed in its finest size for fishing
with the dry fly.

2

CHAPTER II

FEBRUARY

Trout-Fishing — Not much Scope for Luck — The Edinburgh
Reviews Theory of Flies — Eyesight of Man and That
of the Trout — A Case in Point — Male and Female
Insects — Some Particular Fly Always Preferred — The
Southern School of Anglers — Strange Doings in
Hampshire — An Unfortunate Custom of the Scots —
The Fruitfulness of Knowledge.

Trout-fishing, in which we shall soon be
engaged, is a craft much subtler than
salmon - fishing. It affords illustration
of Pope's teaching that all chance is
"direction which thou canst not see."
The poet must have been a fly-fisher. He
could never have arrived at such a thought
by playing or by watching billiards. That
is a pastime in connexion with which
there is real need for the word "fluke."
To be sure, any erratic shot at billiards,

18

FEBRUARY 19

whether scoring or a failure, falls into the
scope of Pope's maxim ; but in many cases
the result is so astonishingly unexpected
that neither player nor onlooker is tempted
to search for the unseen and involuntary
direction. The incidents of golf, in a
less complex way, are similar. Your
opponent, howsoever sweet of temper,
exclaims " Fluke ! " to himself, if not to
you, when you take a short hole in one
from the tee. He believes what he says,
too. On reflection he would admit that,
as you aimed at the hole, you are not
without cause for pride ; but he would not
admit that luck made no contribution to
your success. You do not suffer such
obloquy in fly-fishing. If you catch
many trout, you are acknowledged to
be a skilled hand ; if on a good day you
catch none, or only a few, you are taken
to be a duffer. Any one, even if he be a
metaphysician, may say " Good luck ! " on
seeing you set out for stream or lake ;
but no one would mention luck on
beholding your basket well plenished in

20 AN ANGLERS SEASON

the evening. Instinctively it is assumed
that what is called chance has but little to
do with fly-fishing. Is that a mistake?
One must perceive that in fishing there
really are incidents which could hardly
be estimated without reference to the
notion which the word " fluke " expresses.
For example, when you raise and play
and capture a particularly fine trout in
a lake, it is not to be denied that luck
has helped you. You did not know that
the fish was just below where your cast fell,
and in that respect you were undoubtedly
a favourite of fortune. Similarly, you
may choose the very fly for which the
trout are on the outlook, and obviously
you are rightly to be considered lucky if
your choice has been at random. These
possibilities, however, seem to measure
the scope of flukes, and they are com-
paratively unimportant. Chance really
does play but a small part in trout-
fishing.

That, it would seem, is chief among
the causes why the sport is so attractive.

FEBRUARY 21

The experiences of two or three seasons
are sufficient to make any observant
person perceive that the relations of the
trout to the flies are at all times governed
by natural laws. Are the fish not rising ?
There is a reason. Are they rising very
well ? There is a reason. In either case
the reason is theoretically ascertainable.
There is never any element of freakish-
ness in the conduct of the trout.

These statements have been denied by
men entitled to speak as with authority.
See, for example, what is said on Angling
in the 1908 May number of The Edinburgh
Review, It is argued that your box or book
cannot usefully hold flies of more than
a few patterns. The few are a variable
number, ranging from half-a-dozen to
three dozen ; while even the longest list
represents only a small selection of the
insects on which trout feed. This is an
assurance that a lure, to be successful, does
not need to be particularly like the insect
on which the trout are feeding. The
authorities, it is true, make exception in

22 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

the case of the Mayfly, which is of various
hues and sizes, and is imitated with
exceeding care, and in the cases of the
March Brown and the Alder, which also
are honoured by elaborately studious
effigies ; but they are not exacting as to
the size or the tints of lures in imitation
of the smaller insects. The notion is
that the small flies are sufficiently similar
to warrant the belief that each of the
standard patterns will represent a good
many insects effectively.

Now, it is worth noting that the lures
which are made scrupulously according
to the natural models are large. They
represent insects which are easily seen on
the water or in the air. Their shapes
and colours are readily manifest to the
human eye. Many of the other insects
are either so elusive in their colours or so
small that they are apt to escape the notice
of the angler. Thus it seems possible
that the general derogation of the belief
that you should have lures according to
many patterns is based on the assumption

FEBRUARY 23

that about insects which the angler does
not see definitely the fish are equally at
a loss.

This assumption, that the eyesight of
man and that of the trout are similar, is
too easy-going to be accepted in confid-
ence. It is disproved by experience such
as must have fallen to the lot of all men
who have fished in earnest. Who has not
at least once found the trout rising so
persistently at some particular lure that
by and by it became tattered beyond
recognition ? That this does happen,
and not infrequently, is no doubt the
origin of the saying, common on many
streams, "Never change a fly while the
fish are taking it." I myself once found a
Saltoun, after the wings had been torn off
and only the black body remained, enticing
the trout as rapidly as it could be cast
upon the water. It may be thought that,
as a lure without wings is not the same
thing as a lure with wings, whilst the
trout rose at the Saltoun in either state
with great eagerness, this testimony proves

24 AN ANGLERS SEASON

too much. Does it? If either of the other
flies on the cast at the same time had
been as attractive as the Saltoun I should
perceive that it did ; but the other lures
were of no avail at all, and one of them
was a Greenwell, which has a general
resemblance to a Saltoun. That day it
was a Saltoun that the trout wanted ;
they rose at it with extraordinary avidity ;
and when it was within view they would
take no other lure. Beyond being obliged
to think that the fat black busking of the
hook made the lure resemble something
in nature for which the trout were
foraging, it seems impossible to tell why
the fly did just as well without wings as
it had done with them ; but who shall
deny that the incident was a proof that
trout discriminate ?

It was not an exceptional incident.
There are innumerable analogies. Occa-
sionally you have no sport, or only a
rise now and then, for hours ; and you
look at the sky, and see it drear, or
at the flies, and suspect that the

FEBRUARY 25

droppers, instead of standing out, are
in limp contact with the cast ; then,
without much hope, you put on another
set, and from that moment you have
trout after trout as quickly as you can
ply ! This may befall when, so far as can
be seen, there is no great rise of insects.
What is the cause ? It is simply that
you have found a lure representing an
insect on which the fish are feeding or
are willing to feed. The trout seem to
have lost discretion. On ordinary days
you approach them with much care,
crouching or otherwise out of sight ; but
now, so eager are they to snap at what
you offer, they seem not to heed your
presence, and sometimes rush at the lure
when it is within three yards of your feet.
Now and then this happens amid condi-
tions of weather that do not appear to be
good. With an exception to be noticed
in our April chapter and another to be
discussed in May, it is invariably, as far
as I have had experience, a lure of definite
pattern that brings about the wonderful

26 AN ANGLERS SEASON

sport. Trout even distinguish between
the sex of the insects strewn upon or in
the water, sometimes, for example, pre-
ferring the male March Brown to the
female, or the female to the male ; and in
the colours of wings and bodies of lures,
from the largest to the smallest, there are
gradations which they see and act upon.

It is not implied that it is impossible
to catch fish with lures which are not
precisely like the insects wanted at the
moment. That is possible, and often
happens ; but when it does happen it
tempts the angler to an erroneous con-
clusion. It seems to bear out the notion
that one lure is as good or nearly as good
as another ; but the seeming is illusory.
If the angler had on his cast the exactly
opportune fly, he would raise but few
fish, if any, at either of the others.
When they cannot see a better, trout
will occasionally take a fly that is not
quite what they want ; but when they do
see a better, that is the only fly which
really interests them.

FEBRUARY 27

Why, then, should we set a limit,
voluntarily or under authority, to the
number of patterns ?

Public opinion on the subject, even
though it is led by Sir Edward Grey, a
first-class man alike on the riverside and
at the Foreign Office, is not a sufficient
inducement. The deceptive nature of its
influence has been neatly brought into
the light by a thinker of famed lucidity.
"A thousand men with fishing-rods,"
says Mr. Mallock in his Critical Examin-
ation of Socialism, "might meet in an
inn parlour and vote that such and such
flies were sufficient to attract trout.
But it lies with the trout to determine
whether or no he will rise to them. It
is a question, not of what the fishermen
think, but of what the trout thinks ; and
the fishermen's thoughts are effective only
when they coincide with the trout's."
One fears that The Edinburgh Review,
published in London, is writ by grave
and reverend seniors studying the trout-
streams, when these are their theme,

28 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

from arm-chairs at the windows of the
Reform Club. I much prefer the method
of The Quarterly, which, when reviewing
a fellow's book, chuckles quietly, in a
genial Tory way, over the passages which
please, and makes no empirical protest
when you lead it out of its depth.

At the same time, one has to take
note of another proposition. It is to the
effect that, even if the belief in a few
patterns as a sufficient basis for the
hope of the best possible sport has to
be abandoned, a limit is still desirable.
The pleasure of angling, it will be
said, lies less in catching trout than in
casting at them amid beautiful scenes;
more than a few patterns lead to per-
plexity ; besides, as the stock must be
preserved, it is not well to take as many
trout as possible.

This is not part of an imaginary con-
versation. It is what certain eminent
anglers sometimes say and always write.
It cannot be an affectation ; but it is
certainly strange doctrine. Does it not

FEBRUARY 29

seem to argue a love of loafing rather
than a love of life ? Far from being an
irksome trouble, the search for the right
fly should surely be a pastime as interest-
ing as the search for the right word in a
difficult sentence ; and the delight of
finding it is great. Often, in reading
books on sport in the South of England,
one is almost obliged to wonder whether
the right fly is ever found by the authors.
One cannot reconcile the thought of their
finding it with their habitual indifference
to the weight of a basket. It is hardly
possible to believe that any man who had
even once found trout coming at the flies
as they do now and then come, would
consider too irksome any trouble taken
to bring the great rise about. The great
rise is a revelation that once for all puts
the mood of prose-poetry in the mind of
the ordinary angler into strict subjection
to the hope of sport. In relation to the
angler's interests, prose-poetry, either as
a mood or as a product, is not a thing
to be encouraged. It blurs the intellect.

30 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

It pays no respect to the interests of
ordinary men. Certain literary anglers
may think it incredible that some others
unashamedly consider the trout to be
more important than the aspect of the
meadow-sweet or that of the ambient
air; yet that is the case. Indeed, there is
many a fellow-creature to whom a stroll
by the loveliest riverside is not a pleasure
unless he has a rod in hand. We are told
that a person of that kind is a poacher
by nature and probably in act. Well, I'd
rather be a dog and bay the moon than
such a Roman as the censor ; rather a
poacher than a prose-poet; and I will
give reasons for rebellion. There is
urgent need for plain-speaking on the
subject.

Not long ago The Times published an
article in praise of the Hampshire trout-
streams and the method of angling in
them. Then the writer of a letter to the
Editor made a strange statement. He
said that in Hampshire artificially-bred
and captive trout were fed on horse-flesh

FEBRUARY 31

until they weighed two pounds ; that
they were turned into streams a few
days before the arrival of anglers from
London ; and that these fish were the
game which the Dry-fly Purist, our
censor, sometimes caught while admiring
the wild flowers and the whispering wind.
Could this be true ? Was the South of
England idyll rotten at the core ? Other
writers to The Times refused to believe
the scandal, which was flouted in the
journals of sport. Alas, the story, which
had horrified anglers all over the land,
turned out to be at least partly true.
The truth was formally acknowledged.
Any one who has watched the artificial
rearing of trout will realise what the
truth meant. Trout born and grown in
a state of nature do not lose their
instincts, some of which are self-
protective ; but trout brought up in
captivity become tame and trusting.
Throw a handful of things-to-eat into
the tank, or into the pond, and they will
instantly rush at the tit-bits without the

32 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

slightest fear. They would do so if each
of the bits concealed a hook. Now, this
acquired rashness continues for a con-
siderable time after the fish have been
put into a stream; indeed, there is
reason for questioning whether the native
instincts are ever recovered. What are
we to think of the leisurely gentlemen
who, catching fish of that kind, calmly
assume and publicly declare that we
rustic anglers, mainly in respect that we
use more than one fly at a time and do
not mind if the lures dip a little below
the surface, take trout by unsportsman-
like methods ?

Do not let us think anything uncharit-
able. There is no real reason to do so.
The error is of the head rather than being
of the heart. It is the result of the prose-
poetry habit to which many anglers in
the South have abandoned themselves.
^Esthetic emotions are not invariably
good. Under their influence the brain
may become as balmy as the summer
breeze. Certainly it loses touch with

FEBRUARY 33

the facts of nature. Save in respect that
in the South it is generally recognised as
" bad form " to take trout of less than a
certain size, all the notions of the Hamp-
shire school, which is very influential
among country cousins, are demonstrably
absurd. Its limit to the variety of flies
has been shown to be unnatural and there-
fore unscientific. The understanding that
its method of angling, with one fly at
a time and that fly oiled, is a much finer
art than the method generally practised
elsewhere is equally frail. The art, says
one of its recent exponents, reveringly,
" is to be studied almost with prayer and
fasting." Is it, now ? Why, the trout
of any Hampshire stream are at least as
easily caught, either with wet fly or with
dry, as those of any stream of similar size
in any part of the United Kingdom I
This will be admitted by any one whose
experience enables him to judge. If Tlie
Times disclosure indicated a general
practice, we cannot be astonished.

The other notion on which we have

34 AN ANGLERS SEASON

touched is that the dry-fly convention, by
which angling is regulated in Hampshire,
tends towards conservation of the stock.
That is the most important of all the
notions. If it were true, those interested
in trout -streams elsewhere would have
something to learn from Hampshire ; but,
unfortunately, it seems to be as much a
superstition as either of the others. Where
else than in Hampshire are tame two-
pounders turned into the water to-day to
be treacherously slain next week ? Then,
why are they turned in ? That can only
be because, apart from them, the stock of
"sizable" fish would be found unsatis-
factory. No other reason is conceivable.
Streams that are artificially stocked with
large trout, that is to say, have but a
spurious prosperity. With rods multi-
plying and becoming more active from
year to year, it is only natural that the
Hampshire waters, like others, should
gradually lose their large fish ; but, re-
gard being had to the great care taken
of the streams in Hampshire, and to the

FEBRUARY 35

general assumption that their manage-
ment is the best in the world, it is
astonishing to gather that were they not
regularly replenished with heavy trout
they would be in as poor a plight as
streams elsewhere in England, and all
over Scotland, which are under practi-
cally no management at all.

This obliges us to perceive that the
controversy between the two methods of
angling, the Hampshire method and the
method which is general elsewhere, has
a serious side as well as a silly side.
The Hampshire convention, none too at-
tractive either in life or in literature, is
confessedly a failure as regards the pre-
servation of the stock. It is questionable
whether, with all the advantages touched
upon, any mile of the Itchen or of the
Test has more trout, or even more large
trout, than an equivalent stretch of
the Tweed or of the Tay. The less
fashionable practice, then, cannot be
deemed more injurious than the
other.

36 AN ANGLERS SEASON

The fact is that anglers in all parts
of the country have still a great deal to
learn. The Scots custom of taking small
trout as well as large, a custom which ex-
tends far into England, is bad. If small
fish continue to be taken in increasing
numbers every season, the stocks, even
as regards numbers, are bound to decline.
The fecundity of trout, great though it
is, cannot permanently outstay the in-
considerateness of the anglers on streams
that are open to the public. In this
respect Scotland is far behind the South
of England. Thousands of Scots anglers
pursue their sport without the slightest
regard to ultimate consequences ; but,
after all, the South of England does have
an ideal. It is certainly anxious that the
streams should be worth fishing in for
ever. That is easily understood. Men
whose habitual haunt is a great city
realise the value of trout-streams much
more keenly than the country folk to
whom these are familiar. It is therefore
to the South of England, which really

FEBRUARY 37

means London, that we must look for
well-informed example.

That is why I have endeavoured to
suggest that there is more joy to be
found in fly-fishing than the conventions
of Hampshire permit. It may seem
paradoxical to argue that the race of
trout will be preserved and strengthened
if the means of catching more of them
are adopted ; but there is many a truth
in the guise of paradox. One, I think,
is that in Hampshire and elsewhere there
would be more trout, and eventually
larger trout, if on all possible occasions
every fisherman filled his basket to the
lid with trout of "takeable" size. He
could not do this without having first
acquired a minute acquaintance with the
ways of the fish and of the great variety
of insects on which they feed. To glean
the full delight which a trout-stream is
capable of yielding will be well worth the
effort through which the knowledge is to
be obtained. It will render indolence by
the waterside impossible, and apply a

38 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

closure to such sayings as that "It is
a profound mistake to suppose that the
first object of the angler is to catch fish."
The more fish one catches, the more fresh
glimpses one gains into the marvellously
intricate system of natural laws by which
the incidents of the sport are regulated.
One finds understanding, that is to say;
and it is understanding that is wanted.
There is precedent for the belief that
opportunities for a sport multiply and
become enriched in proportion as the
pursuit is freed from prejudicial con-
ventions and conducted with scientific
energy. Grouse, for example, are much
more abundant now, when many men
seek them every August, than they
were seventy years ago, when they were
sought by only a few ; and they are most
plentiful on those moors from which the
heaviest bags are carried year after year.

It is more than probable that a similar
wonder may ere long overtake the trout-
streams. A most instructive discovery
by Mr. Wilson H. Armistead, an expert

FEBRUARY 39

in fishculture and in the management of
waters, shows how knowledge is progress-
ing. The trout-fishing in a certain lake,
Mr. Armistead tells us, had been steadily-
falling off from year to year. There
was no obvious explanation. The lake
was not polluted ; it was not overfished
by legitimate anglers ; poachers did not
harry it in any exceptional measure.
What was the cause of the decline?
Was it that, while plentiful as ever, the
fish were gradually ceasing to rise ? It
would be well, Mr. Armistead thought,
to know what stock the water held. To
gain this information, he built a trap at
the mouth of the stream which feeds the
lake. "Every fish leaving the lake to
spawn was caught, and the amazing fact
revealed that the proportion of males to
females was only one in seventeen." This,
of course, meant that the stock had been
declining, and that it must for a time
continue to decline. It is not known that
trout are ever polygamous ; if any of them
are, it is certain that the departures from

40 AN ANGLERS SEASON

the rule are inconsiderable. Thus, Mr.
Armistead was justified in inferring from
the result of his experiment that out of
every seventeen spawn-beds noted by the
water-bailiffs soon after the trout had
been set free, only one bed was of any
value whatever. The other sixteen beds
were sterile. The lake was losing stock
at the rate of many thousands of trout a-
year. There are other waters, rivers as
well as lakes, in which the same waste
has been mysteriously going on.

Why is it that in many a water the
female fish tend to be much more plenti-
ful than the males ? There are three
known causes of the disproportion. One
is that male trout are so much rasher than
females that three of every four trout in
the fly-fisher's creel are males. Another
is that large and well -nourished female
trout produce more female than male off-
spring. The third cause is the destruction
of young males by large old ones. Male
trout, Mr. Armistead says, "fight so
fiercely that any one who has had oppor-

FEBRUARY 41

tunity of handling wild spawning fish will
frequently find males so badly wounded
that they cannot live." Watching a
stream carefully, you may see some of
this hostility for yourself. It is to be
noticed even in spring and summer, when
it arises from pure selfishness. Wherever
there is a particularly good hover, as just
below the place where a ditch runs in,
bringing a special supply of food, you
shall see a particularly large trout. He
is the largest in the neighbourhood. Any
male seeking to trespass in the choice
corner will be immediately and fiercely
attacked ; indeed, if the intruder be small
enough to be merely impudent, and not
a serious rival, he will be seized and
chewed. Should the large trout be
caught by an angler, his place will soon
be taken by the next-largest among those
close by, and the state of siege and defence
will go on exactly as before. This war-
fare is greatly aggravated when the time
for spawning comes. The female trout
seems to be invariably good-tempered,

42 AN ANGLERS SEASON

accepting the attentions of any male that
offers himself; but the males are not in-
different. They have predilections. As
far as you can make out, the large ones
always desire to mate with the largest of
the females ; but, unfortunately, the smaller
ones have the same ambition. Con-
sequently, a trout-stream in autumn is the
theatre of a great many unseemly battles.
On almost any shallow you will see a fish
furrowing the gravel with its fins. That
is the female, making a nest. Very close
to her, perhaps alongside, perhaps just
behind, is another fish, approximately
of the same size, but probably larger.
That is a male, intending to be the
father of the prospective family. Now
and then, from one side or the other, a
trout comes over, anxious to supplant
him ; and either, as is usually the case,
the intruder, being comparatively small,
is attacked and defeated, or the intruder
is heavier and more vigorous, and the
mating pair are violently divorced. As
a rule, alike in spring and summer and at

FEBRUARY 43

the spawning time, it is the old trout
that conquers.

That is to the disadvantage of the tribe.
The old trout, though good fighters, are
not good fathers. Their progeny, besides
being female in excessive proportion, tend
to be weaklings. Then, the old male
trout are cannibals. Their consumption
of the young is enormous. It is with
good reason believed that an old male
trout is as destructive to the young of
his own kind as a pike of the same size.
Lake trout rise freely to the fly only when
they are young or adolescent. There
are exceptions, of which Lochleven and
Blagdon are examples ; but the general
rule is as stated. Consider the Highlands,
in which there are more lakes than are to
be found in all the rest of the Kingdom.
On favourable days throughout the season
the trout there rise freely to the fly ; but
the average basket is not better than
three to the pound. How is that ? It is
not to be taken as indicating the average
weight of the fish in the water. As you

44 AN ANGLERS SEASON

perceive when you troll a minnow with
success, the lake has trout very much
heavier than a third-of-a-pound, and it is
reasonable to believe that the larger fish
are plentiful. The explanation is simply
that when they grow beyond three-
quarters -of- a- pound the lake trout as
a rule cease to feed on flies habitually.
That they feed largely on young fish is
a fair deduction from the avidity with
which they seize the trolled minnows or
small trout.

As regards streams an explanation is
readily given. Wherever anglers are at
liberty to use worm and minnow as well
as fly, the stock of trout is well maintained.
Witness the many free waters in Scotland,
in which the fish, though declining in size,
are not perceptibly diminished in number.
On the other hand, wherever all lures
save fly are forbidden the stock con-
stantly tends towards decline. Witness
the highly-preserved streams in England,
in which the trout, while of much better
average size, in consequence of a rule that

FEBRUARY 45

fish under a certain weight must not be
retained, are kept up in numbers only
by artificial stocking every year. In
streams of the one class the trout past
taking fly and becoming cannibal are
thinned out by anglers using worm and
minnow ; in streams of the other class
the elderly trout, which only sunken baits
would lure successfully, are preserved to
become scourges of their species.

Clearly, then, wherever the balance of
the sexes is seriously deranged, the old
trout should be captured. That is the
obvious remedy. At first sight it does
seem daring to say that in order that
there may be more males we must put an
end to the most elderly among the few
that are to be found ; but that is indeed
the case. Destruction of the patriarchs is
the condition precedent to a restored state
of nature. This has been made clear by
the natural history of the problem. It
points to an ideal system of management
which will, to begin with, offend the under-
standing of those who are interested in

46 AN ANGLERS SEASON

"strictly-preserved " streams. " What ? "
they will exclaim. "Allow worm and
minnow? Never!" It cannot be denied
that there will be a certain reasonableness
in their reluctance. Anglers using worm
or minnow would catch not the cannibals
only. They would catch young trout also.
Still, it is demonstrable that the remedy
suggested would do no lasting harm.
Whilst it is certain that worm and
minnow, deftly plied, would take many
a trout that had escaped the fly, the rule
as to what is a "sizable" trout would
remain in force. All fish under the limit
would be returned to the water. Only
those above the limit would be kept, and
of these not a few would be old trout of
no use to the fly-fisher and much worse
than of no use to the stock. Trout above
two pounds would become fewer ; but
trout of that weight, and trout between
it and the limit, would become so much
more plentiful that artificial stocking
would be no longer necessary. In other
parts of the Kingdom, the problem, as we

FEBRUARY 47

have seen, is slightly different. On lakes
generally fly-fishing is so attractive that
worm and minnow, though not forbidden,
are not much in use. They should be
more in use. Unless the coarse utility
of the net is to be resorted to, it is by
means of them alone that the pirates
can be kept down. As to the rivers and
streams, even those which are open to all-
comers will attain their original excellence
two or three years after general acceptance
of the principle that it is unsportsmanlike
and unwise to take a trout which is less
than three-quarters-of-a-pound. If all fish
under that standard were returned to the
water, trout fulfilling the condition of
capture, and trout still better, would
ere long, in all clean streams, be as
abundant as the most exacting angler
could wish. Reasons for this statement,
and for some of those which have led up
to it, will be set forth in our next chapter.

CHAPTER III

MARCH

A Favourite Pool — Trout Not Less Game than Salmon —
Dubious Maxims — Trout Scared by Gut and by
Landing-net — Flies, Cocked -wing, Flat-wing, and
Hackle — Sudden Change of Weather — Principles of
Trout-Preservation — Scarcity of Large Fish — How
this has come about — The Remedy — English Streams
and Scotch Streams — English Anglers and Scots
Anglers — The Worm and the Mayfly.

After a day and a night of rain, the river
was about four feet higher than usual.
That suggests a raging flood ; but there
was no turbulence. While the tributaries
were brawling, the Tay was dignified.
Although there had been added to it a
flow greater than that of the Thames at
ordinary times, a stranger might not have
seen that there was a rise. The river,
at most places broad even when low,
had merely expanded a little in its

48

MARCH 49

ample channel. It was not discoloured.
Perhaps it had been slightly muddy,
tinged by the first gush from the roads,
soon after the beginning of the storm ;
but now it was clear, tinted only by the
essence of the heather.

A favourite pool looked promising. It
always looks so. Whether the water be
low or high, the pool is invariably fishable.
That is because of the admirable gradient
of the gravel bank on which the river
rises and falls. When the water is at its
lowest the end fly alights upon a depth of
about four feet ; when it is high you have
a similar depth to cast upon. The river
as it rises pushes you back ; but it deepens
also. The trout follow the expansion of
the water. To-day, it may be, you will
raise fish above a place where yesterday
you walked dry-shod. They come in to
be sheltered from the full force of the
stream, or to explore regions from which
they are excluded when the water is low.

That is not the way of the salmon. If
one be not deceived by noticing where

50 AN ANGLERS SEASON

these fish rise, they prefer to lie in places
where the water is lively, or studded with
rocks, and fairly deep.

Still, although apparently lazier, the
trout is not less game than the salmon.
In proportion to the weights, he seems
to be rather gamer. Some say that you
should bring a salmon to the gaff in a
time measured at the rate of a minute to
each pound of his weight. On the test
of experience, one feels this to be scant
allowance ; but it is evidently the accepted
rule. Who would undertake to land a
two-pound trout in two minutes ? On
the day mentioned it took ten minutes to
capture one which weighed 1 lb. 15^ oz.
That, it is true, may be deemed a mis-
leading suggestion. A trout five times
the weight would not have taken five
times as long to land. The strength of
fish does not increase in proportion to
weights. A two-pound trout may be as
difficult to bring ashore as a five-pounder,
and a twelve-pound salmon may fight as
well as one much heavier.

MARCH 51

Besides, how fiercely a fish fights, or
for how long, depends in some measure
upon where he is hooked. Hooked in
certain parts of the mouth, he has less
purchase than he would have if hooked
elsewhere. On the very rare occasions
when you hook him in both lips, closing
them, he may come to the bank as if he
were a shot rocket. If by evil hap you
have him by the tail or by the dorsal fin,
he may keep you going so long that,
thinking of other captures possible, you
would be rather glad to be quit of him.
Truth to tell, maxims about how long you
should take to land a fish are not to be
accepted literally.

In very clear streams, such as the Tay,
you will have but few opportunities to
count the time between hooking and
landing unless you use gut so thin that
any attempt to hasten matters by force
will cause a breakage. On very fine gut
a pound trout subjected to over-eager
coercion is just as likely to be lost as one
of any greater weight. In nearly all

52 AN ANGLERS SEASON

waters trout are at the height of their
vigour when they weigh one pound.
Some may ask why very fine gut is
desirable. Well, it is a fact, readily to be
verified, that on many a day a fisherman
using fine gut may have brisk sport
when an equally skilled hand using gut
less fine will have none or hardly any.
How are we to account for this ? It
is more astonishing than it seems at first.
The fish, so far as one can make out, are
not at all scared by passing leaves, or
straws, or twigs, or any other such things
borne down by the stream ; but they are
certainly shy at the sight of thick gut, gut
coarse enough to be distinctly visible.
Can it be that they know what gut is ?
The question deserves the attention of
such as are of a scientific turn of mind.
It is not only the trout's attitude towards
gut that occasionally tempts one to believe
it possible that the fish has an acquired
wariness. Time after time, when he was
near the bank, our trout mentioned above
bolted at sight of the landing-net. So

MARCH 53

did a big grayling, hooked shortly after-
wards. These were not by any means
the only fish which I have witnessed
taking fright and flight amid similar
circumstances. All fishermen of any
considerable experience will admit that
they have seen the same thing often.

Who shall say how it is to be ex-
plained ? Many trout that are hooked
win free, and it has been assumed that
they bequeath to their progeny an aver-
sion to gut ; but no similar conjecture is
plausible in relation to the fear of the
landing-net. Only a very few of the
trout once in the meshes have escaped
to communicate their experience, or to
translate it, through their progeny, into
racial cunning. Nevertheless, nearly all
big trout shy at the net !

Another engaging problem is presented
by the trout's bearing towards flies of
different types. Consider Canon Green-
well's Glory. That lure, much in use
about this time of the season, has two
distinct dresses. In one of them the

54 AN ANGLERS SEASON

wings are so much drooped that they
almost lie along the body; in the other
the wings are so much cocked-up that
the tips of them are slightly in front of
the head. To what end was this variety
designed ? The general understanding
seems to be that Greenwell with the
upright wings, which came from the
Canon's original pattern, is an adaptation
to the conditions of dry-fly angling ; but
that belief, surely, is mistaken. If you
cast a cocked-wing Greenwell upstream
it will sit very prettily on the water ; but
you shall not have so many rises at it as
will reward you on plying a flat-wing
Greenwell similarly. Cast the upright
Greenwell across-stream, letting it move
round and down ; it then acquires an
attractiveness with which the flat-wing,
similarly used, cannot compete. Very
often the trout rise at it in wild eagerness.
The explanation is to be found in the
fact that the lure is being held, though
not violently, against the current. The
cocked wings, which are delicately elastic,

MARCH 55

quiver beautifully as the stream ripples
against them. Even to the human eye
the lure looks like a living thing ; it is
not astonishing that the trout often find
it irresistible. For a similar reason, if
you would discover the full utility of
" spiders," the little flies which have many
legs but no wings, you must ply them in
an upstream direction. The hackles are
in some cases so soft that they cling to
the steel, scarcely adding to its small
bulk, when the lures are held against
the current ; but when you are bringing
the lures towards you from an upstream
cast the hackles look intensely alive.

Seven fish, smaller, followed the big
one into the basket that afternoon.
All the trout were caught within two
hours. Then a strangely chill wind
from the south-west set in, and the rises
ceased. The breeze was coming from a
stormy cloud portending rain. The sport
had been during a lull in the weather.
Clearly the storm that had brought the
flood was not yet over. It was about to

56 AN ANGLERS SEASON

resume. There would be no general
rising of the trout until, after more rain,
the wind should veer to the west-north-
west, where it had been during the lull,
and the mercury in the weather-glass,
which must be drooping now, should
begin to rise again.

One must not be sedulous in fishing
for trout in March. The lawful open-
ing of the season is a month earlier
than is really desirable. The trout, most
notably the large ones, are still capable
of much improvement in "condition."
They are not yet thoroughly good to
eat, and, despite the indulgence of the
Law, they should be given a chance to
become so. This thought, in a measure
apologetic, is particularly applicable in
Scotland, where, as has been indicated,
trout-preservation is only now becoming
a subject of anxious interest. The prin-
ciples are simpler than they are com-
monly believed to be. On the Tweed and

MARCH 57

elsewhere it is by some persons taken
for granted that, after many decades of
free fishing, trout are much fewer than
they once were. Noticing that large fish
in the basket are rarer and rarer, certain
students of the subject have inferred
that the stocks have been becoming
smaller, and have predicted that the
species will ere long be extinct. That
belief is to a large extent mistaken.
Those who entertain it leave out of
account the evidence that would meet
them if they looked carefully into the
streams. Except in places where pollu-
tion is serious or pike are plentiful,
the rivers hold, if not quite so many
trout as they held fifty years ago, as
many as there is need for. The real
trouble, as was indicated in our last
chapter, is that the average size of the
fish is less than it used to be. Of this
there can be no doubt at all. Three-
pounders and four-pounders were once
not uncommon in many a water where
two-pounders are now so scarce that their

58 AN ANGLERS SEASON

captures are specially recorded in the
public journals.

How is that ? How can it be said of
any stream that its trout are as plentiful
as ever, or at least as plentiful as need be,
if it is admitted that the very large fish
which were once common have become
as noteworthy as golden eagles ? Are
large trout more easily caught than small
ones ?

These questions will be put as if
they carried their own answers ; but
the implications are erroneous. Angling
is a pursuit in which knowledge comes
but slowly and wisdom has lingered for
centuries. We sport -loving people of
Britain have been fishing for untold
generations ; yet our natural history of
the subject is superficial. We have been
assuming that our skill is great in pro-
portion to the weight of the individual
fish in our creels. This has occasionally
been an assumption not less gratifying
than sincere ; but it has always been
thoroughly unscientific. Large trout in

MARCH 59

your basket do bear witness to your skill
in " playing " a fish ; but they do not
necessarily bear witness to any exceptional
skill in bringing him to the lure.

At certain times of the season it is the
large trout that are most readily hooked.

The times to which I specially allude
are spring and the period after the flood
which usually comes about the middle of
August. These are the times when the
trout rise at fly most freely. They rise
well in spring because then they have to
recuperate after spawning, and they rise
well as autumn approaches because then
the rapidly - developing roe is making
great demands upon their constitutions.
Now, "how does the angler fare in
spring ?

Here, to prevent misunderstanding,
we must distinguish. While it is true
that trout at large rise most freely in
spring and as autumn approaches, it is
true, also, that all classes of trout in any
stream do not invariably rise at the same
time. Sometimes it is only the smaller

60 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

fish that rise ; sometimes, indeed, it is
only the very small. On other occasions
all the trout in the water are eager to
feed. These are the occasions to which
attention is invited. What happens ?
Do you catch a great many small fish,
and a large one only now and then ?
You do not. Large ones are the rule ;
small ones are the exception. When
all the fish are disposed to rise, a small
trout seizes your fly only when there is
no large one near. If a large trout is
feeding on flies, small trout close beside
him rise only when, as at the instant
when he himself is taking an insect, they
see a chance to do so without incurring
his anger. They know that if they took
what he himself wants he would turn and
snap at them.

This is not speculative doctrine. Here
and there, either when fishing yourself or
when watching some one else, you can
stand at a place from which all that goes
on in a pool is to be seen. If you do,
you will find that what has been said

MARCH 61

is true. Whenever there is a real rise
of trout, the large ones are caught
first.

The rule of precedence among trout as
regards flies holds good in relation to
minnow-fishing also. As we have already
noted, trout taken on a minnow are
almost invariably above the average of
the fish in the water. Some may suggest
that it is because only the larger trout
take minnows, and in last chapter it was
admitted that these trout prefer minnows
to flies ; but the explanation is incom-
plete. This is shown by the fact that
in a water holding only small fish, trout
of a quarter -of- a -pound or even less
seize the minnow freely. The full ex-
planation, I think, is to be found when
we remember that minnows keep as
much out of the trouts' way as they
can. You ply your own minnow, not
where it would itself be, in some shallow
or hiding-place, if it were living and free,
but in the open water. Your minnow
is an unexpected visitant, welcome to

62 AN ANGLERS SEASON

trout generally, but a perquisite of the
largest among those which see it.

A survey of angling with any other
lure, such as worm or the creeper, would
lead to the same conclusion ; but the
cases which have been stated are repre-
sentative and sufficient.

Each year brings more rods to every
river where there is no restriction on the
number of anglers ; in very many places
the trout are to be seen ; every angler
pays special attention to the large fish ;
and at certain times the large fish, in
relation to tit-bits to rise at or to seize,
insist on being served before the small.
Is not our statement, then, that at
certain times the large trout are the
most easily caught, a truism ?

To be sure it is ; but it is not the less
alarming on that account. Being beyond
dispute, does it not point to the proba-
bility that by and by the trout of many a
river will be so small that no one of
sportsmanlike instinct will think them
worth angling for ? It would incline us

MARCH 63

to that fear if there were no hope of
anglers at large taking a more enlightened
interest in the subject ; already, indeed,
in every region beyond a two -hours
journey from London, there are many
streams which, although they contain
trout in great abundance, are ruined
from the sportsman's point of view.
Fortunately, however, there is cause
for hope. In all parts of the United
Kingdom anglers are realising the need
for precautions against the possibility
that their sport may become a thing of
the past.

As was hinted in our last chapter, the
chief precaution needed is the establish-
ment of a rule against the retention of
trout that are of less than a certain
weight. All fish under the standard
should be carefully restored to the water.
A rule to this effect would have striking
results within three years. At the end
of that time the average weight of trout
in any stream would be much more
than it is at present. Many rivers in

64 AN ANGLERS SEASON

England are under rules of the kind
mentioned. The outcome is astonishing.
Wherever there is a limit to the angler's
privilege of catching and keeping, the
trout adapt themselves to it with re-
markable uniformity. One June day, on
a stretch of the Test where the standard
is three -quarters -of- a -pound, an angler
had the good fortune to catch fifty trout.
Thirty were just over the standard.
Each of the other twenty the professional
attendant declared to be just under ; but
the difference between "just over" and
"just under" was so slight as to be scarcely
perceptible. This incident on the Test,
which is not exceptional, seems to show
that trout are extraordinarily adaptable
to the rational requirements of man.
They fulfil his specifications almost to
an ounce. They do so from a necessity
which on reflection becomes obvious. If
on any water all fish under three-quarters-
of- a- pound, for example, are allowed to
live, the water must at all times have
many fish approximately of that weight.

MARCH 65

It will be said that what can be done
in Hampshire cannot be done elsewhere.
The waters of that county are chalk-
streams, and therefore, it is generally
supposed, are by nature peculiarly well
adapted to being haunts of heavy trout.
There is little truth, if any, in the belief
indicated. Trout in Hampshire and else-
where in the neighbourhood of London
are on the average large simply because
those who manage the streams there
know, in one respect at least, how sport
may be wisely pursued. Trout in other
regions are on the average inferior simply
because many anglers are inconsiderate.
There is no important difference between
a stream flowing through chalk soil and
a stream flowing through soil of any
other kind. Trout do not naturally
thrive in the one any better than they
thrive naturally in the other. This
statement, if examined in the light of
an example, will be found true. Com-
pare the Test with the Tay. The
Hampshire stream flows through meadow-

66 AN ANGLERS SEASON

lands, where summer is long and luscious ;
the Highland river, for many miles, is
bordered on both sides by mountains,
on some of which snow lies until June.
The Test is gentle, and in many stretches
muddy at the bottom ; the Tay is im-
petuous, and in most places its bed is
sand or gravel. No two rivers in the
Kingdom present a greater contrast. In
the general understanding the Test is an
ideal trout -stream while the Tay is an
overgrown burn. The Hampshire trout
are heavy, game, and of rich quality ;
while the Highlanders, it is supposed, are
little better than those of a mountain tarn.
This is all wrong. The average trout of
the Tay is in every respect as good as the
average trout of the Test. The Tay, like
the Test, is preserved, though not so rigor-
ously. That is the secret of its excellence.
Although among the mountains, it is not
what is known as a "mountain stream."
Its course lies through valleys. Although
in the Highlands, that is to say, it is not,
except in a volume, noticeably unlike any

MARCH 67

ordinary river in a lowland region of the
United Kingdom. Any ordinary river
would, if it were given fair play, become
as good as the Test or the Tay. This
is said from more than abstract reason-
ing. In almost every county there is at
least one stream that within the memory
of men still living was as good as either
of the rivers of which we have been
speaking. The institution of a rule deter-
mining the weight of "takeable" trout
would quickly restore the injured rivers
to their natural state. Incredulity as to
this will be felt only by those who either
have travelled but little throughout the
Kingdom or have travelled without being
observant. For example, the Eden, in
Fife, is so much like the Test that an
angler dropped from an aeroplane on one
of them, and not being told which, might
easily mistake it for the other. The
essential similarity is just as striking
as the similarity of the general aspects.
Though its abundant trout are now not
better on the average than five to the

68 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

pound, the Eden used to yield baskets as
good as those which are common in
Hampshire.

These remarks, it will be understood,
are impartial. They are intended, not to
depreciate the South of England streams,
but to make it clear that streams else-
where are not sufficiently valued. While
trout-fishing within easy reach of London
costs much, trout-fishing in many other
places costs nothing or very little, and
therefore has never been esteemed as it
should be. Practically every county in the
Kingdom will ere long become as attractive
as Hampshire if anglers generally maintain
their revived interest in the manage-
ment of streams. It is clear that the first
measure of reform must be the imposition
of a rule that the taking of immature
trout shall be an offence disqualifying
the person guilty from exercise of the
privilege. Besides being no more than
the owners of fisheries are entitled to
stipulate, this would be a self-denying
ordinance easily borne. It would mean

MARCH 69

light baskets this season and the next ; but
it would ensure heavy baskets three years
hence and every season after. If trout
under three-quarters-of-a-pound are saved
now, fish of this weight will by that time
be as plentiful as fish of three ounces
are at present. Does not the prospect
warrant the inconsiderable sacrifice ?

The sale of brown trout captured
under the privilege should be forbidden.
The suggestion is not invalidated by the
fact that tenants of grouse-moors sell
some of their spoils. The cases are not
analogous. The lessee of a grouse-moor
is under contract to kill no more when he
has bagged birds to a certain number,
leaving the stock sufficient ; if the grouse
to which he is entitled are more than he
himself can use, there is no reason why he
should not turn the excess to pecuniary
account. A man fishing under privilege
is in a different position. It may be that
he pays nothing to the owner ; it may be
that he pays a small sum, contribution to
a fund for the protection of the stream.

70 AN ANGLERS SEASON

In either case, as the owner does not
profit in a pecuniary sense from grant-
ing the privilege, it is manifest that
the beneficiary accepts the boon on the
understanding that it is to be used in
pleasure only, not for sordid gain. Every
large town has a ready market for brown
trout; this is known to have greatly en-
couraged improper methods of fishing on
streams open to the public. The traffic
must cease if the fisheries are to be
redeemed. Obviously it is open to the
owner of a stream, whether a private
person or the Crown, to say to the
public, " Yes, I will allow you to fish, for
the pleasure of the pastime; but I will
not allow you to fish with intention to
make a pecuniary profit." A concession
of privilege involving property is not
analogous to a concession of political
power. It is not accompanied by the
implicit sanction of a larger claim.

CHAPTER IV

APRIL

The March Browns — Time of their Rise — Variants in
Imitation — The Large Spring Duns — When Trout
are Ravenous — The Twin Trees Pool — Three Good
Fish — A Sharp Tussle — Deadlock — Defeat — On a
Welsh Stream — Unexpected Good Fortune — Lord
Stanley of Alderley — Mr. A. G. Bradley's Query :
Divination or Intelligence? — Mr. D. S. Meldrum's
Basket — A Lochleven Adept — Char in Perthshire —
Trout in Hampshire — A Notorious Angler — In-
tellectual Development through Sport.

This seems to be the month in which
the March Browns are most abundant.
Day by day they are upon the river in
myriads. At the beginning of the month
they come out at two o'clock or thereby ;
they are a few minutes earlier daily as
the spring advances. Observing casu-
ally, you might suppose that the large
and lazy insects, floating downstream with

71

72 AN ANGLERS SEASON

hardly even the flutter of a wing, have all
come from some place up the water ; but
that would be a mistake. March Browns
are rising to the surface, simultaneously,
at all parts of the stream. On close in-
spection it is rather an eerie spectacle.
Looking at a space of water, you see the
surface one moment vacant, and then, in
an instant, there are on it three or four
March Browns ! Their immobility adds
to the wonder of the apparition. If they
came up with a splutter or otherwise
dashingly, you could understand things
at a glance ; but you see no evidence of
their having come up at all. All you can
see is that at this moment there are
March Browns where the moment before
there was nothing.

They are well liked by the fish. Within
ten minutes after they are in full force on
the surface, there also, or within a few
inches thereof, seem to be all the trout
in the river, devouring the clumsy insects.
Often one hears of great sport by means
of a fly in exact imitation of the March

APRIL 73

Brown, male or female ; but I myself
have never had any particularly good
fortune with that lure. For one thing,
there is hardly ever time enough to fill
a basket with it. Usually, as far as I
can make out, the rise is over within an
hour, and, it would appear, there is only
one rise a-day. Besides, I have never found
the trout rising at artificial March Browns
so well as they rise at the real ones.
Indeed, there is some reason for believing
that an artificial fly which in appearance
and even in size is slightly different from
the model is rather better than an exact
effigy. Time and again I have had fair
fortune with a fly of wookcock wing and
quill or hare's-ear body, while a larger and
rougher lure in exact imitation of the
March Brown was on the same cast
plied with but poor result. This, I think,
is not an exceptional experience. If you
examine Malloch's Favourite or Hardy's
Favourite or any other similar "fancy
fly" issued by a noted maker of tackle,
you will find that whilst it has a general

74 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

resemblance to the March Brown it is in
size and even in other respects a variant.
This may perhaps be regarded as con-
siderable evidence in favour of the belief
that an exact effigy is not, or at least not
always, the most effective lure when the
March Brown is on the water.

It may be that the explanation of the
puzzling fact under notice is not far to
seek. The March Brown hardly ever
comes out alone. Its rise is nearly always
accompanied by the rise of a large dun,
a fly to which Greenwell's Glory, Green-
well without a red or yellow tag, bears a
strong resemblance. Between them the
two insects, the brown and the dun, cause
great excitement among the trout, which
become so ravenous as to be almost fear-
less, and do not go down or dart away
when you step within the range of
their vision. The fish are in a riot of
gluttony. It is at least conceivable that
a lure which is smaller than the March
Brown, and as it were a compromise
between it and the grey dun, may strike

APRIL 75

them as being inoffensive and to be given
the benefit of any doubt there may be as
to its species.

In saying this I do not forget the
theory that an artificial fly should as
closely as possible resemble an insect
which is on the water or due to be there.
That I believe to be true ; but it may be
admitted that there are at least apparent
exceptions to the rule which the theory
denotes. Do not the trout, when dark-
ness falls on a summer night, rise well at
large lures which are not in all cases like
insects on the water ? On such evenings
the fish are excited and made rash by
greed, and certainly seem to be not quite
so critical about lures as they are at
ordinary times.

At any rate, unless the water is too
high or too low, the Tay pool near The
Twin Trees on the Kenmore Koad may
be visited with hope on almost any April
day. The stipulated condition is im-
portant. Some pools, such as that which
was described at the beginning of last

76 AN ANGLERS SEASON

chapter, adjust themselves to any flow ;
but the Twin Trees Pool is not one of
them. It is in ply only when there are
two or three inches of water running in
the channel through the island of gravel
which bounds it on the north. Then it is
exactly right : heaving and wavy from
the violence of the rapids just above, yet
of such gentle current that you can manage
the flies pleasantly while casting upstream.
Any time in April when the water is at
this height and the March Browns or the
large duns or both are out, you shall see
rises. The pool is short, not much more
than twenty yards, and there are never
many rises, usually not more than three
or four ; but the trout are large, and
sometimes, if you go about the matter in
tactful detail, you can have them all. The
procedure, of course, is to begin with the
one nearest you, at the end of the pool,
preventing him, when hooked, from
running upstream, to scare the others ;
to take the next -nearest in the same
way ; and so on, until the one that has

APRIL 77

been hovering in front of the hawthorn
at the head of the pool is safely in the
creel. On a fine bland noontide last
spring the trout weighed, respectively,
1 lb., If lb., and Sg lb. Each of them had
been gobbling the March Browns and the
duns at the rate of a dozen or so a minute,
and each had taken the Woodcock at or
about the first time of asking.

What, however, was that fish which
had been rising, less regularly, beyond the
middle of the stream ? There the water
was just a little more rapid than trout
approve so early in the season ; all the
other fish had been hovering, within
five feet of the bank, in what might be
called a bay. The best mode of answer-
ing the question was, if it were possible,
to raise him.

Raised he was, and that at the first
cast ; and his species was instantly evident.
There was no pulling this fish downstream.
He went up, a good many yards past the
hawthorn, fortunately well out on the
other side, so that the line was not en-

78 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

tangled in the overhanging branches ; and
when he came down he moved slowly,
tail-first, the while one's rod-arm was in
a throbbing agitation just like that which
you sometimes suffer when holding the
receiver of a telephone. By and by he
was within four yards of me; but he
did not tarry. Off he dashed across
the water. Would he turn down now,
and persevere in that direction ? If so, I
should have to hold tight and be bidden
farewell through a breakage. There is an
overhanging tree at the end of the pool, as
well as one at the top. Therefore I could
not on the land follow the fish ; and, there
being a very deep hole on the other side
of the obstruction, I had better not follow
him by water. Luckily, he did not go
down. He did not even go up. He
came towards me. Here too, however,
danger lurked. What if he should seek
shelter under the tangle of thin branches
on the tree -stump in the water at my
feet ? That seemed to be precisely what
he meant to do ! As he neared the

APRIL 79

stump, which was not upright, but
leaning over, forming a small cavern,
I gradually let the rod droop until the
point nearly touched the water and be-
tween the top ring and the cast there was
not more than a foot of line. It was a
trying situation. I was pushing the rod
out as far as I could stretch, and the fish
was pulling the bent top-piece in. If only
"Miss Winsome" had been with me as
usual, this strained relation would have
been averted. She would have driven
the fish from the stump by smiting the
water with the landing-net. It is not
always prudent to go fishing on the Tay
alone. While 1 was engaged in these re-
flections, the unexpected happened. If
the fish had come in a few inches farther
the gut would have been caught among
the twigs ; but, to my astonishment, he
turned and charged to the other side
again. My relief was fleeting. The
flush of warmth which had suffused my
trembling legs gave way to a cold sweat.
He was coming straight back, and that

80 AN ANGLERS SEASON

with less deliberation and greater speed !
This time he did not shirk the cavern.
He ran right in, and settled down. There
had been no stopping him. I had, as
before, applied the closure when the cast-
loop was a foot from the top ring ; but
that had been of no avail. He had merely
pulled the rod into a sharper curve.

This was a painful deadlock. There
was no possibility of hoping that the fish
would be in a hurry to come out. I was
under arrest, and should have to remain so
until help arrived. Home was less than a
mile away. It was just possible that if I
were late for luncheon "Miss Winsome"
might divine that something of the kind
had happened, and would come. Rarely
had I needed her more. Should I lay down
the rod, drop from the high bank, and
drive the fish out with the landing-net?
If I did, he might have the rod away with
him before I could scramble up again.
On the other hand, how long was I to
stand in this humiliating pose ? Hark !
A footfall on the high road, just behind !

f-7

w. L. Wooit, Junior.

1. JUST BELOW THE TWIN TREES POOL (page 76>

2. DOWN A BIT ; A SALMON ON.

APRIL 81

It was that of a tall young man in a
frock-coat. " Hullo ! " I shouted, invit-
ingly. The stranger stopped and gazed,
but did not approach. " Just a minute ! "
I said, appealingly ; and through the copse
he came, with hesitating steps, keeping
his eyes on me suspiciously. When he
was close by and at a standstill, he looked
at me in grave and doubtful inquiry.

I handed to him my cigarette case, and,
when he had struck a match, said slowly,
as if in no excitement at all, "Will you
oblige me by stepping upon that stump,
and poking the shaft of this landing-net
down by the upper side ? "

It was in order not to put him in a
fluster, and to prevent him from bungling,
that I stated only the bare requirements
of the case. If I myself were asked by
any one to stir up a lurking fish, I should
be considerably put about.

The stranger complied with greater
readiness than I had expected, and his
help was effective. The moment the
shaft was down the fish was out. Alack,

82 AN ANGLERS SEASON

the pull of the line was not direct ! The
gut was over a twig. It was speedily
sawn in twain.

" Ah ! thank you," I said to the pallid
youth : " that's all right."

It seemed unnecessary to tell him that
a salmon had come and gone. Indeed,
telling him might have confirmed his
impression that he was in odd company.
Instead, I drew his attention to the trout
in my basket, lying on the bank. The
sight of them neither wrought any change
upon his countenance nor induced him to
speak. Having looked at the trout for a
moment and then at myself for several
moments, he went off through the wood,
slowly for a few yards, and then with
long and rapid strides. Obviously his
belief was that he had chanced upon a
person who was "not all there."

At least once before I had been under
the same suspicion ; but then I had been
cleared. That was in Wales.

APRIL 83

" There are big trout there," said Lord
Stanley, brother and predecessor of the
present Baron of Alderley.

We had come, one fine morning, to
the overflow of the lake lying between
his estate and that of Lord Anglesey.
In fact, this was the beginning of the
stream on which we were to have a day's
fishing. The water fell into a large pool,
upon which we were looking from the
bridge that carries the road to a handsome
homestead less than a hundred yards off.

" You fish there for a while," he went
on ; "I will begin just below the bridge."

Of course I set about doing as I was
bid ; but I had not much expectance.
To tell the truth, I had none at all. I
took it that my delightful friend, who
liked a joke, was playing some little trick.
The pool certainly looked very fine.
There was in it plenty of deep, dark,
wavy water. Still, it was not a pool
such as could be expected to have big
trout. The fall from the lake was so
great that no fish, if you except the

84 AN ANGLERS SEASON

very young eel, which can climb over
practically anything, could go through
it ; and never in the course of many
wanderings had I found other than
small trout in a pool out of which there
was no free course up the water. In
mountain streams there are frequent
pools of that kind, and experience had
seemed to teach that they were not
worth dallying over. It was not in the
confined pools, howsoever good to look
at, but in the open spaces, that the best
trout were to be found. I dared say to
myself that when I overtook him my
jovial host would have a few fine fish in
the creel and I myself should have none.

" But what was that ? " I had
suddenly to ask.

I had been casting from the bridge,
lazily, carelessly, expecting nothing ; but
surely that was a rise in the middle of
the heaving waves ? It had been at one
of my flies, too ; and it could be no
troutlet that left such a mark in such
turbulent water.

APRIL 85

Ah, there he was again, and this time
the line was taut !

It was not a small fish I had on.
Being high above the pool, on which
sunshine was shimmering, I had seen him
as he rose from the depth. He was
larger than the best of the trout any of
us had taken from the Alderley lakelets,
stocked from Lochleven.

How was I to get him out ?

The sides of the pool, like what may
be called the apron, were high and
precipitous ; and I could not drop from
the bridge, which was at least twenty
feet above the water. What had Lord
Stanley told me to do in the event of my
having a fish on ? For the life of me, I
could not remember. It had been an
explicit injunction ; but, as I had taken
it to be part of a practical joke, it had
fallen on inattentive ears.

My host himself could not be far off;
but, what with the noise from the water-
fall and that of the wind in the trees, he
would not hear my cry for help.

86 AN ANGLERS SEASON

A stableman was crossing the yard of
the homestead. I shouted. He stopped,
and looked. I shouted again ; but he did
not come. He disappeared ; then was
immediately, with another stableman,
back to where he had stood. I waved a
beseeching arm, and beckoned by a back-
ward movement of the head. At length
the two rustics began to approach. They
were eminently cautious, and took their
own time in coming. They kept at a
discreet distance when they reached the
bridge, and when I had spoken they were
mute. By a motion of the free hand I
directed their gaze to the tense rod, and
to the trout, which was hop-skip-and-
jumping among the surge at the foot of
the cascade ; but the sporting aspect of
affairs seemed not to interest them.
Having looked at the fish for a few
seconds, they turned their eyes again
upon myself, and grinned.

"Could you find Lord Stanley?" I
asked, making a gesture to indicate where
he should be looked for.

APRIL 87

This, happily, was understood. The
stablemen turned, went to the other side
of the road, and looked over the parapet ;
then one of them sauntered off; and
very soon Lord Stanley, his quizzical
countenance in a state of interrogation,
came to a halt beside me.

What should I say ? To own that I
had forgotten what I was to do if
I hooked a fish would not be the right
way out. It would be tactless, unkind, a
confession putting him to disappointment
and me to shame. I hastily wondered,
Could I lay the fault on the stablemen
without doing them any harm? Think-
ing I might venture on this tack, I
said, wearily, that these yokels — dem 'em
— didn't understand the English of the
King — God bless him !

This speech, which in a vague way I
felt to be not at random, but somehow
inspired, was exactly what the circum-
stances demanded. Instantly it brought
a look of understanding to the counten-
ance of Lord Stanley, who, turning upon

88 AN ANGLERS SEASON

the stablemen, spoke, in a tongue which
I took to be Welsh, a few wrathful
words that sent them scampering to their
quarters. When they emerged thence,
which was with no delay, I recollected
my instructions. The stablemen were
running towards us with a ladder. If I
hooked a trout I was to shout for a
ladder !

Soon it was placed in the pool and
against the parapet. Down went Lord
Stanley ; and as he came up again,
cautiously flourishing the landing-net
in triumph, his singularly pleasant face
was more even than usually lit up with
boyish glee.

A strain of the slightly-unusual which
runs through this chapter recalls attention
to a problem propounded, in a letter, by
Mr. A. G. Bradley. "Why do certain
men always kill more trout in a lake, in
ordinary drift -fishing, where no local
knowledge or dodges of any kind come

APRIL 89

in, than other men who are good fisher-
men with an equal length of experi-
ence ? " There cannot be any doubt as
to the assertion in this query. Every
angler will know at least one other whose
habitual success is not easily accounted
for. My correspondent, who was a friend
of Mr. W. C. Stewart in the later days
of that famous fisher, knows four of the
mysteriously successful men. I myself
know some. Of these the most striking
example is Mr. David Storrar Meldrum,
right-hand man to the Editor of
Blackwood. One April morning he took
me to Carriston, a small loch not far
from Kingskettle, in Fife ; and when we
came off the water, at nightfall, his
basket was as heavy as my own. That
statement is not so conceited as it looks.
I myself had been fishing diligently for
years ; but Mr. Meldrum had hardly ever
cast a fly before. He was thoroughly
successful on what was practically his
first day. The flies he used, it is true,
were those I chose for him, duplicates

90 AN ANGLERS SEASON

of those I chose for myself; but that
is a small consideration. Mr. Bradley
declares, in regard to his four mysterious
adepts, that " the secret is not in any of
their cases revealed by the flies. One of
them, who has represented England in
Lochleven competitions, told me that he
thought he had some exceptional faculty
or instinct for divining the touch of a fish
under water."

That is an interesting suggestion.
Certainly there are wonders to be
witnessed in the sport. A few are
brought to mind by what my corre-
spondent says. The first is connected
with char, which, like trout, are of the
salmonkind ; and it is a case in point.
There was a series of seven or eight very
sultry evenings on a Perthshire loch.
At the beginning of this period the trout
were not rising well, and by the end of
it they were not rising at all ; but, for the
first time in the season, the char began to
rise on the earliest of the sultry evenings,
and on the last of them an angler in

APRIL 91

whose company I was afloat caught
nearly a score. I witnessed, from strike
to landing-net, the capture of each char ;
but I did not see a single rise. Even
when a fish took a fly immediately after
it fell upon the gently -rippling water,
there was never a visible break on the
surface. " Do you see the rises ? " I
asked ; and he answered that he did not.
How, then, did he know when to strike ?
He could not tell exactly. He thought
it might be by noticing an almost im-
perceptible arrest in the movement of his
line, a movement caused by little more
than the weight of the line itself.

I witnessed a similar marvel on the
pretty stream which flows past Haslemere
and Liphook. Day after day one of a
small party who were being entertained
by Mr. T. J. Barratt, that princely host,
had been catching more trout than any-
body else, and I went to look on at his
doings in the evening. "Ah, here's a
good fish ! " he exclaimed, striking ; and,
sure enough, his rod was bent and active.

92 AN ANGLERS SEASON

I remarked that I had not seen the
rise. " O, that's nothing ! " he answered,
laughing. "When we land this one I'll
catch five more without your seeing a
rise." He was as good as his word. He
did catch five more, and every time he
struck he was, so far as could be seen,
striking at nothing at all ! As we were
packing up the rods he explained that he
struck whenever he noticed a stoppage
of the line.

From these two cases it would appear
that exceptionally gifted fishermen owe
their success not to divination but to rare
acuteness of the eyesight. As it would
be tiresome to have in angling any
element of uncanniness, this is pleasant
knowledge. It may serve to solve
Mr. Bradley's perplexity in its specialised
formulation. "I can, of course," he
writes, "understand there being grades
among wet-fly fishermen who know more
or less how to fish. That is simple. But
I cannot understand one man standing
out. There is a man called E , a

APRIL 93

resident in London, but a native of the
South Wales border — of the Monnow,
Arrow, Honddu, and that group of
streams — of the upstream and under-
time class of fishing. The country is full
of born fishermen ; but this man never
fails to make the biggest baskets. He
isn't a poacher, but a gentleman and a
sportsman. He is such a terror that
some owners won't give him leave. His
acquaintances cannot account for it. He
is most notorious, and far outnumbers
every one."

I know a good many persons like this
raider of Wales. Their deftness can be
explained, I think, without recourse to
the theory that their greenhearts or
built-canes are a newly discovered kind
of divining-rods. It seems to be attribut-
able to the faculty of observation, and
to that alone. Habitual frequenters of a
water are often astonished by the success
of some angler fishing there for the first
time. He always pauses at the best
places ; he seems always to have a trout

94 AN ANGLERS SEASON

on or just landed. Surely, the beholder
may feel, it is instinct that guides him ?
How otherwise could he unerringly cast
his flies just where fish are lying ? How
have so many rises ? How miss so in-
frequently ? A generalised answer seems
possible. We have seen that aptness
in striking a fish under the surface
springs not from instinct or divination
but from acuteness of sight ; perhaps a
delicate sense of touch assists the eye.
All other phenomena in the practice of
the fisherman who astonishes by success
are equally aspects of skill derived
from intelligence and experience. If
it be not very large, a trout-stream
visited for the first time is as an open
book to the well-trained angler. The
fish of very large rivers have pecu-
liarities of habit, here shunning what
seem good places, and there crowding into
places apparently unattractive ; but those
of what may be called ordinary streams
are uniform in their ways. That is
how a good man, though quite new to a

APRIL 95

water, knows at a glance where to cast.
Trout will be hovering in such places
in this stream as they frequent in any
stream well known to him. Similarly,
the fly of the season, which is sometimes
the fly of an hour, is that which trout
prefer. Habitual anglers anywhere are
usually too indolent to trouble about dis-
covering it ; Mr. E , I suspect, always

has it on. The rest of successful craft
consists in allowing the lure to move in
or on the water just as an insect would,
in the quick sight which the Lochleven
champion mistook for divination, and in
that self-command which enables you
to strike delicately whenever a trout
touches.

Even so, the problem is not yet com-
pletely solved. Mr. Bradley may say,
" Think of twenty anglers, of similar age
and of equal experience; and you will
find that two or three are very much
better than the others." Well, what of
that? It only shows that men are not
equal in talents or in achievements. Some

96 AN ANGLERS SEASON

are exceptionally gifted in the faculty of
observation and in the power of reasoning
from things observed ; and naturally these
excel. As for my own instance, that of
the friend who had nearly a creel ful of
trout on his first attempt : that is a
harder nut to crack ; but it is crackable.
A few years ago, writing in The Academy,
then under the control of Mr. C. Lewis
Hind, who liked his contributors to be
original, I set forth the proposition that
any one who was adept in angling was
necessarily of high capacity in purely in-
tellectual arts. This teaching did not at
the time call forth much public comment.
Perhaps that was because it was not pre-
sented with sufficiently elaborate reason-
ing. The fact is, the proposition, instead
of having been thought out, was merely
the expression of an intuitive surmise.
Now, to my astonishment and delight,
it turns out to have been profoundly true.
Writing to The Times in support of Mrs.
Humphry Ward's plea that London
should provide public playing -grounds

MR. T. J. BARKATT (pa<je V\).

APRIL 97

for children, the most authoritative men
of science have conclusively shown that
the peculiar training which comes through
sports or games is helpful in the proper
devel opment of intellectual capacity. That
men intellectually eminent must soon ac-
quire exceptional efficiency in any skilled
craft they take to, especially if it be
angling, the subtlest of all sports, is not a
strained corollary. It is an inference from
the ascertained nature of things. If Mr.
Bradley will pass all his angling friends
and acquaintances under review, he will
come upon an illuminating fact. He will
find that among the mysteriously success-
ful ones, although a few may be vagabonds,
there is not a single person who lacks in-
tellectual superiority to ordinary men.
One of my own mysteriously successful
angling friends, the deftest of them all,
is not grammatical, and cannot even spell
with correctness ; but an amazing skill,
similar to that with which he casts his flies
or guides his sunken lures, runs through
all his more serious activities, which are

7

98 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

invariably prosperous. Had his aca-
demic education been such as his
capacities invited, he would, I really
believe, have risen to some high post
in the service of our country and the
Crown.

CHAPTER V

MAY

The Temperate Month — Real Beginning of the Trout
Season — On Loch Derculich — Mr. W. L. Wood
— The Junglecock - and - Black — James Stewart —
Large Flies Mysteriously Successful — Precedents
from Bygone Times — Testimony of Ancient Tackle-
Books — On Loch-na-Craig — Lochleven Trout in the
Highlands — The Moness Burn — The Provost off-Duty
— What Might be Made of Burns — The Evening
Rise.

May, as a whole, is the briskest month
of the trout season. The fish, it is true,
are not in the best condition until about
the middle of June, by which time, in
many parts of the country, they have had
a fortnight's feasting on Mayflies ; but in
May they rise freely, and are sufficiently
well nourished to be worthy alike of
the sportsman's zeal and of the cook's
respect. Before then they take flies, real

99

100 AN ANGLERS SEASON

or artificial, eagerly ; but such of them
as are old enough to have spawned are
still frail, some of the large ones so
pitiably that it is a shame to catch them.
After the Mayfly period, which is not
exactly at the same time on all streams,
there is a lull that lasts until the weather
breaks in August. The trout seem to be
sated with insect food ; at any rate, they
are much more unwilling, during daylight,
to rise at any flies which the angler offers.
Also, in June and July they sometimes
fall off in condition. After that, especially
if rain be frequent, there is a distinct im-
provement for three or four weeks ; in
many cases a September trout is actually
better than a July one.

Though at present we feel that no
sunshine could be so warm as to be un-
welcome, June, or July, or August, when
upon us, is apt to have a temperature in
which to wield a trout-rod is to toil ; but
May, as a rule, has weather which is
exactly suited to the gentle exercise.
Besides, the temperate month brings out

MAY 101

upon the waters such a large variety of
insects that the angler has scope for an
agreeable exercise of craft. May, in short,
is the real beginning of the season.

There is an especial interest in being
on any water for the first time. In what
respects will the fish turn out to be
different from those of other places ? As
usual on such an occasion, that was the
subject which concerned us when one
morning, at the hospitable bidding of Mr.
Stewart-Robertson of Edradynate, we set
out upon Loch Derculich. My com-
panion Mr. W. L. Wood, who had fished
there nearly twenty years ago, had been
declaring, on the way uphill, that very large
flies, flies at least twice the size of those
which are standard on Lochleven, would
be needed. This had puzzled me. Was
it to be supposed that the insects of one
water differed in size from insects of the
same species on another water? Mr.
Wood, though a connexion of Professor

102 AN ANGLERS SEASON

Wilson, "Christopher North," was not
prepared to enter upon discussion of a
problem so profound. The only opinion
to which he would commit himself was
that the flies to be successfully used on
Derculich must be large, and that the
trout liked them to be black in the body.

Well, he was right. The first rise was
at his cast, and when the trout, fully 1 lb.,
was in the landing-net, it was seen to
have taken a large Junglecock-and-Black.
The next rise also was to my friend, and
again it was the Junglecock that scored.
The third rise and the fourth, one to
him and the other to myself, were
simultaneous. Mr. Wood's fish was on
a large Teal-and-Black ; mine, consider-
ably smaller, was on a Saltoun, which is
a dun with a black body ribbed in silver.

Lest these hasty statistics should make
it appear that sport was brisk, let me
mention that it was rather slow. Not
a single rise had either of us had while
James Stewart, faithful guide on many
such a day, was rowing us from the boat-

MAY 103

house to the west end of the water, where
we were to begin the first drift ; and
James had looked upon that fact with
misgiving. It had made him, and us,
scan the sky, there to behold, in the
aspect of the clouds, signs of M thunder
in the air." As a matter of fact, we had
been drifting about quarter -of- an -hour
before the first rise came, at least as long
between that and the second, and at least
as long between the second and the other
two. You may say that a trout to each
quarter -of- an -hour is as much as any
reasonable man can expect ; and I agree.
By six o'clock, however, when reluctantly
we left, we had caught only sixteen fish.
That was at the rate of one trout to each
rod every hour, and, as I myself had
caught only seven, the sport, from my
own point of view, was still more modest.
It was nothing like so good as that of
which the loch was known to be capable.
A few days before, two lads, guests of
the neighbouring laird, had come down the
hill with a basket of thirty-three fish and

104 AN ANGLERS SEASON

a report that the trout had been rising
with astonishing freedom. No : there can-
not be any denying that we should have
had similar fortune if the weather had
been favourable. Trout never do rise
well in time of sultriness. That is one
of the few dogmas which no angler will
dispute.

The remarkable thing was the triumph
of my friend's prediction about the flies.
His set not only lured more trout than
came to my own, which were of standard
sizes, but also they lured larger trout.
His fish ranged from 1^ lb. to \ lb. ; mine
from f lb. to \ lb. This brought to mind
a saying of Gould, gamekeeper at Bal-
birnie, who used to come to see to one's
comfort on Clatto Water, in Fife : H If ye
want big troot, ye maun use big flees." I
laughed at this at the time, though never
in the presence of Gould, who was a
famous character, commanding every-
body's respect; but I am not laughing
now. As a general rule the trout flies
which succeed best are in all respects,

MAY 105

especially in size, approximately exact
imitations of insects on the water at the
time of fishing ; but it begins to be mani-
fest that there are exceptions to the rule.
My companion at Derculich mentioned
that long ago, when frequently he fished
on Loch Rannoch with Sir Robert
Menzies, who was so keen a sportsman
that he dwelt in a hut by the loch for a
week at a time, living mainly on trout
the while, the flies in vogue there were
as large as seatrout flies. We have seen
what lures the Derculich trout prefer.
Then, we all know, if not by experience,
either from hearsay or from accounts in
the journals of sport, that the great trout
of Blagdon Lake, among which five-
pounders are frequent, take flies that
are practically salmon flies. What is the
meaning of these facts ?

I thought I had hit on the explanation
when reading a certain article in T*he
Field. There I learned that trout which
since the war were put into South -
African streams are beginning to give

106 AN ANGLERS SEASON

sport; that the flies they take are very
large ; and that their proneness towards
such lures is attributable to their taste
having been vitiated by the rich and
rather gross artificial feeding of their
youth and adolescence. A very brief
reflection sufficed to show that these
tidings cast no light upon the problem.
It is easy to believe that trout brought
up on horse-flesh or liver may come to
have a perverted appetite and false
instincts, and it is known that in some
cases fish reared in hatcheries are a good
long time in stream or lake before they
revert to the ways of wild trout ; but what
has that to do with a matter such as Loch
Derculich ? Derculich has no sophistica-
tion about it. Lying in mountainous
land far up towards Faragon, it is at least
a thousand feet above the sea. No man
has ever, so far as is known, put into it
an alien trout. Only a few men, indeed,
have ever seen the beautiful and splendid
water, which is far away from any public
path. In short, Derculich, like Rannoch,

MAY 107

is a trout water in an untarnished state
of nature.

By the time we reached the valley
neither Mr. Wood nor James was able
to offer any explanation of the trouts'
insistence upon large flies. I was equally
at a loss. However, a surmise comes.
Either Loch Derculich has insects larger
than those of the same species which are
common elsewhere, or there is an especial
reason why the trout in it take lures so
large that they would be ignored by trout
in other waters. Which theory are we
to adopt ?

The first is a shot in the dark, and I
think it misses. We saw a few insects on
Loch Derculich, and they were certainly
not larger than those of the same kinds
which are to be seen on more familiar
waters. James remarked that moths
come out of the heather on the margins
of Highland lochs, and that the moths
are as large as my friend's flies. That is
true ; but it does not settle the question.
The moths do not come out until the

108 AN ANGLERS SEASON

dusk is deep. Trout anywhere rise at
them, or at imitations of them, then ; but
trout in any familiar water do not rise at
artificial moths in daytime. You might
as well fish with a Mayfly in August as
with a moth when the sun is up.

The other theory also is a shot in the
dark ; but I am not so sure that it is
a miss. Simply it is that the Loch
Derculich trout are so peculiarly in a
state of nature that they are exceptionally
lacking in discrimination. They are not,
as those of Lochleven and many other
waters are, sought by anglers every day
of the season. They do not, I under-
stand, see artificial flies on more than
six or eight days of the year. It is
therefore conceivable that, if the flies
are not wrong in shape or in colour, an
erroneous largeness, instead of repelling,
may be attractive. Bearing in mind that
the fish in much-thrashed waters nearly
always ignore lures of more than natural
size, one perceives this theory to imply that
trout are capable of being "educated," and

MAY 109

that is an assumption which in another
book has been seriously called in question ;
but, after all, there may be something to
be said for it. It fits into the facts of
the entertaining case. Also, it bridges
the years between this time and the days
of our grandfathers. In many a High-
land mansion or farmhouse there is still
to be seen an ancient tackle-book, and
the flies in the parchment pockets or
stuck into the flannel leaves are invariably
at least twice as large as any with which
we should think of fishing on much-
whipped waters now. Is there not a
clear inference ? These rude flies certainly
did take trout, and many of them.
Happily, indeed, sometimes there is still
their old owner to tell you so. It may
be that large lures are successful on Loch
Derculich merely because that water and
its trout are to-day in a state of nature
similar to that of all Highland lochs and
their trout sixty or seventy years ago.

110 AN ANGLERS SEASON

Not far from Loch Derculich is Loch-
na- Craig, three miles from Aberfeldy on
the road to Crieff. It is bounded by a
long and lofty crag on the west and by
the highway on the east. It is 1100 feet
above the level of the sea. Casually
passing by, you would not think it a
water from which any considerable basket
of trout could be taken. "There must
have been trout there long ago," you
would feel ; " but many people are on the
road every day, and wayfaring anglers
will have left only a few fish, if any."
It must be in consequence of some such
process of reasoning that Loch-na- Craig
is unknown to anglers generally. The
water deserves to be rescued from the
obscurity in which its topographical pro-
minence has placed it. Loch-na-Craig
is in some respects the most interesting
water I have cast flies on since first I
became acquainted with the two ponds
into which the Wey gathers itself at
Haslemere. What wonderful ponds these
are ! At the side of a much-frequented

MAY 111

road and not guarded by any gamekeeper,
they could not be suspected of containing
anything better than an eel; yet one
afternoon Mr. T. J. Barratt and I took
from them 25 lb. of handsome trout. It
would seem that waters which are most
in the public view are the least severely
poached. Hardly any one deems them
worth trying.

On Loch-na-Craig the other morning
the most enthusiastic angler could easily
have been excused if he had wished to
be under shelter again as soon as possible.
More inauspicious weather could not have
been imagined. The wide valley on the
south was filled with mist, surging athwart
a dense cloud which was steadily blacken-
ing ; out of the darkness came a cold wind
in gusts ; and the stinging sleet was heavy.
Nevertheless, James Stewart, managing
the boat, was not in despair. He explained
that the wind was from the very quarter
which brought good luck to Loch-na-
Craig. A breeze from any westerly
direction never did at all ; instead of

112 AN ANGLERS SEASON

striking the water fairly, it swirled round
the corners of the crag, and threw the
ripples into a jumble. Yes : the sky was
rather dull ; but what of that ? Clouds
were very favourable on Loch-na- Craig.

It turned out that there was more
than the spirit of Mark Tapley in James's
counsels. The basket held two trout,
each of them about 1 lb., before we had
been quarter of an hour afloat. That
seemed to foretell a creditable creel at
the close 1

Alas, the wind suddenly fell when the
fly was being disengaged from the second
fish. The sleet and the cold continued ;
but the atmosphere was still. It was not
so for long. Soon wind came with a roar
round the northern end of the crag, and
the loch was seething white. I dare say
that if we could have heard anything but
the squall we should have heard thunder
also. Now, a thunderstorm does not
invariably put the trout down ; on the
contrary, it frequently brings them up.
They lie low when thunder is approach-

W. /,. Wood, junior.

1. LOCH DERCULICH FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.

2. A GOOD DRIFT ON THE SOUTH SHORE

:ast. I

K. J

(page 102).

MAY 113

ing, and bestir themselves soon after it
has begun. Nearly always, however, they
are in no mood to give sport when the
wind is shifty. Thus I felt sure that
our brace was all we should see that day.
James himself, I gathered from his silence,
was of similar mind ; but James is too
experienced a hand, and too keen, to
think of scuttling from weather of any
kind while still the day is young. Soon,
therefore, we had begun a drift on the
wild surge from the head of the little
loch. Another trout was on before we
were well under weigh !

Shortly after noon the sky was blown
comparatively clear of clouds. Some of
the higher hills were capped with snow.
"I don't like that Lochaber wind,'' said
James, with a cheerful intonation, which
meant, " though, of course, the rise may
go on in spite of it." The phrase was
picturesque. It was singularly sagacious
also. Next morning's journals brought
news that the snowstorm had been
particularly heavy in Lochaber. Who

114 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

can deny that even three trout were
more than could be expected in such
weather at the high noon of spring ?
Still, the basket held six more than that
by five o'clock, when it was time to go.

Then there was further cause for
astonishment. James had mentioned, in
the morning, that most of the trout in
Loch-na-Craig were Lochlevens. Why
had we been so unlucky as to catch no
Lochleven trout ? I had scrutinised each
of our nine fish as it was being played
into the landing-net, and never a Loch-
leven had I seen. That had been the only
real disappointment. Our fish, while we
were afloat, had been in a pail. On
landing, James turned them out on the
heather, and, behold ! most of them were
Lochlevens. There was no mistaking the
shape or the sheen. The brown tint
derived from the essence of peat in the
Highland water had vanished on exposure
to the air.

On our way down the hill, James
Stewart admitted that a basket of nine

MAY 115

good trout was not exactly what you
could call bad for such a day ; but he
said this grudgingly. Obviously he
thought that we should have done
better notwithstanding the snow and the
Lochaber wind. The loch, he mentioned,
was not often fished ; but when it was
he was there as a rule, and 17 lb., or even
more, was a usual result. The water is
one of the many lochs on the domain of
Lord Breadalbane. Periodically he stocks
it with Lochlevens. A few years ago
rainbow trout were put in ; but none
of these is ever caught. It is thought,
James said, that they have all gone down
the stream which runs from the loch into
the Braan. That is probably the explana-
tion. The latest conjecture about the
rainbows is that they are young Steel-
head salmon, which are native to certain
waters in America. If that be so, we
can understand why they seek the sea,
though not why in this country they
never reappear in the fresh water. Many
practical students of fishculture consider

116 AN ANGLERS SEASON

it fortunate, on the whole, that rainbows
do not willingly make homes in this
country. They are beautiful fish, and
very game ; but, it is said, they cease to
rise at fly when they have attained a
weight of about 2 lb., and it is beginning
to be feared that our native trout suffer
from them severely.

Over the heather-clad uplands at the
back of the crag which has been men-
tioned flows the Moness, towards which,
when May comes round, our neighbour
the Provost turns an eager fancy. At
half-past five one bright morn, looking
out of the window of my room, I saw
him, in his garden, staring fixedly at our
roof. I dressed, went out, and asked
whether anything was wrong. O, no.
He had only been watching for the
appearance of smoke from our chimneys ;
which would let him see that the house-
hold was astir. There had been heavy
rain in the night, and the burn would

MAY 117

be in flood ; and should we not be going
up the hill ? Now, though his town
could go comfortably into half of St.
James's Park, the Provost is in his own
sphere no less a personage than the Lord
Mayor of London is in the city or in
Paris. His invitations are little other
than commands. Thus, by nine o'clock
we were high among the hills. Having
intended to seek a few trout in the Tay,
I had set out on the climb with reluct-
ance ; but, now that I was on the bank
of the tributary, the prospect was not
unpleasing. It was good from the height
to see, in a wide expanse, still greater
heights, with drifts of snow lying dead-
white in the sunshine ; the south-west
wind was bright and light; and the
stream, singing through the heather, had
a tawny and attractive fulness.

Despite his seventy -five years, the
Provost is an agile sportsman. His
municipal duties allow him to have no
more than a few days' fishing in a season,
and therefore he makes good use of his

118 AN ANGLERS SEASON

time by the waterside. He is never for
a moment at rest. Before my own rod
was in ply His Honour, by that time fifty
yards away, had about half-a-dozen fish
in his creel. I had seen them tossed out
of the water. You do not need to use
much ceremony with the hill trout. You
may offer them flies if you like, and in
that case, when you hook a fish, you had
as well be wary, fly tackle being delicate
gear ; but anglers to the mountain born,
though highly polite to strangers, have
an ill -concealed contempt for daintiness
such as that. The Provost merely
dropped his line into every likely place,
and out a fish came flashing ! Two
seconds or so after a trout caught sight
of the worm that trout was transferred
to the heather. When angling in the
valleys one puts on a fresh worm, if
that bait is used at all, for each trout,
it being on the plains a traditional and
well-founded belief that even a slightly
lacerated worm will scare instead of
attracting ; but in the hill stream the

MAY 119

same worm serves for fish after fish, and
is good when only a mangled fragment
remains. It was astonishing, also, to find
that smallness of hook, deemed necessary
on waters below, was wasted considerate-
ness on the mountain. Noticing that the
Provosts hook was large enough to be
the basis of a seatrout fly, and thinking
that he might have none smaller, I had
offered him, when he was about to go
off, a few Stewart tackles, and these, with
Highland courtesy, he had accepted ; but
when we met for luncheon I noticed that
it was a large single hook he had been
using, and his basket held six dozen trout !
It could not have been from unwillingness
to lose time in changing that the Provost
had left the Stewart tackles unused. Soon
after beginning, he mentioned, he had
been broken by an unexpectedly heavy
fish, a half-pounder. As he had put on
another of his large hooks, it was clear
that he held them to be better adapted
to the ways of the upland trout. How
the fish contrive to seize them I cannot

120 AN ANGLERS SEASON

say. Some of the trout were of the five-
to-a-pound class ; but the average weight
was slightly under three ounces, and in
relation to the little fish my venerable
friend's gear seemed grotesquely out of
proportion.

Is it wrong to take such fish ? If you
are used to more considerable trout you
may be disposed towards a vicarious
feeling of shame ; yet there seems some-
thing to be said for the Provost and
myself. A sardine is much smaller than
the smallest trout we carried down the
mountain, and we never yet heard of
any one who lamented the capture of a
sardine. Lest it be urged that the sardine
is nourishing food, I mention that so are
our small trout. For some reason known
only in the kitchen, there is never much
" on them " when they appear at break-
fast ; but, like the mountain sheep of
the old adage, they are of an especial
sweetness.

It must not be supposed that the hill-
tream trout are so easy to catch that

MAY 121

any one can take them at any time. The
Provost and I fared well because we had
chosen a day of fortunate conditions.
The stream was full, and the atmosphere
was volatile. Had the water been low or
the weather sultry we should have failed.
As things were, indeed, signs were not
lacking that the fish of the hill streams
share with the fish of the valleys those
strange instincts which make angling a
pastime so precarious. In the afternoon
the Provost set off across the rocks and
the heather to try a stream about a mile
off. We were to meet where that water
and the Moness joined, not far above the
village. When again I saw him His
Honour reported : " Not a trout, and not
a nibble ! " I myself had taken about a
dozen fish since we had parted ; but no
doubt that was because, the store of
worms having given out, I had been
using flies. If I had used the Provost's
bait I should have fared no better than
he. This is important. If any one has an
impression that mountain streams are not

122 AN ANGLERS SEASON

" sporting " in the ordinary sense, I should
like to correct the thought. The day
under review was not by any means my
first on the waters of the uplands, and I
know that the trout there are in their
moods almost as much as any other trout
subject to those subtle atmospheric in-
fluences which give a constant interest to
the pursuit. It is not every day that you
can fill your basket. Sometimes you will
have a nibble or a rise almost at every
cast ; on other days rises or nibbles will
be few. Never once have I found moun-
tain trout taking flies indiscriminately.
Always they show an unmistakable pre-
ference for one particular lure.

Does not this indicate that the hill
streams are worth cultivating in the
interest of the scientific angler ? Surely
it does. The trout, it is true, are small ;
but they are capable of becoming large.
All trout, it would seem, are of the same
race. Their size is merely a matter of
feeding. That, in its turn, depends upon
the nature of the stream. If the nature

MAY 123

of the stream changes, the size of the
trout changes also. The Provost tells me
that he used to fish in the Moness sixty-
years ago, and that then, while half-
pounders and even pounders were not
rare, the average weight of the fish was
fully quarter- of-a-pound. He attributes
the decline to the fact that in the old
days the land through which the stream
flows was largely under the plough, the
water, consequently, having a supply of
worms and grubs ; and that, the land
being out of tillage, the trout have now
practically nothing but flies to feed upon.
It would, of course, be economically
unreasonable to call for ploughing of the
moorlands in order that trout should
flourish ; but the Provost's remark, in-
dubitably sanctioning the belief that the
fish grow as they are fed, has an incidental
significance of moment. There was a
great abundance of aquatic insects on the
Moness, and I have noticed the same
plenty on many another mountain stream.
If one may judge by the infrequence of

124 AN ANGLERS SEASON

trout- rises, however, the insects, as far as
the fish are concerned, are almost wholly
waste. In most places the streams are
all rush and tumble, on which the flies,
apparently, pass unseen. If there were
long pools, with short rapids between
them, the trout would grow large and fat
upon the rich diet of insects. On the
estate through which the Provost's
burn flows there are at least a hundred
similar streams. Others of the same
kind in the Highlands and in Wales
are very many. All are left neglected.
When one thinks of the trouble and
expense to which landowners go in
order to make trout streams or trout
ponds in the plains, this is astonishing.
Certain modifications, easily to be con-
trived, would convert some of these
mountain torrents into exceedingly good
trout-streams.

This month, unless the weather is very
unfavourable, the evening rise becomes

MAY 125

almost as regular as the setting of the sun.
Commenting on an article describing it, a
leader-writer in The Evening Standard
and St. James s Gazette hinted a misgiving
as to whether there is such a thing.
That can be accounted for only by
supposing that as an angler he has had
extraordinarily bad luck. Any one who
has more than once witnessed the evening
rise will believe that it is the rule. The
first experience, if thorough, is startling
and stimulating enough to explain why
those who take to trout-fishing never
willingly lay the rod permanently aside.

I myself first saw the evening rise, and
the fruits of it, on Clatto Loch, which lies
among the southern hills of Fife. I had
been at work assiduously all day, and had
caught only three or four fish. The sun
had been blazing, and there had been only
faint and infrequent breezes. At sundown
my companion and I, having a good bit
to go, had beached the boat, taken down
the rods, and were strolling demurely
away. Suddenly we beheld a strange

126 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

ongoing at the other side of the water near
the narrow head of the lake. There, the
rod much bent, was a fisherman running
hither and thither in battle with a
thumper. He landed the trout, and
resumed. Immediately he was fast in
another, which also was soon in the net.
The same ceremony was gone through
time after time ; and at length, after
watching in envious amazement for about
half- an -hour, we went round to in-
vestigate. The basket on the grass was
almost full of fish, none of them under
half-a-pound, some of them apparently
about two pounds ; and the angler
was still busy piling up the score ! He
laughed pleasantly at our incoherent
astonishment. What flies? Why, just
the ordinary Teal-drakes, one with a red
body, one with a green, and one with a
yellow ; but it was the Teal-and-Red that
was doing best. Soon afterwards, when,
the night having quite closed in, the
fisherman stopped, and we all left the
loch for the valley to the north, through

MAY 127

which the railway runs, the basket was
very heavy. It seemed to be little if at
all under thirty pounds.

Experience, though it has not lessened
the vividness of remembrance, has given
to that incident a natural instead of a
miraculous aspect. Next time we had
the privilege of fishing on Clatto we went
late in the afternoon, and no sooner had
the sun dipped behind the hills than the
trout began to rise. At first they had a
marked preference for a particular fly,
which, if I remember rightly, was the
Teal-and-Green ; but as the dusk deepened
and colours became indistinct they sprang
at all flies indiscriminately. Both of us
frequently hooked more than a single fish
at a cast, and one of us landed two at a
time, each of them slightly over a pound.
Wheresoever else I have thrown a fly, in
Scotland or in England, I have found the
same manifestation of Nature. I have
known the trout rising so well that it was
almost impossible to cast without having
a fish at the lure instantly. The evening

128 AN ANGLERS SEASON

rise is neither a superstition nor a wilful
fiction. It is a fact.

It is, however, far from being a simple
fact. It is one of the most perplexing of
the phenomena with which the trout-
fisher is confronted.

The evening rise is not to be expected
all the season through. There is no rise
for a time at the beginning of the season,
and none for a time towards the close.
Throughout Great Britain the period
during which the evening rise may be
looked for varies with latitude. In the
south of England it begins about the
middle of April. The beginning, it may
be roughly said, becomes later and later
as you go north. When you have
reached the Tay you need not expect the
evening rise until near the close of May.
Having crossed the Grampians, you enter
upon what may be called a reactionary
set of conditions. Then the level of the
land begins to approximate gradually to
that of the Lowlands, and the time of
the trout-fishing season in the far north

MAY 129

to approximate to that of the south.
The period of the evening rise is curtailed
by the approach of autumn, which also
is determined by latitude. September,
which is summer in the south of
England, is often autumnal in Scotland.
Trout-fishing closes earlier in England
than in Scotland, just as it opens later ;
but why it opens later or closes earlier
I do not know. Summer weather begins
earlier in England, and lasts longer.
That, if our laws were always inspired
by the inarticulate hints of Nature,
would result in the open season for trout
being longer in the south than in the
north. This, however, is a thought
apart. The point is that both in
England and in Scotland there is a
time at the beginning of the season and
a time towards the close during which
there is no evening rise.

Thus far we have had comparatively
plain sailing. Trout do not rise in the
evening when they are only just " coming
into condition," and they do not rise in

130 AN ANGLERS SEASON

the evening when they are about to go
out of condition.

Our immediate problem concerns the
period during which they are vigorous in
health and appetite, the period during
which an evening rise is always looked
for. Why is it that sometimes, after
toiling for hours without success, and
after beginning late in the day to put
increasing trust in the gloamin', one
finds the dusk merging uneventfully
into night? This does happen. Its
happening inopportunely accounts, as
has been indicated, for the scepticism
which has occasionally been cast upon
our theme.

I cannot solve the problem ; but I
can state a few suggestive facts. During
the period of what may be roughly
called summer, a period which varies
with latitude and partly with the level
of the land in relation to the sea, there
will invariably, on any river or lake in
Great Britain that holds trout, be a rise
at and about sundown after a day that

MAY 131

has been hot, or seasonably warm, if the
atmosphere is not electric and the sky is
not thickly clouded and there is a dead
calm or only a slight air. Amid any
other set of conditions it is probable
that there will be no evening rise.
Why ? I have a few thoughts in
answer ; but they are not convincing.

CHAPTER VI

JUNE

Lochleven — Its Puzzling Fish — Are they Seatrout? —
Why Worry? — The Scene at the Jetty — System of
Drifts — Punctual Flies — Dashing- Trout — Fear and
Hope — "A Burst of Flies" — Thoughts on the
Weather — After all, a Good Day — A Strange Spec-
tacle—Is the Devil really Dead ?— The Mayfly !

Within forty minutes after passing
through Edinburgh railway travellers to
the Highlands catch a glimpse of water
in an extensive plain. Though the lake
is bounded on the east by the Lomonds
and on the south by the Cleish Hills,
the scenery is not so attractive as that
through which the train will ere long be
speeding ; indeed, it is tame, and if the
sky is dull it is depressing. Nevertheless,
the lake is in one respect the most
famous in the world. It is Lochleven,

132

JUNE 133

native home of a race of trout such as
are to be found nowhere else.

The fish are a puzzle to all who study
them. Look at one in broad daylight
just after it is out of the landing-net.
Save that it is peculiarly well shaped and
notably bright, it seems to be an ordinary
brown-trout. Look at a basketful of the
fish displayed on a lawn in the evening,
and the earlier impression is instantly in
doubt. The fish have a silvery hue ;
this actually seems to be luminous ; it
changes, as shot silk does, while you
move and see it in various lights. These
fish must be seatrout ! Certain natural-
ists believe that they are. The theory
is that long ago the lake was an arm
of the sea, and that seatrout which
happened to be in it at the time were
landlocked by a seismic upheaval separat-
ing the fresh or brackish water from the
salt. There are two considerations which
tell against this surmise. One of them
is that, whilst seatrout in general remain
in good condition well into October,

134 AN ANGLERS SEASON

Lochleven trout fall markedly off before
the end of August. The other is that
failure has attended all attempts, how-
soever scientifically conducted, to rear
seatrout to maturity in fresh water.
Still, there are facts which favour the
surmise. Resembling seatrout in sheen
and in shape, Lochleven trout resemble
them in flavour also. Between a Loch-
leven trout and an ordinary trout there
is in that regard as much difference as
there is between an ordinary trout and a
grayling. Whilst not less delicious to
the taste, the Lochleven trout is richer.
Besides, the "Lochleven trout" is not
the only trout in the water. When
your boat drifts upon the broad shallows
towards the north-east of the lake one
of the gillies gives you a warning. He
says, "We may have a big yellow trout
here." Should the warning be justified
by the event, you will find that the fish
is of a tribe distinctly different from that
which gives celebrity to Lochleven. It
is less shapely, and lacks the elusive

JUNE 135

sheen ; it is, unmistakably, none other
than an exceptionally fine brown-trout.
This would seem to show that a trout
does not become a Lochleven trout
merely by living in Lochleven. The
true Lochleven trout, in common with
every other fish of the salmon kind,
prefers to breed with his own race. It
may be, after all, that he really is a scion
of the seatrout.

Why worry about his pedigree when
we might be thinking of having a bout
with him ? June is the month of months
for that fine ploy. Lochleven is then at
its best. If you are a fairly competent
fisherman the one possibility to be
dreaded is that of adverse weather. You
shall have only a trout or two, if any,
when the atmosphere is fermenting into
thunder, and, except in the lee of an
island here or there, a boat on Lochleven
is not easy to manage when the wind
becomes more than half-a-gale ; but in
June the atmosphere as a rule is still
wholesome and the breezes have become

136 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

light. In June you are much less likely
than in any other month to hit upon a
bad day. Even the direction of the wind,
so important on many waters, does not
matter much on Lochleven. An east
wind, generally deplored elsewhere, is
welcome. Wind from the east is nearly
always steadier than wind from any other
quarter, and that is a great advantage ;
being interrupted by the Fife hills, it is
never too strong on Lochleven. In fact,
most of the best baskets there are made
when the breeze is from the east. The
explanation, I think, is that it is the
breeze with which the trout are most
familiar. In summer the inland atmo-
sphere is during daytime warmer than
the atmosphere on the sea ; and thus in
daytime the breezes tend to be from the
sea, which at Lochleven is on the east.
Therefore the anglers gathered of a
morning about the jetty at Kinross are
never vexed when they are faced with an
east wind. If the wind were from the
west, they could begin fishing immedi-

JUNE 137

ately after going off; but there will be
no real loss of time in the two-hours row
to the other side of the water.

Joyous is this scene at the jetty. To
each angler, or to each two anglers, a
particular boat has been allotted at the
office, close by, and gillies step briskly
along the jetty shouting The Mary
Seaton ! The Mary Beaton ! and other
names, now those of boats, which are
picturesque in historical romance. Soon
there is nobody about the jetty, and, so
far as can be seen by anyone habituated
to the short vistas of London, nobody
on the water. The fleet is dispersed
far and wide upon the lake, beyond the
range of the unaccustomed eye.

This is not what would happen on an
ordinary loch. On such a water the
boats would be clinging to the shores.
That is because ordinary lochs are
shallow enough for trout-fishing only for
a few yards from the land. Farther out
than that most of them, in the High-
lands, have depths greater, often much

138 AN ANGLERS SEASON

greater, than the average depth of the
North Sea ; and trout, except occasionally
in a dead calm, when they seem to have
followed flies that have wandered from
the shores, do not rise in the deeps.
Lochleven, with fish of matchless beauty
teeming, is all shallow. There is only
about fifteen feet of water at the deepest
part. Thus one can with reasonable
hope cast flies anywhere on its surface.
Thus, also, it gives scope and verge
enough for as many anglers as could be
accommodated on a dozen ordinary lochs
of the same size, and it is never over-
crowded.

The boats, however, have not dis-
tributed themselves at random. Ah, no !
The water is marked out in "drifts."
If the anglers in any boat have no
preference among these, the chief of the
two gillies is sure to state a choice. Just
as Queen Mary, when imprisoned on one
of the islands, had signallings with trusty
Anti- Roundheads on the shore, the gillies
have an elaborate system of alignments,

JUNE 139

and so can take you to the very drift
where yesterday, or last season, or many
years ago, some memorable basket was
made.

Not a few trout have been creeled
during our statement of the preliminary
procedure. Some of the anglers who set
out intending to begin at The Sluices, or
at the base of the Lomonds, found cause
to stop far short of that. They ran into
the midst of a rise of fly. They dis-
covered this through noticing a rise of
trout. Many flies, even though large,
escape the human vision. The Mayfly,
which on most waters does not come out
until June, is a remarkable instance.
Though it is yellow, and almost as large
as a butterfly, you are startled by the
apparition. You know it must have been
there, in the sunlight, for some time ; yet
you did not see it. It is so tenuous, so
silent, so gentle, as to appear unreal ;
dawning upon you slowly, as it were,
yet with such a thrill that the glowing
air, the awaking Summer, seems to have

140 AN ANGLERS SEASON

given off a living and fluttering blossom.
The Mayfly is not native to Lochleven ;
but that water has many flies not less to
be desired. Some of them are so regular
in arrival that at ten minutes to one
o'clock or other highly specific time on
a particular day you may notice the gillies
peering into the water to see whether
they are on the way up. Others are
either less to be depended on or not so
much the subject of ordered knowledge.
That is why one has often the delight of
coming unexpectedly upon a rise of fly
and a rise of trout. This may be any-
where on Lochleven, no part of which
is so deep as to prevent the breeding of
insects.

When you do chance upon the inspir-
ing activities, you see what the insects
are and put on a cast of lures in imitation ;
to go farther for the sake of having a
longer drift might be to lose the one
opportunity of the day.

Especially if you have had experience
on many waters, you then realise that

JUNE 141

Lochleven trout are indubitably a class
by themselves. Their manner of rising
is different from that of any other fish
that lives in fresh water all the year. An
ordinary trout rising at a real fly is as a
rule a symbol of leisurely and placid wild-
life. He comes to the surface slowly,
inhales the insect at his ease, and makes
no more than a slowly-expanding dimple
on the water. The Lochleven trout darts
at the fly with great rapidity, and, though
he does not often come into the air, he
leaves the surface swirling. When you
are facing the sun and the waves are
high, you can actually see the wonderful
movement. The trout coming at the lure
is like a flash of light in the wave, which
is sometimes blue, sometimes green. How
he contrives to stop exactly when he
touches the surface is more than can be
told. If it is your own fly he has taken,
he goes down with equal violence. Here
again he differs from an ordinary trout,
which sometimes, when hooked, pauses
for a little, as if wondering what has

142 AN ANGLERS SEASON

happened and what is to be done
next.

Often in accounts of angling we hear
or read of the rod being "bent into a
semi-circle." A struggle so severe as is
thus indicated is not usual on an ordinary
water ; but it is the rule on Lochleven.
The agile vigour of the fish is equalled
only by that of the seatrout or the grilse.
In common with those fish, the Loch-
leven trout has more brilliance than stay-
ing power in his fight. If you are cool
enough to keep him in hand for two or
three minutes, the victory is likely to
be yours. He yields sooner than a
brown trout would, or a rainbow of the
same weight. Thus, notwithstanding the
ferocity with which he tears the line from
the reel, one has no reason to be more
than usually apprehensive.

On a good day Lochleven will easily
yield you twenty trout, weighing as many
pounds, and there is always the possibility
of a fish four or five times the average
weight. Many an angler will own to

.11 1 N R I I :t

having had "agood day " ; ImiI none will
unreservedly admil thai he has evei had
"a really good day." On mi ordinary
water the most. eagei angler U often
. ; 1 1 1 . 1 1< < 1 when evening comes ; hul mi
Lochleven no angler ever is. The e\

ceptional hope is never realised ; but it

is never (punched. Why should not yon
hope for a basket of f>0 lb. ( V on cannot
help hoping. K< .illy, there must now and
then be a day when the trout rise from
morning until nighl as well as they often
rise lor an hour or so '( I ('only we shonld
chance upon it! One invariably puts in
at the jetty with an exultant intuition
that, good ;r. I.h< day has been, the

morrow, of some day soon, will be in-
definitely better. No angler ever <piits
the water avowedly lor the last linn
I ioehleven has a spell.

Very early in the morning of a recent
Monday it seemed that summer had
arrived. A light breeze from the west

144 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

north-west bore scarcely any cloud, and
the atmosphere was already warm. Mr.
Wood and I were hastening by railroad
to Lochleven. I myself was in high
hope ; but, beyond expecting a day of
pleasant indolence on the water, my friend
had no hope at all. My reason for good
cheer was that a storm-centre had just
passed. There had been rain on Saturday
and a gale on Sunday ; now the wind,
much less strong, was still falling, and
the mercury in the barometer was slowly
rising. These, as I had often found, were
the only conditions amid which trout were
certain to feed. Mr. Wood's doctrine
was that, though the conditions might
be favourable on other waters, they were
very bad on Lochleven. The fish there,
he said, never rose when the sun shone
brightly. Hubert Wood, who was with
us, inclined towards the gloomy view.
So, when we arrived at the Green Hotel,
was Mr. Harris, who has known the lake
for forty years. So was Miss White, in
charge of the office at the pier, while we

JUNE 145

looked over the array of fly-casts on her
counter. So, in short, was every one
but myself. "Would you like to go
anywhere in particular ? " asked the chief
of our two boatmen, as we cast off. The
question, in tones as melancholious as you
can imagine, meant, "It doesn't matter
where we go : we'll not see a trout
to-day."

We went towards the shallows to the
north of Queen Mary's Island. That
course was taken because, there having
been weeks of rain, the loch was high.
Mr. Wood and Hubert trolled minnows
on the way, and I myself cast flies. By
the time we reached the shallows Hubert
had caught a trout and a perch ; the flies
had not stirred a fish, and no rise had
been seen. The first drift on the shallows
was equally disappointing. It occupied
half-an-hour, during which time we saw
not a single rise. The boatmen suggested
trolling again, and the minnows were let
out. This was quite to my mind. It is

true that you cannot cast flies comfort-

10

146 AN ANGLERS SEASON

ably when the boat is being rowed ; but
there is sometimes a reason for wishing
to move on a lake more quickly than the
wind will take you. It is that, whilst the
trout all through any water become dis-
posed to take flies at the same time, the
flies do not appear at all places simultane-
ously. This I knew to be peculiarly the
case on Lochleven. On that water there
is often what Mr. Harris calls a "burst
of flies" over an area about an acre in
extent, while there do not seem to be
more than a few straggling insects out-
side the well-defined circle. I perceived,
therefore, that if we moved quickly over
the water we should increase our chance
of discovering a region where insects and
fish were rising.

This reasoning was justified. I had
a rise about half-an-hour after the second
issue of the minnows ; then, within a
space of time scarcely more than is
taken up by the writing of this sentence,
another, another, and another ! All four
trout, I grieve to say, were missed. My

JUNE 147

excuse is that you are at a disadvantage
when your first care is to prevent en-
tanglement of the line with the oars.
This handicap, of course, was quickly
removed. Now that we were among
rising trout, the trolling lines were
hastily reeled in ; and soon three fly-
rods were at work. That was about
one o'clock.

All went well thereafter. Soon my
companions and the boatmen, all of
whom had been slily chaffing at my
theory about the weather, were smiling
in another mode. Until six o'clock, when
it was time to return to the pier, we were
never very long without need for the
services of a boatman and the landing-
net. In the middle of the afternoon the
less youthful gillie remembered that he
had often known brisk sport in bright
sunshine and a smart breeze ! He was
quite honest. The explanation is that
acceptance of tradition had temporarily
obscured facts within his knowledge.
The average angler's belief in cloud is

148 AN ANGLERS SEASON

one of those superstitions which out-
stay generations of experience disproving
them.

The truth, I think, is that neither
cloud nor bright sunshine has a direct
influence on the sport. Whether the
sky is clear or it is clouded, the trout
rise particularly well immediately after
the passing of a storm. Only, the sky is
usually either clear or but thinly veiled
at that time, and usually there are thick
clouds when a storm is impending and
the fish are in the sulks.

That day I noticed, not for the first
time, a very interesting peculiarity in
the ways of trout. When the fish do
rise under a heavy sky they come at the
flies in a comparatively languid manner,
and into the landing-net without much
more ado ; but just after a storm, when
the atmosphere is fresh and brisk and
buoyant, they rise with arrow-like direct-
ness and rapidity, and fight with dash.
This seems to show that trout are as
much as human beings, or even more

JUNE 149

than these, invigorated by a renewal of
the atmosphere.

Piqued by the "agreeable disappoint-
ment," Mr. Wood remarked that if " fair
luck " had fallen to us our basket would
have been very impressive. There could
be no doubt on that score. My friend
was not talking inconsiderately. Our
percentage of missed rises had been un-
usually high. We missed at least thrice
as many fish as we landed. That was
because from the time we found ourselves
among the feeding trout the sun was
behind our backs, and thus, in the baffling
light, the rises were not instantly visible.
Had the wind been from the east, the
percentage of misses would have been
much smaller. Facing the light, we
should have seen the fish darting at the
lures through the waves ; and I do believe
that our basket would have been more
than twice its actual dimensions. As
things were, it was twenty-three trout,
weighing 17 lb. Twenty - one other
boats were out on the same day ; nearly

150 AN ANGLERS SEASON

all of them brought in good baskets ;
the best basket, made by two anglers
whose names I did not catch, was thirty-
three trout, weighing 28 lb.

Next morning, when I left Kinross
the hotel was in a hum of high expect-
ancy. There was a fine breeze ; the sky
was overcast ; a gentle rain had begun.
Anglers, the hotel people, and the gillies
were gleefully telling one another that
this was to be the best day of the season.
It was now my turn to be sceptical. I
did not like the aspect of the weather ;
on looking at the morning journal I
found, from the report of the Meteoro-
logical Office, that a fresh disturbance
was approaching; the barometer showed
that the atmospherical pressure had
slightly decreased during the night. I
thought that the general hope would not
be fulfilled.

This was not wrong. Wednesday's
newspapers reported that Tuesday's
baskets had been much lighter than
those of Monday. The day that to the

JUNE 151

general understanding had looked hope-
less had turned out to be one of the
best of days, and that which promised
to be the day of the season was distinctly
poor.

One afternoon, while casting flies on a
sluggish stretch of a trout stream, I
noticed a man about a hundred yards off
on the other side of the water. His
head and shoulders, that is to say, were
visible ; the rest of him was screened by
a thick fringe of reeds, over which a
fishing-rod protruded. Suddenly the tip
of the rod was sharply tilted ; a trout was
jerked out of the stream, and went hurt-
ling through the sunshine to the meadow
behind. Soon head and shoulders and
the rod appeared again, and instantly
another fish fluttered to the grass in a
gleaming curve. The angler coming
slowly downstream, this was repeated,
repeated, repeated. Never had I wit-
nessed such a strange performance. So

152 AN ANGLERS SEASON

astonishing was it, I could only stand

and watch. What wizardry could the

man be using ? There was no clue.

With a very short line, the angler, every

time he came back from basketing a

trout, dropped a lure upon the water just

as one might have dropped a worm had

the stream been flooded and discoloured ;

yet it could not be a worm he was plying.

Before seizing a worm the trout usually

waits until it is well below the surface ;

but in this case a fish leapt at the

lure the moment it touched the water.

Then, if one could forget some lady or

another upset by the excitement of her

first rise, who had ever seen trout so

unceremoniously treated ? The fellow

did not play them. He merely struck,

hooked, and tossed them out. How

thick his cast must be ! or, if the gut

were as fine as is commonly deemed

desirable, how marvellously strong ! The

fish he was catching were not small ;

they were, indeed, well above the local

average. The least considerable seemed

JUNE 153

to be about half -a- pound ; not a few
were twice as large. Surely it was
something uncanny I had chanced upon ?
Though abounding in trout, the stream
had the repute of being "difficult."
Any angler resident in the neighbour-
hood thought himself skilful if a day's
effort yielded him a dozen fish ; yet here
was a person taking splendid trout at the
rate of one a minute ! Awestruck, I
questioned whether, as was made out in
Mr. Readers inspiring novel, through
which I had been making my delighted
way, the Devil were really dead. The
extraordinary spectacle was a good many
years ago, in school days, when theology
is less impelling than curiosity ; and
when at length the stranger was just
opposite across the stream I made a
polite request to be informed as to what
he was fishing with.

" The Mayfly ! " said he, so openly
exultant in a human manner that faith in
Mr. Reade was there and then restored.
He invited me to go over the bridge and

154 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

see his basket, a very capacious one,
which I found to be packed to the brim ;
gave me a Mayfly ; and went off to catch
a train.

Anglers at large will not think of
his doings with unanimous admiration.
Some of them will disapprove severely.
These are they who, after having banned
the worm, the gentle, the creeper, and
the minnow, are disposed towards ban-
ning the Mayfly also. They think that
all these lures, even though suited to
comparatively rare occasions, are too
effective. Unfortunately, there is no
great reason for their dread of the
Mayfly. That beautiful creature fell
upon evil days, which are not yet over.
Its struggle for life is severe. It is far
from being so ephemeral as it is called
and seems. Two years elapse between
the laying of the egg and the coming
of the full-fledged insect. During that
period its home is in or on the soil at the
bottom of the water. It dies in any
stream that is poisonously polluted. In

JUNE 155

some cases it is unable to live even where
the pollution is not poisonous. A very
sad instance is to be witnessed in Kent,
in which a naturally charming little
stream, once alive with trout and May-
flies, is now destitute of both. Refuse
from a mill forms a glutinous slime under
which neither spawn of fish nor insects'
eggs can thrive. Within the last five or
six years, stimulated by the splendid
example set on the Thames, public bodies
and private persons in many parts of
the United Kingdom have been taking
measures against pollution, and that with
no little success ; but now, alas ! the
Mayfly is adversely affected by a well-
meant reform of another kind. That
is the Wild Birds Protection Act, in
relation to which those who are con-
cerned with justice and general prosperity
out of doors, in wild life, are confronted
by a problem exactly analogous to that
which in various modes is continuously
perplexing statesmen. How is the lot
of one class to be improved without

156 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

infliction of unjust injury on some other ?
Nature is bafflingly intractable. Who
could have foreseen that kindness to
the birds, kindness which apparently
amounted to no more than fair-play,
would lead to gross cruelty to the Mayfly
and to the trout ? That is what has
happened. If each of us "ate like a
bird," each of us would consume at least
a quartern loaf, two legs of mutton,
and a sirloin of beef every day. Think,
then, of what has befallen the Mayflies
in consequence of our highly successful
legislation in behalf of the birds. Count-
less thousands are gobbled before their
eggs are laid, before the trout have time
to take a reasonable toll, before the
pretty insects themselves have had an
hour's experience of life in its complete-
ness. Think, also, that one of the more
exacting birds is none other than the
kingfisher, now greatly multiplied, and
realise how heartrendingly insoluble are
the difficulties with which the statecraft
of the streamside has to deal. As in

JUNE 157

human society, so among the creatures
of the wilds, often the mind of the
observer is rent by a conflict between
natural pity for the weak or the
picturesque and a perception that
measures to make the pity effective are
certain to end in trouble and probably in
injustice. At any rate, the Mayflies are
at present a sorely subjugated race.
While one does not hear of any stream
on which they are as plentiful as they
used to be, there are many streams on
which they are becoming fewer, and
some on which they are extinct.

That is why there can be no harm in
having described the marvellous Mayfly
fishing which was witnessed years ago.
There is no fear that any one will be
able to repeat it. On streams where the
Mayfly is common the insect is relished
by the fish more than any other dainty
in their fare. It is so extraordinarily
appetising that when it is abundant the
very largest trout, which cannot be
attracted by any other fly, come out of

158 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

their holes and corners. They renew
their youth, and are as rash as the
incautious smolts. Still, what of that?
On any water which has no rise of
Mayflies imitations cannot be presented
with success. Even where there is a
rise, the insects, real or artificial, are
forbidding to begin with. Until the flies
have been on the water for a day or so,
they scare the trout, which, instead of
leaping at them, crouch or flee. Where
there are only a few Mayflies, they seem
to be not very exciting to the fish.
Thus, opportunities to raise a trout
whenever the lure touches the water
have become rare.

Nevertheless, certain lessons may be
learned from the incident which I have
described. It was not only because he
was fishing in one of the fat years that
our memorable angler was so successful.
It was also because he was working
from behind a screen of reeds. That
gave him an advantage similar to that
which the Irish angler has when out

JUNE 159

upon some lough in the fortnight of the
Green Drake. There the lure is on a
cast dangling from a line of floss-silk, a
fluffy line, easily borne out upon the
breeze ; working with the wind, the
angler can make the fly just touch the
water and then go, touch and go, touch
and go, as if it were laying eggs. That,
at times, is a movement of the Mayfly
which the trout cannot resist. Our own
particular angler managed to imitate it
merely because the screen of reeds
enabled him, unseen, to dap his Mayfly
perpendicularly. At other places he
would have dapped in that way in vain.

A very entertaining fact is that all
the trout in a stretch of water want
Mayflies which are in a particular stage
of their brief life in the air. When they
are to be caught by dapping it is the
perfect Mayfly that they want. At
other times they seek the insect, just
arrived or just arriving on the surface,
with its wings still incompletely unfolded.
Then the lure which will succeed is one

160 AN ANGLERS SEASON

with clinging hackles and without wings ;
the hackles, if of the right colour, are
very like the unopened wings. Again,
sometimes it is the spent gnat that the
fish desire. Then the appropriate lure
is one with wings constructed so as to
seem tattered and misshapen. How, it
may be asked, are we to know which of
the three patterns is befitting in any
particular hour ? Only by experiment.
The trouts' preference for a particular
pattern is, strangely, in despite of the
fact that Mayflies in each of the three
stages are on the water at the same time.

CHAPTER VII

JULY

A Lull, apparently — Summer Languor — Not an Unbroken
Rule — Worms are now In Season — A Full Basket —
The Water-Level : in England and in Scotland —
Mountain Lakes — A Day on Loch Ordie — Luxuriance
of Nature on the Hills — Racial Differences among
Trout — Some Highland Lochs — Red Trout and White
Trout — Are Pike Objectionable? — Donald Sim —
Henry Haxton — Lord Tullibardine — An Unrecorded
Episode in the War with the South-African Republics.

Some anglers think that trout, in common
with flowers and song-birds, are at their
best in spring. Of such was a damsel
who said to me, just arrived in the
Highlands and anxious to go out on a
loch, " O yes, we'll go ; but the fishing
is now over for the year." As summer
was still young, this was astonishing ; but
the lady held to her opinion. The game-
keeper, she said, had told her that trout-

161 11

162 AN ANGLERS SEASON

fishing ended with May. Her belief
prevails in quarters where you would
least expect it. Only a few days ago a
trader in tackle, in whose shop I was
seeking flies, said, as he set out his cases,
" Of course, there's very little use trying
the river now." He was an angler, too !
Was there warrant for his depressing
remark ? Well, there was a little. Just
as the flower-garden becomes dowdy
and the birds become silent before
Midsummer Day, the trout in many
places become languorous by the same
time. This is particularly noticeable,
and particularly explicable, on waters
which have the Mayfly. After their fort-
night's feeding on that most relished of
all things in their fare, the fish seem to
be out of appetite for a time. Besides,
the languor overtakes many a water
which is without the Mayfly. There
also it becomes difficult to pile up a
basket such as will cheer the heart of
reasonably exacting man. To be sure,
there are exceptions to this rule, excep-

JULY 163

tions so noteworthy that we must be
cautious in our generalising. Think, for
example, of Lochleven, which, after a
long series of tame seasons, is now re-
joicing its frequenters by sport so good
as to make the best of the old-time
records comparatively modest. Recently
it has been not unusual to hear of well-
nigh a thousand trout caught, by never
more than forty-four anglers, on this
wonderful loch in a day. Then, no
angler in the south of England ever
refrains from expecting fair sport in July
or even in August. This fact, well based
upon experience, is strange. One would
naturally expect the trout of southern
England, where summer is early, exces-
sive, and prolonged, to be specially
afflicted with languor ; but that is not
the case. In July and August they rise
more freely than trout in any Scotch
river do. As regards Scotland it cannot
be denied that there is cause for the im-
pression of our young hostess, the game-
keeper, the tackle - dealer, and many

164 AN ANGLERS SEASON

others. On two waters out of each
three, or thereby, sport with the trout
certainly does fall off when the early
flowers have faded and the birds have
ceased to sing.

What is the meaning of this ? Before
endeavouring to show what it is, let us
perceive what it is not. The phenomena
in the trout waters have nothing to do
with the vernal influence that produces
the gentler iris and affects the young
mans fancy. Spring is love -time with
the birds and the flowers ; but it is not
so with the trout. It is in autumn that
these have their season of amour. By
May the impulse which flourishes into
splendour in the flower-garden, and into
music in the copses, is long past in the
haunts of the trout, and it does not
begin to stir again until October is well
advanced. Thus, we must not seek con-
solation for our empty or ill-plenished
creels in thoughts of a scientifically
emotional kind. My friend Mr. Watson
is a great poet, an illuminating interpreter

JULY 165

of the reign of law, a seer ; but he is not
quite correct in saying that in May half
of the world a bridegroom is and half of
the world a bride. It is no bridal glee
that makes the trout sportful in May.
It is sheer gluttony. Before the starling
and the nightingale are hushed, the trout
are gorged. That is why, in effect, they
say to the angler, " Owing to the pressure
of other matter, we are obliged to decline
your contribution." They cannot well
hold any more. They are even unable
to accept the offerings of what may be
called the regular staff, Nature. You
shall see this for yourself if you look
upon a stream. There go, fluttering or
floating down, alders, black spinners, grey
gnats, oak flies, Welshman's buttons,
sedge flies, willow flies, and other insects,
too many to be named ; and not one in
a thousand is taken. Here again, how-
ever, we must beware of generalising.
In fact, we must seem to contradict
ourselves. That is not our fault. It is
because the ways of the trout are not

166 AN ANGLERS SEASON

to be understood, or even seen, at a
glance. It is true that he is gorged
this month ; but it is necessary to dis-
criminate. He cannot take many more
flies ; but there is something for which
he will eagerly endeavour to find space.
That is a worm, small and daintily
pink or purple. Do you ask why this
appeals to him ? If so, think why it is
that we Britons, who would not for a
high fee eat the roe of our own salmon,
are pleased whenever that of the Russian
sturgeon is on the table. We take the
caviare because it is ill to come by. It
is probably for the same reason that the
trout at midsummer takes a worm. At
that time of the year worms are well
down in the soil, which near the surface
is too dry to be comfortable ; thus there
are few, if any, washed into the streams
in the process of Nature. The one
which you yourself offer may be the
only worm within a mile. It has the
attractiveness of things exotic.

If you ply that worm skilfully, you

JULY 167

shall have no cause to complain that the
trout are languid. The condition is not
easily fulfilled. A fly, or two flies, or
even three, can be cast so far that, using
ordinary caution, you do not come within
the trout's range of vision ; but if you
toss a worm as sharply as you cast a
fly the bait will leave the hook. Hook,
observe ! A single hook, and that small,
instead of a Stewart tackle, which is a
flight of three hooks, is to be commended.
It leaves the lure comparatively un-
trammelled, and therefore the more
effective. Deftly dropped near where
a trout is lying, a worm at this time
of the year, unless a thunderstorm is
coming, will as a rule be rushed at. I
am old-fashioned enough, as they would
say in the Quarterly Review, either the
blue or the buff, to be joyful at that
great moment. Worm-fishing is tabooed
on many streams ; but the objection
cannot be sustained. A nibble at a worm
is at least as exciting as a rise at a fly.
The rise is over and done with, one way

168 AN ANGLERS SEASON

or the other, in less than a second ; but
the nibble may go on for four or five
seconds, and each of these is as a thrilling
minute. Is the trout a fingerling or a
five-pounder ? When, O when, should
we strike ? I know not ; nobody knows !
Occasionally the trout is only chivying
the worm, which is not within his lips
for more than a small fraction of a
second at a time ; in that case the success
or the failure of the strike is accidental.
Occasionally the worm has been seized ;
in that case the strike, though again on
chance, will, if in time, be effective. The
great question is that of timing, and it is
not soluble on any scientific principle.
In fly-fishing you strike whenever you
see or feel a rise ; in worm-fishing your
mind is rent in a conflict between anxiety
not to be too quick and dread lest you
should be too cautious. That is to say,
the inhibitory nerves and the other set,
the name of which I forget, are in full
blast at the same time. This is moral
and intellectual discipline of a beneficent

JULY 169

kind. All men in sound health have a
natural liking for the bow and spear, or
other weapon of the chase ; and what all
sane men feel to be natural no man can
with assurance denounce as perverse.

Meanwhile, since we took to the worm,
our basket has been filling ; and what is
this we see ? The sun has set, and the
breeze has dropped, and the stream is
aboil with rises ! Have we once more
to go back upon the track of our asser-
tions ? Indeed we have ! Though at
the height of summer the trout are in-
different towards flies in daytime, always,
when the atmosphere is fresh, as was
stated in May, they rise uncommonly
well between sunset and midnight. In
fact, they rise as briskly throughout these
hours as they do at mid-day in April.
What, then, on analysis of the belief of
our young friend and the gamekeeper and
the tackle-dealer, do we find to be the
truth ? Only that during the hours of
sunshine the trout tend to ignore flies
between the close of spring and the first

170 AN ANGLERS SEASON

flood in August. That is a frail basis
on which to assume that the season
ended with May. Why, we are in July,
and our basket is packed to the brim !

In England, where the water-level,
never high, is gradually becoming very
low, nobody would think of going up-
hill in search of trout. Instinctively one
realises that there cannot be a lake among
the hills of Hampshire, for example, or
on the Sussex downs. Surrey is equally
ill-off. Its best bit of uplands is without
even a considerable pool. This peculiarity
of the southern part of Great Britain is
due to the isolation of the eminences.
If Surrey had a cluster of Leith Hills,
instead of having only the solitary mount,
it would have a lake somewhere near the
clouds when the barometer and the sky
are low. Great tracts of Scotland are
bounteously enriched by water stored
far above the ordinary haunts of men ;
yet this is known only to a few. Let

JULY 171

the wayfarer leave the beaten track and
climb far enough ; and suddenly, just as
he sees over some ridge, he will find, with
wonder and delight, a lake lying before
him ; and always, especially if there be
sunshine, it is of extraordinary beauty.
In scarcely any part of the Highlands
do you need a guide or a divining-rod
to lead you to water among the hills.
That is because the hills of the High-
lands are in clusters. They are only
semi-detached ; hollows or plateaus lie
between the shoulders of one and those
of another or of others ; and there, fed
by sparkling rills that begin in corries
near the peaks, lie, like huge gems, the
mountain lakes. There are so many of
them that it is questionable whether
their number is truly given in the
most painstaking of official surveys. A
gamekeeper who accompanied us to the
one most recently visited thought that
there were about fifty lakes on the
estate ; but he was not sure. " Maybe,"
he added after reflecting for a few

172 AN ANGLERS SEASON

moments, "there are half-a-dozen or so
more than that."

This was in Atholl. The lake was
Loch Ordie, about four miles uphill
from Guay, a village on the Highland
Line. It is circular, and three miles
in circumference; and through a gap in
the fringe of pines surrounding it there
were to be seen, deceptively on a level
with the eyes, snow-drifts in corries away
to the north. This will indicate that on
a sweltering summer day, when trout and
anglers in the lowlands are languid and
dejected, a mountain lake is a pleasant
resort. Fain would I weave words into
a pattern suggesting the general loveliness
of Loch Ordie as a decoration of the
brown old earth ; but that cannot be.
The moment you begin to be active as
an angler you bid good-bye to yourself
as an impressionist. The trout, if you
are to catch a few, claim your undivided
attention. Prose, then, stark prose,
follows our ascent into the Atholl hills.

The sky was cloudless ; but there was

JULY 173

a brisk wind from the north-west, and the
trout rose well. By six o'clock in the
afternoon, when we had to leave, the
two of us had caught twenty - seven.
Seven of the fish were almost exactly
1 lb. each. We had not been fortun-
ate as regards the size of our trout.
A game-book lying in the luncheon-room
showed that the average weight of the
trout taken on Loch Ordie was consider-
ably above that of those in our own
basket. It was slightly over f lb., which
is as good as the average of Lochleven
this season, a record year on that splendid
water. Trout up to 3 lb. had often
been caught. Besides, the gamekeeper
mentioned that a few days before our
visit, in netting pike, he had taken from
a small bay, and of course returned, fifty
trout weighing not less than 2 lb. each.

Is it astonishing to find such good fish
so far above the level of the sea? At
first it is. One thinks that the world
should become bleak and infertile when
one quits the vales. This, however, is a

174 AN ANGLERS SEASON

false preconception of the ways of Nature.
It is not only in the lowlands that she
is competent and prolific. There is
luxuriance of life, in many kinds, up to
nearly 3000 feet above the sea. This
richness does not taper off as you
approach the limit. It seems to be
uniform until it suddenly ceases alto-
gether and you enter upon altitudes
frequented by the ptarmigan and the
eagle only. Insects abound wherever
within the limit there is water. Much
to the delighted excitement of the birds,
even the Mayfly, which is known as the
Junefly in the lowlands of Scotland, and
as the Sloop in regions where summer
is still later, was fluttering about the
margins of Loch Ordie ; and now and
then, at intervals of an hour or so, there
were rises of other insects, and con-
sequently rises of the trout. Even as
the insects were late in the year, the fish
were backward in condition ; but what of
that? It enables the angler to believe,
in common with the Poet Laureate and

JULY 175

the learned writers who discourse about
the woodlands and the garden, that the
present time, whatever it may be, is the
best of all the year. It is very good
in itself, and still better in what it is
leading to. This incontrovertible pro-
position establishes harmony between
these presents and our remark that May
was undoubtedly the briskest month in
the angler's season. In spring the angler
thinks in terms of the valley ; but in
summer, like Lady Breadalbane when it
is time to see to the red deer of the Black
Mount, he lifts his eyes and himself unto
the hills. Surely it is well to know that
there are waters in which the trout are
as lively in the months of summer as
those of other waters are in May ! The
angler who has the privilege of them can
keep company with spring until the first
hint of autumn, which comes in a north-
west wind at the close of the mid- August
rainstorm, revives the lakes and rivers of
the valleys.

Deeply interesting are the discoveries

176 AN ANGLERS SEASON

he will make. He will find that no
water which is unconnected with another
has trout exactly the same as those of
any other. The fish in each lake have
some marked individuality. This may
be in colour, in shape, in size, in manner
of rising, or in the vigour with which
they endeavour to win free. The
Loch Ordie trout, for example, turns on
its back before seizing a fly, just as a
shark turns when about to take its prey ;
this is an action I have never witnessed
in any other water. Then, for further
example, there is the problem presented
by the internal colouring of fish. Some
trout are red when they appear on the
table, and some are so pallid to be almost
white. It is generally supposed that the
red trout are those which have had the
richer fare, and that the others also
would be red had they not been always
on the verge of hunger. This theory,
which nobody seems to question, is not
convincing when we contemplate the
phenomena to be explained. Within a

1. LOCH ORDIE IN A FAIlt BREEZE (page 172).

2. THE SOUTH-WEST CORNER, WHERE DONALD DWELLS.

W. L. Wood, junior.

JULY 177

four-hours tramp of Loch Ordie there are
Loch Derculich, Loch -na- Craig, Loch
Oyl and Loch Kennard, both near Loch-
na-Craig, and Loch Skiach, on Kinnaird.
All these waters are approximately on
the same high level, and in all of them
the trout are red. On the other hand,
Loch Doine, Loch Voil, Loch Lubnaig,
and Loch Tay, in the same county, and
Loch-an-Beie, just over the border in
Argyll, lie low, not much above the sea ;
and the trout in all of them are pale.
How is the difference to be accounted
for ? Does it show that feeding is better
on the hills than in the vales ? It might
indeed be thought to do so were there
not a disturbing consideration. The
mountain trout, ruddy though they be,
are not so game as the white trout in the
lochs below. What are we to make of
it ? Are we, after all, to think that the
better feeding is on the hills ? We could
not think that without thinking also
that rich fare makes trout comparatively
feeble. Are we to think that the better

12

178 AN ANGLERS SEASON

feeding is in the valleys? As the red
trout, though not always the best to
catch, are always the best to eat, we
could not think that without thinking
also that the more well-nourished a trout
is the less palatable it becomes.

A more important problem may arise
on even a cursorary experience of sport
on Highland lochs. Are pike objection-
able in a trout water? Here again
anglers in general are in no doubt. If
you would have trout, you must destroy
the pike. That is the general under-
standing. It is taken to be a self-evident
proposition. That is exactly what it is
not. Pike undoubtedly prey upon trout ;
but the best trout are to be caught in
waters which are haunted by pike. Look
at the facts in the fairly-representative
region about which we are thinking.
Loch Doine, Loch Voil, Loch Lubnaig,
and Loch-an-Beie are without pike ; and
on any of these waters it is easy in a
good day to catch forty trout, which will
weigh 10 lb. Pike are plentiful in Loch

JULY 179

Ordie, Loch Skiach, Loch Derculich,
Loch Tay, and Loch Vennachar ; on any
of which waters, on a similar day, your
basket may not only have as many trout,
but also trout which are at least double
the weight. These facts call for a re-
consideration of the relations between
trout and pike.

Perhaps those who share the general
prejudice against pike will deem the
scope of the reference too narrow. They
may invite attention to Blagdon Lake,
which, whilst without pike, yields trout
that on the average are much heavier
than the trout taken from any other lake
in the country. Blagdon, however, is
irrelevant. It is a new lake, artificial ;
and waters of that kind have a natural
history which, though uniform and
peculiarly definite, has not yet been
generally noticed. For the first four or
five years the trout in any lake made
by man flourish abnormally. They grow
with great rapidity ; when three years
old they are twice as large as trout of

180 AN ANGLERS SEASON

the same age in natural lakes ; and, being
young, they rise as freely as other young
trout do. That is because the soil on
which they live is soil which has until
recently been open to the air, soil
swarming with worms, caterpillars, and
other succulent creatures, too many to be
mentioned, which are not indigenous to a
natural lake. The trout feed on these
tit -bits until the supply is exhausted.
That is about the fifth year; and then
the average weight of the fish begins to
decline towards uniformity with the
average weight of the fish in the
neighbourhood. The process has been
witnessed on Lake Vyrnwy, and it will
ere long be manifest on Blagdon.

The Highland lochs of which we have
been thinking are not subject to any such
falsifying departure from the normal
order. All of them are natural. In all
of them Nature is at work according to
her ordinary rules. The two sets of facts
which she produces are confusing. We
take the best baskets of trout from

JULY 181

waters which have pike ; but, as will be
seen immediately, we have no encourage-
ment to plant pike in waters which have
trout only. It is easy to understand why
a lake which has pike yields trout which
on the average are larger than those
caught in a similar lake without pike.
Many thousands of very young trout are
devoured in the one water, and many
thousands of very young trout are left to
rush at our flies in the other. Explain-
ing the humble average size of trout
taken from the pikeless lakes, that solves
half of our problem ; but it leaves us
without any light whatever on the other
half. As is known by every one who
trolls a minnow in the intervals of
casting flies, the lakes which are without
pike have huge trout; but where the
pike are not, only the comparatively
small trout rise ! The same mysterious
law is seen in another aspect through the
fact that on a pike-haunted lake you will
catch with fly as many trout of 1 lb. or
over in a day as you can by the same

182 AN ANGLERS SEASON

means take from a pikeless lake in a
month. That is the puzzle. That is
what confounds what Mr. Ruskin calls
the imagination analytic. According to
natural understanding, trout of 1 lb. or
so, which are old enough to be wary but
not too old to be tired of flies, should
rise most freely where pike are absent ;
yet, whilst there they hardly ever rise at
all, they rise particularly well where their
natural enemies are constantly on the
watch ! Is this an argument for planting
pike in waters where Nature has left
them out? Certainly it is not. Some
who thought it was have been painfully
undeceived. Nature knows the ideally
perfect relations between trout and
pike, and in many a place contrives
to maintain them from century to
century ; but man is not yet able to
make successful experiments in the
mysterious domain. Disaster is the out-
come of any attempt to improve a
stock of trout by introducing a pack of
pike. The trout disappear from the

JULY 183

bottom as well as from the face of the
water.

Gamekeepers are as a rule delightful
companions. Our visit to Loch Ordie
would be memorable if only in respect
that it led to our making the ac-
quaintance of two singularly interesting
representatives of the class. These are
Donald Sim and Henry Haxton.

On our reaching the loch, about half-
past ten in the morning, Donald was not
to be found. Disturbing to ourselves,
impatient to be out upon the water, this
was doubly so to Haxton, who said that
Donald had received orders to be ready
not later than ten. There is a row of
picturesque cottages close to the jetty :
the home of a forester, the home of
Donald and Mrs. Sim, and a "fishing-
house." On making inquiry, Haxton
learned that Donald had gone out, to see
to the foxes, at " the back of five." It
was true that when after foxes Donald
was never in a hurry to return ; but, even

184 AN ANGLERS SEASON

if he should not be noticing the time, he
was sure to be home for his dinner, at
eleven o'clock. O, well, we would set
forth without Donald. . . . By and by,
from the boat, I caught sight of a tall
and erect figure walking with remarkable
rapidity along a path through the wood-
lands which skirt the loch. "That's
Donald," Haxton said. We drew ashore,
and Donald came cheerfully aboard. He
gave some explanation of his being late ;
but I did not hear it. I was preoccupied
with the fact that this very youthful
gillie was on the verge of his eightieth
year. All day, joking and laughing and
chatting, he was- as keen on the sport as
if he had been a schoolboy. The eastern
half of the loch was catching the full
force of the wind, which was high, and it
must have been by no small strength that
the boat was kept under control ; but the
eastern half, Donald thought, was where
the best trout were likely to be rising,
and consequently it had the drifts we
must " stick to." He spared no effort ;

JULY 185

indeed, he seemed not to be conscious of
any. The dear old boy had been living
there, in uplands that cannot be seen
from any valley, for fifty years. Long
may he be " after the foxes " and gleefully
attending to his other duties !

Haxton was in many respects different

from Donald. He was apparently little

more than thirty years of age. He is

not a Highlander, and, though very

attentive, he had no ebullience of spirits

or of speech. He hardly ever, except in

answer, made any remark ; but when he

did there was always something arresting

in what he said. Thus, when we nearly

bumped upon a submerged rock, and he

mentioned that at that place General

Lyttelton had caught a three-pounder,

he spoke in a tone which unconsciously

suggested that the distinguished soldier

was a familiar acquaintance. In short,

I felt that Haxton was no ordinary man ;

and months afterwards I accidentally

learned that I had not been wrong.

Haxton, the meekest and mildest of

186 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

gamekeepers, is nothing less than a hero
of the battlefield.

To set him in a true light, I must
sketch an unrecorded episode in our war
with the South- African Republics.

Two squadrons of the Scottish Horse
had been out on trek for a time which
was much too long. It was many a week
since they had been near a railway ; the
men were ill-clothed, ill-fed, in general
out-of-sorts. Most of their old officers
had been killed or wounded, and they
were away from Lord Tullibardine's
control. Between them and the Column
Commander, who was new to his post,
there was some little lack of under-
standing.

Report says that, hearing about this,
the Officer Commanding the Scottish
Horse, of which there were three
regiments, warned Lord Kitchener that
trouble was not improbable. Thereupon,
and acting upon a hint received from the
men themselves that things were wrong,
he galloped eighty miles in a day to see

JULY 187

them. He had sixty Australians with
him, and on the way captured a Boer
remount camp with 150 serviceable
horses.

The column was found to be in a
miserable state ; and the disaffection was
not clearly attributable in the first instance
to the men. The Officer Commanding
had a concert that night, and so waked
them up. Also, he urged them not to
allow discontent to grow. He knew their
troubles, he said, and would be actively
sympathetic as long as they played the
game. Most of the men were of those
who had fought so well under Benson ;
but a good many had joined since then,
and these, naturally, were softer than
their comrades. It was with the new
men that the danger lay. They did not
yet know the Officer Commanding
personally, and they had not acquired
the spirit of the corps. New clothing
was- issued, and the affair seemed to
be going well ; but, alas, there was a
breakdown. A good many troopers,

188 AN ANGLERS SEASON

all of them in the two squadrons men-
tioned at the opening of our narrative,
refused to go out again. This was at
Standerton.

The Officer Commanding immediately
put Major Blair, his second-in-command
and an experienced officer, in charge of the
men at Standerton. Almost immediately
after entering upon this duty, Major
Blair reported, by telegraph, that there
was open mutiny. He had put under
arrest all the non-commissioned officers
except one. He asked his chief to
come down.

Lord Tullibardine did go down, and
found that officers and men were
at loggerheads. Hoping to overcome the
trouble, he sent all the officers away on
leave. Then he paraded the men, and
had a long talk with them. His anxiety
was to make them realise that they were
mutinous, and that mutiny was a crime
of the gravest kind.

The men could not agree with his
definition of their attitude. Denying

JULY 189

that they were mutinous, they said they
were "on strike." They were striking
because the non-commissioned officers
had been put under arrest, and they
would go on striking until those officers
should be let out.

This declaration, it is believed, found a
soft spot. The strikers were essentially
good men ; if they had been less good
they might have taken an attitude more
nearly approaching formal correctness.

However, sentiment had to be con-
cealed and discipline enforced. Lord
Tullibardine simply said to the men
that every day the strike went on was
only another stitch in the blanket of
the non-commissioned officers. If they
would leave off striking, he would see
what he could do for their comrades
under arrest.

In further conversation the men
assured Lord Tullibardine of their loyalty
to himself and to the regiment. Then
they repeated their earlier grievances,
which included a complaint that the

190 AN ANGLERS SEASON

Column Commander did not yet know
them sufficiently well.

Next day Lord Tullibardine again
paraded the men, who intimated that
they were firm on the question of the
strike. They said that they were going
to write to The Times and to Lord
Kitchener; some of them, indeed, had
written to Lord Kitchener already.

Lord Tullibardine answered that they
would have been wiser had they trusted
to him.

They said that they were suffering
from a breach of contract. This was
a fresh grievance, and it was possible
to perceive that it was not quite un-
founded. The terms of enlistment, framed
by the home authorities, had been am-
biguous. " For a year or for the duration
of the war " was not good wording. Men
might honestly understand it to mean
that they were free to go home after
serving for a year.

Lord Tullibardine explained the real
meaning of the terms ; which was that

JULY 191

if the war lasted less than a year the
men would have maintenance for the
year, but that in any ease they were
enlisted for the duration of the war.

This was convincing ; but it did not
conciliate.

Consequently, Lord Tullibardine went
up - country to confer with Lord
Kitchener.

It is believed that at first the Com-
mander-in-Chief was inclined to settle the
trouble by having the men sent home, but
that the Officer Commanding dissuaded
him from that course by showing that it
would be attended by a risk that others
among the fifty thousand yeomanry in
the field might strike in order to have
themselves disbanded. At any rate, it is
known that Lord Tullibardine ended the
interview by asking for full powers.
Might he come back to report in two
or three days ?

" Yes," said Lord Kitchener : " go and
see what you can do."

Accordingly, Lord Tullibardine went

192 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

to consult General Clements, who was
commanding the district in which the
mutinous troops were stationed.

The General took Lord Tullibardine's
point of view, but made a disquieting
suggestion. "The best plan," said he,
" is to march down a couple of battalions
and disarm them."

The Officer Commanding was con-
siderably put out of countenance. It is
said that he exclaimed, "I can disarm
my own men by myself."

After further debate, the General
and the Officer Commanding set out upon
a joint attempt at pacification. They
found the men in extremely bad temper.
The Officer Commanding had taken with
him twenty men from his own squadron.
These were by way of going out to
another column, and, to prevent sus-
picion, were kept pretty well in the
background. The strikers were paraded,
to be given a third chance. They had
fallen-in in their shirt-sleeves, but with
their arms. " You need not bother with

JULY 193

your arms," said the Officer Commanding:
"just leave them there. The General
wants to talk to you." The men, of
whom there were ninety, obeyed. They
were always very good on parade ; never
mutinous against the Officer Command-
ing personally. General Clements spoke
to them just as Lord Tullibardine had
spoken ; but he pleaded in vain. The
men refused to leave off striking unless
the non-commissioned officers were set
free. The General then proceeded to
command those who meant to remain
loyal to take a step forward ; but the
Officer Commanding interrupted, saying,
" Rather tell every man who means to
mutiny to step forward." In response
to the command thus amended, all the
men save one stepped forward without
hesitation or a murmur. They had been
told that if they mutinied they might be
shot.

The General was aghast. "Lord
Tullibardine," said he, "you know what
to do."

13

194 AN ANGLERS SEASON

" Yes," said Lord Tullibardine ; and,
turning to the men, "You have only
yourselves to thank. Half - sections
right, into jail I Quick march 1 M

The men set out towards the jail,
round which, about quarter - of - a - mile
away, was a fence of barbed wire. Then
the Officer Commanding blew a whistle,
and suddenly, out of a ditch close by,
there sprang a row of infantry with
loaded rifles and fixed bayonets.

The Officer Commanding went down
to camp.

Very soon he was followed thither by
a message from the men whom he had
been reluctantly obliged to imprison.
It was raining heavily: might they
have tents? The Officer Commanding
answered that they were now under the
Provost-Marshal ; that the tents belonged
to the Scottish Horse ; and that he had
no power to hand them over. A little
later the prisoners sent intimation that
they were without rations. "You must
complain to the Provost- Marshal," the

JULY 195

Officer Commanding answered. "I can
indent only for twenty-three men — the
number in camp besides myself." He
added that, as the men had preferred
Lord Kitchener's friendship to his own,
any further communications that might
be deemed necessary should be addressed
to the Commander-in-Chief.

Next day the court-martial was to
begin. The Officer Commanding had
provided himself with much u blue paper,"
including many quires of foolscap, en-
velopes of great length, and apparently
all the ominous books he could lay hands
on. At sight of him thus equipped,
one man intimated a desire to back out
of the strike ; but the men generally
were not yet overawed. The C.O.'s
bark was much worse than his bite
would be, they seemed to feel. At
any rate, many of them practically in-
sisted that, besides being Prosecutor, he
should be witness as to character and,
one might almost say, Counsel for
the Defence. Man after man sought

196 AN ANGLERS SEASON

the Officer's advice as to what should
be pleaded in vindication of his conduct.
"Would it be any use mentioning that
I'm a Free Mason ? " asked one. " No,"
the Prosecutor had to answer. "That
would only make things worse. It would
bring to light the fact that you have
broken a second oath of loyalty to the
Sovereign." Another man had a wife
and two bairns at home. "You should
have thought of that before," said the
Prosecutor. "Nae doobt," moaned the
prisoner; "but I'm sure that if there's
anything your Lordship can do to help
me, you'll do it?" "Yes," said Counsel
for the Defence, looking gravely sym-
pathetic : "I'll take home to your family
any message you entrust to me."

Nevertheless, although the Blue-Paper
demonstration was a failure, the court-
martial was all right. The Lance-
Corporals were taken first. They were
sentenced to about a year's imprisonment.
Parading the men, the Officer Command-
ing read out the sentence ; offered them

JULY 197

a chance of coming in ; and pointed out
that he had begun with the younger
troopers, whose punishment would be the
lightest. Three or four men came in.

Then the Officer Commanding took
the Corporals, who were sentenced on the
rising scale he had foreshadowed. Ten
or twelve men came in.

Next one of the Sergeants appeared
before the judgment seat, and was
awarded three years. More men came in.

Then another Sergeant was found to
be deserving of very heavy punishment ;
but the question of what the sentence
should be called for more deliberation
than could be given to it there and
then. Perhaps it was thought that a
little suspense would have a good moral
effect on the men still to be tried. At
any rate, the President adjourned the
Court, and it was understood that Lord
Tullibardine went to see the Commander-
in-Chief.

Putting two and two together, and
especially when pondering Lord Tulli-

198 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

bardine's remark that in so grave a case
General Clements must consult Lord
Kitchener, the men expected the Ser-
geant's sentence to be Death.

They were of a subdued aspect when,
next day, Lord Tullibardine reported
that he had been interceding with the
Commander-in-Chief, who had yielded
to a plea for mercy. The sentence was
five years. A sigh of relief ran through
the ranks.

Then the Officer Commanding an-
nounced that on the morrow he would go
on to men much worse than the non-com-
missioned officers, who, after all, had been
little more than insubordinate, and might
only have been reduced had their com-
rades not behaved as silly children. Had
they really, he asked, thought that they
could score off him ? Had they imagined
that he was to be beaten by his own men ?
Perhaps at that moment some of them
were thinking of their arrangements to
discredit him at home? Well, had
they never heard of the "Tress Censor ?

JULY 199

Taking from his pocket a handful of
missives and a handful of coins, and
throwing them all on the ground,
"There," said he, "are your letters to
The Times, and your telegrams, and the
money that was to pay for them ! " They
had done their best, he went on, to hurt
the honour of the regiment ; they had
shamed themselves, their relations, and
their country. Then, quieting down, the
Officer Commanding said : " If you trust
me, I will be your best friend. Do you
wish to be left to Lord Kitchener ? Or
will you place yourselves unreservedly in
my hands ? "

"Yes!"

It seemed that all of them said u Yes ! "

"Those who are willing to play the
game, step forward ! "

All but nine responded. These nine,
it was soon afterwards found, were
youths who had just recently been taken
into the regiment; they did not yet
realise the gravity of the situation.

" Will you take my award, or a court-

200 AN ANGLER S SEASON

martial?" asked Lord Tullibardine of the
others.

Very readily they expressed a prefer-
ence for the award.

"Well, then, it is fourteen days'
imprisonment. It will be entered in
your records; but, as you have done
fourteen days already, you start clear
to-morrow morning. All it will mean is
that you have lost fourteen days' pay."

Then the Officer Commanding made
a speech. He told the men that, as then-
own regiment was ready to cut their
tin-oats, he was going to send them up
to the First Regiment. He hoped that
there they would show themselves of use.
From their behaviour on trek there had
arisen an impression that they had lost
spirit on account of Baakenlagte, and
that they couldn't fight and wouldn't
go. " We have something to put right,"
he said; "and I will give you your
chance."

The chance arose soon after the
men had been taken to the First Regi-

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Who nn,.. I.r (hat (I. ii. WiHt mUmiI

202 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

with his life in his hands rather than be
cowed into tarnishing the traditions of
his regiment ?

None other than Sergeant Haxton ;
Haxton, whose acquaintance we made at
Loch Ordie ; Henry the meek and mild !

He was an under gamekeeper in the
Lowlands before the war. Now he is a
head gamekeeper in Atholl, in connexion
with the management of which Lord
Tullibardine advises his father, the Duke.

W. & I). Lowiif//.

THE MARQUIS OF TULLIBARDIXE, M.V.O., D.S.O.

CHAPTER VIII

AUGUST

On Loch Moraig — Unreasonable Discontent — The Time
for Midges — Varieties of the Midge — Seatrout and
Salmon — Mr. Senior's Saying — The Lammas Flood —
West-coast Rivers and East-coast Rivers — Why their
Seasons are Not Simultaneous — The Influence of
Nature — Man's Interference.

" Trout ? I tell you, we know nothing
about them ! "

That was how a friend who the other
evening had come off Loch Moraig with
a basket of thirty-three fish wound up an
account of the day.

He had been happy until the narrative
brought him to a certain hour. The
trout had liked his flies until six o'clock.
Then they had stopped. They had not
ceased to feed. On the contrary, their
rising at natural flies had become brisk.

203

204 AN ANGLERS SEASON

Thinking that this was because of a
small white insect that had come out in
myriads, he had put on a small white
lure ; but it was useless. Not a fish
would look at it. He had come ashore
at eight o'clock. He would not have
thought much about the matter had not
another angler, heavily burdened by his
basket, entered the inn shortly before
eleven o'clock reporting that between
eight and ten the trout had taken ordinary
flies unusually well, and that the hours of
dusk had been the best of the day. The
question was, Why had artificial flies
been ignored between six and eight ?

Meekly I suggested that perhaps
neither of the anglers had tried the right
midge. Always at this time of the year,
I reasoned, there were black midges and
dun midges on the water for two hours
or so before dark ; and it was probably
either a black or a dun midge, instead of
a white one, that had attracted the trout.
Surely the bill-of-fare for a summer day
was well known : ordinary flies while the

AUGUST 205

sun is up, midges for about two hours
when it has dipped behind the hills, and
ordinary flies or flies still larger after
that?

The reminder calmed my friend, whose
outburst was no more than a symptom
of the experienced angler's insatiable
curiosity about whys and wherefores.

We are now entering upon a time
which each year gives much scope for
this inquiring spirit. A good deal is
known about brown trout and their
ways ; but of seatrout and salmon know-
ledge in the same measure is to seek.
Usually you can explain the capture of
a brown trout. The lure was something,
or an imitation of something, that was
naturally desirable at the moment. Even
when you fail in the attempt to catch a
brown trout, an explanation is as a rule
at hand. It is that, whilst the lure is
opportune, the state of the weather, or
that of the water, is such that the fish
are off their food. In short, as regards
the brown trout, which are with us,

206 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

inland, all the year, we have a natural
science ; but what we know of the fish
that spend half of their time in the sea
is knowledge of another kind, empirical.
Between a seatrout or a salmon in the
stream and the same fish in the basket
there is no relation of cause and effect
that you can perceive to have been
morally certain or even probable. The
capture was a great event; but it was
essentially accidental. You do not under-
stand it as you understand the capture
of a brown trout. At least, as a rule
you do not. When there really is a
glimmer of rationality in the triumph
we owe our pride of mind to some
lesson that has been taught by haphazard
experiment not connected with any study
of natural law.

As was said by Mr. William Senior
in a moment of comical candour, angling
for salmon or for seatrout " is an art, but
not a fine art." The lures for brown
trout are taken or copied from nature ;
but such skill as we have in the capture

AUGUST 207

of seatrout or salmon is the result of
accidents. Each of the many standard
flies was a bow at a venture when first
designed. Not one was copied from
nature. Does this consideration take
away from enjoyment of the sport ?
Surely it does not. Rather, it enriches
the enjoyment. It is wonderful to think
that without the slightest guidance we
have designed many "flies" for which
the migratory fish show specific likings.
Of these likings, which are sometimes
asserted dramatically, there can be no
doubt whatever. One cannot always, it
is true, be sure that the fly one has chosen
is the best for the day ; but there are a
few rough general rules. Early in spring
and late in autumn the largest flies are
appropriate. In summer the befitting
flies are small. When there is a chill
in the air and in the water flies with
silver bodies are attractive. When the
stream is low a sombre lure is the most
likely to succeed. When it is tinted by
flood water a gaudy one should be in

208 AN ANGLERS SEASON

ply. These rules, set down mainly in
relation to salmon, hold good as regards
the seatrout. Seatrout flies are smaller
than salmon flies ; but they are similar
to these in being one of man's random
inventions. As a rule seatrout and
salmon are alike uninterested either in
the insects native to the fresh waters or
in lures in imitation of those insects.
Indeed, when fishing on some large river,
one frequently finds the seatrout attracted
by salmon flies almost as readily as they
are attracted by the smaller flies designed
for themselves. This suggests that in
the salt water or in the estuaries salmon
and seatrout have certain articles of
food in common, creatures that the flies
resemble.

The Lammas flood is the herald of an
exhilarating time. It washes the dust
from the world, freshens the winds, and
restores body and spirit to the streams.
What fairer sight than a full -flowing
clean river alive with salmonkind fresh
from the sea? The spectacle and the

AUGUST 209

opportunity are not depreciated by know-
ledge that in trying to catch a few of
the fish we are without that adaptation
of means to end which renders more or
less scientific our relations with the
brown trout. The very uncertainties of
the endeavour lend to it a peculiar zest.
The probabilities are against you ; but
there is always a chance that you may
stumble into a success beyond that of
the wildest hope. If you have the right
fly at work on the right pool, you may
take in a day a weight of fish equal to
that of all the brown trout caught in
many weeks.

To some readers it will seem strange
that I have been writing about the
migratory salmonkind as if the season
for those fish were only approaching.
Are they not, it will be asked, being
caught already? Yes : in certain streams
they are ; and on that account there is
occasion to consider an interesting state
of affairs.

Whilst we have been thinking of the

14

210 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

great rivers flowing to the east coast, and
of the time when these have migratory
fish, it is true that sport with seatrout
and salmon has already been found on
streams flowing to the west. Why do
the fish run plentifully into the west-
coast streams at a time when there is
little or no run in the others ? There
are two causes. One of them is due to
Nature ; the other is the work of man.
Look at the configuration of Scotland.
Nearly all the rivers flowing into the
North Sea, on the east, are very long,
and all those which fall into the Atlantic,
on the west, are very short. That is
because the range of hills separating the
great watersheds is not at any part much
more than twenty miles from the west
coast. Whilst both sets of watercourses
have approximately the same origin, they
have different temperatures. Strange as
it may seem, in the early half of the year
it is the western streams that have the
lower temperature. Far into the spring
these short waters, fed by melted snow,

AUGUST 211

are very cold, so cold that the migratory
fish, instead of running into them, stay
in the sea, directly warmed by the Gulf
Stream, until the rivers are made comfort-
ably habitable by rain in May or June.
Melted snow is the origin of the other
rivers also ; but long before their courses
are run they have been warmed in the
plains, and the North Sea, not being so
much affected by the Gulf Stream, is
far into spring colder than the rivers
which it receives. Thus, while the
migratory fish of the west are lingering
in the salt water for the sake of warmth,
those of the east are running into the
rivers to escape the cold.

In reality, then, it is the western
streams that are late, and it is the eastern
streams that are early. The seatrout and
salmon that have recently been caught
in the Awe and the Orchy and the Shiel
are, as it were, fish analogous to those
which were caught in the Spey and the
Dee and the Tay between February and
the beginning of June. That is the

212 AN ANGLERS SEASON

arrangement of Nature, and not open
to criticism.

Man, however, has supplemented the
arrangement. On the western watershed
he is less solicitously mercantile than he
is on the east coast and for a good way
inland ; in which large region he has
prosecuted commercial fishings with an
assiduity that has amounted to persecu-
tion. Of the millions of seatrout and
salmon that every year enter the estuaries
on the east only a few thousands ever get
beyond the top of the tide. The others
are taken by the nets. The nets are off
the waters only for two or three weeks
at the beginning of the season and for
two or three weeks at the end. That
is why from the beginning of June until
the August flood there are hardly any
seatrout or salmon taken by the rod from
rivers flowing to the east. The fish of
the early migration that escaped both
nets and rods have been so long in the
fresh water that they do not rise at fly.
There are no fresh-run fish in the rivers.

AUGUST 213

Indeed, there are but few fish in the
sea that would run even if the nets were
off. " The spring run " and " the autumn
run" are phrases that conceal a mis-
apprehension of the facts of Nature.
Undoubtedly there are these runs ; but
the truth, unobserved for generations
and so (forgotten, is that if Nature had
her way there would be other] runs
as well. The short streams of the west,
though without fish for a few months
at the beginning of the year, are still
almost in a state of nature ; but the great
rivers flowing to the east are not in this
state, and that is why they are without
runs for three or four months in the
middle of the year. It is an error to
suppose that it is not natural for sea-
trout and salmon to run into these rivers
in May, in June, in July. Naturally
there is a run for every month of the
year. There always was such a run
before the fisheries became commercial.
What has happened is that the tribes
of fish which by nature seek fresh water

214 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

in the months named have been gradually
brought near to extinction by the nets.
Practically the only tribes left to main-
tain the species are those which run in
the few weeks at the beginning of the
season and the few weeks at the end
when the nets are off.

u Practically," I have said ; and the
word leaves room for hope. As may be
seen at the fish-shops and elsewhere,
there are still seatrout and salmon to
be had in May or in June or in July.
There is still in the estuary of every river
the remnant of a May stock, that of a
June stock, and that of a July stock ;
and if it were made free of the river the
remnant in each case would ere long be
a tribe in full strength once more.
Within recent years there has been,
among all classes concerned, a growing
willingness to approve any measures
which, even if they should involve a
temporary loss to commerce, would
lead to restoration of the salmonkind.
Indeed, in not a few rivers the netting

AUGUST 215

has already been lessened with markedly
good results. All will be well when
owners, lessees, and the public discover
the mistake of supposing that the fish
run only at the beginning of the year
and towards the end, and realise that,
even as there are monthly roses, there
are by nature monthly runs of seatrout
and salmon also. Curtailment of netting
during May and June and July will then
be an admitted necessity.

CHAPTER IX

SEPTEMBER

The Tay in Flood — How Rain Differs from Melted Snow
— Soot Film on a Loch — Where to Cast? — Bays of
Two Kinds — An Ideal Bay — Why It is Good — Floods
Which are too Fierce — Waste of Water — How that
can be Prevented.

If only the harvest had been completed
when the rains began, the valley of the
Tay would have been a place of un-
qualified delight this month. The river
has been constantly in flood. What that
means can hardly be realised by those
who are familiar with small streams only.
A rise in these waters is measured by
inches ; but a rise in the Tay is a matter
of feet, or even of yards. When there is
a flood of between three and four yards
miles upon miles of the valley become a
lake ; that is what happens once or twice

216

SEPTEMBER 217

very early in the year, when rain from
the south-west is accompanied by a quick
melting of snow on the mountains.

A two-yards rise, which may be called
a moderate flood, is what comes in less
intemperate autumn. It is quite without
disadvantage from the anglers point of
view. A flood which comes mainly or
largely from out of the snowdrifts is very
cold, so cold that fish of all kinds abstain
from food ; but the flood early in autumn
is from rain only, rain just cold enough
to revive their instincts and whet their
appetites. You are not, as in springtime
you sometimes are, driven far from the
banks. Though there is a little over-
flowing on a meadow here or there, the
river is for the most part within its own
recognised channel. It is muddy from
road water for a few hours at the begin-
ning of the rain ; but after that it is
wonderfully clear, even if it be still rising.
Here, again, the flood in autumn differs
markedly from that of spring. Whilst
discoloration is essential and lasting early

218 AN ANGLERS SEASON

in the year, it is incidental and fleeting
when the year wanes. What is the
explanation ?

Anglers at large say that melted snow
has a colour other than that of ordinary
water, meaning that in the processes of
being frozen and of being dissolved
moisture acquires a dirty-grey tinge and
ceases to be limpid. The bare facts of
the case are as they state ; but I think
that the true explanation has been missed.
We hear of this or that being " pure as
snow " ; but is snow always pure ? One
spring day, when looking for foxes on a
mountain in the watershed of the Tay,
I came upon cause for this sceptical
question. It was the remnant of a snow-
wreath so much tarnished that only when
we were almost upon it, and the dogs
were rolling about in it to be cooled after
their long climb, had we recognised it as
once having been snow. Soft for about
two inches on the surface, and rotten
ice below, it was extraordinarily dirty,
almost, in appearance at least, as much

X

SEPTEMBER 219

so as the slush of London streets when
snow and salt have been churned by the
traffic. How was that ? Whence had
the impurities come ? I surmised then,
and think now, that they had come with
the clouds from Glasgow. The furnaces
of that great city send into the air
enormous quantities of peculiarly dense
smoke, which is distributed to astonishing
distances. This I know from frequently-
repeated observations on a loch on the other
side of the hills which are the southern
boundary of Loch Tay. It is covered by
a film of soot when rain comes from the
south-west, where Glasgow is. The film
is so considerable that when the water is
dead-calm trout breaking the surface, not
with their heads only but with their
backs and tails also, leave in it the marks
of their shapes, and when wind comes,
making the water break in waves upon
the shore, the beach is blackened. Now,
if rain brings down some of the impurities
with which the clouds are charged, is it
not manifest that snowflakes, much larger

220 AN ANGLERS SEASON

than raindrops, must bring down greater
quantities ? Any one who doubts the
theory can be convinced by a simple
experiment. Let him taste either rain
or snow that has come after a time of
drought. It has a rank flavour of
soot.

The fish do not seem to mind the
contamination in the autumn floods.
Perhaps it is much slighter than the
contamination in the floods which come
out of the accumulated snows in spring.
The rain-water must be well filtered in
its comparatively gentle progress through
heather and moss and shingle down the
hills. At any rate, the river, as has been
said, is limpid even when the flood is at
its height, and the fish are in a coming-on
disposition.

Where to cast ? That is the question.
Brown trout, in flood, seek the line of
least resistance, and are away from their
usual haunts. They could, if they liked,
front the torrent at its fiercest ; but they
do not. Thus many a pool or streamy

SEPTEMBER 221

stretch which is first-class in summer is
useless when the floods are out.

The fish have run into bays, sheltered
places which were waterless before the
river rose. It is not in every bay,
however, that you may expect sport.
Some of the bays are the deep and foam-
flecked whirlpools which Mr. Ruskin
describes in language much too grand to
be quoted in these unassthetic pages. In
such bays trout are absentees. Trout in
a whirlpool would have water going
through their gills the wrong way and
would be drowned. This is a fact
which seems to be generally unknown to
instructors in the art of angling. These
err in telling us to "fish the eddies."
Usually there are trout at the edges of
the eddies ; but there is never a trout in
an eddy itself. The whirlpools of the
Tay are so large that, as a rule, you
cannot reach the outer edge, where there
may be trout, and usually the swirl
reaches to the bank you stand on, near
which, therefore, there is none. Bays of

222 AN ANGLERS SEASON

another kind are almost equally hopeless.
These are they in which the water,
though not whirling, looks as if it were
boiling violently ; heaving up in sections
and sinking down again ; on and on so,
in unceasing fretfulness. Now or then a
trout is taken from such a bay ; but it is
not a comfortable place. Just watch the
leaves and twigs in it, noting how they
are tossed up and down, this way and
that ; and you will understand why, as a
rule, trout shun such a caldron.

Where, then, are we to fish ? Well,
that will be best explained through an
example. Just beside the first hole on
the golf-course at Aberfeldy there is an
ideal bay. At that place, about 200 yards
below General Wade's famous bridge, the
channel of the river is very wide, so wide
that at ordinary times the water fills only
the northern half, leaving the other dry ;
the halves are separated by a long bank
of gravel. When the river has risen
about three feet the bank is submerged
and the half of the channel which was

SEPTEMBER 223

dry is filled. By the time the water is
another yard up, all the trout of the pool
opposite and of about quarter-of-a-mile of
the rapids below seem to have gathered
in the bay by the first hole. You see
them rising, rising, rising, some of them
not more than two yards from your feet ;
and many of them have slowly -waving
tails that are thrillingly large.

During this month's floods heavy
baskets have been borne away from that
place, on which a few weeks ago one
stood striving to retrieve a pulled shot
from the tee !

I am not sure that it is possible to tell
exactly why this bay is a favourite with
the trout; but one can at least note its
obvious characteristics. The water does
not whirl, and it does not surge. It does
not at any stage flow backwards ; in the
two or three yards where it is very slow
it is flowing in the same direction as that
in which the main gush goes. Above all,
it is part of what was the original channel
of the river. Trout, I think, instinctively

224 AN ANGLERS SEASON

visit, whenever they can, the hovers of
their ancestors.

The autumn floods are just as they
should be. They cannot be deemed too
high. They enable the salmon and the
seatrout to run, and so scour and cleanse
the bottoms of the river and all the tribu-
taries that the spawn-beds shall be whole-
some. The floods of spring will suggest
thoughts much less comfortable. They
will be in exaggeration of the design of
Nature. Nowadays the hills and the
mountains are seamed with artificial
drains almost from the summits. These
became necessary in order that there
might be large flocks of healthy sheep.
One result is that when rain and melting
snow combine to make a flood there
comes vast injury to other than pastoral
interests. Millions of the eggs of salmon
and millions of the eggs of trout are
swept out of the spawn-beds and destroyed.
Besides, the water of the floods is, to a
very large extent, sheer waste. A three-
foot rise is quite enough to allow the

SEPTEMBER 225

migratory salmonkind to run. All
the water beyond that is a ruinous
extravagance. Its very effectively assisted
passage to the sea is the reason why, as
Mr. C. G. Barrington has noted in The
Times, the rivers are so low in summer
that neither seatrout nor salmon could
run then. If the mountain regions
had not been drained, the rains and the
snows would be economised and the
rivers would have natural and ample
flows all through the year.

The hills and the mountains are
drained, however, and there's an end of
that. We would not undo the measure
of progress if we could.

Still, there is no reason why we should
not neutralise it. That is possible and
almost easy. The means has been fre-
quently described. It is the construction
of reservoirs at or near the source of
rivers. In a great many cases Nature
herself seems to have anticipated the
plan. She has placed a lake at or near
the source of many a river. Not a few

15

226 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

rivers, indeed, are doubly equipped in
that respect. Of these the Tay is an
example. It has both Loch Tay and
Loch Lyon to draw upon. If either of
these lakes, at the narrow outflow, were
fitted with a sluiced dam a few feet high,
the river would not need, even in the
severest summer drought, to be lower
than it used to be at such a time before
the drainage system was begun. The
stored water could be let into the river as
required.

When the notion of storage was first
mooted there were naturalists ready to
contend that stored water was "dead
water," and that fish would not run
through it. They have been corrected
by the complete success of experiments.
Stored water is not by any means " dead
water " ; for reasons indicated at the
beginning of this article, it is likely to be
considerably less impure than water which
is unnaturally rushed off the hills in a
rainstorm or in a thaw.

Indeed, however, the storage system is

SEPTEMBER 227

not in question. Its merits have been
proved. All that we need now to do is
to realise that it is easily and cheaply
applied. The dams cost very little ; the
wages of managing them are trifling ; and
the loss of the strip of land which is
submerged in the raising of the level
of any lake is quickly balanced by
the increased prosperity of the fisheries
for many miles below. Even a river
which is without a lake at or near its
source can as a rule have the system
of redress applied. Somewhere near its
source there is sure to be an area of low-
lying waste land in which a lake could be
easily set. In this matter, happily, the
needs of domestic civilisation, the interests
of sport, and the conditions which pre-
serve or restore the amenities of nature
are all in harmony. If we would have
our rivers in a state of natural purity,
we must have them in natural flow.
From whatever point of view the
problem is regarded, that is the cardinal
consideration.

CHAPTER X

OCTOBER

Early Closing on the Tay — An Unexpected Invitation
— Bismarck — The Earn in Flood — Next Day —
" Whaur Peter Bides" — Peter's Bad Repute —
Apologetic Reflections — John's Account of Peter —
A Seatrout and a Snub — In the Afternoon — The
Dread Pool — At Last ! — The Spectre and the Salmon
— Rash Curiosity and What Came of it.

In Scotland the statutory close-time as
regards trout begins on October 16 ; but
in our district it is feudally ordained that
there shall be no fishing for trout after
the end of September. That is wise.
The Tay trout spawn late, and are in
good condition throughout October ; but
they are not so plentiful as they should
be. Twenty years ago, Mr. Wood tells
me, any fairly skilful angler could easily
have 15 lb., or even more, on a favourable

228

OCTOBER 229

morning at any time of the season ; but
now a basket of similar weight is to be
expected only on an exceptionally good
day in spring, or during the August or
September floods. The trout have not
become warier than they were of old.
The change, my friend declares, is attri-
butable to their having become fewer.
Pike have been multiplying. They are
plentiful in all the many backwaters
and in the deep still bays. They destroy
thousands of trout. They have practically
absolute sanctuary. Now and then one
of them is taken on a lure that is being
plied for salmon ; but otherwise they are
left to prey and to propagate in peace.
If the pike were systematically netted
out the stocks of game fish would rapidly
revive. Meanwhile it is well that the
trout should have a yearly fortnight more
of freedom than the Law commands.
During the first half of October the
salmon of the Tay are still fair game ; but
in our part of the river that is what may
be called a derisory privilege. You might

230 AN ANGLERS SEASON

almost as well set out to catch capercailzie
by putting salt on their tails as hope
to catch a salmon above Grantully this
month. The fish that pass Grantully do
not pause very often or very long until
they are in Loch Tay, or in the tributaries
thereof, or in the Lyon ; and fish that are
running are not to be successfully tempted
by any lure. Thus it seemed that the
close of September was to be the end of
the season.

Just before the middle of October, how-
ever, there came an interesting letter with
the morning tea-tray. It was an invita-
tion to fish on the Earn. It came from a
man whom I did not know. He explained
that he sent it at the suggestion of a
London friend-in-common. He had, he
said, a very good stretch of the river ;
but, though the fish were many, he was
not succeeding very much. Would I
come to show him how to do better ?

Of course I would ! I am far from
being as crafty a hand at salmon-fishing
as 1 hope to become ; but, except amid

OCTOBER 231

serious circumstances, there is never any
use in saying that you cannot do some-
thing which you are asked to do. My
friend's friend on the Earn would probably
be at least as fortunate, during my visit,
as myself; but I would go cheerfully and
with brave countenance.

As things turned out, I needed con-
siderable courage. The train was late ;
and the dog-cart which was to take me
from the little station, on the line from
Perth to Balquhidder, was later. After a
four-miles drive amid heavy rain, I found
my host, on the door-step of a fine old
mansion, obviously a little put out at the
delay. We were to fish that afternoon,
and it was now nearly two o'clock.

I had never seen Prince Bismarck ;
but I had seen many portraits of him, and
my host, save for his bushy auburn hair,
seemed to be the Prussian come to life
again. The resemblance was not merely
physical. My new friend's habit of mind
was stern. This I realised during the
conversation at our hasty luncheon.

232 AN ANGLERS SEASON

When I asked him, for example, what
he thought of the proposal to end the
House of Lords, " I don't think of it at
all," he said. "The House of Lords
cannot be ended except by civil war —
fighting in the streets." Other topics
upon which I ventured fared no better.
He dismissed each of them with a swift
judgment which left no fresh opening.
If you think that I must have been
leading in the conversation, you are quite
right. It is true that I was taking the
lead ; but what could I do ? Bismarck
was not taking it himself. When we were
on the way to the water, to reach which
we had to trudge downhill through
three or four pathless and muddy fields,
he mentioned that all his life he had been
subject to hot haste of temper, and that
he was only now, on retirement from the
Stock Exchange early in middle life,
getting the better of the habit. You
are not to think that I was ill at ease
with him. On the contrary, I was
delighted. He struck me as being a

OCTOBER 233

still strong man in a bleatant land ; a re-
freshing person in a time of Socialists,
Dryfliers, Cobdenites, and other total
abstainers from high spirits and common
sense.

The river was in flood. It seemed
ridiculous to think of it as being a
tributary of the Tay. That is how it is
regarded geographically ; but it would be
more precisely thought of if deemed a
substantive river having an estuary in
common with the Tay. That afternoon,
on which I saw it at close quarters for
the first time, it was as big as the Tay
itself. It was more discoloured than the
famous river ever is after the first gush
of a sudden flood has passed away. Not
there and then, at any rate, I perceived,
should I be able to show Bismarck how to
catch a salmon. Even in a muddy flood
trout sometimes hover so near the surface
that they can see flies floating down ; but
salmon habitually lie at the bottom. An
Eagle, the largest and most gaudy of our
lures, would be invisible to them on the

234 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

brown Earn heaving from bank to
brae.

So I thought, and I was not wrong.
Neither of us had seen any sign of a
salmon as we went homewards through
the fields.

Next morning the scene had quite a
different complexion. There had been
frost in the night. Rime lay daintily
on the grass, and the river sparkled in
sunshine. The flood had fallen two or
three feet, and the water was beautifully
clear. Failure on such a day would be
inexcusable.

1 had a rise soon after beginning. O
the joy of it ! So certain did it seem that
the fish were " on the move," I had no
chagrin at having struck too late. What
was a missed rise on the morning of a
day when one would have a dozen or a
score of rises ? I should assuredly have
three fish, if not four, by the time I was
to meet Bismarck, where a mill-stream
ran into the Earn fully a mile down, at
luncheon. My only fear was that he

OCTOBER 235

himself might have five. An exag-
gerated reputation is not an unqualified
advantage.

" Boast not of the day in the morning,"
as the Spaniards say. Ten o'clock passed,
and eleven, and twelve ; yet the fish were
still all in the river. Not another rise
had I had. My gillie had begun to look
disappointed, and even censorious. He
hadna' thocht it possible to be sae long and
sae hard at it on sic a day wi'oot a fush.

"We may get one here, John," I
answered as, having passed a clump of
trees, we came upon a pool in which two
fish had just risen at the same moment.

John did not answer, and on turning
to see why he was silent I found him
looking uneasily across the river. His
features, hitherto always ready to break
into a smile, were set in something like
alarm. He tried to let them relax when
he knew I was looking at him. Not
altogether succeeding, he reluctantly
entered upon an explanation.

"That's whaur Peter bides," he said,

236 AN ANGLERS SEASON

nodding at a house across the water, and
as if speaking to himself rather than to
me. It was a large, straggling house of
one storey, evidently very old. It was
enclosed by a square of ancient oaks.
These details I took in while wondering
what could be the importance of Peter in
John's eyes. I asked who Peter was.

"He's greenkeeper to the Golf Club
up by," John answered slowly. After a
pause he began again, this time with
resolution.

" As ye're sure to be wantin' to stay a
guid while at this pool, Sir, and maybe
to come back to't — for it does ha'e mony
fush, I maun allow — I'll jist be plain wi'
ye, Sir. Peter's a witch — a man witch —
what's ca'd a warlock."

" O John 1 " I exclaimed.

"Ye needna' laugh, Sir. It's the
truth I'm tellin'. And I'm feared that, if
he is at hame, he may put the buidseachd
on ye — and on me too."

"The buidseachd, John! What's
that?"

OCTOBER 237

" The evil ee," said John, in low tones.

I was too much astonished to speak.

A greenkeeper with the evil eye !

It was true that after a three -years
residence in the Highlands it had become
difficult to remain absolutely certain that
the invisible veil between this world and
its life and some other world and its
activities was never rent. Considerations
that had sapped incredulity crowded into
mind. There was, for example, what
Winsome and I had been told one day
when, taking a walk towards Ballinluig,
we had been hospitably hailed into a
farmhouse near Dalguise. It was the
13th of January, which is still New
Year's Day in parts of the Highlands, and
the household were making merry with
cake and wine. The farmer's daughter
was vexed that she could not give us any
butter to carry away. She had been
trying to make butter that morning ; but
a certain neighbour had come in, and had
cast the evil eye upon the churn. The
butter would not make. This had been

238 AN ANGLERS SEASON

told to us in perfect candour. Naming
the possessor of the evil eye, a youngish
woman known to us, the buxom damsel
had stated the case in the simple manner
in which she would have recounted
a sale of sheep or the birth of a calf.
Other recollections were such as I can-
not specifically relate. Persons still
living, neighbours of our own, would be
saddened if I did so relate them. They
were about a man and a woman who met
their deaths tragically, one by accident
and the other by her own will, and could
not be found until the distraught
relations called for the help of an old
spinster living in Glenlyon, ten miles
off, who "has the second sight." The
sorceress declared that the bodies were
lying in certain places, and there the
bodies were found. The stories to which
I allude are not idle legends. No one
in our neighbourhood, which is as sane
as any other, calls them in question.
They are known to the minutest detail,
and believed absolutely. Two or three

* OCTOBER 239

other chronicles of a similarly strange
kind, gathered during the few years which
have been mentioned, it would be possible
to set down ; but, though they came
hastily to memory as I gazed at the
quaint house on the Earn, I need not
narrate them. I will only say that it
is hardly possible for any one, howsoever
well endowed with the critical hard-
headedness that comes from moving
about in the most worldly society, in
London or elsewhere, to dwell in the
Highlands without soon beginning to be
doubtful as to whether all "superstitions"
are so superstitious as at first they
seem.

" But the Greenkeeper to a Golf Club
possessed of the Evil Eye ! O John, that
is too steep ! " I said this to myself after
pondering for a few moments ; and then
I said as much to the gillie.

" Weel, Sir," said John, doggedly,
" though what I ha'e telTt ye may soond
rideecilous, it's what a' the folks hereaboot
believe. Peter's no' canny."

240 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

" Has he cast the evil eye upon many
of them?"

"On nane ava' that we can be quite
sure aboot," John answered, in a tone less
burdened by apprehension. "But that's
nae doobt because he hasna had need to."

This was puzzling ; but John ex-
plained.

"Peter is compairatively a stranger
here. He's been i' this pairish only three
years come Martinmas. But the gowfers
werena' long in findin' oot that they had
made a waefu' bad bargain when they
appinted him to keep the green. For ae
reason or anither, there's no' a man
among them that's no' carefu no' to
offend Peter. In fac', he's the terror o'
the countryside."

" Where did he come from ? "

"Oot o' Logierait, far ower the hills
there," said John, waving a hand towards
the north. " The Club didna' ken onything
aboot him when they brocht him here —
except what they were tell't in his
testimonials. What was pit into his

OCTOBER 241

testimonials seemed to be a' richt. In
fac', ye never saw the like. A'body o'
staunin' in Logierait and for mony a mile
roond aboot — lairds an' members o' the
Hoose o' Lords, forby meenisters o' a'
denominations — ga'e Peter the grandest
character. But the Club sees through a'
that noo. Peter's auld freen's wanted to
get quit o'm."

" Is that known to be the case, or is it
guess-work ? "

" Vera little guess-work aboot it, Sir.
Nae sooner had Peter been safely
appinted than members o' the Club
began to get letters frae freen's in
Logierait warnin' them aboot Peter —
letters frae some o' the few in the pairish
wha hadna' gi'en him testimonials. They
were to the effec' that he was in league
wi' the De'il, and that the De'il had even
been seen in his company — playin' awfu'
pranks. Some o' the folks here say the
same thing — though they're gey quiet
aboot it, keepin' a calm sooch as far as
possible."

16

242 AN ANGLERS SEASON

John paused, and then said, in a
lighter voice, "But there's ae guid thing.
It seems that Peter never bides very
long in ae place — seldom mair than four
or five years. So, it may be, we ha'e only
twa years o'm noo."

"Couldn't he be sent off before
then ? Why doesn't the Club give
him the sack?" I was speaking in the
hope of urging John on to further
chatter.

" Send Peter awa', Sir ! Mercy on us,
wha would daur to dae that ? It was
thocht o' at first, when it was seen that
Peter negleckit his wark ; but when
things cam' to the pint, at an extraordinar'
general meetin' o' the gowfers, naebody
could be got to propose the motion.
They a' kent that onybody wha did pro-
posed would be a target for Peter's evil
ee. So, I'm told, they a' sat as quiet and
solemn as if they were i' the kirk. Mair
dumb, in fact ; for no' even the Captain,
wha was in the chair, found his tongue,
excep' to say, after they had a' sat in

OCTOBER 243

dead silence for ten minutes or a quarter,
' I think, gentlemen, we may now
adjourn.' Ye see, Sir, the vera nicht
afore the meetin' a fearfu' sicht had been
seen aboot Peter's hoose, an' that, comin'
on the heels o' the warnin's frae the
north, was alarmin'."

"What was the fearful sight, John?"
"I'd rayther no' say, Sir, if you'll
excuse me. It doesna' do to talk aboot sic
things. But I think I can safely tell ye
this, as Peter himself brags aboot it when
he's in guid humour. Peter's no' really
the servant o' the Club. Ye see whaur
he bides — near twa mile frae the coorse.
That's because he says the garrets abune
the Club rooms dinna' suit his health.
He's vera often doon at the coorse,
especially if there's a guid match gaun'
on ; but as for keepin' the greens — he
hardly ever does a haun's turn. Besides
a' this, at every quarterly meetin' there's
a letter frae him demandin' a rise o' wages ;
an' he aye gets it, for the reason I ha'e
made ye acquant wi' — naebody daurs say

244 AN ANGLERS SEASON

no to Peter. He's the maister o's a' in
thae pairts."

During most of this talk we had been
moving slowly down the pool, casting.
Just as John had resumed, to tell about
Peter's riches, which were reputed to be
considerable, a fish rose at the fly. He
strained heavily as he went down, and I
had no thought that he could be other than
one of the salmon which had been leap-
ing ; but he immediately came up again
with a dash that carried him into the air,
and we saw him to be a seatrout.

"We'll ha'e to go noo, Sir," said John,
as he lifted the fish out on the gaff. " It's
nearly lunch time. But we're only a
short step frae the mill-stream."

At the tryst we found Bismarck
seated on the bank, waiting.

" Any luck ? " I asked.

" None," said he.

I beckoned to John. He brought my
creel, and showed the seatrout, which was
nearly a four-pounder.

" Yes : I see," said Bismarck, quickly

OCTOBER 245

turning to his packet of sandwiches;
"but we're fishing for salmon."

It was nearly three o'clock when John
and I were back to the place where we
had begun in the morning. Luncheon,
rest, and the lapse of time have a wonderful
effect on the angler's spirit. If he has
had good sport in the morning, he expects
to have better in the afternoon ; if he has
had none, he is confident that at least a
little is to come. He sets to work, in
either case, with reason in his mood. The
fish have been " on the take " ? Why,
then, it is probable that they are on still.
They have been off? Well, as they
usually rise for a while at some stage of
the day, it may be that we are just in
the nick of time.

John and I were thoroughly optimistic
at the fresh start and for half-an-hour
after. Then our conversation began to
languish. John remained civil and at-
tentive ; but I have no doubt he was con-

246 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

vinced that there was something wrong in
my way of working the fly. As a matter of
fact, he had been suggesting that a little
more line would be advisable. "In this
clear water they're apt to see ye unless
the flee is weel awa." When he said
that, I always let out a little more ; but
after four or five casts I was moved to
reel in, surreptitiously. It was from no
want of will that the fly and myself fell
short of John's requirements. It was
simply from want of strength. On an
eighteen-feet greenheart rod three or
four extra yards of line add considerably
to the horse-power required in casting,
and already, after a long morning of
practically fruitless effort, my left ribs
and both arms were aching. This I should
not have noticed had we been having any
success ; but failure brings troubles of all
kinds into view. I was finding John's
remarks, now become infrequent, tire-
some. John, hitherto a youth of sprightly
humour, was become as much a bore to
me as I was a duffer to him. The very

OCTOBER 247

weather was obtrusive. As often happens
early in autumn, the frost of the morning
had " come back," and the heavens were
veiled in cloud. If only we had been
having a fish now and then, or even a run,
the weather would have seemed all right ;
as things were, it was dismal. Salmon
here and there were leaping ; but not
one of them would look at a fly. Besides,
I had an exceptional cause of being out-
of-sorts. Residing in the wilds, I have an
instinctive conscience as regards north,
south, east, and west. On the drive from
the railway station to the house, over a
road which had many turns, I must, for
a moment, have lost the sense of directions,
which I had not recovered ; at any rate,
ever since I had set foot on its bank this
river Earn, which I knew to flow from
west to east, had seemed to be flowing
from east to west. Readers native to
the land south of the Border, who never
know where they are in relation to the
points of the compass, and laugh at any
one who raises the question, will perhaps

248 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

oblige me by recalling their feelings
when under the influence of one of those
recurring dreams in which you think, for
example, that you have just entered a
ball-room and are trying so to arrange
your overcoat that the night-dress shall
be concealed. The peculiar irritation
which was caused by the Earn persistently
flowing the wrong way will then be
understood.

When we came to the pool opposite
Peter's house John and I, it may be said,
were not on speaking terms. At any
rate, we were not speaking. That I felt
to be fortunate. Had we been in the
cheerful relationship of the beginning,
morning or afternoon, John might have
counselled a hasty passage beyond the
range of the uncanny influence ; but, as
he was despising me so much that he was
no longer even suggesting a change of fly,
he could not very well break silence to
ask a favour.

He sighed when, having reached the
end of the pool, I turned towards the

OCTOBER 249

head of it once more ; but that did not
deter me. He could hardly be more
uneasy about Peter than I was about my
plain-spoken host.

The fact is, While not deserving the
repute in which I was apparently held by
the friend-in-common of Bismarck and
myself, I was not such a duffer as John
thought. It had not been for nothing
that I had become acquainted with a
good many miles of the Tay under the
guidance of James Stewart. I do now or
then know a good pool when I see it.
The whole of the stretch over which we
had gone looked promising ; but this pool
was the best part. All the rest of the
water was such as salmon often show
themselves on, frequently leaping ; but it
was such water as they ran through with-
out much stoppage. The pool was the
one place in which fish would be lying in
wait.

Night falls early after the middle of
October. It was nearly dark when we
were at the head of the pool again. I

250 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

was not sorry. Two or three of the
rising salmon were only a few yards
from our bank. I could easily reach
them with a comparatively short line,
and in the dusk I should not be seen.
... At last 1

On parting from Mr. Malloch, to
whom, according to custom when passing
through Perth, I had paid my respects
the morning before, I had received wishes
for good luck and a forty-pounder. It
seemed as if the wishes were to be not
vain.

You cannot always tell, even approxi-
mately, the weight of a fish just hooked ;
but there was something unprecedentedly
emphatic about this one. Against the
easy violence of his dive, the great, stiff,
lumbering rod was as a reed shaken by
the wind.

If a salmon could make the weapon
bustle about so, why should not I ? I
felt ashamed of my aches and pains, and
they instantly ceased to be. Why had I
been cross and taciturn ? John was the

OCTOBER 251

best gillie in the Highlands ! He was
already delivering heartfelt felicitations.

"Take a drink, John."

"Yes, Sir: wi' richtguid wull. . . . This
is to be a stiff job, Sir, and a long ane."

" You didn't see him, John ? "

" No, Sir ; but I ken the place. They're
aye vera big fish that lie here. In fact,
this pool and the bit just below the mill-
stream, whaur the Maister has been fishin'
a' day, are the only casts in the water
that ye can really depend on."

In the uplifting excitement of the
moment, John was candid.

" But what about Peter, John ? "

" O, we maun e'en try no' to think
aboot Peter. It was here that the forty-
twa-pounder was ta'en last season — at
this time o' the month, too. Losh, Sir ! "
he added as the reel whizzed, " should we
no' be movin' doon ? "

I should have been glad to go down-
stream ; but it would not have been easy
to do so for more than about thirty yards,
and therefore, as the pull of the fish had

252 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

not become really dangerous, it would
have been unwise to move at all. At
the short distance indicated, the path by
the river ceased and the very high bank
slipped steeply into the stream. Just
where the path ended a peril in the water
began. This was a long series of tree
stumps, situate at intervals so regular as
to indicate that the river had gradually,
in the course of ages, eaten its way under
the roots of an ancient avenue. Notwith-
standing what is told in Chapter IV., a
hooked salmon does not make a point of
running under a snag whenever there is a
chance ; my own experience goes to show
that the fish nearly always rejects the
chance. I would have run that risk, then,
had it been the only risk ; but there was
the precipitous bank. Even in daylight,
instead of venturing to seek on it foot-
hold close to the river, I had passed up
round the shoulder and walked along on the
level top ; and I had seen its unstable face,
a front of sand, to be honeycombed with
rabbit- holes. It was not a place over

OCTOBER 253

which one would willingly run after a
salmon in the dark.

On consideration John admitted this.
Also he perceived that, as we could not
go down indefinitely, it was better not to
go down at all until absolutely obliged to.
We would keep the thirty yards as a
reserve against the extreme measures
which the salmon would probably adopt.

" But what if he runs up ? " asked
John in an afterthought ; adding, " That
would be even waur than his fleein doon."

The clump of trees at our shoulder
completely blocking the way upstream,
that was true ; it had not until then
occurred to me. The salmon had not
shown any disposition towards running
up. Now he was not even alarming in
his tendency the other way. His head
was upstream again, and I had recovered
most of the line that had been rushed off;
he had been moving in half- circular
directions from one side of the river to
the other, and, sedate but strong, was still
upon that course.

254 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

Swish ! sh-sh-sh-z.

That is an ugly sign for a beautiful
thing, the sound of the spray which
falls upon the water when a salmon
leaps and for a moment after.

" Was that our fish loupin' ? " John
asked anxiously.

" I couldn't see ; but I think so. At
any rate, he's turned and flying."

Soon we were at the end of our thirty
yards, and the contents of the reel were
our sole resource. . . . All the hundred
yards of plaited silk were out . . . half
the backing of brown twine was gone . . .
ten yards or so more and rupture was
inevitable . . . but the fish had turned !
He was keeping on the offside, too, far
away from the line of snags.

Slowly he came upstream ; slowly,
slowly, the tense line softly humming ;
the while I reeled in inch by inch and
warily stepped backwards towards the
copse.

" When does the moon rise, John ? "

Though John was close behind me

OCTOBER 255

and must have heard, there was no
answer.

" It would be a help, John."

Still John was silent.

When I looked inquiringly over my
left shoulder, it became evident that there
was something wrong.

John, stalwart John, was motionless ;
his face had become so pallid that it
reflected what faint light there was ; the
eyes, fixed and staring, expressed some
indefinite fear.

A school chum had used to be just
like that before falling and writhing and
foaming at the mouth. He had been
epileptic. Was it possible. . . .

"It's a' richt, Sir," John whispered, as
if dreading to be overheard. "Excuse
me. But jist look ower your ither
shoulder."

On looking as directed I saw that
John was in no need to be apologetic.

A Spectre had entered upon the mirky
scene. It was standing, a little way up,
on the other side of the river. I would

256 AN ANGLERS SEASON

say that It was watching us were it not
that It seemed to be without a head.
Otherwise the figure was that of a man.
The outlines were perfectly clear. The
dress was what is called " a lounge suit,"
and the hands were in the pockets of the
coat. Withal, It had an aspect of
unreality. It did not seem substantial.
It was but a figure of light at the best ;
not glaring light ; dim, indeed, or at least
strangely soft ; white, with a delicate stain
of blue ; and, gazing intently, I saw, or
fancied, that it flickered.

" It cam' oot o' Peter's hoose," John
muttered.

" Who or what can It be ? "

" I ha e my ain idees ; but I'd rayther
no' say. Only, ye may mind what I tell't
ye aboot wha plays pranks wi' Peter.
I'm no' for namin' him the noo."

You may think that my observa-
tions and this dialogue were singularly
deliberate. So they were. I found
myself astonished at them. They
occupied less than a minute, however ;

OCTOBER 257

and stupefaction, rather than active
alarm, would seem to be the first effect
of a Vision. Perhaps the salmon had
a steadying influence. Thirty or forty
yards off, he was ponderously saunter-
ing across-stream and across. I daresay
he helped me not to lose the sense of
being still on a pathway of reality.
At any rate, I did not feel so ghastly
as John was when I had looked at
him.

Rumination on these self-satisfied lines
came to an abrupt end.

Just as he had touched on the other
shore and was due to turn on his tracks,
the salmon leaped. The Spectre heard
him, and came strolling down the bank.
It did not glide, as glides the ghost of the
novel or of the stage ; It walked just as
a man would walk. It stopped where
the fish had leapt and plunged. Then,
instead of completing his cruise to the
hither shore, the salmon rushed towards
the Spectre. He paused, not far from the
bank, opposite the dread being. That

17

258 AN ANGLERS SEASON

was not all. When the Spectre, turned
upstream again, resumed Its stroll, the
fish set off in the same direction. At
first I took this, if indeed I thought of it
at all, to be accidental ; but evidently
it was not so. When the Spectre
stopped, near the head of the pool, the
salmon stopped. When It began to
come down again, so did the salmon ;
tail-first, I felt, but as it were keeping
step with the apparition backwards. An
involuntary utterance of astonishment
was not unnatural.

" Beg pardon, Sir ? " said John.

"He's seen the ghost," I answered,
" and is following It about."

John made no immediate remark ; but
soon he said, " Wha ever ken't the like o:
that? If I had I the freedom o' the fush,
it's no gaun' near the ghost I'd be — if
ghost he is, Sir.*'

" You don't want to run, John ? "

"No' noo, Sir. At first, if I could
ha' done ony thing at a,' I micht ha' been
inclined to run ; but I'm gettin' used to't.

OCTOBER 259

Forby, he needs long legs that wud run
frae — ye ken wha, Sir."

" Pooh, John ! I see neither tail nor
horns, and I don't think there are hoofs."

John said something which from his
tone I knew to be reproachfully argu-
mentative ; but I did not really hear him.
Suddenly I had a new cause for anxiety.
Had It a definite beat ? How far down
was It going ? Would It stop and turn
where It had stopped and turned before ?
If It should lead the fish down the river
farther than the line would reach from
the end of my own beat, I should have but
little chance of coming out of this tussle
in triumph.

Again involuntary words must have
escaped.

" Beg pardon, Sir ? "

" Nothing, John. Only, I was think-
ing of asking It to stop. If It goes far
down and the fish goes too, we're done,
I'm afraid. Will you shout, John ? "

" No' me, Sir, — unless ye gi'e positive
orders. I shouldna' like to be askin'

260 AN ANGLERS SEASON

an obleegment frae the — ye ken wha, Sir,
as I said before."

By this time the Spectre was Itself
beginning to settle my concern. It had
stopped, and had turned ; but, instead of
making to come back again, It moved
slowly off into the meadow. Ten or
twelve yards from the water, It stooped ;
slowly and as if with effort pulled Itself
erect ; moved a few steps ; then gradually,
legs-first, vanished. As far as mortal
eyes could tell, It had, with notable
leisureliness, sunk into the earth.

The process of disappearance, somehow,
was more disquieting than aught that had
befallen.

I had no remark to make.

John, at my elbow, sighed with relief.

The salmon leapt ; splashed about on
the surface for a few seconds ; and
bolted up the river.

My host was scrambling down the
hillock at our back. He had caught two
fish, he said, and had sent his gillie home
with them. Why had I stayed there so

OCTOBER 261

long ? It was getting on for dinner-time.
Had I had any luck ?

"We're just in the holts wi' a good
ane," said John, realising that I was too
much engaged to be talkative.

Swish ! sh-sh-sh-z.

The sound came from afar, and I
trembled at the thought of what might
happen next. The salmon, if he liked,
could come down much more quickly
than I could reel up ; and by this time
the hook must have worn its socket loose.
. . . The anguish of that moment !
Hoping to encourage the fish to keep
fronting the torrent, instinctively I had
slackened the strain. . . . All was well.
He was coming down, but not running
down ; dropping down tail-first. Slowly,
slowly, but with never a pause, his
tether shortened ; by and by he passed,
and I had him against the stream. " All
right now," I thought, and even said ; and
was speedily undeceived. If the salmon
had seemed fatigued, he had been, in-
advertently of course, misleading. He

262 AN ANGLERS SEASON

leaped, not once, but three or four times
in immediate succession ; he bored to
the bottom and stood erect, tail-up ; he
dashed hither and thither, pausing only
to wag his head in playfulness or rage ; he
came to the surface and smote it with
his tail. Bismarck was unrestrained in
the generosity of his compliments and
exhortations.

Swish ! sh-sh-sh-z Whirr-r-r !

. . . . " All right, John ! " He was again,
apparently, beginning the half- circular
tour, and I thought I foresaw an
opportunity to bring our performance to
an unexpectedly early finish. The fish
seemed to be in no fear of us. Time
after time, at the end of one of his con-
secutive curves on the outside edge, he
had come close to the bank, and had even
paused a few seconds there ; in fact, he
had paused each journey. Theoretically
he had almost been within reach of the
gaff ; but practically he had been outside.
He had never, as far as, judging by the
feel of things, I could make out in the

OCTOBER 263

darkness, been near the surface when
close to us ; it had been from the bottom
of the water, eight or nine feet deep, that
he had shown his leisurely contempt. I
wondered, Next time he was in -shore
would it be possible to persuade him, in
consideration of the toil we had jointly
undergone, to come half-way up ? In that
case, and John being prone on the bank
at the port of arrival, with his gaff aslant
in the water to the hilt, the episode
might be brought to an event. I would
try. . . . With might and main I raised
the rod, and did so not in vain. Dis-
tinctly I felt him coming up, and not
yet turning to go out. . . . Was this the
moment to say " Now ! " and let John
strike on chance? What, after all,
would it matter if he missed ? The
salmon and I would be just as we were.
A jerk of the gaff against the line would
be deplorable ; but, as the line was
vertical, there was not much risk of
that. . . . "Now!" . . . John had not
missed ; but he was still prone. Evidently

264 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

he was in distress. " Help ! " he cried :
" I'm slippin' in ! " My host was to the
rescue promptly, and an extraordinary
ongoing ensued. To the pull of the
salmon John could oppose no more than
his own inertia, which, as the bank was
sloping, was not great. All the muscular
energy he could afford to use was that
which was needed in order that he might
not lose hold of the violently agitated
gaff. John, in short, had become part
of the landing apparatus. There was
Bismarck, his heels dug into the turf, his
head and shoulders thrown back as if he
were engaged in a tug -of- war, John's
ankles in his hands !

When at length the four of us were
reposing on the bank I myself at least
was nearly as " far through " as the
salmon.

Dinner within an hour would have
been welcome ; but my host did not
insist on punctuality. He said that a

OCTOBER 265

fresh meal could be prepared at any time.
We had still to visit the house across the
river. Nothing less would satisfy him.
While we were resting John and I had
given an account of what had happened
in the early stage of the evening. That
is to say, I had told the tale, and John
had given evidence in corroboration.
Bismarck, incredulous at the outset, was
sufficiently impressed to desire acquaint-
ance with Peter.

John protested. The boat, he said,
besides bein' vera sma', was auld and
rotten ; so were the oars, which were no'
even o' the same size. The boat was
never used excep' for minnow-fishin'
when the water was fallin' low. To try
to cross in sic a dark nicht and wi' the
water pretty high would be dangerous.
It would be better to wait till the mornin\

John did not exaggerate the defects of
the boat, which, waterlogged, lay near the
foot of the pool ; but his warning was in
vain. Bismarck was resolved to probe the
mystery without delay.

266 AN ANGLERS SEASON

Having emptied the boat by turning
it keel-up, we launched it and set out ;
crossed the strong flow slantingly ; and
arrived at Peter's door, on which Bismarck
knocked just as if he were a postman in
a hurry.

Steady footsteps within were heard ;
the door was opened ; and a man stood
inquiringly in the narrow hall, which was
lit by a lamp on either side.

" I'm tenant of the shooting and fishing
across the water," said my friend, "and
I have come to see you on a matter of
importance."

The man in the doorway, an athletic
figure of middle age and middle height,
whose pleasant and alert face was instantly
attractive, seemed amused.

" Tenant — only tenant ? Dear me !
You might be the Laird, or even the
Factor, by the way ye speak — Don't-think-
o'-arguing-wi'-me, so to say. However,
come awa' in, and bring your suite."

The fellow spoke in a tone of banter
which, I noticed, took Bismarck by sur-

OCTOBER 267

prise. As he was leading the way through
a devious passage,

" Is that Peter ? " asked Bismarck, in
a whisper.

" Aye : it's himsel', Sir," John answered,
resignedly, clearly meaning, "A wilful
man must have his way" and that the
way was not likely to be smooth.

The apartment in which we soon
found ourselves was very unlike what
could have been expected. It was lofty
and otherwise spacious. A pile of coal
and logs was burning brightly on an
ungrated hearth, on either side of which,
built into the receding wall, was a
cushioned seat. Easy-chairs were ranged
about the fire-place. A bookcase, packed,
covered the whole of the wall on the right
of the ingle-neuk ; on the other side was
a huge cupboard with a divided door,
whence Peter had just brought a decanter
filled with a purple liquor and four small
tumblers, which he had placed on a little
round table standing between the easy-
chairs and the fire.

268 AN ANGLERS SEASON

" Claret, gentlemen," he was saying.

Cases of stuffed birds and set-up
fish, three or four stags' heads, the head
of a Highland bull, bows and arrows,
a flintlock gun, pistols, and other
things which I could not take in at
the moment, decorated the three other
walls.

" I ha'e no particular objection to other
wines, or even to spirits ; but I like claret
for sentimental reasons, which are the
only reasons that are always satisfactory.
Claret is the wine that our forebears liked
and thrived on."

A table in the middle of the room was
strewn with daily journals, weekly reviews,
and monthly magazines.

Peter had handed round the plenished
tumblers.

" Gentlemen, The King ! " said he ;
and, still sitting, each of us raised his glass.
Peter lowered his, saying,

" It is customary to rise when a toast
to the King is called."

Bismarck and I arose, with conscious

OCTOBER 269

lack of grace ; John, still more awkwardly,
followed suit.

"Now," said Peter, seating himself
after the little ceremony, "we'll go into
this important business which gi'es me
the pleasure o' your company." He
looked at each of us, inquiringly, in turn ;
his singularly straightforward blue eyes
finally resting on Bismarck.

Was Bismarck as uncomfortable as
myself? I hoped and believed that he
was. But for him, we should never have
been there. I should have liked to be
there with countenance unashamed ; but
we had blundered. We were aggressive
fools. Peter, leaning forward, his elbows
resting on his knees, paused for answer.
He was master of the awkward situation.
He was not at all angry ; I thought, in-
deed, that he was keeping amusement in
restraint. However that may have been,
he was indulgent. As Bismarck stayed
silent for a few moments, no doubt in the
process of collecting his scattered inten-
tions, Peter resumed.

270 AN ANGLERS SEASON

"I'se warrant it is the business that
usually brings persons o' importance to
my door. Poachin'. Isn't it, noo ? "

"It is," said Bismarck, eagerly I
thought ; I 'daresay he felt that he would
be stepping farther into error if amid our
highly practical circumstances he broached
the subject of the Spectre and Ye Ken
Wha. " Exactly. I regret to say that I
suffer a good deal from the scoundrels.
My partridges were short, and I've
hardly any pheasants ; I have a suspicion
that the river is netted. It occurred to
me that you, a constant resident in the
district, might "

" Quite so," said Peter, in an obliging
tone. "But am I richt in takin' you to say
that every poacher is a scoonerel ? "

"You are," said Bismarck.

" And you mean it ? "

" I do. Poaching is theft, or, at the
best, robbery."

"I do a bit o' poachin' mysel'," said
Peter.

" Oh ? ' said Bismarck, discomfited.

OCTOBER 271

" Yes. Would you like to apologise ? "

Bismarck did not answer immediately.
He was weighing the alternatives. It
was an anxious interval in the placid
conversation. I expected that the de-
termining influence would be the trait he
had mentioned in the morning ; and I was
not wrong.

" No," said he : " certainly not."

His vigorous features, as he looked up,
expressed resolution blent with wonder.
What would Peter say now? What
further rebuke should we have to suffer ?

"Well," said Peter, rising, "I like ye
nane the waur for stanin' by what ye
said. But it doesna do to be called a
scoonerel. It micht lead to bein' treated
as such. We maun find a way oot o' the
difficulty. Here, John : just gi e me a
hand wi' this table."

The larger table having been moved
into a corner, Peter took down two pairs
of boxing-gloves from among the fire-arms
on the wall.

"They're very light," he said, as he

272 AN ANGLERS SEASON

handed a pair to Bismarck, — "in fact,
the lightest."

Bismarck took them ; gently moved
them up and down, one in each hand, as
if in response to Peters statement of
their weight ; then looked up in per-
plexity, saying, without words, What am
I to do with them ?

" Put them on, of course," said Peter,
"and your jacket off." He had laid his
own jacket aside, and was already gloved.

"But," said Bismarck, hesitatingly,
"surely it's not to be expected "

"That you can put up your hands
against a greenkeeper ? Yes : that's it.
It's what they a' feel in the same circum-
stances— my distinguished visitors. Tuts !
Dinna' let sic a trifle stand between us !
I'm no' a greenkeeper by nature. I'm
hardly one in reality. The post is a
sinecure. I hold it merely in order to
account to the folks hereaboot for my
bidin' in the place. It gi'es me my visible
means o' subsistence. But that's nothing.
What I really live on are the invisible im-

OCTOBER 273

ports. These make me at least a gentle-
man of means. So, kind Sir, come on ! "

At the close of this speech, delivered
with easy arrogance modified by good-
humour almost brotherly, Bismarck burst
into laughter. Then he rose from the easy-
chair, and took off his jacket. It was
impossible to feel repelled by Peter. It
was impossible to reject his challenge.
We had invaded his house, and we had
called him names. If he was good enough
to have these attentions bestowed upon
him, surely he was good enough for
others, those which he had invited ? Surely
we were not so unworthy as to abandon
our course of conduct merely because it
had taken us to an unexpected turn,
risky to ourselves ? That was implicit in
what Peter had said ; but it was implicit
only. The fascinating rascal had too
much delicacy of taste to be raspingly
plain in his speech. He was treating us
with much consideration.

" Yes : come on ! " said Bismarck,
tapping Peter on the shoulder. Out

18

274 AN ANGLERS SEASON

shot Peter's left ; but, without otherwise
moving a hairbreadth, Bismarck jerked his
head, and nothing happened. The rest
of the round was experimental sparring.
Each man was trying to discover the
particular artistry in which his peril lay.

"Slow work," said Peter. "Fill the
glasses, John. You'll find bottles in the
cupboard."

The second round was almost as little
effectual. Neither man could get at the
other's face, and the blows elsewhere,
hard though some of them were, seemed
to be against tissue scarcely less resilient
than india-rubber.

John had become excited. Having
filled the glasses, he had returned to the
door of the cupboard, and was standing
there, near his master, uttering snatches
of encouragement and of suggestion.
This seemed unfair. What was I to do ? I
could not well stand up and take the part
of my host's antagonist ; but something
had to be done. I requested John to
take his seat and be quiet. John would

OCTOBER 275

not. He seemed unable. He was, I per-
ceived, struggling to regain the bearing
which is proper to a gillie and usually
an unbreakable habit ; but the influence
of this exceptional crisis was too strong.
Besides, he had a show of reason for his
attitude. " In any turn-up I've been at,
Sir, a body was allowed to tak' a side."

" Silence, bantams ! " said Peter.
"When twa elderly gentlemen are
fechtin' a' other argument is unseemly.
At least, that's the rule in this ring. It
has to be observed. Sit doon, baith o'
ye, and hold your tongues."

" Yes, John," said the other pugilist :
"sit down. And be easy. We shan't
be long."

"You've a bit up your sleeve, I see,"
Peter remarked. "Well, so have I.
Now then ! "

Each made a show of being blindly
violent; for a minute or so there was a
great ducking and bobbing of heads, and
hammering thereof. Then they slowed
down, Peter walking round Bismarck,

276 AN ANGLERS SEASON

who revolved on his own axis, and
anon Bismarck walking round Peter, who
similarly watched the foe. . . . What
Bismarck's error was, his back being
towards me at the "dramatic instant, I do
not exactly know; but Peter was quick
enough. Bismarck had been hit sharply
under the chin, and was on his back.

"No' hurt, I hope?" said Peter,
cheerily. " No, no ! Just a bit tap that
does nae real herm, though at the minute
it feels as bad as a knock on the funny
bone. I propose a short interval for
refreshments."

"Refreshments certainly," said Bis-
marck, rising and laughing ; " but I don't
think we'll begin again. I'm outclassed,
Peter."

" Hoot, toot ! Dinna' say that at this
early stage ! It micht just as easily be
your turn next time. I saw ye tryin'
fort. You're just as fine a chiel as ony I
ha'e met since I was walloped by the
laird frae Comrie. Dear me ! that was a
dooncome ! He was white-haired and

OCTOBER 277

auld, sae much sae that I thocht shame o'
mysel', and was inclined to sue for peace ;
and he had long side- whiskers, and spats,
and a grey frock-coat ; he looked, and
spoke, like a draper. But it wasna' behind
a counter he had been reared. It was
nae fecht at a' — just doon and up, doon
and up. Nae suner had I found my feet
than I found the floor. And he just
smilin' and polite as a shop-walker a the
time. Aye : he was a fearsome Colonel !
But you and I are a match, and the luck
may be wi' you if we start afresh."

Though these remarks, as they pro-
ceeded, became manifestly heartfelt, Peter,
I knew, had set out on them with intent to
soften Bismarck's vexation. In this he
was successful. When we were all seated
round the fire again, Bismarck was in
excellent spirits. He wanted to with-
draw the unfortunate word, since now,
having gone through the ordeal of battle
on account of it, he could do so without
shame; but our new friend would not
hear of this.

278 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

/'Well keep the peace noo, I think,"
said he, soothingly; "but — just fill the
glasses, John, lad — apologisin' is oot o'
the question. I never think o' ca'in' for't,
or allooin' it. To tell the truth : At this
stage on sic occasions I aye seem for the
time to see that I mysel' am the chief
offender. O' the twa views o' poachin' —
yours and mine — yours is the maist com-
monly held. There's nae doobt o' that."

He paused ; gazed meditatively into
the fire for a few seconds ; and then
began again. Like his other openings,
the new one was of a nature wholly
unexpected.

"But it is not always the common
opinion that is right," he said, snapping
the words out with an earnestness that
was startling. " No : not even though
it be the opinion which all persons, all
parties, and all classes hold. You see,"
he went on, less emphatically, "I read a
good deal, and often, being a lonely man,
I sit and think about what I have read ;
and that, no doubt for the same reason,

OCTOBER 279

— loneliness — leads to notions that may
strike ordinary folk as queer." Then,
thinking aloud, apparently scarce con-
scious of our presence, and lapsing into
his habitual dialect, the extraordinary man
reviewed the social polity of the time. I
will not undertake to give a word-for-
word report of what he said. So fresh
and pungent was the commentary, I think
I could almost do so ; but perhaps a
summary will suffice. It was certainly
sad, said Peter, to think o' the thoosands
o' men wha nooadays found it hard to
mak' a livelihood ; but were we on the
richt road to a remedy ? If there were
only scores o' ill-aff folk, instead o'
thoosands, would the State be sayin' to
the people, "Poor, miserable wretches,
what's your wull ? Just tell us, and we'll
do it. But, before speakin', be sure you
really ken how miserable you are " ? No :
if there were only scores o' puir bodies,
instead o' thoosands, the State wudna'
be sayin' that. Yet, why no'? Didna'
each lowly insec' feel a pang as great as

280 AN ANGLERS SEASON

when a giant died ? Micht there no' be
as much sufferin' in a single hoose as in
a mob fillin' half the streets o' London ?
Aye, and more ; for sufferin', when it got
ower being individual and private, became
no' sufferin' at a', but a kind o' rejoicin'.
No' seein' this, the State had lost its head.
A' it was daein' in the hope o' puttin
things richt was tendin' to swell the mobs
that were exultin' in their woe. Waur
than that : it was lowerin the spirits even
o' a' the well-doin common folk in the
country. Nae State could go on tellin'
the people that they were miserable with-
oot the people becomin' so. Nothing that
could be thought o' — no' even free trade
in drink and intemperance a general
fashion — would be sae bad as this. It
was a debauchery o' the emotions and the
mind. He jaloused there must noo be
thoosands o' men no' earnin' ony thing
wha could be earnin' much if they liked.
But that was no' the worst o't. The
worst o't was that there was a cloud o'
thinkin' misery ower the land. The people

OCTOBER 281

were losin' spirit. State aid was no' a
blessin'. It could never gi'e the people
pluck and peace o' mind and happiness.
What ga'e these things was a man's ain
effort — that, and naething else. He
sometimes thought that if it werena'
that other countries which were possible
enemies had States, we'd be better with-
oot a State at a'. Fause sentiment,
which injured when it tried to cure,
would never then get the upper hand.
After a', each man for himsel' was the
principle o' well-bein' and happiness.

This outbreak left us silent, and Peter
fell into a reverie again. At length
Bismarck, having expressed respect for
the precepts we had heard, delicately
indicated inability to reconcile them with
Peter's practices.

" Oh ! " said Peter, in his lighter voice,
" I ken I'm no' exactly consistent. But
I'm no' sae far oot wi' mysel' as would
appear. You think that a man o' my
principles should be industriously followin'
an ordinary trade ? How could I do

282 AN ANGLERS SEASON

that? I shouldna' be mysel'. I should
be an item in some union or other, a
mite in a movin' cheese. I shouldna' like
that. The organisation o' labour has
raised wages, and that's guid ; but it's
no' a' that a real man wants. I like
the guid things o' this life ; but they
would ha'e nae savour if they cam'
to me through co-operation wi' some
thoosands o' other men individually feck-
less and self - suppressing — self-assertive
only in the lump. That's no' high-mettled
enough. Self-suppression and regimenta-
tion are proper only against the King's
enemies. They're glorious then. They're
no' inspirin' when used for other pur-
poses, gi'en' life a drab hue. Sociality is
natural and fine. It's likin' for your
freen's and respect for your kent enemies
if they're strong. The very opposite o't
is Socialism, which is a mak' - belief
o' love and respect for a'body, kent
and unkent alike — a doonricht damned
delusion. That, or onything o' the kind,
I canna' endure the thought o\"

OCTOBER 283

" And so," said Bismarck, " you're a — a
sort of outlaw ? "

" In a manner of speakin', yes," Peter
answered, not at all offended. "Only,"
he added, chuckling, "I've very good
antecedents. I'm no' what ye can ca' a
working man by nature. Neither were
the ancestors o' ony o' the nobles in this
bonnie country. They just took what
they wanted, withoot sayin' 'By your
leave ' to onybody. And so "

"Oh, Peter, Peter," Bismarck inter-
rupted, in a disappointed tone, "don't
say it — it's just common Radicalism ! "

" I hope to heaven it's no' that ! " Peter
answered, with equal fervour. " But I'll
tell you, and then you will judge for
yoursel'. What I was goin' to say is
that an estate in land is no' like a
fortune made by industry. It was to
begin wi' seized and set apart by force.
It has never acquired the same moral
title as a fortune made in honest business
has. That is why poach in' is no' so bad
as other kinds o' theft. In fact, I canna'

284 AN ANGLERS SEASON

see it to be theft at a'. If I did, I would
drop it. I ha'e my ain wants, which are
unco expensive, and, like other folk, I
ha'e lame dogs to be helpit ower a stile.
I need aboot three hundred pounds a-
year, and I mak' maist o't by poachin'.
It's no' very muckle when levied on a
wide district. But I wouldna' levy it if
I thocht poachin' essentially wrang. It
appears to me no' unfair as between man
and man. And it's no' only mysel' that
has that view. I'm as weel respectit by a'
I have to do wi' as Claverhoose was by the
Duke o' Argyll and other Whigamores."

Peter laughed complacently.

"You see," he went on, "the lairds
and I are on a footin' o' equality. They
ha'e something unusual — titles of nobility
or what-not — that gi'es them privilege
against the ordinar' run o' people ; and so
ha'e I."

"What is that, Peter?" asked
Bismarck, greatly interested.

"I've often wondered," Peter answered,
ingenuously. " A' I ken aboot it is that

OCTOBER 285

on moors and in forests and on rivers
whaur poachers are constantly bein'
caught I mysel' go at large withoot bein'
interfered wi'. Neither gamekeepers
nor police ever meddle wi' me. Some-
times, in fact, they ask me, on the sly
like, when I'm to be at some particular
place, meanin' that they want to be sure
o' no' bein there themsel's. Ower and
ower again they've tell't me that they
winna' fa' oot wi' me if they can help it.
That's been the way o't whaurever I've
been — in a parts o' the coonty o' Inver-
ness and twa in this. Ah, bonnie Inver-
ness ! " He sighed in retrospect.

"Why did you leave, Peter?"
Bismarck asked.

"Leave?" Peter echoed, his thoughts
coming slowly back to the present time.
"Because I had made too many freen's."

" Too convivial, perhaps ? "

" No, no," Peter answered, gravely :
" there was naething o' that sort intil't —
at least, naething by-ordinar'. I left
because I had been obliged to become

286 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

freen's wi' a' the lairds in the coonty.
Whaurever I settle, a the gamekeepers,
as I ha'e mentioned, gi'e me a wide
berth ; but that's no' the way wi' the lairds.
Ane by ane, they call upon me, and in
course o' time they've a' called ; or if a few
haven't their sporting tenants have. That's
what mak's me move on and be a sort o'
hameless wanderer ower the Hielands."

We were still puzzled.

" Don't you see ? " said Peter, his gaze
moving from one to the other in astonish-
ment. "How could you expec' me to
poach ony mair on your ain place — land
or water — after the proceeding o' this
nicht? We've had a bit fecht and are
freen's noo. After I've had a blaw-oot
wi' a man — whether I've licked him or he
has lickit me — I never again go helpin'
mysel' in his preserves. I focht my way
into the freendship o' a' Inverness, and so
oot o' the coonty. I've done the same
in ae fine wide district in Perthshire, and
ye ken yoursel' that the same thing's
gradually happenm here."

OCTOBER 287

Bismarck began to laugh ; but Peter,
who had been speaking in a simple
matter-of-fact tone, though a little sadly,
looked at him with an expression which
put a check on mirth.

" Pardon me," said my friend, softly ;
and fell silent.

" Tut, tut ! " exclaimed Peter, as if
suddenly conscious that the spirits of the
company had drooped, and rising lithely
from his chair. "The glasses, John —
fill up ! We'll have a song."

"Words and music by mysel'," he
said, having tuned his violin, which he
had fetched from a corner of the room.
" They cam' into my head a minute ago.
No' grand opera, ye ken ; but a' richt
in spirit, I think. Ilka verse carries its
ain chorus — the last twa lines."

Then he sang to a lilting air :

O bonnie is the August day

As any day in Spring
JVhen o'er the heather, brae to brae,

The young g)~ouse take the wing !

288 AN ANGLERS SEASON

And bonnie the September time,

Calm sparklin in the sun,
When through the stubble, tipped xm rime,

The perky paitricks run.

JJSTien doon the hillside creeps the snow

And snell has grown the air
' Tisjine to leave the plains and go

To seek the mountain hare.

And finer still if luck attend

Your footsteps up the wind
A nd into easy range should send

A muckle hart or hind !

Aye : that's d grand ; but what's the gun

Compared wi rod and reel
When from the North Sea comes a run

(J salmon and o' peel ?

Peter's voice, light, confident, defiantly
joyous, instantly caught us as with a
charm, and held us so. The first chorus
was by no means shy ; the last was a roar
of immeasurable glee.

OCTOBER 289

The enchanting knave was absolute.

" Well," he said, when we had rested
for a minute or so, "the nicht's wearin'
on, and ye maun be hungry. I had my
ain supper just before you cam' in.
Could you do wi' cold grouse ? "

Gladly could we have done with that,
or with any other fare, had a meal there
and then been a thing desired ; but eating
would have been too prosaic at that
moment. No, no : we must be going.

"At ony rate, you canna' go empty-
handed," said Peter. " That wouldna' be
lucky. Ootby I ha e something that will
please you. Come and see."

When we were again in the open air
and aside from the light cast into it from
the doorway, there was the Spectre ! It
had taken the arm of Bismarck, and was
leading him across the meadow within
the square of oaks. John and I were
close at their heels. "I see I'm in a
lowe," the Spectre was saying, in the
unmistakable voice of Peter. "My
fishnV claes — I wear them when I've a

19

290 AN ANGLERS SEASON

netfu' to carry to the railway station —
are smeared wi' — what dye ca' it ? —
phosphorus, I think, and shine. I put
them on at sunset, thinkin' that the
water would be doon enough thi' nicht
for an hour or so with the leister.
Excuse me. They're no' dirty — only
glowin'. They're very usefu at the
leisterin' — savin' me frae troublin' wi' a
torch, which splashes a body wi' pitch.
I've only to bend ower the bow o' the
boat, and there, in a jiffy, are the
salmon ! But the fish I'm going to show
you, hoping youll accept it, was no'
ta'en that way. I took it on a flee this
morning, just after daybreak. Fair
sport."

Here the speech stopped. So did
Peter himself. He bent down ; moved a
hand about upon the turf; found an iron
ring ; pulled ; and raised a trap-door.

" No' a bad arrangement this," he said.
" Nae doobt when you've been fishin' on
the bank opposite you've noticed the
mouth of the big culvert on this side.

OCTOBER 291

The covered-in burn has never less than
three feet o' water unless the Earn is
very low. Thocht I to mysel' when I
took up my abode here, ' This is the very
place for my coble. Naebody will ever
think that there's a boat up the burn,
and I'll no' be troubled wi' questions as
to what I need a boat for.' So I stripped
off a square o' the turf, cut a hole in the
roof o' the culvert, and put this trap-door
doon — wi' the turf on, as you see."

" Neat," Bismarck remarked.

" Aye : so it is, if I may say so. And
I've another o' the same roond the bend,
behind the hoose. I thocht it might be
usefu' in case there should be need for a
mysterious disappearance. At the side
o' the other trap-door I pulled doon a
slap o' the wall o' the culvert, and made
a bay big enough to hold the boat, which
naebody would be likely to notice in the
dark. So if ony folk, seein' the boat
enterin the mouth o' the burn, followed
in pursuit, they would no' be likely to find
it. They would soon come doon again,

292 AN ANGLERS SEASON

and if they thocht it was myser they had
seen in the boat they micht come into
the hoose to spier, and there they would
find me at the peacefu' fireside, studyin'
the affairs o' the day."

With a merry laugh Peter took a step
down ; and down, down, down he went.
Just thus had the Spectre disappeared.

"Follow, gentlemen," said Peter,
" mindin' the steps — they're slippy."

The steps, seemingly fixed somehow
against the wall, were very narrow, not
more than a foot in width.

"I can lift them aff, and put them
into the coble, and then there's no trace
at a'," said Peter.

We were in the boat by this time ; and
what happened in the darkness I could
gather only from what Peter was saying.

61 Ah, yes : here he is ! At least
thirty pund, I'm sure, and clean-run — I
wunna' wonder if he had still the sea-
lice on him. Steady, now. Keep your
hands inside the coble. They micht
scrape against the wall.".

OCTOBER 293

He was punting us down the culvert.
Soon we were on the river, and soon on
the other side. Peter had told us not to
bother about our boat. It could lie
where it was all night; he would take
it over in the morning.

" Well done, well done ! " he exclaimed,
when he had peered down upon our own
salmon, lying among the bracken. "I
heard splashin's and the reel, and kent
some o' you was playin' a fish ; but I had
no thocht that it was sic a fish as that !
Mine's sma' compared wi't. But keep
it — keep it! Maybe you've no' yet
overtaken a' the freen's you would like to
send salmon to. It may help you in
that way."

Cheerily wishing us good-night, Peter
returned to his boat. We watched him
as he shot luminous across the river,
singing :

When from the North Sea comes a run
(J salmon and o' peel

INDEX

Aberfeldy, pool at, 222

Academy, The, 96

Acquired wariness of trout,

52
Adventure in Wales, 82 et

seq.
on the Earn, 230 et seq.
iEsthetic emotions, 32
Alder, the, 22
An afflicted golf club, 236

et seq.
Ancient tackle-books, 109
Anglesey, Lord, 83
Armistead, Mr. W. H., 38
Artificial lakes, 179 et seq.
Artificially-bred trout, 30 et

seq., 106
Atholl, 172 et seq.

the Duke of, 202
Atlantic and North Sea, 210

et seq.
Autumn run and spring run,

213 et seq.
floods and spring floods,

216 et seq.
Awe, the, 211

Bays, different kinds of, 221

et sea.
Barratt, Mr. T. J., 91, 111
Barrington, Mr. C. G., 225
Benson, General, 187
u Big flies for big trout," 104

Billiards, 18

" Bismarck," 231 et seq.

Black Mount, the, 175

Blackwood's Magazine, 89

Blagdon Lake, 43, 105, 179

Blair, Major, 188

Bradley, Mr. A. G., 88 et

seq.
Breadalbane, Lord, 115

Lady, 175
" Burst of flies," 146

Caldrons, eddies, and whirl-
pools, 221 et seq.

Carriston Lake, 89

Casts and traces, 4, 17

Chalk streams, 65

t( Chance," 18 et seq.

Char in Perthshire loch, 90
et seq.

Chill wind, effect of, 55

" Christopher North," 102

Clatto Water, 104, 125 et
seq.

Clements, General, 191 et
seq.

Condition of trout in spring,
56

Confined pools, 84

Creeper, the, 62

Currie, Mr. Peter, 14

Dee, the, 211

295

296 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

Destruction of spawn, 224
Divination or intelligence ?

90 et seq.
Dun, large spring, 74

Eagles and ptarmigan, 174

Earn, the ; adventure on,
230 et seq.

East - coast and west - coast
rivers, 210 et seq.

Eddies, whirlpools, and cal-
drons, 221 et seq.

Eden, the Fife, 67

Edinburgh Review, The, 21
et seq.

Eels, 84

Episode in war, 186 et seq.

Evening rise, the, 124 et seq.

Evening Standard, The, 125

Evil eye, the, 237 et seq.

Favourite trout- pool, a, 49

et seq.
Feeding, 177 et seq.
Field, The, 105
First hole pool, 222
Flies for trout - fishing, 21

et seq.
punctual, 140
Floods, 216 et seq.

Glasgow smoke, 219
Glenlyon sorceress, 238
Golden eagles, 58
Golf, 19

Club, an afflicted, 236 et

seq.
Good sport, 77 et seq.
Gould, 104
Grantully, 230
Grayling, 53
Greenwell's Glory, 24, 53,

74
Grey, Sir Edward, 27

Grouse, 38, 69
Gulf Stream, 211
Gut, 52

Hampshire, 30 et seq., G5, 170
Harris, Mr., 144
Haslemere, stream at, 91, 110
Haxton, Henry, 183 et seq.
Highland lochs, 43, 109, 171

et seq.
Hind, Mr. C. Lewis, 96

Impurities in snow, 218 et seq.
Intellectual development

through sport, 96 et seq.
Intelligence or divination ?

90 et seq.
Itchen, the, 35

John, 235 et seq.
Junglecock-and - Black, the,
102 et seq.

Kenmore, scene at, 3 et seq.
Kitchener, Lord, 186 et seq.

Lake Vyrnwy, 180
Lammas flood, the, 208
Languor in summer, 161 et seq.
Large trout most readily

hooked, 59 et seq.
Libation, a picturesque, 3
Liphook, stream at, 91, 110
Loch Tay, 2 et seq., 177, 179,
219, 226

Derculich, 101 et seq., 177
et seq.

Rannoch, 105

Ordie, 172 et seq.

Doine, 177

Lubnaig, 177

Voil, 177

INDEX

297

Loch Skiach, 179

Vennacher, 179

Moraig, 203

Lyon, 226
Loch-an-Beie, 177
Loch-na-Craig, 110
" Lochaber Wind," 113
Lochleven, 9, 43, 85, 101,
132 etseq., 163, 173

trout in Highlands, 114 et
seq.
Logierait, 240

Luck, the scope of, 18 et seq.
Lyon, the, 3
Lyttelton, General, 185

Macfarlane, William, 7 et seq.
Malloch, Mr. P. D., 250
Mallock, Mr. W. H., 27
March Brown, the, 22, 26,

71 et seq.
Mayfly, the, 22, 99, 140, 153

et seq., 174
Meldrum, Mr. D. S., 89 et

seq.
Melted snow and rain, 217

et seq.
Menzies, Sir Robert, 105
Midges, 204
Minnow and worm, 44 et seq.y

61
" Minnows," 13 et seq.
Moness Burn, the, 116 et seq.
Mountain lakes, 170 et seq.

North Sea and Atlantic, 210

et seq.
"Not all there," 82 et seq.
Notorious angler, a, 92 et seq.

Opening Day, 1 et seq.
Orchy, the, 211
Otter's Rocks, the, 6

Perthshire loch, char in a,
90 et seq.

Peter, 236 et seq.

Pike, 57, 178 etseq., 229

Poet Laureate, the, 174

Pollution, 57

Pools, confined, 84

Pope, 19

Principles of trout-preserva-
tion, 56 et seq.

Prose-poetry, 29

Provost, the, 116 et seq.

Ptarmigan and eagles, 174

Punctual flies, 140

Quarterly Review, The, 28

Racial differences among

trout, 176
Rain and melted snow, 217

et seq.
Rainbow trout, 115
Record, a peculiar, 14
Red deer, 175
Robertson, Mr. W., 17
Ruskin, Mr. , 182, 221

Sale of trout, 69
Salmon on ! 5 et seq., 6 et seq.,
77 et seq., 250 et seq.

hovers, 49

time to land a, 50

and seatrout, 205 et seq.
Saltoun, the, 23, 102
Scarcity of large trout, 57
Scots' bad habit, 36
Scotsman, The, 16
Scottish Horse, the, 186 et

seq.
Seatrout and salmon, 205
et seq.

and snub, 244
Senior, Mr. William, 206

298 AN ANGLER'S SEASON

Sexes, balance of, 39 et seq.
Sharp tussle, a, 77 et seq.
Shiel, the, 211
Silly saying, a, 38
Sim, Donald, 183 et seq.
Smoke from Glasgow, 219
Snow, impurities in, 218 et

seq.
Sorceress, a Glenlyon, 238
South African trout, 105

et seq.
of England, 29, 36, 163
Spawn, destruction of, 224
Spectre, a, 255 et seq.
Spey, the, 211
" Spiders," 55
Sport stimulating intellect,

96 et seq.
Spring dun, the, 74

floods and autumn floods,

21 6 et seq
run and autumn run, 213

et seq.
Stanley of Alderley, Lord, 83

et seq.
Steelhead salmon, 115
Stewart, James, 102 et seq.,

Ill, 249
Stewart, Mr. W. C, 89
Stewart-Robertson, Mr., 101
Storage of water, 225 et seq.
Storm, 55
Strange spectacle, a, 151

et seq.
Striking a fish, 11 et seq.
Summer languor, 161 et seq.
Sunshine and smart breeze,

147
Surrey, 170

Tay, the, 2, 35, 48 et seq.,
51, 65, 128, 211, 216
etseq., 226, 228, 233

Teal-and-Black, the, 102

Teal- wing flies, 126 et seq.
Telarana Nova casts and

traces, 17
Temperatures of rivers, 210
Test, the, 35, 64, 65
Thames, the, 48, 155
Theory about trout flies, 21

et seq.
Times, The, 30, 33, 96, 190

et seq.
Times in which salmon and
trout should be landed,
50
Traces, gut and wire, 4, 17
Trolling, 12, 44, 145
Trolling-rods, 7 et seq.
Trout, artificially -bred, 30
et seq., 106
standard of "takeable"

size, 47, 63, 67
time to land a, 50
acquired wariness, 52
condition of in spring, 56
scarcity of large, 57
large, most readily hooked,

59 et seq.
sale of, 69

in South Africa, 105 et seq.
red and white, 176 et seq.
and pike, 178 et seq.
Trout-fishing, 18 et seq.
Trout - preservation, prin -

ciples of, 56 et seq.
Trouts' racial differences, 176
Tullibardine, Lord, 186 et

seq.
Tweed, the, 35, 57
Twin Trees Pool, the, 75 et
seq.

Wales, streams in, 93
War episode, 186 et seq.
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 96
Warlock, a, 236 et seq.

INDEX

299

Waste of water, 224 et seq.

Water-levels, 170

Water-storage, 225 et seq.

Watson, Mr. William, 164

Weather, 148 et seq.

West - coast and east - coast
rivers, 210 et seq.

Wey, the, 110

Whirlpools, eddies, and cal-
drons, 221 et seq.

\ White, Miss, 144

i Wild Birds Protection Act,

155
I Wilson, Professor, 102
Wood, Mr. Hubert, 144

et seq.
Wood, Mr. W. L., 101 etseq.,

144 et seq., 219
Worm and minnow, 44 etseq.,
62, 166 et seq.

THE END

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