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Title: Minor tactics of the chalk stream and kindred studies
Author: G. E. M. Skues
Release date: August 31, 2025 [eBook #76776]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Adam and Charles Black, 1914
Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MINOR TACTICS OF THE CHALK STREAM AND KINDRED STUDIES ***
MINOR TACTICS OF THE
CHALK STREAM
AGENTS
=AMERICA= THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
=AUSTRALASIA= OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
=CANADA= THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
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MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
[Illustration]
ROUGH SPRING IRON BLUE DUN.
OLIVE. NO. 00.
NO. 1.
GREENWELL’S GREENWELL’S WATERY DUN.
GLORY. GLORY. NO. 00 DOUBLE.
NO. 0. NO. 00 DOUBLE.
PALE SUMMER PALE SUMMER
GREENWELL’S GREENWELL’S BLACK GNAT.
GLORY. GLORY. NO. 00.
NO. 1. NO. 00 DOUBLE.
TUP’S TUP’S
INDISPENSABLE. INDISPENSABLE. OLIVE NYMPH.
WET. NO. 0. WET. NO. 00 NO. 0.
DOUBLE.
DOTTEREL TUP’S
HACKLE. INDISPENSABLE.
TIED FLOATER.
STEWARTWISE. NO. 0.
NO. 00.
MINOR TACTICS OF THE CHALK STREAM
AND KINDRED STUDIES
BY
G. E. M. SKUES
(_SEAFORTH AND SOFORTH_)
SECOND EDITION
[Illustration: [Logo]]
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1914
_First published in March, 1910_
=Dedicated=
_TO MY FRIEND THE DRY-FLY
PURIST, AND TO MY
ENEMIES, IF I HAVE ANY_
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
It would ill become me if I allowed a Second Edition of “Minor Tactics
of the Chalk Stream” to go to the public without expressing to those
writers who have dealt with my volume in the Press my grateful sense of
the generosity with which, whether they were or were not in agreement
with the main object of the work—the endeavour to put the wet fly in
what I conceive to be its right place on the chalk stream—they have one
and all received it. In the fifty or so Press notices, short and long, I
find, without exception, an absence of the harsh word, and a pervading
urbane and kindly spirit which is of the true Waltonian still. Such
fault as has been found has in the main been that I have shown undue
timidity in dealing with the pretensions of the dry-fly purist. To that
criticism I should like to reply that in dedicating my book to my
_friend_ the dry-fly purist I was using no idle word—that in asking him
to make room for the wet fly beside the dry fly as a branch of the art
of chalk-stream angling, I knew myself to be making a claim on him which
he would not willingly concede, and I was determined that no harsh or
provocative word of mine should give offence to any of the many good
friends, good anglers, and good fellows who would not—at the first
onset, at any rate—find themselves able to see eye to eye with me.
I take leave to hope that the interval since the first publication of
“Minor Tactics” has brought a good few of them round to the view that,
without ousting the dry fly from pride of place as major tactics of the
chalk stream, the wet fly has its subsidiary, but still important, place
of honour in chalk-stream fishing.
G. E. M. SKUES.
FOREWORD
Rising from the perusal of “Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice,” on
its publication by Mr. F. M. Halford in 1889, I think I was at one with
most anglers of the day in feeling that the last word had been written
on the art of chalk-stream fishing—so sane, so clear, so comprehensive,
is it; so just and so in accord with one’s own experience. Twenty years
have gone by since then without my having had either occasion or
inclination to go back at all upon this view of that, the greatest work,
in my opinion, which has ever seen the light on the subject of angling
for trout and grayling; and it is still, as regards that side of the
subject with which it deals, all that I then believed it. But one result
of the triumph of the dry fly, of which that work was the crown and
consummation, was the obliteration from the minds of men, in much less
than a generation, of all the wet-fly lore which had served many
generations of chalk-stream anglers well. The effect was stunning,
hypnotic, submerging; and in these days, if one excepts a few eccentrics
who have been nurtured on the wet fly on other waters, and have little
experience of chalk streams, one would find few with any notion that
anything but the dry fly could be effectively used upon Hampshire
rivers, or that the wet fly was ever used there. I was for years myself
under the spell, and it is the purpose of the ensuing pages to tell, for
the benefit of the angling community, by what processes, by what stages,
I have been led into a sustained effort to recover for this generation,
and to transmute into forms suited to the modern conditions of sport on
the chalk stream, the old wet-fly art, to be used as a supplement to,
and in no sense to supplant or rival, the beautiful art of which Mr. F.
M. Halford is the prophet. How far my effort has been successful I must
leave my readers to judge. I myself feel that in making it I have
widened my angling horizon, and that I have added enormously to the
interest and charm of my angling days as well as to my chances of
success, and that, too, by the use of no methods which the most rigid
purist could rightly condemn, but by a difficult, delicate, fascinating,
and entirely legitimate form of the art, well worthy of the naturalist
sportsman.
In the course of my too rare excursions to the river-side, I have
elaborated some devices, methods of attack and handling, which I have
found of service, some applicable to wet-fly, some to dry-fly fishing,
or to both. In the hope that these may be of interest or service, I have
included papers upon them.
In conclusion I should like to express my gratitude to the proprietors
of the _Field_, for permission to reprint a number of papers contributed
by me to that journal over the signature “Seaforth and Soforth,” which
come within the scope of the work; and to Mr. H. T. Sheringham, for his
invaluable advice and assistance in the arrangement of these papers.
G. E. M. SKUES.
CONTENTS
PAGE
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION vii
FOREWORD ix
CHAPTER
I. OF THE BEGINNING OF THINGS 1
OF THE INQUIRING MIND 1
II. SUBAQUEOUS HAPPENINGS IN NATURE 8
OF THE DROWNING OF DUNS AND OTHER INSECTS 8
OF THE STAGES IN A RISE OF DUNS 9
III. SUBAQUEOUS HAPPENINGS IN ART 14
OF MEDICINE FOR BULGERS 14
OF UNDER-WATER TAKING, ITS INDICATIONS, AND THE TIME
TO STRIKE 17
OF ROUGH WATER AND GREY-BROWN SHADOW 20
IV. SUPPLEMENTARY IN THE MATTER OF FLIES 24
OF WET-FLY DRESSINGS FOR CHALK STREAMS 24
OF THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR OF TYING SILK 29
OF THE IMITATION OF NYMPHS, ETC. 30
V. SPECIAL CONDITIONS AND WET-FLY SOLUTIONS 36
NERVES 36
OF THE TROUT OF GLASSY GLIDES 38
OF THE WET FLY IN POOLS, BAYS, AND EDDIES 41
OF THE JUDICIOUS USE OF THE MOON 44
OF THE WET-FLY OIL TIP 45
OF GENERALSHIP AND THE WET FLY 47
A POTTED TROUT, AND ONE OTHER 49
OF TWO SATURDAY AFTERNOONS 54
VI. UNCLASSIFIED 57
OF HOVERING 57
OF THE PORPOISE ROLL 59
VII. SUNDRY CONSIDERATIONS 60
OF THE RELATION OF PATTERN TO POSITION 60
OF THE USE OF SPINNERS 63
OF GENERAL FEEDERS 67
ON ATTENTION TO CASUAL FEEDERS 70
OF THE FREQUENTATION OF DITCHES 73
OF THE NEGOTIATION OF TAILERS 76
OF THE FASCINATION OF BRIDGES 78
VIII. MAINLY TACTICAL 81
OF THE DELIBERATE DRAG 81
IN THE GLASS EDGE 84
OF THE CROSS-COUNTRY CAST 87
WHAT TUSSOCKS ARE FOR 89
OF THE ALLEGED MARCH BROWN 91
OF GENERAL FLIES 92
IX. CONSIDERATIONS MORAL, TACTICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, AND
INCIDENTAL 95
OF FAITH 95
OF THE BANK OF VANTAGE 98
OF COURAGE AND THE JEOPARDIZING OF TUPPENCE
HA’PENNY 103
OF IMPOSSIBLE PLACES 105
OF THE USE OF THE LANDING-NET 109
OF THE WEEDING TROUT 115
INCIDENTALLY OF THE LIGHT ROD ON CHALK STREAMS 117
AND OF WET-FLY CASTING 120
X. FRANKLY IRRELEVANT 122
A DRY FLY MEMORY 122
XI. ETHICS OF THE WET FLY 126
XII. APOLOGIA 131
MINOR TACTICS OF THE
CHALK STREAM,
AND KINDRED STUDIES
CHAPTER I
OF THE BEGINNING OF THINGS
OF THE INQUIRING MIND.
I read recently in that fine novel, “A Superfluous Woman,” a sentence
enunciating a principle of wide application, to which anglers might with
advantage give heed: “We ought not so much to name mistakes disaster as
the common practice of servile imitation and faint-hearted
acquiescence.” In no art are its practitioners more slavishly content
“jurare in verba magistri” than in angling. Tradition and authority are
so much, and individual observation and experiment so little.
There is, indeed, this excuse for the novice, that, going back to the
authorities of the past after much experiment, he will find that they
know in substance all, or practically all, that, apart from the advance
of mechanical conveniences and entomological science, is known in the
present day. The difficulty is to dissociate the dead knowledge, which
is reading or imitation, from the live knowledge, which is experience.
And if these pages have any purpose more than another, it is not to lay
down the law or to dogmatize, but to urge brother anglers to keep an
open and observant mind, to experiment, and to bring to their angling,
not book knowledge, but the result of their own observation, trials, and
experiments—failures as well as successes.
In all humility is this written, for I look back upon many years when it
was my sole ambition to follow in the steps of the masters of
chalk-stream angling, and to do what was laid down for me—that, and no
other; and I look back with some shame at the slowness to take a hint
from experience which has marked my angling career. It was in the year
1892, after some patient years of dry-fly practice, that I had my first
experience of the efficacy of the wet fly on the Itchen. It was a
September day, at once blazing and muggy. Black gnats were thick upon
the water, and from 9.30 a.m. or so the trout were smutting freely.
In those days, with “Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice” at my
fingers’ ends, I began with the prescription, “Pink Wickham on 00 hook,”
followed it with “Silver Sedge on 00 hook, Red Quill on 00 hook, orange
bumble, and furnace.” I also tried two or three varieties of smut, and I
rang the changes more than once. My gut was gossamer, and, honestly, I
don’t think I made more mistakes than usual; but three o’clock arrived,
and my creel was still “clean,” when I came to a bend from which ran,
through a hatch, a small current of water which fed a carrier. Against
the grating which protected the hatch-hole was generally a large pile of
weed, and to-day was no exception. Against it lay collected a film of
scum, alive with black gnats, and among them I saw a single dark olive
dun lying spent. I had seen no others of his kind during the day, but I
knotted on a Dark Olive Quill on a single cipher hook, and laid siege to
a trout which was smutting steadily in the next little bay. The fly was
a shop-tied one, beautiful to look at when new, but as a floater it was
no success. The hackle was a hen’s, and the dye only accentuated its
natural inclination to sop up water. The oil tip had not yet arrived,
and so it came about that, after the wetting it got in the first
recovery, it no sooner lit on the water on the second cast than it went
under. A moment later I became aware of a sort of crinkling little swirl
in the water, ascending from the place where I conceived my fly might
be. I was somewhat too quick in putting matters to the proof, and when
my line came back to me there was no fly. I mounted another, and
assailed the next fish, and to my delight exactly the same thing
occurred, except that this time I did not strike too hard.
The trout’s belly contained a solid ball of black gnats, and not a dun
of any sort. The same was the case with all the four brace more which I
secured in the next hour or so by precisely the same methods. Yet each
took the Dark Olive at once when offered under water, while all day the
trout had been steadily refusing the recognized floating lures
recommended by the highest authority. It was a lesson which ought to
have set me thinking and experimenting, but it didn’t. I put by the
experience for use on the next September smutting day, and I have never
had quite such another, so close, so sweltering, with such store of
smuts, and the trout taking them so steadily and so freely.
It was a September day two or three years later when I had another hint
as pointed and definite as one could get from the hind-leg of a mule,
but I didn’t take it. There was a cross-stream wind from the west, with
a favour of north in it, and all the duns—and there were droves of
them—drifted in little fleets close hugging the east bank, where the
trout were lined up in force to deal with them, and feeding steadily.
Fishing from the west bank, I stuck to four fish which I satisfied
myself were good ones, and in over two hours’ fishing I never put them
down. I tried over them all my repertoire. I battered them with Dark
Olive Quill, Medium Olive Quill, Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear, Red Quill (two
varieties), Grey Quill and Blue Quill, Ogden’s Fancy, and Wickham, and I
left them rising at the end with undiminished energy, and went and sat
down and had my lunch. Then I sought another fish, and began again, when
suddenly it occurred to me that I had not tried the old-fashioned
mole’s-fur-bodied, snipe-winged Blue Dun. I had only a solitary
specimen, and that was tied with a hen’s hackle; but such as it was, and
greatly distrusting its floating powers, I tied it on. I did not err in
my distrust, for after a cast or two it was hopelessly water-logged. I
dried it as well as I could in my handkerchief, and despatched it once
more on its mission. It went under almost as it lit, just above a
capital trout, but for all that it was taken immediately. The next
trout, and the next, and the next, took it with equal promptitude; one
was small, and had to go back, but the others were quite nice average
fish.
Then, in my eagerness, I was too hard on my gossamer gut when the next
trout took my fly, and he kept it. I had no more of these Blue Duns, and
I did not get another fish till the evening.
Still I did not realize that I was on the edge of an adventure, nor yet
did I realize whither I was tending when Mr. F. M. Halford told me how a
well known Yorkshire angler had been fishing with him on the Test, and,
by means of a wet fly admirably fished without the slightest drag, had
contrived to basket some trout on a difficult water.
Indeed, it was several years later that, after fluking upon a successful
experience of the wet fly on a German river which in general was a
distinctively dry-fly stream, I began to speculate seriously upon the
possibility of a systematic use of the wet fly in aid of the dry fly
upon chalk streams. In conversation with the late Mr. Godwin (held in
affectionate remembrance by many members of the Fly-fishers’ Club, and,
indeed, by all who knew him), who had seen the very beginnings of the
dry fly on the Itchen, and remembered well and had practised the methods
which preceded it, I learned how, fishing downstream with long and
flexible rods (thirteen or fourteen feet long), and keeping the light
hair reel-line off the water as much as possible, these early fathers of
the craft had drifted their wet flies over the tails of weeds, where the
trout lay in open gravel patches, and caught baskets of which the modern
dry-fly man might well be proud.
I gathered, however, that a downstream ruffle of wind was a practical
necessity; and as I could not pick my days, and such as I could take
were few and far between, I realized that, even if they appealed to
me—which they did not—these methods would not do for me, as I might, and
often did, find the river glassy smooth, but that, if I were to succeed,
it must be by a wet-fly modification of the dry-fly method of upstream
casting to individual fish.
I could not believe that the habits of the trout were so changed as to
make this impossible, and I began to look for opportunities to
experiment. The bulging trout presented the most obvious case, yet it
was rather by a chain of circumstance than by the straightforward
reasoning which now seems so simple and obvious that I was led into
experiments along this line.
How I effected some sort of solution of the problem with a variant of
Green well’s Glory, and later on with Tup’s Indispensable, is detailed
elsewhere, as also are my experiments with the trout of glassy glides
(who seldom break the surface to take a winged insect, presumably
because of the drag), together with other fumblings in the search of
truth; but from that time forth I have seldom neglected an opportunity
to test the wet fly on chalk-stream trout. It may be that on many
occasions I have used the wet fly when the dry would have been more
lucrative. On the other hand, I have found it furnish me with sport on
occasions and in places when and where the dry fly offered no
encouragement, nor any prospect of aught but casual and fluky success,
and I have provided myself with a method which forms an admirable
supplement to the dry fly, and has frequently given me a good basket in
apparently hopeless conditions, and in the smoothest of water and the
brightest of weather.
CHAPTER II
SUBAQUEOUS HAPPENINGS IN NATURE
OF THE DROWNING OF DUNS AND OTHER INSECTS.
It has been advanced as an argument against the use of the wet fly, that
duns and the other small insects which drift down upon the surface of a
stream are never seen by the fish under water, and that a wet fly is
therefore an unnatural object, especially if winged. “Never” is a big
word, and I venture to think the case is overstated. I have watched an
eddy with little swirling whirlpools in it for an hour together, and
again and again I have seen little groups of flies caught in one or
other of the whirls, sucked under and thrown scatterwise through the
water, to drift some distance before again reaching the surface.
Anyone who has kept water-insects in spirit for observation or mounting
is aware that they readily become water-logged, and by no means insist
on floating. Again, we have it on the best authority that certain of the
spinners descend to the river-bed to lay their eggs, and probably, that
function performed, they ascend again through the water, giving the
trout a chance while in transit. Thus the trout may well be familiar
with winged insects under water. Even if he were not, it may be doubted
whether he is sufficiently intelligent to reject a thing which he
fancies he has found good to eat on the surface merely because it
happens to be below. Indeed, experience so conclusively proves that
trout will take the winged fly under water that those who repudiate both
these propositions are upon the horns of a dilemma. Many hackled flies
are more or less—and generally less—careful imitations of nymphs or
larvæ. But of these more anon.
OF THE STAGES IN A RISE OF DUNS.
It has often been the subject of admiring comment that, before ever the
angler can see a single fly in air or upon water, the trout will have
lined up under the banks, and settled at the tails of weed-beds, and
have begun to take toll of insect life; and many have commented on the
startling unanimity with which trout begin to feed all at once all over
a river or length. Some seem to suppose that, with a quick appreciation
of values of temperature, atmosphere, barometric pressure, and what not,
the trout discern when the flies will rise, and are there in readiness.
Is it necessary to suppose anything far-fetched? It has often seemed to
me that the swallows and martins can and do detect in advance the
preparations for a rise in the swarming of nymphs released from weed or
gravel, or whatever their particular fastness may be, and borne down the
current. This precedes the actual hatch for a period greater or less
according to temperature, pressure, and perhaps other little-understood
conditions; and so it happens that no trout that is not “by ordinar’”
stupid could fail to appreciate that game is afoot, and to put himself
in position to enjoy the sport.
If one goes down to the bottom of the High in Winchester, near by King
Alfred’s statue, and peers between the railings, one may generally see
several brace of handsome trout; and if one takes some new bread and
presses it together in little balls hard enough to make it sink, but not
sink too fast, and throws it to the trout, one may see some most
beautiful catching, neater than that of the most finished fielder in the
slips. So when the nigh-upon-hatching nymphs are being hurried down,
your trout shall enjoy some pretty fielding before the bulk of the
quarry come near enough to the surface to attract attention to the
trout’s movements by any swirl or break on the surface. If the trout be
lying out on the weeds from which the nymphs are issuing, you shall see
the trout swashing about in the shallow water covering the weed-beds, in
pursuit of the nymphs, and presenting the phenomenon known as “bulging.”
This is the first stage of the rise.
Presently, as the swarm of drifting nymphs becomes more numerous,
escaping units, first in sparse, then in increasing numbers, reach the
surface, burst their swathing envelopes, and spread their canvas to the
gales as _subimagines_. Presently the trout find attention to the winged
fly more advantageous—as presenting more food, or food obtained with
less exertion than the nymphs—and turn themselves to it in earnest. This
is the second stage. Often it is much deferred. Conditions of which we
know nothing keep back the hatch, perhaps send many of the nymphs back
to cover to await a more favourable opportunity another day; so it
occasionally happens that, while the river seems mad with bulging fish,
the hatch of fly that follows or partly coincides with this orgy is
insignificant. But, good, bad, or indifferent, it measures the extent of
the dry-fly purist’s opportunity.
Good, bad, or indifferent, it presently peters out, and at times with
startling suddenness all the life and movement imparted to the surface
by the rings of rising fish are gone, and it would be easy for one who
knew not the river to say: “There are no trout in it.” For all that,
there are pretty sure to be left a sprinkling, often more than a
sprinkling, of unsatisfied fish which are willing to feed, and can be
caught if the angler knows how; and these will hang about for a while
until they, too, give up in despair and go home, or seek consolation in
tailing. Often these will take a dry fly, but an imitation of a nymph or
a broken or submerged fly is a far stronger temptation. This is the
third stage.
Now, the dry-fly purist is quite entitled to his own opinions, and to
restrict himself to the second stage; but if there be other anglers who
are willing to vary their methods, who can and do catch their trout, not
only in the second stage, but also in the first and the third, and if
their methods spoil no sport for others, who shall say that they are
wrong in availing themselves of all three stages of a rise of duns?
I remember well one day late in May when the three stages were
excellently well marked. There was a bright sun, a light breeze from the
east with a touch of south in it, and I was on the water about 9.30, and
took the left bank, with the wind behind my hand. No fish were rising,
but on reaching the water-side I almost stumbled on top of a trout which
stood poised over a clear gravel patch under my own bank. Fortunately,
however, I withdrew without his seeing or suspecting me. My pale-dressed
Greenwell’s Glory trailed in the water, and I delivered it without
flick, well wet, a foot or so above the spot where I had marked my fish.
There was no break of the surface, but a sort of smooth shallow hump of
the water about the size of a dinner-plate, with a dip in the middle, as
the fish turned and I pulled into him. Presently I saw a brace bulging
vigorously over some bright green weeds. It was not the first or the
tenth time that my sunken Greenwell covered the fish that one of them
came; but when he did there was no doubt about it, and he joined number
one in the basket. Two more followed in a short time, unable to resist
the same lure. Then it seemed to fail of its effect, though the river
was freely dotted with rings, and after wasting much time I tumbled to
the situation, and changed to a floating No. 1 Whitchurch—most effective
of Yellow Duns—on a cipher hook. The effect was immediate, but I had put
it off too long, and when I looked up from basketing my third trout to
the Whitchurch the rise had worn out. But I was not done yet. I changed
to a Tup’s Indispensable dressed to sink, and, fishing upstream wet in
likely runs and places, I made up my five brace before I knocked off for
lunch.
CHAPTER III
SUBAQUEOUS HAPPENINGS IN ART
OF MEDICINE FOR BULGERS.
For many a year bulging trout were the despair of my life, and in those
days I would gladly have said “Amen” to the opinion expressed in a
letter to the _Fishing Gazette_ of March 13, 1909, by the angler who
writes over the pen-name of “Ballygunge,” that when trout were bulging
you “might as well chuck your hat at them” as a fly. Many times had I
vainly plied them with Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear, as recommended by Mr. F.
M. Halford, as well as most of the current imitations of duns on the
water, and Wickhams, Tags, and other fancy flies to boot. Hoping against
hope, I never gave up trying for those aggravating fish, and one day,
towards the end of a bad exhibition of bulging by the trout, I actually
caught a brace, and lost a third, on a Pope’s Green Nondescript—a dun
tied with starling wing, red hackle and whisk, and a dark green body
ribbed with broad flat gold.
On many occasions since I have found that fly kill well at the beginning
of a rise, and it may be that on the occasion spoken of the trout which
I got were on the verge of giving up bulging in favour of the winged
dun. But I was not satisfied. Then the recollection of a visit to the
Tweed struck me with the notion that on that water all the trout
practically bulged all the time, and that with their wet-fly patterns
Tweed anglers were able to give a good account of themselves, and I
searched among Tweed patterns for the nearest analogue to Pope’s Green
Nondescript. I thought I found it in Greenwell’s Glory, if varied by
exchanging for the hen blackbird wing a starling wing. The likeness was
not very exact, but it was close enough to experiment on. The point that
I wanted to achieve was to combine with the colours of Pope’s Green
Nondescript the type of dressing special to the Tweed Greenwell’s Glory.
Rough, slim upright wings, well split, and standing well apart when wet,
made of several thicknesses of feather so as to absorb water, and not to
give it up readily when cast; body spare, consisting of the waxed
primrose tying silk only, closely ribbed with fine gold wire, and one or
at most two turns of a furnace hen’s hackle with ginger points, no whisk
(whisks only help flotation), and a rather rank hook to take the fly
under. The type of dressing is to be found applied to all his patterns
in Webster’s “Angler and the Loop Rod.”
Whether it was because I had faith in my medicine, or whether any other
cause was at work, I know not, but the experiment was, despite some
misses due to failure to judge the right moment to pull home the hook,
an immediate success.
Bulging trout are bold feeders, and seem to mind being cast over less
than do those which are taking surface food; but they are much more
difficult to cover accurately, because they rush from side to side and
up and down, and the odds are that, if you cast to one spot, the trout
is careering off in pursuit of a nymph to right or left of it. But once
the trout sees the fly, the chances of his taking it are far better than
are the chances that a surface-feeding trout will take the floating dun
which covers him. The fly is allowed to drag in the stream, so as to be
thoroughly wet, and is then cast upstream to the feeding fish in all
respects like a floating fly, except that it is not dried or allowed to
float. The weight of the reel-line will probably be enough to dry the
gut, so that the risk of lining your trout is minimized, only the fly
and the first link or so of gut going under before it reaches him. I
found it best to tie this pattern on gut, and, dressed as described, it
has been worth many a good bulger to me, apart from its value for
general purposes.
Later on the value of Tup’s Indispensable fished wet impressed me much,
and its resemblance to a nymph induced me to give it a trial upon
bulging trout. For wet-fly purposes this is as near the dressing as I am
at liberty to give: Primrose tying silk lapped down the hook from head
to tail, a pale blue or creamy whisk of hen’s feather as soft as
possible and not long, three or four turns of coarser untwisted primrose
sewing silk at the tail, body rather fat, of a mixed dubbing of a creamy
pink (invented by Mr. R. S. Austin, the well known angler and
fly-dresser of Tiverton), and a soft blue dun hackle, very short in the
fibre, at the head, the dressing being preferably finished at the
shoulder behind the hackle. When this fly is thoroughly soaked it has a
wonderfully soft and translucent, insect-like effect. It proved even
more successful than Greenwell’s Glory, and with one or other I am
almost always able to give a good account of bulgers instead of coming
empty away.
OF UNDER-WATER TAKING, ITS INDICATIONS, AND THE TIME TO STRIKE.
Friends with whom I have discussed the use of the upstream wet fly on
chalk streams have frequently said to me: “But how are you to know when
the trout takes, and when to strike?” It is a very pertinent question,
and the answer is not to be given in a word. Often the indications which
bid you pull home the hook are so subtle and inconspicuous that the
angler is at a loss to account for the miracle which is evidenced by his
hooped rod and protesting reel, but even in the roughest water something
helps the angler to divine the moment for action. In a subsequent
section, under the heading “The Grey-Brown Shadow,” will be found an
account of a day’s sport with the wet fly in an upstream wind so rough
as to throw the river into waves. The flash of the fish as it turns to
take the fly may often be seen, so dimly and so momentarily as to be apt
to escape notice if one does not know what to look for; but I have on
several occasions even divined it through water which reflected a bright
white glare, and seemed opaque to the eye. If on these occasions a
hooked trout had not proved the truth of my observation, I could not
have sworn to having certainly seen anything move; but there through the
surface, which looked at the angle of view impenetrable to the eye, I
did seem to glimpse a faint pink flash that corresponded to no movement
on the surface, and there was the fish soundly hooked, and no fluke
about it.
Often under an opposite bank, when the light will not permit you to see
your gut or fly, you will see a trout suddenly ascending to near the top
of the water, and as suddenly sinking; then, if you tighten, ten to one
your hook is firmly in his jaws, and you see him shaking his head
savagely at the unexpected restraint upon his liberty ere he makes his
first rush.
When fish are bulging, the moment of taking the fly is generally marked
by a swirl, and the angler should strike immediately. Fortunately, a
wet-fly strike, even if misconceived or mistimed, is far less likely, so
long as the fish is clean missed and not lined, to alarm him than is a
strike with the dry fly, because the wet fly comes out through the water
at a point far below the fish instead of being drawn along the surface.
In glassy glides, which are always fast water, one either sees the fish
turn to the fly, or, if the light prevents it, one sees a little
crinkle, or break, work up through the water to the surface, which warns
the angler to strike. Often the gut lying on the surface goes under as
the fish draws in the fly, and alike in daylight and moonlight it acts
as a float; and even if the fly be taken too deep below water for any
other indication to be in time, it will warn the angler to attend to
business. An ingenious angler, as elsewhere explained, has conceived and
utilized successfully the idea of oiling his gut cast for fishing wet
directly upstream in rapid water, and an excellent device it is for its
occasion.
But perhaps the commonest indication of an under-water taking in water
of slow or moderate pace is an almost imperceptible shallow humping of
the water over the trout. It is caused by the turn of the fish as he
takes the fly, and when the angler sees it it is time to fasten. If he
waits until the swirl has reached and broken the surface (and it may not
be violent enough to do so), he may be too late. If the fly drops
directly over the fish, that shallow hump seems often almost
simultaneous with the lighting of the fly; but if the cast be wide, your
trout will not infrequently dart a yard or more to a wet fly—when for a
dry fly he would do no such thing—and then the angler has a warning of
the coming of the shallow hump on the surface which tells him that the
iron is hot. It may be questioned, however, whether it is not more
difficult to time correctly the strike for which one has had such
warning than one which comes without warning.
In my experience, the trout which takes under-water is generally very
soundly hooked. A trout taking floaters on the surface frequently sips
them in through a narrowly-opened slit of mouth, but an under-water
feeder draws in the fly by an extension of the gills which carries it in
with a full gulp of water.
In the effort to divine the indications which call for striking with the
wet fly I confess I find a subtle fascination and charm, and, when
success attends me, a satisfaction beside which the successful hooking
of a fish which rises to my floating fly seems second-rate in its
sameness and comparative obviousness and monotony of achievement.
OF ROUGH WATER AND GREY-BROWN SHADOW.
It was blowing up freshly from the south-west as the train ran into
Winchester one April a year or two back, and ere the water-meadows were
reached the distinct bite in the wind had given ample warning that,
maugre the crisp yellow sunshine, 11.30 clanging from the cathedral
spires left ample time to get down to the water-side and put rod and
tackle together before the big dark olives or the smaller and rather
lighter olives, which warn one to put up a Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear, put
in an appearance. April was three parts through, yet the backwardness of
the season made conditions correspond more nearly to three weeks earlier
in the normal year.
Soon everything was in readiness, and a couple of dark Rough Olives,
tied on gut, with dark starling wing, heron herl body dyed in onion dye
and ribbed with fine gold wire, and hackle and whisk of ginger, lightly
dyed olive, were put into the damper to soak, on the chance that the wet
fly might pay better than the dry.
Noon and the quarter-past chimed from the belfry, and then a big dark
olive drifted on to an eddy near by, and, lifted out on the meshes of a
landing-net, was identified. The hint was enough. One of the flies in
soak—tied on No. 1 hooks—was knotted on, and the surface was scanned for
the first dimple. Presently it was located—such a tiny, infinitesimal,
dacelike dimple, hinting rather than proving the movement of a trout. It
was hardly noticeable in the turmoil made by the strong ruffle of the
upstream wind against the somewhat full current of the stream. It was
rather far across for accurate casting in such a wind, and presently a
sudden gust slammed the line down upon the spot with such a splash as no
self-respecting trout could be expected to endure.
A movement upstream was prescribed by the conditions, and presently
another dimple like the last was spotted in a more favourable position.
It was repeated after an interval, but no fly was to be seen on the
surface; so, without an attempt at drying, the Rough Olive was
despatched on his mission, and lit a foot or so above the spot. Again,
and once more, it did so, and then there was a hint of a grey-brown
flicker in the hollow of a wave. By instinct rather than reason the hand
went up, and the arch of the rod showed that the steel had gone home. In
due course the trout—a fish of fourteen inches—was landed, and the
angler proceeded upward.
He soon found, however, that to reach and cover the trout satisfactorily
it behoved him to cross, and tackle them from the other side, and he
made his way to the footbridge. On the way down, on the main stream he
saw another hint of a rise in midstream, where the waves were highest.
The wind served him well, and the fly was over the trout in no time. For
four or five casts there was no response; then again that grey-brown
shadow for a moment in the trough of a wave, mounting rod, a screaming
reel, and a vigorous trout was battling for his life.
Arrived presently at the desired spot, the wet Rough Olive was taken off
and a dry-fly pattern mounted and duly oiled, and offered to three fish
in succession, with the result that they all went down. Then back once
more to the wet-fly, and thrice more ere 1.30 struck there was the faint
flash of grey-brown under water, the same instinctive response, a
spirited battle for life (successful in one instance), and then the rise
petered out and not a fish was stirring. And though at 2.30 a strong
rise of the smaller olive came on, and lasted till 4.30, keeping
hundreds of swallows and martins busy, yet not another fish put up a
neb. Perhaps it was because the sun had gone in.
There are those who wax indignant at the use of the wet fly on dry-fly
waters. Yet it has a special fascination. The indications which tell
your dry-fly angler when to strike are clear and unmistakable, but those
which bid a wet-fly man raise his rod-point and draw in the steel are
frequently so subtle, so evanescent and impalpable to the senses, that,
when the bending rod assures him that he has divined aright, he feels an
ecstasy as though he had performed a miracle each time.
CHAPTER IV
SUPPLEMENTARY IN THE MATTER OF FLIES
OF WET-FLY DRESSINGS FOR CHALK STREAMS.
Assuming that we have made up our minds to test the wet fly upon chalk
streams, it must be taken as an axiom that the ordinary patterns of the
dry fly will not do. They are built to dry and to float. The patterns
required must be built to soak and to sink. Therefore bodies and hackles
which throw the water must be rejected in favour of bodies and hackles
which take up the water or readily enter it. So dubbed bodies in place
of quills, hen hackles in place of cock’s, and of these a minimum of
turns in place of a maximum; and if whisks are used, they, too, must be
soft and soppy. For the same reason, wing material, if employed, should
be so arranged as to take up the maximum of water, and to let it go as
unwillingly as possible. Furthermore, the bulk of material in proportion
to the hook metal must be reduced as far as possible.
Given these requirements, let us look around, as I did, among all the
various systems of wet-fly dressing in use, from John o’ Groat’s to
Land’s End, and see what features we ought to borrow from them. If we
make up our minds, as I think we shall, that it is desirable to expose
the body of our fly freely, we shall not adopt any system which lays the
wings low over the back of the fly, that type being designed to secure
what is called “a good entry” for a dragging fly, and we have nothing to
do with dragging flies or any form of river raking or dredging, or with
any flies which, like the Devonshire types, carry superabundance of
bright cock’s hackles. So we are limited to the systems which dress
their flies with upright wings, like the Tweed and Clyde types, and to
the soft hackled Yorkshire style.
The conditions, however, of our waters confine us to tiny patterns—Nos.
0 and 00 hooks in the vast majority of cases, and occasionally No. 1—and
the supply of tiny soft absorbent hackles from birds other than poultry,
sufficiently small to leave the body well exposed, is hardly to be had.
So, taking one consideration with another, it would seem that the Tweed
and Clyde patterns, being used on a broad and in many places
equablyflowing river, will have advantages enough to invite a trial.
Now, what are the features of the Tweed and Clyde patterns? First there
is the spare body, dressed with tying silk only, with or without wire
ribbing, or lightly dubbed with soft fur, making an absorbent dubbing;
then a small and lightly-dressed soft hackle, two turns at the outside,
close up behind a pair of wings tied in a bunch, and either left single
or, preferably for our purposes, split in equal portions, and divided
with the figure-of-eight application of the tying silk behind the wings
and in front of the head, the whole tied on a rank, and not too light,
round-bend hook.
It will be suggested that the trout does not see the winged dun under
water. That is approximately, though not quite absolutely, true; but for
all that, being in some respects rather a stupid person, if size and
colour are right, he will not make much bones of the position of the fly
with reference to the surface being incorrect. It might be supposed,
again, that a hackled pattern would better suggest the nymph stage than
a winged pattern. This may be true, but the theory has yet to be worked
out in much detail before one can dogmatize about it. Elsewhere my
preliminary efforts in this direction are described. Here I could say
that the wings built up of a length of feather rolled into a bunch have
the advantage of taking up a lot of water, and not releasing it readily;
and they also assist to let the fly down more lightly on the water than
so lightly dressed a fly would fall but for the wings. To let a hackled
fly down as lightly, one would need a lighter wire and a larger hackle.
The wings also help the fly to swim correctly in the water, with the
weight of the straight, unsnecked, round-bend hook as the counterpoise
to the parachute action of the wings.
My own belief is that wet flies tied on gut swim better and hook better
than those tied on eyed hooks. As the drying action of casting is
reduced to a minimum, they are not so ready to go at the neck as when
used as dry flies; but if the angler prefers it, there is no reason why
he should not use eyed hooks, though snecked bends of any kind and
upturned eyes are deprecated. Down-eyed hooks, round, unsnecked,
square-bend, and Limerick, in the order named, are recommended.
When immediate sinking in rather fast water is required, additional
weight can be got by tying on a second hook, and making the fly what is
technically known as a “double.” These are more easily tied on gut than
on eyed hooks, though there is a maker who supplies eyed hooks for
doubles in sizes Nos. 1, 0, and 00, one packet containing the eyed hook,
and the other the shorter-shanked companion hook to be lashed on. In
either case the hooks have to be separated with the thumb-nail, so as to
stand at an angle of 45 to 60 degrees before using. Lest it should be
suggested that these double hooks, fished wet, lend themselves to a form
of snatching, let me say that I can only recall a single instance of a
trout being hooked on a wet double otherwise than fairly in the mouth,
and in the course of my experiments I have given them an extensive
trial.
The range of wet-fly patterns required is not extensive. I have found
the following serve all practical purposes:
1. ROUGH OLIVE.
_Wings_: Darkest starling.
_Body_: Heron herl from wing feather dyed brown-olive, and ribbed
with fine gold wire.
_Legs_: Dirty brown-olive hen hackle, with dark centre and
yellowish-brown points.
_Hook_: No. 1.
2. GREENWELL’S GLORY.
_Wings_: Hen blackbird, dark starling, medium starling, or light
starling (lighter as season advances).
_Body_: Primrose or yellow tying silk, more or less waxed (lighter
as season advances), ribbed with fine gold wire.
_Legs_: Dark furnace hen hackle (black centre, with cinnamon
points) to medium honey dun (lighter as season advances).
_Hook_: No. 1, 0, or 00.
3. BLUE DUN.
_Wings_: Snipe.
_Body_: Water-rat on primrose or yellow tying silk. Vary body by
dressing with undyed heron’s herl from the wing, and ribbing with
fine gold or silver wire.
_Legs_: Medium blue hen.
_Hook_: No. 1 or 0.
4. IRON BLUE.
_Wings_: Tomtit’s tail.
_Body_: Mole’s fur on claret tying silk.
_Legs_: Honey-dun hen with red points.
_Hook_: No. 0 or 00.
5. WATERY DUN.
_Wings_: Palest starling.
_Body_: Hare’s poll or buff opossum on primrose tying silk.
_Legs_: Ginger hen’s hackle.
_Hook_: No. 00.
6. HARE’S EAR.
_Wings_: Dark or Medium starling.
_Body_: Hare’s fur from lobe at root of ear; rib, narrowest gold
tinsel or fine gold wire.
_Legs_: A few fibres picked out or placed between the strands of
the silk and spun.
_Hook_: No. 1 or 0.
7. BLACK GNAT.
_Wings_: Palest snipe rolled and reversed.
_Body_: Black tying silk with two turns of black ostrich herl or
knob of black silk at shoulder.
_Legs_: Black hen or cock starling’s crest, two turns at most.
_Hook_: No. 00.
It will be observed that hooks a size larger than those employed for
floaters can often be used.
The very short range of hackled patterns is dealt with later.
OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE COLOUR OF TYING SILK IN DUBBED FLIES.
Years ago I spent a week upon the Teme, fishing wet, and I remember
looking down one sunny morning upon my cast in shallow water, and being
struck by the appearance of my Yellow Dun. The body was dubbed with
primrose wool, but though, while dry or in the air, every turn of the
tying silk was completely hidden, yet, looking down upon the fly in the
water, I could see every turn distinctly, and the dubbing was scarcely
noticeable, and I was glad that the tying silk harmonized so perfectly
with the hue of the dubbing.
The importance of the base colour of the tying silk was still more
strongly brought home to me a day or two later. I had tied some
imitations of a pale watery dun which was on the water with a pale
starling wing, light ginger hackle and whisk, and a mixture of opossum
and hare’s poll for dubbing; but some I had tied with pale orange silk,
and some with that rich maroon colour called Red Ant in Mr. Aldam’s
series of silks. The grayling took those tied with pale orange freely,
but would not look at those tied with Red Ant.
It maybe of less consequence for floating flies, but for wet flies I
have since always been careful to have the tying silk either harmonious
with the colour of the natural subimago, or corresponding to the colour
of the spinner. For instance, for an Iron Blue Dun I should use claret
silk dubbed with mole’s fur or water-rat; for the old-fashioned mole’s
fur Blue Dun, primrose to heighten the olive effect in the dark blue;
primrose silk also for a Hare’s Ear; in the Willow-Fly, orange silk
under the mole’s fur or water-rat; in the Grannom, green very darkly
waxed, or black; and so on. The fact is that the transparency of fur and
feather is marvellous. A starling’s wing looks much denser than a dun’s,
but place it over print, and you can read every word through; and fur is
practically as transparent when wet.
OF THE IMITATION OF NYMPHS, CADDIS, ALDER LARVÆ, AND SHRIMPS.
For some time after my introduction to Tup’s Indispensable I used it
only as a dry fly, but one July I put it over a fish without avail, and
cast it a second time without drying it. It was dressed with a soft
hackle, and at once went under, and the trout turned at it and missed.
Again I cast, and again the trout missed, to fasten soundly at the next
offer. It was a discovery for me, and I tried the pattern wet over a
number of fish on the same shallow, with most satisfactory results. I
thus satisfied myself that Tup’s Indispensable could be used as a wet
fly; and, indeed, when soaked its colours merge and blend so beautifully
that it is hardly singular; and it was a remarkable imitation of a nymph
I got from a trout’s mouth.
The next step was to try it on bulging fish, and to my great delight I
found it even more attractive than Greenwell’s Glory. It was the
foundation of a small range of nymph patterns, but for under-water
feeders, whether bulging or otherwise, I seldom need anything but Tup’s
Indispensable, dressed with a very short, soft henny hackle in place of
the bright honey or rusty dun used for the floating pattern. The next I
tried was a Blue-winged Olive. There was a hatch of this pernicious
insect one afternoon. The floating pattern is always a failure with me,
and in anticipation I had tied some nymphs of appropriate colour of
body, and hackled with a single turn of the tiniest blue hackle of the
merlin. It enabled me to get two or three excellent trout which were
taking blue-winged olive nymphs greedily under the opposite bank, and
which, or rather the first of which, like their predecessors, had
refused to respond to a floating imitation. The body was a mixture of
medium olive seal’s fur and bear’s hair close to the skin, tied with
primrose silk, the whisk being short and soft, from the spade-shaped
feather found on the shoulder of a blue dun cock.
Another pattern, successful in the last two months of the season, is
dressed with a very short palish-blue dun or honey dun hen’s hackle, a
body of hare’s poll tied on pale primrose silk, with or without a small
gold tag and palest ginger whisks. But it is evident that on this
subject I am only at the beginning of inquiry. Of course there is
nothing very new in the idea of imitating nymphs. The half stone is just
a nymph generally ruined by over-hackling.
In July, 1908, I caught an Itchen fish one afternoon, and on examining
his mouth I found a dark olive nymph. My fly-dressing materials were
with me, and I found I had a seal’s fur which, with a small admixture of
bear’s hair, dark brown and woolly, from close to the skin, enabled me
to reproduce exactly the colours of the natural insect. I dressed the
imitation with short, soft, dark blue whisks, body of the mixed dubbing
tied with well-waxed bright yellow silk, and bunched at the shoulder to
suggest wing-cases, the lower part of the body being ribbed with fine
gold wire. Two turns of a very short, dark rusty dun hackle completed
the imitation, much to my satisfaction.
Apparently it was no less agreeable to the trout, for, beginning to fish
next morning at ten o’clock, I found six fish rising on a shallow. I
began with a small Red Sedge, as no dun was yet on the water, and missed
several of them. Then, putting up Pope’s Green Nondescript, I again
missed three fish in succession. I then bethought myself of my nymph,
and, knotting it on, in a few minutes I had five of the six fish, and
had lost the other. I then found a trout feeding in a run, evidently
under water. I made a miscast at him, and he came a yard across to take
the nymph, but did not take a good hold, for I lost him, only to secure
a better fish a few moments later. It then came on to blow and pelt with
rain in such sort as to render it no sort of pleasure to continue
fishing, and I knocked off at eleven o’clock, with three brace as the
result of an hour’s fishing.
I have made me a shallow spoon-shaped net of butterfly-net material to
attach to the ring of my landing-net. It has the advantage of taking
anything which comes down the stream, whether on or under the surface,
and its practical use demonstrates itself in more ways than one. For
instance, in September, 1909, I went down to the river about 9.30, and,
having put my rod together, sank my net in the water, and watched for
what came down. There were a number of tiny diptera, but no trace of dun
or nymph. I therefore concluded that it would be some time before the
trout would be lined up under the banks, and that I could safely go away
for an hour, and try certain carriers where the feeding of fish is not
dependent on the rise. I did this, and put in over an hour’s exciting,
if not very remunerative, sport before returning to the main river. The
rise came on about 11.30. But for my net I might have wasted all the
time on the bank, instead of conducting a siege of three very handsome
trout, and bringing up two of them.
On occasion I have found a Dotterel dun tied with yellow tying silk on a
No. 00 hook, and hackled with the tiniest dotterel hackle, after the
manner of Stewart (_i.e._, not hackled all at the head, but palmer-wise
for halfway down the short body), quite remunerative fished wet. This, I
imagine, is taken for a dun emerging.
But it is not only duns whose nymphal stages may be imitated. I borrowed
a tube containing some nearly full-grown larvæ of the alder, and though
I am given to understand that in this stage the alder passes the greater
part of its existence in the black mud formed by decaying vegetation, I
made a sort of imitation of them which rather pleased me, and I tried it
in Germany in mid-May. Whether the trout are or are not familiar with
the natural insect in this stage I cannot say, but they took the
imitation with such avidity that I speedily wore out my three specimens.
They were only made as an experiment, and I tried no more, as I felt
qualms in my mind as to whether it was quite the game to imitate this
insect in this stage, any more than it would be to fish an imitation of
the caddis. I am therefore not giving my recipe. Nor do I give that for
making a caddis or gentle which I once tried, with mad success for a few
minutes, and gave up, conscience-stricken. I have since seen alder larvæ
in a glass tank in the Insect House at the Zoological Gardens, and,
though their conditions are there no doubt quite artificial, they were
swimming so freely and seemed so much at home in the water that I think
it more than probable that they venture into the open often enough to be
familiar to the trout. The long pale trailing processes along their
sides suggested to me whether there was not to be found in the alder
larvæ the prototype of the bumble.
I was at one time greatly interested in an attempt to imitate the
fresh-water shrimp, and I tied a variety of patterns, including several
with backs of quill of some small bird dyed greenish-olive, and ribbed
firmly while wet and impressionable with silk or gold wire; but somehow
I never used or attempted to use any one of them. I, however, gave one
to an acquaintance, and he tied it on, and, standing on a footbridge,
cast it downstream over some trout which were reputed uncatchably shy.
At the first cast a big fish rushed at the shrimp, slashed it, and went
off leaving the one-time owner lamenting.
CHAPTER V
SPECIAL CONDITIONS AND WET-FLY SOLUTIONS
NERVES.
Years ago, long ere the spirit of revolt was in me, when I followed as
closely as I knew how the maxims of the apostles of the dry fly, and
knew no other method for chalk streams, I suffered many blank days and
much depression from a state of weather and light which must be familiar
to all chalk-stream anglers—the more particularly because the “d——d
good-natured” and sympathetic friend who knows nothing of the subject
picks it out to say knowingly: “What a beautiful day for fishing!” It is
clouded, dull, leaden, overhung, and the reflected light on the water is
a dead milk-and-watery white; while, looking down into its depths, one
sees everything with a deadly and crystalline clearness. There is no
hint of thunder about, but on such days the trout are all nerves. Never
are they so difficult to approach, never are they so ready to dart off
with that torpedo wave. And if one finds a rising fish, and puts a dry
fly over him, even if he bolts not, he rises no more.
But at length there came a day when my first timid experiments in the
fishing of chalk streams with the wet fly had proved encouraging enough
to lead to my having a small stock of wet-fly patterns for chalk-stream
fishing. It was a bad sample of those days when the nerves of trout
seemed all on the jump, and I had fished from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. without
so much as a rise. It was not that the fish were not rising. On the
contrary, they rose very well—not very much, perhaps, but the best days
are often those when the rise is moderate. But this day every fish I
cast to went down at once, and too often I saw that detestable torpedo
wave, sometimes at the approach, and more frequently at the first cast.
Soon after three I tied on a Tup’s Indispensable dressed on gut, and
crawled carefully to within a long cast of a trout which rose at
infrequent intervals in a narrow side-stream under the opposite side. My
line trailed on the water as I approached, and I made the minimum of
effort to dry the fly ere I delivered it, so as to attract as little
attention as possible to my movements. So it came about that the fly,
when it lit a yard or more to the left of and above the trout—it was a
bad cast as regards direction—went immediately under. For the _n_th time
that day I saw that torpedo wave as the fish darted through the shallow
water. I rose with a sigh, but as I did so my rod was a hoop, and the
reel screeched; for the trout’s dart had been _at_ the fly, not from it,
and it had gone a full yard or more to fetch it. He was just short of
one and three-quarter pounds. Before four o’clock I had another brace by
the same method. They were not easy, and I did not get every fish I
tried, or even many; but I got some where with the dry fly I should
assuredly have gone on getting none, and the trout stood to be cast to
in a way they would not that day to the dry fly.
It is true enough that there are days and times when the dry fly will
beat the wet fly hollow, but there are days when the converse is the
case, and from subsequent experience I can recommend the trial of the
wet fly on those dull, nervy days of milk-and-watery glare.
OF THE TROUT OF GLASSY GLIDES.
There are places on most rivers where the water comes swiftly and in
solid volume down a slope too slight in the incline to create a fall,
too short to create a rapid or stickle, and too smooth to cause a broken
surface, yet with a rapid run below. The result is a glassy glide,
gin-clear, with an air of unusual smoothness, and such a pace that there
is an immediate drag upon any floating fly which is laid upon the
current. Often some of the handsomest and best fighting trout in the
river are to be found in such places, where their blood is constantly
refreshed by the highly oxygenated water, their health and energy kept
up to the mark by the need of contending against its swiftness, and the
inducement to so contend is present in the plentiful supply of food
brought down by the current.
Such a glide do I know well, with some excellent fish always showing
there, but never breaking the surface; and for years I found them
impregnable, for the simple reason that, if one pitched a fly over their
noses, it was past them before they could rise to it, and if one pitched
it up enough to give the fish a chance to take it they wouldn’t, because
there was a prompt and streaky drag if the line were, as it could hardly
help being, the least little bit across stream. Even the natural fly
would sail over them unmolested.
But one day some years back, on a calm afternoon in July, with not a
trout rising, I was on the Itchen, and I had crawled up some half-mile
of sedgy bank in search of a feeding fish without finding one. But on
the far side, in front of a certain post, the remnant of a one-time
fence, I knew from experience that there was usually a fish—at any rate
at feeding-time. There was nothing to suggest any particular dry fly,
and on the previous afternoon—a Sunday—I had spent a pleasant twenty
minutes watching a fish in front of the stump taking something under
water with a sort of porpoise roll. It therefore occurred to me to put
up one of those little Greenwell’s Glories, dressed by Forrest of Kelso
on pairs of No. 00 hooks to gut, with which the name of Mr. Ewen M. Tod
is associated. I had bought them in the previous spring to experiment
upon bulging trout. These flies are known as “doubles,” and are not
ready floaters. One puts a thumb-nail between the barb, and forces them
apart till the two hooks form an angle of 45 degrees with each other.
The fly dropped a yard above the post and sank. When it should have been
nearing the post, a faint swirl rising to the surface seemed a
sufficient indication of a movement below to justify a raising of the
rod-point, and the fish was fast. In this manner it came about that a
small Greenwell’s Glory on double hooks terminated the cast when the
glassy glide above adverted to was reached. A trout lay out in it in
position to feed, but though he moved a little from side to side, and
may have been intercepting food, he made no rise. Keeping well out of
sight, I dropped the Glory on the far side of and in front of the fish,
and it at once went under. Again came the small disturbance welling
quickly to the surface; up went my hand, and again a good trout was
fast.
That afternoon I killed two and a half brace of good fish with the wet
fly fished into likely places without seeing a single rise. The other
three fish—but that is another story.
Since that day I have killed many a good fish in that hitherto
impossible spot, and one morning in July, 1908, I had two and a half
brace in less than an hour with a wet double Tup’s Indispensable out of
it.
OF THE WET FLY IN POOLS, BAYS, AND EDDIES.
There is probably no problem which has filled the souls of so many
dry-fly anglers with the despair attending defeat as that presented by a
day when a cross-stream wind, whether up and across, down and across, or
straight across, drives every dun under the opposite bank, and into
little pools and eddies between the prominences on that bank, and so out
of the line of the current which would otherwise carry them along. Then
every big trout in the river seems to shift out of the current and into
the sheltered bay or eddy, and there he sets to work collecting with
busy neb the little argosies which have lost their tide, and are
drifting helpless on slack water. It seems so easy to drop the fly in
the right place. So it is, but if, as is many times more than probable,
your cruiser is away a foot or two, or is deliberate in his movements,
and does not take the fly at once, your drag has made itself painfully
evident, and your fish is down for half an hour. No, on those occasions
the only chance with the dry fly is to hit your fish with it on the tip
of the nose at a moment when few naturals are about. Then he may snap
it—but what a number of chances against its so falling!
No, here is a case in which the wet fly is clearly predicated, and it
should be so dressed as to go under without the least hesitation. The
advantage which the wet fly has is not that the trout is taking the
nymph in preference to the floating dun, though he is probably doing
that far more than is apparent, but that, whereas a drag on the surface
is fatal and betrays the gut, an under-water drag is not betraying, and
the movement of the fly caused by the drag may, in its beginning at any
rate, be even attractive to the trout, as imparting motion suggesting
life and volition to an otherwise suspicious object. The drag also
serves to tighten instead of slackening the line, so that a very small
strike fixes the hook.
When the trout takes a wet fly in such a position, the surface
indications are by no means obvious; but if the angler be on the alert
to strike when such indications come, it is wonderful how soon he can
pick up the knack, and what excellent fish this method brings him. A
strike which does not touch the fish, being in the nature of an
under-water drawing of the fly, will often have no scaring effect upon a
feeding fish, where a strike with a floating fly would send him headlong
to cover.
It is difficult to pick among my recollections one instance more
illustrative than another of the value of this method, but I will take
an afternoon in July, 1908. It was a cold day for the time of year, with
a keen north-westerly wind across and a little down. A few little pale
duns were going down, being beaten by the wind into and among the bays
along the opposite bank, where they dodged in and out among the flags.
Three trout, and three only, could I find moving, and they were taking
every dun which went over them. I tried Little Marryat, Medium Olive,
Flight’s Fancy, Ginger Quill, and Red Quill, in vain. In fact I put all
three down. But they meant feeding, and were soon going again. It was
the last day of a seven-day visit. I had so far forty-six trout, and I
wanted to round off the fifty. I put up as an experiment a tiny dotterel
hackle, tied with primrose tying silk in the true Stewart style, not
with the fibres radiating from the head, but palmer-wise for halfway
down the body. The trout had it at the very first offer, and was duly
landed. I went on to the next, and got him almost immediately. The
third, for some reason, had no use for Dotterel duns, but the moment I
covered him with a Tup’s Indispensable he slashed it, and joined the
other two in my creel. I looked in vain for a fourth, and there was no
evening rise, so I had to leave off with but forty-nine of my fifty. But
for the wet fly, I am convinced I should have had to content myself with
the single brace which the morning rise had brought me, and that would
have been a disappointing ending to a good seven days.
OF THE JUDICIOUS USE OF THE MOON.
Though blinder than the proverbial bat in any slanting light, and
therefore not as fortunate as I should like to be in fishing the evening
rise, and though academically of opinion that fishing should cease when
the dusk no longer lets the angler discern his fly, I confess to being
at least as unwilling as any better endowed with sight to leave the
water-side while the trout are still busy sucking down the spinners; but
there are occasions when, if the moon be up enough to cast black shadows
under the banks, and I can find the suitable spot with rising fish, I
envy no man his superior eyesight—mine is good enough. Let me illustrate
my meaning by describing the occasion on which I made my little
discovery.
It was an evening in July. I had not begun fishing before four o’clock,
and the afternoon had only earned me a single trout, and he no great
shakes, either. The evening rise came on, and the trout began to feed
briskly; but my infirmity was against me, and I missed or misjudged
several rises, and it began to look as if I were going to make nothing
of my opportunity, when I came to a bend where the current swung in
pitch-black shadow under the opposite bank, while between the near edge
of the shadow and my bank the stream ran molten moonlight. Round the
bend in the dark I could hear the trout feeding away gaily, and the
rings of their rises surged into the silver of the lighted current.
It seemed a mad thing to do, but I despatched my Tup’s Indispensable to
a spot in the dark as near as I could judge above the ring of a good
fish. My cast lay like a hair on the surface, stretching into the dark,
not too taut. Suddenly I saw my gut draw straight upon the current, the
farther end disappearing under the sheen of the moonlight, and, without
waiting to think, I raised my rod-point, to find myself in battle with a
solid fish. Thrice in the twenty minutes the rise lasted did I repeat
this experience. Each trout was soundly hooked, and a nice level lot
they were, running from one and a quarter to one and a half pounds. Thus
was success at the last moment pulled by a fluke out of almost certain
defeat. It is not always possible to find place and light serving in
this way, but if you do, make use of the moon.
THE WET-FLY OIL TIP.
In my observations upon the judicious use of the moon, I indicated the
advantage to be derived, in cases where the light prevented the rise
from being otherwise detected in due time, from watching the gut cast as
a float signalling the taking of the fly. Indeed, it is not only by
night that the cast may be watched with advantage, but often by day when
casting a fly, wet or dry, but especially wet, into a bad light, while
the cast or part of it may be seen floating on a glassy piece of water.
It is now some years since, in the columns of the _Fishing Gazette_, I
called attention to what I described as the “wet-fly oil tip” in this
connection. I take no credit for this invention. It belongs entirely to
Mr. C. A. M. Skues, the secretary of the Fly-fishers’ Club, and its
discovery came about in this way:
We were fishing opposite banks of a German trout stream, the Erlaubnitz,
and the day rise of fly was over. The trout, which had been hovering
over their pockets in the weeds and in the runs between them, had
dropped out of sight, and it was obvious that it would need something to
attract them more noticeable than the pale watery duns which were the
staple of the season. We agreed upon Soldier Palmers tied with bright
scarlet seal’s fur. Presently the far bank began catching them, though
he was fishing upstream wet in rather fast water. I hailed him, and he
said he had paraffined his gut cast to within the last two links from
the fly and watched his cast. I was not above a hint, and in a minute or
two I was experiencing the benefit of the wet-fly oil tip, and we were
kept busy till six o’clock brought on the usual rise of Little Pale Blue
of Autumn, and a change to floating patterns. It also involved a change
of cast, for a cross-stream cast with oiled gut betrays you with a vile
drag. It is a disadvantage of paraffining your gut that it limits you to
one cast—viz., that directly upstream. But there are times when it is
well to accept the limitation.
OF GENERALSHIP AND THE WET FLY.
There is a bend on Itchen where the water runs deep and black. Over the
best of it hang three large trees, under which, if trout be rising
anywhere on the river, they will be found pegging away, and often when
they are moving nowhere else. The place is near the spot where anglers
foregather for lunch and a pull at pipe or flask; so the fish under
these trees are hammered more than a little, and their knowledge is in
direct proportion to their experience. Here, too, anglers usually take
apart their split canes in the evening, and, ere they do so, have one
last chuck in the dusk with Sedge, Coachman, or large Red Quill at one
or all of these rising trout, but it is the rarest thing for one to be
caught. I have caught six of them in fifteen years. Perhaps it is
because to cover them one must fish straight across from the opposite
bank—no other attack is possible—and they can hardly fail to see rod and
angler.
But it fell about in the year of grace 1909 that my lawful occasions
took me along the right bank, on which the trees grew, past the haunt of
these aggravating risers, and I took the occasion to observe. None of
them were moving at the time, and the water was lower by some inches
than the normal. I looked in the place where the best of the risers was
usually present when attending to business, but he was not there. Four
or five yards farther upstream the bottom, from being shallow, dipped
suddenly to the deep, with a sharp brown earthy edge, and there, lying
in shelter from the current under the earthy ledge at the head of the
hole, lay a trout which I put down at a comforting two pounds. He saw
me, and slithered into his fastness, but I did not forget the hint. Many
times had I cast to that trout when rising, but always under a tree some
yards below. Now I would cast to him when not rising, and I would fish
him in his hide. The lowest of a small cohort of ribbon-weeds craning
their tips gently over the surface indicated the neighbourhood of the
lip of the hole, and, scanning the opposite side carefully, I marked the
exact bunch of yellow flower from behind which I ought to deliver my
cast, and marked on the hither bank a bunch of purple hemlock which
indicated the centre of the hole.
Later in the day from the opposite bank I sent over a wet Tup’s
Indispensable to the weed’s edge several times without avail.
The next time I came down the fish was rising to surface food, and I
left him severely alone. My time was to be when he was not rising, for
no trout seems able to resist a nymph at any time, even if not feeding,
and a nymph of sorts he should have. Coming back later, I found
stillness reigning; so, mounting a Tup’s Indispensable, I soaked it
well, and flicked it over to the edge of the weeds. It lit, and went
under, leaving the gut for the most part along the surface. The gut
drifted down, the fly end slowly slipping under the upper film. The fly
was withdrawn and the cast repeated. Once more the gut lay along the
surface; once more it slipped slowly through to a point; then it seemed
to move under with a certain decision. I raised my rod-point with a
drawing action, and the trout which had defied ten thousand dry flies
was on. He wasn’t quite two pounds, but it doesn’t matter. It was
generalship which got him, which discerned that in his holt he was
possibly accessible to the seductions of the casual nymph-suggesting wet
fly in a way in which he was not accessible to the temptations of the
too well known dry fly in the place of vantage where he daily fed.
A POTTED TROUT, AND ONE OTHER.
When the drowners are out in the water-meadows flushing the ditches till
they flood the tables and drench the grasses with water seeking its way
back through the herbage to the river by way of ditch, drain, and
carrier, the wise old trout who know their business may be found in
narrow ditches and channels down to foot-wide runnels in search of the
earthworm and the miscellaneous pickings of the grasslands. Again, when
July comes round, and the season of minnowing is indicated, the big
trout once more make their way, in search of minnows, into the narrower
irrigation channels of the water-meadows. So ardent are they at times in
pursuit of their quarry that on occasion it is possible to net them out
without their becoming aware of their danger.
On one occasion I got three good trout thus from behind at one scoop of
the landing-net, and turned them back into the main.
Often, if they get into a channel with a constant flow and a steady
food-supply, trout will not care to drop back to the river, and will
take up a position of strength, where, inaccessible to the fly of the
angler, they daily increase in size and lustihood. Such potted fish are
almost entirely subaqueous feeders, a floating dun rarely crossing their
field of vision. They grow dark and copper-coloured, and very unlike the
fish of the river from which they hail.
One such fish do I remember, who took up his holt in the eddy just above
a hatch-hole, through which ran the whole of a brisk stream some two to
two and a half feet wide, turning at right angles to do so, after
impinging on his eddy as on a sort of water-buffer. It was not hard to
approach the place without being seen, but the moment one looked over
the edge his troutship would flash down through the hatch-hole and into
the racing stream beneath. Several times I mounted a Sedge, tied on a
No. 2 hook attached to a strong cast, and dibbed cautiously over the
edge. Once I caught a companion trout of one pound five ounces, but on
all other occasions the attempt was fruitless.
Tired at length of these failures, and not pleased that such a trout as
our friend of the hatch-hole eddy should give no sport to the fly, one
afternoon I approached the hatch-hole from below, slid down my wide and
large landing-net into the thrust of the stream, and looked suddenly
over into the eddy. There was a brown flash to the hole, and next moment
the trout was kicking in the net—black hogback with red copper sides and
gleaming white belly, two and a half pounds, and as fat as a pig.
Swiftly I conveyed him the needful fifty yards or so to a side-stream
some ten or twelve yards wide, and turned him carefully loose. He made
no pretence of being scared, but moved leisurely away across and up
stream. I watched him cross a patch of weeds and enter a gravelled
clearing, where a tidy trout lay, butt him out of it, and establish
himself in his place. In a few moments he moved up into the next place,
butted out the brace of trout which occupied it, and took the position
of vantage. He did not remain long, but moved to the next pool, again
ejecting the occupants.
Still dissatisfied, he moved higher up to where the stream was narrowed
by camp-sheathing to support a low wooden bridge over which carts pass
to carry the meadow hay. Here he ejected the three or four occupants,
and established himself finally, with his neb close up under the sill of
the bridge—too close for a fly to be got in ahead of him—obviously with
the key of the larder in his pocket; and here daily for the next five
days of my stay I saw him firmly planted, but, though I plied him with
Sedge, and Quill, and Tup’s Indispensable, wet fly and dry fly, I never
got an offer or an indication of a desire to offer from him, nor did I
ever see him break the surface, and I left him _in situ_ at the end of
my visit.
During these five days, however, crossing from the smaller stream to the
main, I saw a trout in a foot-wide runnel hovering with that quivering
of the fins that indicates a willingness to feed. He was not a big
fish—about one pound—but I thought it would be sport to try and cast to
him and catch him in so narrow a channel, and I knelt down to deliver
the fly. He saw me, however, and moved up. It was on my way ’cross
meadow to the main, so I followed him till I came to the place where the
runnel’s water-supply issued from a pipe which entered its head, at
right angles to its course, from the centre of one of the tables. The
flow from the pipe had worried out a corner hole, which was wide and
deep enough to admit my whole landing-net and a bit over, and I dipped
it in. I saw the amber gleam of my trout as he slashed by me and fled
back down the runnel he had ascended, but wriggling in the net which I
lifted was a bouncing fish, black, hogbacked, with copper sides and
white belly, in first-rate fettle, and weighing better, at a guess, than
one and a half pounds, evidently an old inhabitant of that corner. The
main was but a few yards off, and I carefully turned in my captive.
Two days later I was fishing up the bank of the main in blazing
sunshine, searching for a rising fish, but finding none, when my
attention was attracted by a movement in the water close under my bank
some ten or fifteen yards above the spot where I turned the trout in. I
dropped my wet Greenwell’s Glory a foot or so from the spot, and,
answering the draw of the floating gut signalling some under-water
adhesion, I tightened on a nice fish, and after the usual preliminary
exhibition of coyness, emphasized by sundry jumpings, I persuaded him to
come ashore. The spring-balance said one pound ten ounces. Colour, size,
and shape, were identical with the trout I had turned back two days
before, and though, of course, I cannot prove it, I have no doubt he was
the same.
Now, why did one of these potted trout take the fly, and the other
refuse? This is my theory: Both had got the exclusive habit of
subaqueous feeding, but the big one had his nose in a position where it
was impossible to get a wet fly to him so as to pitch above him, or even
alongside of his head, and the water was too fast for it to be worth the
while of a fish of his calibre to turn and follow a mere nymph. The
smaller fish was in a position to be covered, and the moment the nymph
came to him under water he had it as a matter of course. Possibly, in
the same position the larger trout might have done the same.
OF TWO SATURDAY AFTERNOONS.
They were consecutive. Both were in August, 1909, and the reason why
they are recorded is not because of any remarkable success, but because
they illustrate varying conditions on the same river, proving amenable
to varying treatment.
The first found me by the water-side soon after two o’clock. The morning
rise was completely over. Not even a grayling was rising. The water was
deadly still. A full stream was running, because the hay-makers were in
the meadows, and no water that could be kept out was being let into
ditches and carriers; so it was no good exploring them for stray risers,
as at other times I might have done. For some time I explored likely
places under the sedges with floating flies—No. 1 Red Sedge with
hare’s-ear body, Red Ant, and Tup’s Indispensable—but without eliciting
the faintest response. Then about five o’clock I put up a wet
Greenwell’s Glory, and cast it upstream, wet, into every little likely
pool between the bank and the weed-bed which grew intermittently a yard
or two out from the bank. The change was immediate. By six o’clock I had
three and a half brace of average fish (biggest one pound ten ounces),
all on the same fly. Fish would surge a yard or more to meet it, would
even turn downstream and take it, though the floating fly had not moved
a single one to offer. There was no evening rise.
The following Saturday I was down at the same time. There was the same
faint westerly breeze, and much the same light. A few—very few—grayling
were taking black gnats for a short time after my arrival, but they soon
stopped entirely, and I had only one in my basket. Not a rise dimpled
the surface. I continued, however, casting a Black Gnat under my own
bank—the right—for some forty or fifty yards, without an offer. I had
the mortification of seeing three handsome trout move out from position,
and I was just about to change to a Hare’s Ear Sedge when I saw a
grass-moth flutter out of the sedges and across the water. As luck would
have it, I had four floating Grannom in my cap, and it didn’t take long
to knot one on.
In a few minutes I was into a trout, which took as the fly lit. I landed
him, and then another, and yet a further brace, every one of which took
the Grannom without the least hesitation. Then I found myself trenching
on the beat of another angler, and I bethought me that the three fish I
had disturbed might be back in position; so I turned down, and, getting
below them, cast carefully to where they ought to be. I whipped one fly
off; then with the new fly I rose the first of them—quite a nice
fish—hooked him, and lost him after a short tussle. Examining the hook,
I found it pulled out nearly straight owing to a soft wire. Whether that
rattled me or not I don’t know, but I left my two remaining Grannom in
the other two fish successively. Having no more, I fell back on the
Sedge in vain. Equally vain were Red Ant (dry) and Greenwell’s Glory and
Tup’s Indispensable (wet), and, as there was no evening rise, I finished
up with a basket of two and a half brace, which with better handling
should have been four brace.
On each of these afternoons there was no rise of fish or fly; and on one
nothing but a floating pattern did any good, on the other nothing but a
sunk pattern.
The inference that I might have gone back blank on the first occasion
but for the supplemental aid of the wet-fly method does not seem
far-fetched.
CHAPTER VI
UNCLASSIFIED
OF HOVERING AND SOARING, AND OF CRUISING TROUT.
The trout that is glued to the bottom is generally a pretty hopeless
fish. He is either not willing to feed, or, being willing, his
suspicions have been aroused and he has gone down. Pretty stories are
told of how such fish are occasionally startled into taking by the fly
being slammed down with violence on or just behind their heads, but no
such instance has come within my experience.
But the trout which is hovering in mid-water or near the surface is
always a hopeful subject. Anglers will tell you he is willing to feed.
In my belief, he is more than that; he is generally actively
feeding—under water.
I remember a trout which lay in the same hole with six grayling. He was
hovering not far below the surface, but would have nothing to say to a
series of dry flies of appropriate pattern offered him; but a wet
Greenwell’s Glory was too much for him, and he turned and took it first
cast. He was undoubtedly feeding on nymphs, but not over weed, and so
not bulging; yet he presented only the appearance of hovering, or, as
Walton generally calls it, “soaring.”
Another likely fish is the cruiser on his way to his feeding-station. If
I see a wedge-shaped ripple advancing irregularly upstream, and broken
at times by a dimple in the centre, I always feel hopeful, and I know
that such trout are nearly always of unusual size for the water. It is,
of course, difficult to place the fly exactly; but if that difficulty is
overcome, your trout will take it most unsuspiciously. The best course
is to throw to one side and a little ahead of the last rise.
A more difficult proposition is the cruiser who has a small defined
beat. You find him moving up the bank in such wise that every cast is
short of his rise; but suddenly, if you are not ware, you will find that
he has turned and sailed downstream to the bottom of his beat, and that
your rod and line are absolutely over him. Such a trout seems always
fastidious and picksome, but it is all the more gratifying to circumvent
him. He is usually taking toll of insects collected in eddies, and a
spinner of sorts is more likely to take him than a dun; but he will
often rush for a fly that is being withdrawn under water.
OF THE PORPOISE ROLL.
There is one peculiarly irritating kind of rise in which trout indulge.
Just like porpoises, they come up, and, scarcely breaking the surface
with the head, expose first the back fin and then the tail as they go
down. Often of an afternoon or evening it seems as if every trout in the
river were busy at this game. The difficulty is to know, on such
occasions, what they are taking. “Detached Badger” (p. 119 of “Dry-Fly
Fishing”) suggests larvæ, but though at times I have caught fish thus
rising with sunk flies, I am inclined to doubt their taking nymphs or
larvæ, and to suspect spinners. This (even if the trout be taking
nymphs) is not properly described as “bulging,” that term being confined
to the swashing rises when a fish rushes to and fro, making visible
waves, ending in a boil as it turns in the act of fielding the
subaqueous insect. Fortunately, this porpoise type of rise is rare, for
when trout indulge in it sport is consistently bad. I have been
promising myself for the last two or three seasons that, when I drop on
such a rise, I will try Mr. F. M. Halford’s spent spinner patterns, but
in an average number of days’ fishing I have failed to drop on an
occasion when the trout have been thus rising.
CHAPTER VII
SUNDRY CONSIDERATIONS
OF THE RELATION OF PATTERN TO THE POSITION OF TROUT, AND HEREIN OF THE
TAKING OFF OF WARY WILLY.
It is perhaps a small matter which is treated under this head, but
anything which helps the angler to a correct selection of fly is so much
to the good, and the point I want to make here is that the haunt of a
fish is an item to be taken note of in deciding what items to put upon
the menu to be offered for his selection. For instance, if your trout be
in position in the middle of a fairly wide stream, and that be his
habitual post, it is practically little good giving him an imitation of
any insect which haunts the bank only, such as alder in its season,
sedge, grass-moth, or willow-fly, which, on the other hand, may be tried
in their season, with every prospect of success, upon fish under the
banks.
Well do I remember how marked this rule was in its application on a day
in September, 1903, on a German limestone river. In the middle the
willow-fly, which was out in quantity that day, was no good. The trout
wanted duns, and willow-flies were no use to them, or probably there,
away from the banks, were practically unknown; but under the alder and
willow-fringed banks on either side the trout took the spent willow-fly
freely, and, of thirty-seven trout, no less than thirty-four fell that
day to the willow-fly under the banks, but not one from mid-river. Many
a time the trout will take a sedge or an imitation of the grass-moth
under the banks when quite shy of them in midstream. In connection with
this I may record an incident which is framed in my mind as the strange
disappearance of Wary Willy.
Wary Willy was almost a public character. He inhabited a club water not
far from Winchester, and was always at his post when duty called. But he
was of an obliging turn of mind, and always ready to show sport to the
new-comer who might be tempted to put a fly over him. Yet it was not for
nothing that he had earned his name, for, though many had risen him,
none was recorded as having hooked him. His holt was under a grassy bank
(right of the river), about three yards above the spot where a willow
stump extended a solitary branch at right angles to the current, a foot
above and about two yards out into the stream, so that any angler who
paid his respects to William had to send his invitation across the
willow-bough, a state of things which led to difficulties and language
for the angler, and to an amused retreat on the part of Willy. Yet a
short time later he would be back at his post, adding to his collection
of the Ephemeridæ with undiminished zest.
I was not a member of the club, but I paid a visit to a friend who had a
rod, and he very good-naturedly insisted on my trying his nine-foot
Leonard over Wary Willy, and he brought me to the place. I had no tackle
with me, so I had to use my friend’s floating flies. The wind was light
and in the right direction, and I got my fly over the branch nicely and
covered him several times, and as I let my reel-line drop on the water
below the branch the current carried my fly back successfully a number
of times; but at length I was hung up, and when I tried to release
myself Willy had business elsewhere.
On this water the club members and the keepers said that sedges were no
use. It was a dun and spinner water only. So when in the afternoon I met
the head-keeper, and saw a small Red Sedge in his cap, I made no bones
of asking for it, as it was of no use. Borrowing the Leonard once more,
I tied on the Red Sedge, and stole up cautiously to Willy’s abode. But
just ere I got to position a fish rose to the right of his place, about
three yards out from the bank. I did not wish him to scare Willy, so, to
get him out of the way first, I dropped the sedge upon his nose, and he
had it immediately. He was very indignant at the imposition that had
been put upon him, and turned several somersaults in the air, and
altogether put up quite a good fight for a fish of his ounces, which
numbered twenty-five, before my friend’s landing-net received him. I
had, however, steered him carefully, so that his antics should not
disturb William, and I approached that worthy’s holt with a modest
confidence that William stood in the way of getting a surprise. But
William was not there. William never came back. He couldn’t. He was
dead, and in my friend’s landing-net. But it was several days before
remorse began to work in me, for it was not till a week or so later that
my friend told me of the disappearance of Wary Willy. But Willy had
always been fished with duns. He knew all the patterns of Holland and
Chalkley and Ogden Smith, but never had he had cause to suspect the
genuineness of a sedge—and so, good-bye Willy!
OF THE USE OF SPINNERS DURING THE RISE OF DUNS, AND HEREIN OF THE
VAGARIES OF THE BLUE-WINGED OLIVE.
“The Red Quill,” says Mr. F. M. Halford, “is one of the sheet-anchors of
the dry-fly fisherman on a strange river when in doubt.” Never was a
truer word spoken. Mr. Englefield of Winchester, I believe, conducted
the experiment of confining himself to the Red Quill (in a variety of
sizes and shades, and with and without the addition of gold and silver
tags) for a whole season, and did as well with the one fly as in other
seasons with a larger selection. And it is a remarkable fact that the
Red Quill, bearing more resemblance to a Red Spinner than to a dun, will
frequently kill during a rise of duns as well as, or better than, quite
a good imitation of the dun itself. It will also be found that during
the rise of any kind of dun its spinner will often take as well as, if
not better than, the subimago pattern. For instance, a Red Spinner
during a rise of olives, a Claret Spinner when the iron blue dun is on,
and a Sherry Spinner when the blue-winged olive is on.
All the spinners do not die and fall spent on the water over night. Some
come on to the water in the cool of the early morning, and if the angler
tries in the hot weather for an early morning trout, the spinner may be
commended to him as giving him his best chance, so far as floating
patterns are concerned. And when, before the rise comes on, an odd fish
or so may be found in position putting up occasionally at something,
spinners may legitimately be suspected. Therefore it may be that, when
the rise comes on, the memory of a recent acquaintance with more
delicious morsels than the current duns leads to a readiness on his part
to absorb the floating imitation spinner.
The blue-winged olive is a large and handsome fly, and its hatch is
usually an evening matter, though I have seen it at all hours of the
day. But when it is on, and there are other duns at the same time, it is
always possible to distinguish the trout which are taking the
blue-winged olive by the curious shape of the boil they make in taking
it; a kidney-shaped boil, with two distinct whorls right and left. And
if the angler is provided with Orange Quills on No. 1 hooks, and will
pick out these fish, he may count on sport worth remembering, though
possibly not a spinner may be on the water at the time. Curiously
enough, such a thing as a good imitation of the blue-winged olive in the
subimago form has yet to be invented. Patterns are tied which will kill
an occasional trout, but the Orange Quill, if the rise be anything like
a good one, means three or four brace, and probably all big fish.
One evening, June 24 in 1908, I ran down to Winchester by the 6.50 train
to see Eton v. Winchester on the next day, and I got down there about
eight o’clock. I had not meant to fish overnight, but I thought there
was time for a cast before the dusk drew in, and I picked up a nine-foot
Leonard and a landing-net, stuck a damper with a cast in my pocket, and
a small box of flies, and got down to a broad shallow. I found several
fish rising, and at once diagnosed the blue-winged olive. So I tied on a
large Orange Quill and cast to the nearest. Up he came, and was off with
a flounder. Without losing a moment, I covered the next with the ensuing
cast. The same thing occurred, and I promptly dropped my next cast a
yard to the right over the third fish. He, too, came up and fastened. He
went straight to weed, but, holding him quite lightly, I soon had the
satisfaction of feeling him beat himself free of the weeds, and
presently I netted him out. The fly was quite soaked, and I tried to
change it, but it was too dark, and so I knocked off, having risen three
trout to the Orange Quill in three successive casts.
Some years ago I dressed for my friend, M. Louis Bouglé, of Paris and
the Fly-fishers’ Club, a winged imitation of the blue-winged olive,
which is at certain seasons almost the only dun on the chalk streams of
Normandy, and he can kill an occasional fish on it. Its dressing is
immaterial, for I never could do any good with it myself; but one
evening I was fishing the Varennes with M. Bouglé, when there came on a
good fall of blue-winged olive spinner. My friend caught a trout with
his pattern, and by the aid of a spoon I got from its stomach, and
turned into a glass, three large greenish-amber spinners, with the
distinctive three setæ; and next morning in a capital light I tied an
imitation of these insects, spent-gnat-wise, with seal’s fur body of
palish yellow-green olive of appropriate mixture of furs. Next evening
we each got fish with these imitations, M. Bouglé more than I, and I
have always been promising myself that I will put it up one blue-winged
olive evening on the Hampshire rivers; but when the occasion has come,
and that distinctive rise is seen, I have never been able to resist
taking the Orange Quill rather than the spent olive pattern out of the
box where they repose together. It is hard to resist three or four
brace.
OF GENERAL FEEDERS, AND HEREIN OF THE UNDOING OF AUNT SALLY.
There are places in most rivers—generally, I think, about the spots most
frequented by man—where trout establish themselves, which seem, though
willing enough to take duns as they come, to be independent of them as a
staple food, and to take gaily every day and all day long, and often far
into the night, whatever fly-food comes along, always excepting, _bien
entendu_, the angler’s flies, however delicately offered. Such trout are
readily put off their feed, but not for long, and the angler, returning
to the spot after a short absence, may make up his mind to find his
friend back in position, pegging away as freely as ever. Everyone has a
chuck at these fish—no one can resist them; but it is a rare thing for
one to be caught—and the Coachman may account for a few. A strong ruffle
in the water _may_ enable you to take one unaware, but, generally
speaking, the ordinary tactics, whether dry-fly or wet, are thrown away
on such fish, and the only chance is to fall back on something
exceptional either in lure or in method of attack, or both.
Followeth the example of
_The Undoing of Aunt Sally._
She was called Aunt Sally because everyone felt bound to have a shy at
her. Her coign of vantage was near the bottom of the water, where the
fishery begins, and her irritating “pip, pip,” as she took fly after fly
in the culvert that was her home was too much for the nerves of nine
anglers out of ten, so that the absurdest efforts to circumvent her were
made daily—efforts to float a dry upwinged dun down the culvert from the
top: result, immediate and irremediable drag; efforts to flick a fly
upstream to her in the culvert from below: result, broken rod-tops,
barbless hooks, flies flicked off against the brickwork, and other
disasters, leading to profanity.
The _locus in quo_ was a stream in the South of England, flowing some
fifteen yards or so wide at a good even pace, with a nice purl on it,
down to and past a deep hole used for bathing by the farmers’ lads. From
this hole, a culvert in the left bank, a yard wide and, say, four yards
long, diverts a considerable body of the stream into a new channel, to
drive a mill in the town below. This was the fastness in which Aunt
Sally had taken up her abode, and throughout the spring and summer had
defied all efforts to dislodge her.
It was my first visit to the stream that year, and from 9 a.m. till 3
p.m. on an August day I had worked away for meagre results. There was no
rise of fly after ten o’clock, and a strong rise of water-rats. Three
trout had I turned over, and one of one pound two ounces reposed in my
bag. I had not seen a rising fish for hours, when, weary and
disappointed, I drifted down the right bank to the bottom of the
fishery, and sat down to rest on the steps which are set in the hole to
assist bathers in clambering out.
“Pip!” I heard coming from somewhere. I looked upstream, I looked under
my own bank, but not a sign of a ring was to be seen. “Pip, pip!” again.
At last, leaning low and looking through the culvert, I saw, some two
yards down, what I took to be a dimple of a rising fish. Watching a few
moments, I saw it repeated, and my spirits revived. My point was fine,
so I took it off and knotted on a yard of sound Refina gut, and ended it
with a brown beetle with peacock’s herl body and red legs. I soaked him
well, so that there should be no drag on the surface, and then, getting
my length for the other side, let the fly and gut drag in the stream
till the moment I made my cast. Fly and gut together struck the brick
face of the culvert, and fell in a heap at the mouth. Instantly the
current caught the fly and gut, and extended it down the culvert. Almost
at the same moment the current of the main stream, across which my
reel-line lay, began to drag upon it, and completed the extension of the
gut by the time the beetle had run a short two yards down the culvert.
At once it began to drag back. This was too much for Aunt Sally—to have
that beetle scuttling from her when it was almost in her mouth. She came
at it, and in a flash secured it ere it could escape from the culvert;
and before she could turn she was skull-dragged out of her fastness and
turned down into the stream below. She made a determined fight for it,
but she was very soundly hooked, and I gave no needless law, so that her
fifteen inches were soon laid out upon the grass. Not knowing of her
fame, I was quite content with her one pound eleven ounces; but an
angler who told me of her reputation said she had always been put down
as a much bigger fish. An hour later I looked down the culvert again,
but the water had dropped some inches, and there was not enough current
through the culvert to make it fishable. I had hit the happy moment for
the undoing of Aunt Sally.
OF ATTENTION TO CASUAL FEEDERS.
The happening fish is a godsend to the angler whom time or trains,
failure to find the taking fly, or other act of God or the King’s
enemies, have prevented from making his basket during the main hatch of
duns. By the “happening fish” is to be understood, not the chance riser
to a chance cast, but the trout which, by reason of a larger stomach
capacity, misfortune of position, shortage of fly, disinclination for
the society of tailers, or the pursuit of the succulent shrimp, or
neglect of his opportunities during the main rise, is left hungry, or at
least hungry enough not to have left off feeding after—often long
after—the main rise has faded out; and also the trout whose hearty
appetite ranges him under the bank in advance of the rise, in a state of
impatience for his meal, which leads him to sample such _hors d’œuvres_
as the stream may bring his way. For reasons which shall be made
apparent, both of these classes of trout offer themselves an easier prey
to the angler than the trout who is busy with a steady diet of hatching
duns. It is doubtful whether the advice often tendered to the
over-eager, to allow the rising trout to get well set at the wicket, is
really sound, as, by the time he is well set, his appreciation of what
is offered him has become greatly sharpened by a prolonged experience of
it as it should be, and he is as likely as not to refuse anything that
does not appeal to him as being identical with the natural insect he has
been absorbing so much of; and I know no more likely fish to take, if
you get your fly to him right, than a trout which is cruising up to his
feeding-ground, picking a fly or two on the way. Freely I confess that
whole rises have passed me too many a time without my having succeeded
in ascertaining what the trout would take, and on such days—and again on
days when trains have borne me to the water too late for the morning
rise—I might frequently, but for my friend the casual feeder, have
brought home a toom creel.
The places where the casual feeder is to be found at home are various;
but, speaking generally, the casual feeder’s position depends on the
nature of the fare which the time of day affords him, and the odds are
long that from the end of May, when the first of the sedges (the
so-called Welshman’s Button—the “Dun Cut” of the fathers of angling)
comes upon the water, that position will be found under the banks where
sedge-flies and other bank insects most do congregate, and from which
they venture upon the water; at bridges where a constriction of the
current concentrates the food; at bridges where spinners are apt to
dance until their dancing minutes be done, and sedges often shelter in
brickwork; at hatches where woodlice and other insects harbour in the
wood, and are prone to drop into the current; in pockets in the weeds;
and in ditches and carriers where the hatch of duns is sparse and
unsatisfactory, and a trout must rely upon other resources for his daily
sustenance. This may be floating or subaqueous, but is more likely in
carriers and swift waters to be subaqueous, inasmuch as it is only for a
brief period that a hatch takes place; but subaqueous forms of fly-life
are always about (though, no doubt, sparsely at other times than that of
the rise), and experience proves that when no definite rise is in
progress, no trout that is on the alert finds it easy to resist a nymph
who has left his shelter. Hence, given the willingness of the trout to
feed, and the absence of a steady diet of dominant attractiveness, there
is every inducement for him to be of an open mind as to the provender
that will seduce him.
Then there is our friend the “tailer,” of whom more elsewhere.
Thus, instead of spiking his rod when the morning rise is over, and
taking his Walton or his Marcus Aurelius or his Omar Khayyám from his
pocket, let the wise angler concentrate on the casual feeder; and if his
reward be not great, there is every chance of its being quite
respectable, and he may be saved the humiliation of an empty creel.
OF THE FREQUENTATION OF DITCHES, DRAINS, AND CARRIERS.
I know of no sight more gloomy than that of a golfer painfully tramping
from shot to shot. But perhaps the next gloomiest sight is the angler
who, with perhaps but a single day at his disposal, lounges hour by hour
by the side of the main river, waiting with such patience as he can
muster for the rise which comes not. Let us suppose that he is either
unable or too magnanimous to fish the wet fly, that there are no fish
lying, either visibly or inferentially, in convenient places under his
own bank, so that they could be fished to with a dry sedge or a Red
Quill. Let him come with me, and we will pull some sport out of adverse
conditions. Let us begin here, where this hatch is letting a goodly
supply of water into this carrier for the watering of the meadows. Be it
known unto you, O angler, that the trout of ditches and carriers are far
less affected by the rise of duns, and far readier to feed at all times
or any time, than those fish of the main river. Here our choice is to
fish either a sunk fly, suggesting a nymph (for here an upwinged dun can
hardly get through undrowned), a floating fly resembling one of the
sedges which dodge about the camp-sheathing or a good-sized Wickham’s
Fancy. Search all the tail of the run carefully with one or the other of
these patterns, and it shall go hard with you if you do not get a
chance, at any rate, from a passable fish—possibly more than one.
A little lower down the carrier runs through a culvert, and, if the
hay-makers have not got him out, one is likely to find quite a
respectable trout just below the arch, and he is to be had if you fish
him right. Farther down there is a low wood bridge, through which the
stream flows briskly, and below this there are usually two or three
feeding fish. For some reason these are specially sensitive to shadow. I
have had many fish from this spot from both sides, but never one from
the right, or west, side after two o’clock, or from the other side
before two. Having fished these fish, and caught or lost or put them
down, let us move over to the next piece of water. It is slow, and has
little weed. If it had been a day with a ruffle of wind, or had the
drowners turned a good current through, we would have fished it up yard
by yard; but to-day it is no good. But here, a bit farther on, a brisk
stream runs through a little hatch, and for a hundred and fifty yards or
so makes a most merry little length. Keep low in the long grass, fish it
foot by foot, and, so far as you can, turn _down_ all the fish you
scare. If you send one up, sit down and wait. It will not be long ere
the others recover their equanimity. On a good day you should get your
two brace from this length, either with No. 1 Red Sedge, No. 1 Red
Quill, No. 0 Pink Wickham or No. 0 Tup’s Indispensable wet, or No. 0
Wickham’s Fancy. Now let us wind up along another brisk little piece of
water, perhaps fifteen feet wide, which races in a series of runs, and
stretches right across the meadows. It is known as the Highland Burn,
and it is full of sporting fish, and you must take the chance of hooking
a half-pounder along with your chance of a fish nearer two pounds. And
do not neglect the ditch which runs in at right angles halfway up. I
have seen a past-master take no less than three capital trout from those
few yards in one day, turning each as hooked down into the Highland
Burn, and killing him there.
OF THE NEGOTIATION OF TAILERS.
Authority hath it that “the best policy is, perhaps, to leave tailing
fish alone”; but the busy man, who only gets an occasional day’s
fishing, to whom that advice is too trying and disappointing (meaning
me), was recommended to try an Orange Bumble or a Furnace. With an
exception I shall presently refer to, it is some years since I have had
any experience of tailing trout, for an alteration in a weir has made
such a difference in the pace and level of a length on the chalk stream
I most do fish, that whereas in the old days the tailer used to be a
common sight there, nowadays it is the greatest rarity. But in those old
days the tailer was my stand-by. If—as was frequently the case—I made
naught of the morning rise, I would betake me to this length and sit
down gaily to the siege of each tailer in succession, with the
confidence that, unless I made some mistake and scared the fish—and
tailers are not too easily scared—sooner or later he was my fish. It was
often later, for I had to go on casting, casting, casting, in the hope
that the moment might come when my fly would be passing over the trout
at the moment when his head was raised, and he was taking breath before
another big go at the shrimps and other food in the weed-beds. The
frequent casting gave much opportunity for mistakes, and not
infrequently I scared my fish, after wasting half an hour or more over
him; but, on the other hand, I seldom failed to secure at least one
fish, and oftener a leash. The method was simplicity itself. I sat down
below my fish, and dropped a Pink Wickham a yard or so above where his
tail dimpled the surface, and floated it down over him quite dry. This
was repeated so long as the fish was there, but if he lifted his head in
time to see the fly come over him, there seemed to be some mysterious
attraction in that pattern which forbade him to refuse it. Whether this
is so in other waters I know not, but I often regret the obliteration of
the old race of tailers. They were a great stand-by, and always put up a
big battle when hooked. The size of fly was 00 for smooth water, but in
a ruffle the single cipher size proved better medicine.
The single occasion above referred to was in May, 1909, in a different
part of the river. The water was running thinly over a broad shallow,
very full up with weed-beds, and, instead of standing nearly
perpendicularly on their heads in order to tail, large numbers of trout
and grayling were grubbing at an acute angle with the bottom among the
weed-beds, and with violent wriggles of head and body dislodging small
insects, which they pursued with rushes plainly marked upon the surface,
ending, at the moment of capture of the prey, with swirls. I did not put
up a Pink Wickham, because I had another experiment to make. In the
previous July I had caught three brace before eleven o’clock on a nymph
imitated in olive seal’s fur from one found in the mouth of a trout on
the previous day, and I wanted to give it a trial here, on the chance
that it might be found that it was nymphs, and not shrimps, that the
tailing fish were shaking out. So, keeping the artificial nymph soaking
at the end of my line in the run at my feet, I despatched it every now
and then across the course of the trout, when, desisting from their
grubbing, they pursued the flying quarry. It was generally the case
that, by the time the fly lit, the fish was careering off in some
different direction; but several fish pursued my fly and swirled at it,
and one takable trout and one short of the regulation twelve inches
succeeded in taking it. It was a short and most inconclusive experiment,
but, if occasion serves, it will be renewed.
OF THE FASCINATION OF BRIDGES.
Years ago, before ever I knew the Upper Itchen, there was a wooden farm
bridge which crossed the main river to carry produce. Whether the bridge
fell into decay through disuse and neglect consequent upon the fields on
the east side being separately let to another farmer, or whether the
separate letting occurred because the bridge became dangerous, and would
have cost too much to repair, anyhow, when I came first to know this
particular part of the river in the early eighties, there was nothing
left of the bridge except a stump or two, green with slime, brown with
rot, showing just above water, or intercepting weed—just that and a band
of bottom a little higher than the river-bed above and below, as if the
made bottom which had carried the bridge still persisted. Even the
stumps are long gone the way of all stumps, and the made bed is only
just traceable if you know where to find it. But for all that, after all
these years, this is the place in the river where trout are to be found
feeding, if they are found feeding anywhere; and they feed in much the
same way, seeming secure, yet really shy, as the trout feed under or
just below all the bridges on the river. All bridge trout seem to be
shy. Some bridges make shyer trout than others. I knew one—a
railway-bridge on that length—under which in four-and-twenty years I
never got a trout, or even a rise, for all I tried persistently, wet and
dry, until 1908, and then only because on that particular day a strong
ruffle of wind blew up the arch and made good big waves. Then I got a
brace to a floating Tup’s Indispensable, and lost another fish. Whether
it is the holt into which to run at hint of danger, or the insects which
haunt the woodwork, or the clear space of unweeded water in which to
swim, or what not, bridges seem to have a special fascination for trout;
and if the fly (preferably a small sedge) can be delicately dropped over
the fish as if it fell from the woodwork, the chances of getting him are
much increased.
Trout seem specially watchful at bridges, and, if the water be not too
fast, will turn to take a fly which is aimed to hit them on the tail.
CHAPTER VIII
MAINLY TACTICAL
OF THE DELIBERATE DRAG.
Of all trials of the chalk-stream angler, perhaps drag is the worst. Yet
even drag may be made use of on occasion, to add to the weight of the
creel. Years back, on the Erlaubnitz in South Germany, I sat by a
mill-head on a blazing and wellnigh hopeless September afternoon. The
water was low, much of the head having been run off by the sawmill, and
such little current as there was confined itself almost entirely to the
centre. Brown and dirty-looking weeds topped the surface along my side
of the head. Suddenly I detected a tiny dimple in a little spot where,
among the weeds, an eighteen-inch square of clean surface showed itself.
I despatched my fly—a Landrail and Hare’s Ear Sedge on a No. 3 hook—and
by good luck or good management it dropped neatly on the spot. I waited.
Three minutes passed. Nothing happened. Then I thought to recover my fly
and drop it again in the hole, but with rather less delicacy, so as to
attract attention to its fall. But first I had to recover it. I moved it
gently towards the side of the hole, but I could not prevent the effect
of a drag on the surface. Yet ere the fly had moved three inches a good
pound-and-a-half trout had it, and, after a game of pully-hauly in the
weeds, was duly brought to net. This was a limestone stream, and not a
chalk stream.
But in August, 1908, I was on my way through the meadows to the main
Itchen, when in a much-weed-encumbered carrier I became aware of a good
trout lying in, and near the head of, a little pool of open water three
or four yards long at most, and perhaps a third as wide. My rod and cast
were ready, but no fly. So I knotted on a good big sedge—I think a No. 3
Silver Sedge. The water was glassy smooth, and the current would not
have carried my fly the length of the open water in much under five
minutes. I was afraid to cast above the fish, or to right or left of his
head, for I knew it would send him scuttling to weed. I wanted to drop
the fly just behind his eyes, but I misjudged, and it fell several
inches short, almost upon his tail. I waited a moment; the trout lay
still, but evidently excited. Then I remembered my German experience,
and began to draw the fly along the surface. Immediately the trout
turned and slashed it, and was soundly hooked. Candour compels me to
admit that the gut was also smashed by a strike of unregulated violence;
but this is entirely beside the point, for it in no sense detracts from
the value of my illustration of the occasional serviceableness of the
calculated drag in still waters, even with the dry fly.
My friend M. Bouglé acutely distinguishes drag of the kind here
described as the drag of _déplacement_, as compared with the drag of
_rétention_, which occurs on moving water.
On the Pang at Bradfield resides a blacksmith named Holloway, who is a
first-rate angler, and I have seen him practise the deliberate drag on
fast water with the May-fly in a manner which in other hands would send
every trout scuttling to cover, but he did not put them down a bit. He
ties a May-fly—not a very pretty confection, but admirably constructed
for this purpose. The hackle, which is white, instead of standing out
more or less at right angles to the hook-shank, is so tied as to lie
almost flat upon it, and as a result the fly leaves practically no wake
when it is drawn over the fish, and the movement, which he practises
assiduously, far from scaring the fish, appears to be actually
attractive. Yet the Pang fish are quite wary, and liberties may not be
taken with them with impunity. In this case once more we have the drag
of _déplacement_, but it is hard to see why it should not be just as
fatal to the angler’s chances as the drag of _rétention_.
IN THE GLASS EDGE.
A more unpromising May day than that I now tell of it would be hard to
conceive. The wind—from the west, with a bite of north in it—blew for
the most part dead across stream with strong, shuddering gusts, so
violent at times as to force the angler, taken unawares, two or three
steps nearer to the water’s edge, and more than once nearly to
precipitate him into the water between the sedgy tussocks which fringed
one side of this length of Upper Itchen. On the previous day there had
been a sparse skirmishing line of dark olives on the water at 10.15,
covering the main advance at 11.30; but to-day 10.30, 11, 11.30, noon,
and the intervening quarters, chimed from the belfry, without a fly
showing on the water or in the air. At noon the sun shone out for a few
moments, and made fitful reappearances at intervals till 1.30. Strolling
slowly and watchfully up the bank, with an eye on the far side, the
angler came upon Keeper Humphrey in attendance on another angler, and,
on his advice, put up a Red Quill on a No. 0 hook, for lack of one a
size larger, and, leaving the other a couple of hundred yards below, sat
down to wait for the rise. At length a little upwinged dun was seen in
sail in the glass edge, hugging the far bank as close as possible. For a
few yards it staggered down, battered by the gale, and then slid
sideways among the flags under pressure of a stronger gust than usual,
and was lost to sight. Pitiably sparse the fly were, and in half an hour
not more than half a dozen came in sight. All vanished disappointingly
among the flags. But at last the watcher was rewarded by seeing one
disappear in the centre of a tiny widening ring, which scarcely rippled
out beyond the narrow glass edge. In a moment distance was got by a
trial cast a yard or two downstream, and then the Red Quill dropped
perkily a foot above the spot where the dun had disappeared, and went
swiftly down on the full current—so swiftly that the angler did not
realize until a second too late that the same neb which had lain in wait
for the dun had sucked in the Red Quill. The strike was just too late,
and a pricked and badly scared trout dashed violently out into the
stream.
In the next little bay another rising trout was located, but the
violence of the wind made it necessary to cast too tight a line in order
to drop the fly in the glass edge, with the result that a drag began to
develop immediately, putting the trout down. A few yards higher a clump
of trees made a sort of buffer of air, and the conditions were a bit
easier. Yet, though the sun came out and showed the Red Quill gliding
down the glass edge, the rise of the next trout was such a delicately
neat movement that the angler was once again almost taken unawares. Yet
this time he fastened, and his first fish of the day, after a
dumbfounded second’s pause, forged upstream with a rush, tearing line
from the protesting reel. He was not, however, allowed to reach his holt
among the weeds, but was turned, and netted out thirty yards or so
downstream, after a strenuous resistance. The hook was on the extreme
edge of his upper lip, but, fortunately, had taken a beautifully firm
hold. The spring-balance recorded one pound fifteen ounces—rather a
disappointment, for his hogback and splendour of general condition
suggested that he might, though a short sixteen inches, have topped two
pounds.
A moment sufficed to knot on a fresh fly, and the very first cast into
the glass edge, to a glide where a dimple betrayed a trout, produced
another rise; and again the offer was accepted, and an excellent fight
put up. When eventually netted out, the fish proved to be one pound nine
ounces, and even handsomer and finer in condition than number one. He
was hooked exactly in the same way. There was one more rise spotted, the
fish risen, touched, and seen in the clearness of the glass edge to
flash some yards upstream under the far bank. Then the sun went in for a
spell, and all was over for the day. The other angler had a brace—two
pounds ten ounces and one pound odd—caught in the same way by floating
the Red Quill in the glass edge.
This was one of those rare days when the dry fly can be fished into the
bays under the opposite bank.
OF THE CROSS-COUNTRY CAST.
If questioned on their favourite mode of approaching a trout, it is
probable that nineteen out of every twenty chalk-stream anglers, if not
a larger proportion, would plump for the right bank with the rod held
over the water. It is doubtless the easiest method. It has various
advantages not difficult to enumerate, but it may be gravely doubted
whether it is the most effective from the point of view of catching
trout. Later under the caption (“The Bank of Vantage”) it is shown—with
what success the reader must judge—that in most states of the wind the
left bank has, contrary to general opinion (other things, of course,
being equal), decided advantages over the right.
Apart from states of the wind, it must be apparent that, where the
horizontal cast is used, and often where the cast is not strictly
horizontal, the left bank has the advantage over the right that the rod
and line are less displayed, and far less likely to alarm a wary fish
under the angler’s own bank than a rod held more or less over the
stream; and, naturally, it is only to a fish under the angler’s own bank
that the cross-country cast is made.
Secondly, there is the advantage that little of the line—possibly not
all of the gut, even—strikes the water. It is enough if the drag and the
recovery occur far enough below the fish not to disturb him; but if the
fly be the right pattern the drag is a matter of no consequence, as the
cross-country cast comes so lightly, so naturally, and with such
concealment of its perils from the trout, that as frequently as not he
takes the fly at the first offer.
Of course, the vegetation on the bank may be such as to render it almost
impossible to deliver this cast without being hung up, but the angler
should not be too ready to assume that this is so. It is wonderful how,
with care, a light hand, and a little patience, the line may be
recovered, and what risks may be taken with comparative impunity. It is
often astonishing to see how anglers who pay largely for their fishing
rights, own costly rods, reels, and lines, and make long train journeys
for their fishing, will decline to tackle trout in difficult positions,
because it involves the possible loss of a cast or a fly—perhaps 1s.
2½d. all told—with the odds long in favour of the loss being no more
than a fly, and perhaps a point. I am ever for the adventure. The
certain smash does not always come off.
But after the meadows are cut, and when the sedges are low, it is often
excellent sport to beat slowly up on either bank, left or right, keeping
in either case well inland—especially so on the right bank—and flicking
a grass-moth or a small sedge dry into every little eddy and bay, and on
to every likely spot under the bank, with never more than three feet—or
four feet at the outside—of gut on the water (often not more than
eighteen inches or a foot). Of course, a rod which will cast a short
line accurately is indispensable. The fly lights like thistledown. On
such days, if you work orthodoxly up your right bank, casting a longish
line upstream, and covering the water with it, you shall not hook one
fish for three which you shall take with the cross-country cast. Then,
to recover it, you must either draw it slowly over the edge where the
danger lies, or you must flick the line up so as to belly vertically
away from you, and pick the gut and fly cleanly off the water or the
herbage. And if occasionally one is hung up, what does it matter? If it
be of service, the angler is not denied such relief as the golfer freely
avails himself of when the deadly bunker has him for its own.
WHAT TUSSOCKS ARE FOR.
This is not a riddle. It is a speculation which many anglers have
probably indulged in. Some have considered them a providential
arrangement for the protection of the business of the dealer in flies
and tackle, and verily they have their reasons. At one time I was of
that fold, but of late years I have had glimpses of the other side of
the shield, and I am beginning to realize that while tussocks may be put
along river-sides as a trial of the patience of some, yet for others
they are a means of providing an occasional trout, and generally a good
one, on days when disappointment is king. They are placed, in other
words, for the trout to stand on the upstream side and the angler on the
downstream side, the latter substantially concealed from the former. It
is equally true that the former is also concealed from the latter; but
this is of little consequence if, as is commonly the case, the screen is
not dense enough to hide the ring from the angler when the trout takes
his fly.
But it may be said, “What is the use of the concealment if the
inevitable result of casting over the tussock is to get hung up in it?”
Well, it is not the inevitable result. There are two ways of tackling a
tussock. One implies the use of a short rod, or at least a rod capable
of an accurate short cast. It will not do to dib. At the first glimpse
of the rod-top over the tussock off goes your trout. No; the fly must be
cast, and cast so near the tussock that it drifts down to the fish just
above the tussock before it is necessary to pick it up for the next cast
with a forward flick. The other method is to cast over the river-side of
the drooping sedges of the tussock from such a distance that only the
gut and a foot or two of the casting line go over the tussock, and to
let the belly of the line dip in the water between you and the tussock.
Then, if the fly be not taken, the angler shall see his line coming back
smoothly and at the pace of the stream over the tussock, and finally the
fly shall be lifted off the surface with no disturbance, and be drawn by
the current softly over the tussock, and drop on the surface on his own
side, free for the next attempt.
Obviously, this latter cast is not well suited to the left bank unless
the angler be left-handed, and, then, it is not suited to the right
bank, unless he be ambidextrous. _Ergo_, the rod which casts a short
line with delicacy and accuracy is a desideratum for this business, as
for many others. A heavy rod will seldom be found to do it. When you
have hooked your fish, he may be depended on to carry your line at once
free of the tussock. I have never had an instance to the contrary, and I
have rather an affection for the tussock cast.
OF THE ALLEGED MARCH BROWN.
Everyone who reads much angling literature must have come across
ingenuous arguments on the wonderful usefulness of the March Brown even
on waters, such as the chalk streams, where the natural is not found. It
is so. I have found it so myself. One 6th of April some years back I
reached the Wey, to find that the Grannom was well on a good week in
advance of time, and that I had one imitation, and one only, in my box.
To improve upon the humour of the situation, I allowed—nay, I forced—the
first trout to whom I presented it to keep it. But was I downhearted?
No! I had some small floating March Browns, which, with the whisks
pinched off, made quite satisfactory Grannoms and saved the situation.
On other occasions I have used Grannom and March Brown indifferently to
represent the grass-moths with which the meadows and banks were teeming,
and they each did the job excellently and were most attractive. I have
also used the March Brown as a Brown Silver Horns, and to simulate other
sedges, and there is no doubt that it is an excellent fly, and, as
generally tied, quite a poor imitation of the natural March Brown, and
quite a passable imitation of almost anything else.
GENERAL FLIES AND FANCY FLIES.
The alleged March Brown may be called a “general fly”—_i.e._, it is a
more or less satisfactory imitation, not merely of one, but of many
flies. In the same way the Red Quill is a general fly, covering not only
a series of red spinners, but also probably the whirling blue dun. Tup’s
Indispensable used as a floater is an excellent rendering of many red
spinners. The sunk variety is an efficient rendering of many nymphs. No.
1 Whitchurch is, I see, included by Mr. F. M. Halford among fancy flies;
but I should venture to class it as “general,” being an effective
presentment of the yellow dun series of flies. Greenwell’s Glory, again,
is a general fly, and with its starling-winged variants it represents a
series of olives, from the blue-winged olive to the iron blue (male).
It is hard to say what precisely are fancy flies, unless one defines
them as flies which are not known to represent definitely any insect or
class of insects. Whether Wickham’s Fancy to the eye of a trout looks
the gorgeous golden thing which it does to mankind it is hard to say. I
have floated one on water over a mirror, and the reflected image did not
look golden at all, but a pale, dim green, much like the colour seen
through gold beaten so thin that it is almost transparent. The Pink
Wickham may seem to the trout to be a sedge with a greenish body. The
Red Tag _may_ have its living prototype. The Soldier Palmer is supposed
to represent the soldier beetle. But in most of these cases it is
impossible to say what the artificial represents, or may represent, in
life, and its attraction is apt to be that of something bright and
garish which appeals to curiosity or tyranny in the trout, rather than
to appetite. Indeed, why a trout should take any artificial fly is a
puzzle to me. The very best are not really very like the real thing. One
thing is clear: It is not form which appeals to the trout, but colour
and size.
I know a skilful angler who, when he ties on a new split-winged floater,
rumples and breaks up the fibre of its wings with his fingers before
using it. This he does for the excellent reason that it pays. His theory
is that it lets the light through; but form is entirely sacrificed.
It is a curious fact that, though the Test and Itchen are “by ordinar’”
clear, yet double-dressed floaters can be successfully used on them,
which would do little or nothing on other streams, of which the Wandle
occurs to me as an example. If I had a day on the Wandle, I should take
care to provide myself with single-winged patterns. Can it be that the
clearness of the Test and Itchen is such that the fly looks distinct
enough by reflected light, while transmitted light is necessary to
render the fly noticeable on such streams as the Wandle? In any case,
when visiting a strange river, the angler should see if the fish will or
will not stand double-dressed floaters, if he has a fancy for that build
of fly.
CHAPTER IX
CONSIDERATIONS MORAL, TACTICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, AND INCIDENTAL
OF FAITH.
Among the many uncertainties which attend the sport of fly fishing,
there is one thing that may be laid down as certain, and that is that no
consistent measure of success attends a lure, whether wet, dry, or
semi-submerged, in which the angler has not faith; and it may be
shrewdly suspected that much of the ill-success which has attended the
use of the wet fly upon chalk streams in the past is due to lack of
confidence on the part of the angler. It has been laid down so
positively by the high-priests of the dry fly that the wet fly has no
chance compared with it—at any rate, on smooth water—and it has been so
freely stated that crack wet-fly anglers come down to the chalk streams
confident in their powers to make an exhibition of chalk-stream fish,
only to retire defeated and converted, that it is little wonder that the
chalk-stream angler who tries the wet fly does it half-heartedly; and it
is probable that the North-Country man coming to practise his art upon
South-Country streams, and accustomed to catch his trout in considerable
numbers, soon becomes disheartened by failure to do the like on rivers
where two or three brace is a good bag. Probably he casts a much shorter
line than is advisable on chalk streams, and so scares off or puts down
his fish, and discouragement and the sceptical attitude of his
South-Country hosts and keepers knock him off his game before he has had
time to adjust himself to the (to him) novel conditions.
Fishing a chalk stream with a wet fly is not quite like fishing a
mountain stream or North-Country river, and it is not a game to be
learnt in an hour or a day. But if the angler will fix his mind firmly
on the fact that the wet fly was for centuries the only method in use on
chalk streams, and that it brought excellent baskets to good anglers in
the past, he may set to work with confidence that in the right
conditions the wet fly will kill, and kill well, at this day, and he may
set himself with equal confidence to find out for himself how it is
done. And let him not be disturbed by the fact that there are days or
hours when it has not a chance against the dry fly; for there are days
and hours when the dry fly has not a chance against it, and there are
other occasions when the trout will take either with approximately equal
freedom.
Simultaneously with my own experiments recorded in this volume, Mr. F.
M. Halford was engaged in establishing and proving his latest series of
patterns, in which he endeavours to approximate more closely than ever
before to the coloration and attitude of the natural insects, especially
in his series of spinners. In an article over the signature “Detached
Badger,” which appeared in the _Field_ of October 22, 1904, Mr. Halford
was at some pains to prove that these spinners must be taken floating;
but the feature of these patterns is that they do not, like the old
patterns, sit cocked upon the surface, lifted half-hackle-high above it,
but, being sparsely dressed, lie low on the water, practically flush
with the surface, and thus achieve a closer approximation to the spent
natural insect than did the old patterns. This, as much as the more
exact coloration, may account for the success of these patterns. And,
after all, a fly that is flush with the water is perilously close to the
edge of wet. Tup’s Indispensable fished as a spinner in the evening rise
will often kill better semi-submerged and flush with the surface than
thoroughly dried and oiled. It usually serves me well, and I have
accordingly scarcely tried Mr. F. M. Halford’s new patterns, but when I
have done so it has been wet that they have been taken, and not dry.
I mentioned a few pages back that another Itchen angler once fished the
whole of a season—it may have been two—with the Red Quill in various
shades and sizes, and with differences introduced by the presence or
omission of tinsel tags, and he achieved a success with that one pattern
or type quite as great as he enjoyed when he allowed himself the full
range of the hundred best and some others.
Clearly, he and “Detached Badger” have had faith—the faith which, if it
does not move mountains, will at least move trout. And the angler who
takes his courage in both hands and experiments boldly with the wet fly
fished upstream to his trout, or into the place where his trout should
be, will find his faith, as mine has been, not without its reward.
OF THE BANK OF VANTAGE.
In looking back on a day’s fly fishing, one can realize how much has
depended upon the correct selection of the bank to fish from, and an
examination of some of the more important of the general considerations
governing choice may not be amiss. Special conditions, such as height of
banks, the trees and bushes thereon, and the accessibility of the water
therefrom, may force upon us deviations from what our judgment would
otherwise dictate, and it is impossible to dogmatize about these. There
are also cases where the winding character of the stream presents such a
constant variety of conditions that it is impossible to say that at the
moment of selection one bank is more worthy of choice than the other.
But, subject to such special conditions, there are a few general
principles which it is well to bear in mind in considering from which
side we shall direct our attack.
The first of these is to avoid such a position as will throw the shadow
of angler or rod over the fish. This is an obvious consideration, and
one that is easy of application. But it does not necessarily follow
that, because the sun will throw one’s shadow—even a long or formidable
shadow—on to the stream from, say, the right bank, one must necessarily
adopt the other. It may be that the shadow will be straight across or
even behind the angler, or, at any rate, in such a position as, for
instance, not to interfere with his casting upstream, or upstream and
across, and the river bottom may not be so bare that the fall of his
shadow will send the trout scurrying upstream to disturb and put down
the feeding fish above. In narrow streams, however, the effect of shadow
in bolting fish upstream is necessarily far more pronounced than in
streams of moderate width—say twelve to twenty yards. In like manner,
the narrow stream should not, if possible, even with a favouring
upstream breeze, be fished from the right bank, which necessitates
holding the rod and waving line and fly over the water, or one may see
one’s hopes laid low for half an hour or more, and a good stretch
spoiled by the bolting of fish which, approached from the other bank by
a more or less “cross-country cast,” with the rod held low to the right,
might have been brought to basket or turned downstream.
Probably, however, the most generally governing consideration is the
direction of the wind in relation to the general trend of the stream.
Perhaps the majority of fly-fishermen, if asked to choose a bank with an
upstream or downstream wind, would choose the right without hesitation.
But there may be a good deal to be said for the other side, apart even
from the sun and the narrowness of the stream. For instance, with an
upstream wind and a fairly wide river, especially if it be swift, the
angler on the right bank is practically confined to his own bank and
midstream fishing. If he casts for the opposite bank, he finds it
extremely difficult to be accurate, and a drag which inevitably puts the
fish down is almost certain to be set up. On the left bank, however, not
only can he approach the left bankers more closely than he dare approach
the right bankers when fishing on the right bank, not only can he tackle
the midstream fish equally well, but he can cut under and against the
wind and get across to the opposite bank far more accurately from the
left bank than from the right, where the wind follows his hand.
Take next the case of a downstream wind. Here the angler will want to
consider what he has to do. Does he wish to fish his own bank or the
opposite bank, or both? Casting from the right bank, he can cut under
the wind and get his fly over to the opposite bank far better than he
could from the left; but is it worth doing? If he can float his fly for
a reasonable distance without drag, it may well be; but if the current
be so strong as to set up an almost immediate drag, he may be
practically confined to his own bank. So he would be on the left side;
but whereas casting from the right bank he would be apt to find the
point of his gut cast forced outwards and downwards by the wind, and be
constantly landing his line on the sedges or bank, when casting from the
other side his line would fall upon the water, and the gut-point and fly
be driven inwards so as to search the water quite close under the bank,
just like a natural fly. Moreover, it would not be driven so far inward
as it would be driven outward when cast from the opposite side, for in
dropping over the bank-edge the fly and gut-point would enter, before
the force of the cast is spent, into that little cushion of calm to be
found just under the bank, and would generally straighten out in a
manner to command admiration both from men and trout.
Take next the case of an upstream wind slightly across from the right
bank to the left. Here it is even more difficult for an angler on the
right bank to fish his own bank than for an angler on the left bank,
while he has more command in cutting across to the far side from the
left bank than from the right. If, on the other hand, the wind be
upstream and off the left bank, by standing back a bit and using a short
cross-country cast the angler may get his fly very neatly over most of
the fish under his own bank, and can cut across more easily than he
could from the right bank.
Take, again, the case of a wind downstream and across from the right
bank to the left. Here again the angler on the left bank is in the
superior position for negotiating his own bank, casting almost straight
into the wind, and letting fly and point be deflected under his own
bank. On the right bank the angler would be apt to have his fly flung
out towards midstream, and the short cross-country cast would be apt to
miscarry. On the other hand, if the wind be downstream and across from
the left bank, the advantage lies slightly with the right bank, but it
is nothing like so marked (assuming, as we have been doing from the
first, that the angler is right-handed) as in the converse case.
On the whole, therefore, it will be seen that, contrary to the generally
received opinion, unless the wind be fairly direct upstream or (for
fishing the opposite bank) down, the left bank is almost invariably the
bank of vantage.
OF COURAGE AND THE JEOPARDIZING OF TUPPENCE HA’PENNY.
That, my friends, is almost the extreme price of a trout-fly. Some cost
less. Yet how often shall you see an angler whose equipment for the
taking of trout has run into pounds, and whose railway fare and
reckoning at his inn are substantial items of expenditure upon the same
object, throw away most sporting occasions for the attainment of his end
because, forsooth, he is sure to be hung up or weeded or smashed or
something equally delightful—and bang would go tuppence ha’penny! I have
no patience with this sort of thing. The more hopeless the prospect of
getting out a trout from an impossible place, the more determined I am
to try for him. _De l’audace, encore de l’audace—toujours de l’audace!_
In May, 1909, just before the May-fly began, I was by the river-side,
when I heard a loud smacking sound, and, peering through a willow-bush,
I saw a fine trout cruising on an eddy and sucking down flies with
hearty enjoyment. If I cast over him from behind the bush, I should have
to play him on a six-ounce rod with x x x gut between a thorn-bush which
I could touch with my right hand and a willow I could touch with my
left. There were snags above and snags below. Did I hesitate? Only long
enough to tie on a new Crosbie Alder, then long enough for him to reach
the top of his beat, and then I dropped the fly behind him just before
he turned. He was the satisfactory side of four pounds, and I got his
successor next day out of the same place—three pounds six ounces. A
beautiful brace! Luck! Of course it was luck, but I shouldn’t have had
it if I hadn’t taken risks.
There was a Kennet trout under a willow in May-fly time. A weed-piled
snag in the stream just below the droop of the willow made it impossible
to get a fly over him by casting above the willow and floating down.
There was just one possible way—to make a slanting downward cut which
might bring the fly down between branches in a sort of dip in the tree,
and drop it on the fish’s nose. I left two flies in the tree, but I did
the trick and got the fish. He was only two pounds six ounces, but I
thought he was bigger. Still——
Then there was a fish which lay just above a hatch-hole through which
water ran into the meadows. The inevitable thing for him to do when
hooked was to bolt down the hatch-hole. But somehow he didn’t, and I got
him. There was a pound-and-a-half trout taking tiny pale duns on the
edge of a small pile of weeds collected against a broken bough of a
tree, into which he was sure to bolt when hooked. But somehow he didn’t,
and he was steered to the landing-net with a No. 000 dun on gossamer gut
attached to his nose. Then there was that trout which I got over a
barbed wire crossing the stream eight or ten yards away.
There are countless such instances—I tell of some more under the head of
“Impossible Places”—but there is one thing that may safely be deposed
to, and that is, that there is no place so desperate that, with luck and
management, you may not get a well-hooked trout out of it.
OF IMPOSSIBLE PLACES.
The habit of a lightly hooked trout, of floundering on the surface, is
too well known to need enlarging on. Sometimes his antics will be varied
by leaps into the air. But is the tendency of a hard-held fish to go to
weed or snag equally well realized? Yet from a consideration of these
two established tendencies may not a highly unorthodox method of
extricating a good fish from the impossible position be evolved? What is
the theory? This: Let him think he is lightly hooked.
It was on the banks of the Itchen that the first glimmerings of the idea
suggested themselves. A novice with the dry fly was walking disconsolate
up the stream, bemoaning himself that he could not find a rising fish.
Coming up with a brother angler just about to settle down to a rising
trout in some quick water, he was invited to cast over it. The fly
covered the right spot, and brought up his troutship, who fastened, and,
turning at once, bolted at express speed downstream. The novice,
unaccustomed to anything more formidable than Devonshire brook trout,
disregarded his companion’s advice, “Run, man, run downstream for all
you’re worth!” and backed, open-mouthed, slowly upstream, letting out
line as freely as the reel (a checkless one) would let it go. So long as
the line put no check upon him the trout ploughed downstream close to
the surface, but the moment the reel was empty and he felt the check he
was deep in a weed-bed. He stayed there till the angler had reeled up
and put on another fly. _The checked fish goes to weed._ That was the
first lesson.
The second was in this wise: On a September morning a good many years
back, a brace of trout were rising, a yard or so apart, above a tree
which overhung the same water on the side where the angler stood
knee-deep in a swampy reed-bed. It was possible to reach them if,
holding by his left hand to a bough, and resting one foot on a root
while dangling the other in the water, he hung over the river at an
angle of forty-five degrees, and threw his line underhand up the stream.
But how if he hooked his fish? There was a bank of weeds, dense and
long, a yard or two above. Well, he must chance it. The likelihood of
losing the fish seemed overwhelming, the chance of killing him slight;
for the position was so awkward that, in order to get back to terra
firma, there was nothing for it but to tuck the rod under the arm and
trust to chance while recovering equilibrium and a footing. Yet the
angler got both these fish. Situated as he was he could put no pressure
on them; he could not even keep the line taut. But each of the fish when
hooked came floundering and splattering unresistingly downstream, trying
to throw out the stinging insect that adhered to his jaw. By the time
the angler was prepared to deal with him the fish was in open water and
was easily played. Result, a brace of one and a quarter pounders and the
second lesson. _The unchecked fish flounders on the surface._
What these two lessons have been worth to the angler it would be tedious
to relate, but one or two instances may illustrate. There was that
fish—one and three-quarter pounds he proved—rising on the far side of a
dense bank of weeds in a channel two feet wide. He had to be approached
with reverence on one’s face, and from twenty feet out in the meadow. He
took the Pink Wickham at the first time of asking, and the angler,
having fastened, dropped his rod-point instantly. The fish with a
startled plunge rushed up the channel and out into the open water, and
began to flounder. Before he knew where he was the angler turned him,
brought him down the right side of the dangerous weed-bank, and duly
netted him out.
Then, again, there was that black fish between two pollard willows on
the Darenth. He was rising eighteen inches out from the bank. The
willows were two yards apart, and their roots formed a mass of snags
below him, while just downstream of them was a plank bridge a foot above
the river. Here again it was a case of kneeling far out in the meadow
and dropping the Yellow Dun exactly over the nose of the fish. He came
with the most confiding simplicity. Had he been checked he would have
been in the snags before one could say “Knife,” but the angler, mindful
of his lesson, held him not. So it befell that he rushed out into
midstream and leapt four several times, much as does a pricked fish that
is not hooked at all. But ere he could do more the angler was on terms
with him, and held him out from the bank, up from the bottom, and away
from the plank bridge, till the landing-net received his one pound six
ounces.
Finally, let the tale be told of a trout of the Kennet that had his holt
in a corner of a little bay, whence a willow-bush had fallen into the
river, leaving on the bank side a tangle of broken roots, in the river
to the right, some three yards off, the half-submerged willow, while
above and below were heavy patches of long swaying weed. It was an ideal
place for a trout to feed in—and to break away. The water came into the
bay in a little defined channel between weeds, and in this a foot below
the entry a sizable neb was showing at intervals. A small Green Champion
May dropped exactly in the channel, and trotted down the prescribed
distance and disappeared. Again the tactics of the loosened line, again
the hooked fish rushed out from his almost impregnable holt into the
open, and was presently netted out by the triumphant angler—a handsome
and, he thinks, a not ill-deserved three pounds ten ounces. A week later
the same tactics produced another fish of two pounds eleven ounces from
the same hole.
OF THE USE OF THE LANDING-NET.
There is a common superstition among anglers that the primary use of a
landing-net is to land fish. Let us rather say that the use of a
landing-net, rightly understood, is to assist in the capture of fish.
Not to catch fish, for the catching of fish in the landing-net is mere
poacher’s work, but to aid in the catching. Some anglers tell you you
must never show your net to a fish until ready for netting. But why not,
if it will help you to kill him? There are many more or less desperate
cases where the net may be of the profoundest service long before it is
called to operate at the final ceremony of dipping out. I will give one
or two examples in an ascending scale of complexity.
Firstly, a new use for the handle. Under the left bank of a
South-Country chalk stream a trout is taking every dun that goes down
alongside the cluster of cut weed under which he shelters. The angler’s
Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear lighting delicately a foot above, with the gut
resting on the weed, is accepted and carried straight down into the
weed-bed below. The angler reels up tight over the fish, but fails to
move him. Ah, there is the long-handled landing-net! A few
judiciously-placed prods with the butt bring him plunging stupidly out,
and he is bustled down into open water and promptly dipped out with the
other end.
Secondly, the use of the mesh. Scene: A hooked fish racing downstream
towards a dense weed-bed on the angler’s side. The angler offers the
net, and the fish sheers off into midstream, and is towed past the
dangerous obstruction. Very simple examples these.
The third and next is more complex. Scene: A hatch-hole which lets water
from the same stream into a carrier in the water-meadows. Camp-sheathing
on both sides of the hatch, supported by three successive crossbars from
four feet to eight feet long as the sides diverge. Under the middle bar
lies a good trout, very evidently feeding. Problem, how to get him. It
is impossible to cast underneath the crossbars. One can only cast over
them, and trust to luck and judgment to get the fish out if one hooks
him. If he runs downstream the line is doubled over the crossbar and a
break is assured. But how is he to be prevented? The angler knows that
under the apron of the hatch there is a big hole, and he sets to work
with confidence. The fly is dropped from below, just over the third or
shortest bar. The drag of the oiled silk line brings it back till it
passes over the third bar, and drops softly on the water with a foot or
two to float before it can drag. Presently it is taken, and the hooked
fish has turned to bolt down the carrier. But there the angler is ready.
Landing-net in hand, he gesticulates wildly at the advancing fish, which
bolts upstream again and buries itself in the hole under the apron.
Softly the rod is passed under the second and lowest crossbars, then the
point is brought down to the water’s edge, and with a steady strain and
a jarring tap on the butt of the rod the trout is brought down out of
his fastness and killed in due course.
Lastly, another example of a similar method. Imagine a strong stream
some three yards wide and one hundred yards or so long, running down
from a similar hatch to a big cross-dyke reaching out on both sides. The
angler is on the right bank, and the current turns to the left on
reaching the dyke. The water for the latter half of the carrier is too
deep for wading. In the broad gravel shallow at the tail of the patch a
big two-pounder is lying. The angler has already been run by a much
smaller fish down to the verge of the carrier, where the stream turns
off, and only netted his trout just in time. For various reasons the
other bank is unsuitable to fish from. To begin with, the big trout is
not accessible from that side. Even from the left bank it is difficult
to cast over him, but presently our artist with the landing-net gives
the appropriate response to the dimpling rise with which he takes the
Ginger Quill, and a good sound working connection is established. For a
moment the angler does not put a pull on him, and he moves out into the
strong water, shaking his head to get rid of that objectionable insect
that has fastened in his palate. The angler rapidly winds in line, and
begins to hold him firmly. His aim is to keep him tiring himself in the
strong water—not to drive him up under the apron (it is unnecessary to
run that risk now), but to keep him from running down. The stream is
narrow enough to enable the angler, by dipping his rod-point to right or
left, to turn the fish from every upward rush to such a holt, but in a
few moments comes the downward rush. Now for the landing-net. In an
instant the fish has turned and is back facing the strong water, and
engaged in fighting to get up into the shelter of the hatch. But again
and again he is turned and brought down to the edge of the gravel shelf
where the stream is strongest, when a hint from the landing-net sends
him up again straining with all his force against both stream and line.
Presently, tiring of the game, and failing in his efforts to rub out the
hook against the camp-sheathing, he turns and bolts downstream with such
suddenness as to evade the threatening net, and is gone forty yards
before the angler is level with him. Then again a threat of the net
turns him, and he makes a dash for a weed-bed some ten yards or so
above. From this he has to be turned down, and his downward rush stopped
with the net as before. From this point the fight resolves itself into a
series of downstream rushes, alternating with much briefer trips
upstream, terminated by the necessity in each case for pulling the trout
down out of the weed-bed he is bolting for. At last, at the very bottom
of the straight, on the edge of the dyke, the fish, not yet half beaten,
has to be dragged willy-nilly into the landing-net, or else he must
escape down the dyke which streams away on the far side.
Finally, and in conclusion, one more example. The _locus in quo_ is a
piece of fast water some eight or ten yards long, a sort of
tumbling-bay, from which the water escapes at racing pace through a
culvert twelve or fourteen feet long, which passes under a farm road,
thence along some two hundred yards of narrow weedy carrier to an
irrigation hatch. In the tumbling-bay are three or four fine fish, one
of them something over two pounds. All are feeding on something under
water, probably nymphs. A dry fly would drag at once. A double-hooked
Greenwell’s Glory, as used on North-Country rivers, might do the trick.
But the hooked fish will to a certainty bolt down the culvert, and then
it will be a case of smash at once, or weeding with a long line, and the
impossible task of bringing the fish up the racing stream into the
tumbling-bay again, or of passing the ten-foot rod through a twelve-foot
culvert. Happy thought! there on the bank is a plank that has been
floated down the stream above, there is some string, and there is the
watcher to lend a hand. He receives the landing-net, and goes below some
fifteen yards or so. Presently the fly drops well soaked on the water,
and swings over the best of the trout, which the next minute has raced
down and through the culvert, tearing out line until—yes, until the
menacing net in the hands of the watcher sends him securely to weed. Now
for the plank. A minute serves to tie on the rod and to send the plank
floating down through the culvert. The watcher is ready on the other
side with the landing-net, and draws the plank to the side. The rod is
released, and soon the angler stands over the fish with a short line.
Now for the net again. A few well-directed prods with the butt brings up
the fish, who bolts for the culvert. But the net is before him on the
far side, and he gets back into the tumbling-bay. Guiding the line with
the butt, a pull is got on him which soon brings him down again below
the culvert. The only remaining dangers are the weeds and the hatch-hole
at the far end. From this last the net is again ready to keep him, and
the great battle ends as every such battle should.
OF THE WEEDING TROUT.
It has been shown how it was frequently possible to extract a big trout
from an apparently impossible fastness by a tactical trick. Every angler
knows that a trout who is, or conceives himself to be, lightly hooked
will thrash about upon the surface in his effort to dislodge the fly,
very often with success, though not always; for occasionally the hook
will have a small but sufficient hold in some inaccessible place, such
as the corner of the jaw, and all is well with the angler. It is by
playing upon this idiosyncrasy and slackening on a fish immediately
after it is hooked that the trout may frequently be induced to run from
an impenetrable holt into the open in order to kick himself free from
the surface. The same idiosyncrasy may be worked upon with a weeding
fish, with gratifying results. If the angler hooks a fish which turns
and bolts downstream below him, he will note that the fish will not go
to weed until he is held. The moment he is held he will whip into the
first available weed-bed. That is the first step in our argument. The
next is this: The harder he is held the more frightened he becomes, and
the deeper and the more desperately he will burrow in the weeds.
But one day it occurred to me to try upon the trout that has got to weed
the tactics of inducing him to believe himself lightly hooked. To let
him go altogether for a time till he recovered his nerve and came out
was an old and often unsuccessful device. To hand-line him was to put a
much harder pull upon him than could be put on with a rod, and though it
sometimes worked, it was by no means always successful. For the new
method, therefore, it was necessary to maintain a light pull upon the
fish, but so light that the rod-top gave to every movement, leaving the
fish almost as free as if he were loose, but with just the difference
that there was enough strain to keep him beating, and enough to provide
a fulcrum for him to beat from. The experiment was brilliantly
successful. On the first occasion on which it was tried, three trout
(all over two pounds) were hooked in a weedy portion of the Itchen upon
the lightest tackle and a delicate rod. Each went to weed. The angler
held his hand high (for the rod was but nine feet), and kept the very
lightest strain, with the result that the fish began to beat among the
weeds as he would on the surface, and in a few moments had lashed the
weeds aside and kicked himself free of them, and was on top. Once there
he was resolutely hauled downstream and bustled into the net. This
method has been worth many a good fish since that day; indeed, given a
fairly soundly hooked fish, there have been no failures. Of course,
nothing will save a fish so lightly hooked that the first touch of weed
or obstruction releases him. In applying this method, the light rod,
which has come to be so common, has an advantage over the big, heavy,
and clumsy weapon so frequently in the hands of dry-fly men in the
recent past. This is indeed a notable instance of the superiority of the
_suaviter in modo_ over the _fortiter in re_.
OF THE LIGHT ROD ON CHALK STREAMS.
In the catalog (I quote the word in the American spelling) of the house
of William Mills and Son of New York there is a portrait of Mr. Humphrey
Priddis (whose signature “Dabchick” at the foot of Itchen reports is
familiar to all readers of the _Field_) holding up a two and one-eighth
pound trout which he had just killed on a two and one-eighth ounce
Leonard rod, the property of young Mr. Mills, a son of that house. I was
down on the Itchen the afternoon on which that feat was done. I saw the
rod, the fish, and the captor, and the place was pointed out to me. The
water was full of dense masses of waving weeds, and in accomplishing the
capture of such a fish—a large one for the water—on such a rod there is
no doubt that the angler executed a feat of which he had every right to
be proud. He declared himself amazed at the power of the rod, and that
he could throw three-and-twenty yards with it.
Young Mr. Mills was fishing with a nine-foot rod weighing five ounces, a
delightful tool capable of casting a heavy tapered Halford line with
wonderful command. I had the privilege of trying it, and I promptly
acquired its duplicate, in addition to the ten-footer of the same make
which I already possessed and had used the previous season.
I am not going to reargue here the long controversy of light rod
_versus_ the old-style ounce-to-the-foot weapon. The light rod has won
its place, and has come to stay. Those who have tried it fairly are
convinced that it will answer all necessary calls for casting, that it
is fully equal to butting and killing large trout, and that it adds a
daintiness to the art of fly fishing which the old-time anglers of the
heavy rod were hardly conscious it lacked. But I do want to press three
points in its favour beyond those enumerated: (1) It casts a delightful
_short_ line, and I confess to fishing consistently with the shortest
line I dare use, often with most of that in the country; (2) it can be
fished steadily all day, wet or dry, without tiring the hand—what a
change from those terrible wrist-breaking, hand-paralyzing,
blister-producing flails of the eighties and nineties! and (3) it
enables one to play light with unequalled sensitiveness. When I was a
boy at Winchester, old John Hammond had the length commonly known
nowadays as Chalkley’s, and I well remember the rods which old John used
to turn out for fishing the Itchen. They were soft and floppy to an
extent which would nowadays lead to their immediate rejection; but I
have seen the maker with one of them steer a good fish, hooked under the
opposite bank, by sheer handling, over dense weed, into the waiting
landing-net. And remembering this, and remembering how a fish which goes
to weed can, if lightly handled from the first, be forced, by play on
his idiosyncrasy, to beat himself free and up to the surface, I am
inclined to think that the modern angler is far too much inclined to use
force in handling a hooked fish, and that a rod which achieves—as the
light split canes of the highest class do—a combination of steely
quickness and casting power with something of the sensitive delicacy of
the wood rods of old John Hammond is the equipment to have in a tussle
with a big fish on fine tackle.
To kill a brace of trout one of over four pounds and the other three
pounds six ounces on x x x gut in deep weedy and snag-infested water
between two bushes which I could touch with either hand, and which
prevented movement up or down stream, is a feat which I am sure my
old-time heavy rods could have done no better than did my six-ounce
ten-footer in 1909. Force was no good in such a place, and force was
never used until each trout had been sufficiently bewildered and
fatigued by beating in vain against the nothing which restrained him to
be kept more or less under the rod’s point till ready for the net.
OF WET-FLY CASTING.
The use of rods which carry a heavy reel-line is so general on chalk
streams that probably the easy drying of the fly and cast is taken as a
matter of course, and it is little recognized how much is due to the
weight of the line driving the fly rapidly through the air. If the
angler were devoting himself to wet-fly fishing on a rough river, he
would avoid such a casting line, and if he means to fish a chalk stream
wet-fly only, he would do the same. But he would need to be able to
propel his fly and line upstream against the wind, and to cast a fairly
long line not infrequently, so that a line with more weight in it than
would be required for a rough river would be essential on a chalk
stream. But if, as is the wiser course, the angler proposes to fish
either wet or dry, as occasion demands, his equipment must be still more
of a compromise. He must use a rod which will carry a line that will dry
the fly with sufficient speed, but preferably not a line of the heaviest
class; and he must trust to the make of his flies, and to the soaking
they get through trailing in the water before the cast, to get them to
go under on lighting. The knack can be acquired without difficulty, but
if the dry-fly habit has become inveterate he will need to be
continually watching himself when he desires to fish wet.
The line should be flicked as little as possible, and the angler should
try (generally speaking, but not always—see chapter on Nerves) to float
the gut while letting the fly go under. Then he secures the double
advantage of not lining his trout and of getting an indication from the
movement of the gut should the fly be taken without his otherwise
detecting it. The fly, being once delivered, may be allowed to come down
with the stream precisely like a dry fly except for its being under
water; but it can be recovered sooner and with less disturbance of the
surface, because the fly is drawn under and not along the top of the
water. The withdrawal should, however, be as gentle as possible, in
order to retain as much moisture as can be in the fly to sink it at the
next cast. If there be enough wind to raise waves, or even a strong
ruffle, this is of less consequence, as the make of the fly should be
such that it can only float, if at all, while quite dry on perfectly
smooth water. It is in general no use to put up the ordinary dry flies
to fish wet.
CHAPTER X
FRANKLY IRRELEVANT
A DRY-FLY MEMORY.
In the Test Valley a good many years ago the coarse herbage lay drying
in the water-meadows in the heavy swathes in which it had fallen to the
scythe, but all along the boggy edges of the streams and carriers a tall
screen had been left standing shoulder-high, concealing the angler from
the rising fish, but compelling him, unfortunately, to stand and to fish
overhand instead of keeping low and switching a horizontal line to his
quarry. During the afternoon a chilly wind from the north-west had
supervened upon the blazing heat that for a week past had conjured such
alluring visions of the evening rise to end each July day. The sky was
overcast, and a troubled sun watched sulkily from the far side of the
valley, through dun rifts in the clouds, the approach of two rods to the
river-side. It was almost too early to begin. Scarce a fly was in the
air, and only one sign of any promise gave any hint of possible
success—the horses in the meadow opposite, driven to madness by the
Hampshire flies, were charging and careering wildly about their pasture,
heels half the time in air.
Just a cast above the bottom boundary was a run which promised a moving
fish when the trout began to move, and half an hour’s wait in these
exquisite meadows was time well spent, if only in observing the splendid
profusion of life in this wonderful valley. The tender bloom of the
meadowsweet was at its most perfect, great wild purple orchids put up
among the boggy tussocks, while the lush richness of the water-side
herbage baffled description. From some meadow near came the “crek, crek”
of the landrail—less common, alas! than of old—the note of the snipe,
the wailing cry of the pewit, the “coo” of the turtle-dove, were
punctuated with the querulous gutturals of the moorhen, shyly under
cover in the sedges. Presently a small pale olive rose from the surface
and came drifting down the wind, then another and another, escaping
their water-enemies below only, too often, to be snapped up by the
screeching swifts that found them out too soon. Then, in the very neck
of the run, a fish put up, and the serious business of the evening
began.
The fly on the cast was a Tup’s Indispensable, then the latest invention
of an ingenious West-Country angler, and, when the red spinner is up, a
very killing fly, but the fish, continuing to feed, would none of him.
Nor was the Red Quill to his liking, but the first cast of a Ginger
Quill on No. 00, covering him correctly, brought him up, and he
fastened. For a second he hesitated, then ripped the line from the
shrieking reel in an upward rush, leapt into the air, and was off.
By this time the sun’s lower limb was resting on the opposite hill, and
the wind should have dropped dead. But still it came with a certain bite
of chill down the valley from the northward. Yet, in spite of cold, the
long, fleshy forest fly vied with the mosquito in assaults upon the
unprotected portions of the angler, and moths and sedges began to creep
out and flit from flower to flower. Two other fish putting up in the
next hundred yards were missed, and a small one was landed and returned.
Then, as dusk drew on, the fly was changed for a large Orange Quill on a
No. 2 hook.
A good fish was rising steadily, though not rapidly, in the next bend,
but the Orange Quill, offered from perhaps too short a range, set him
down with great suddenness. A shy fish! So was the next found rising,
for he did not wait even the preliminary wave of the rod to cease from
his impetuous and greedy feeding. Perhaps the necessary wading through
the boggy margin to get near enough to the water for an effective cast
sent over him a wave that put him down.
The next hundred yards provided no opportunity for the angler, but at
the end of them the sedgy screen ceased suddenly, and it was possible to
approach the shy quarry with a horizontal cast. Over a bank of weed
trailing near the surface an under-water movement seemed to indicate a
fish of some sort. The fly, an Orange Sedge on a No. 2 hook, dropped
lightly on the right spot, with a line behind it slack enough to let it
pass well over the fish before the inevitable drag set in. Up came a big
black neb. Instinctively the line tightened, but the fish was already
hard in the weed, and nothing could coax or force him out. Ten precious
minutes wasted, at a time when minutes were priceless, in vain attempts
to persuade him, before the inevitable break was effected and a new fly
tied on.
A few yards farther on a snag divided the current, and a foot above it a
good fish was taking merrily every fly that covered him. He was not
proof against the Orange Sedge, and in a moment he was being led
flapping down on the farther side of the snag. Nothing seemed to
intervene between him and the landing-net, when suddenly the rod
straightened and he was gone. A feel at the hook in the growing dark
proved it to have broken at the bend. With difficulty another was
mounted, but by this the rise had ceased, and naught was left for the
angler but to feel his boggy way back through the eerie meadows to his
starting-point, and thence to the village—disappointed to a certain
extent, but with the disappointment more than tempered by the amazing
charm of this valley of valleys.
CHAPTER XI
ETHICS OF THE WET FLY
In dealing with this subject, I am conscious that I start with a weight
of opinion against me among the fishermen of chalk streams. I have known
some of them say in a shocked tone, “But that is wet-fly!” as if it were
some high crime and misdemeanour to use a wet fly upon a chalk stream.
To make my peace with such I want to argue this question out, and test
and see what it is about the wet fly which has brought such discredit
upon it among the best sportsmen in the world.
It is axiomatic with many that it is unsuccessful upon chalk streams.
That is not my opinion, but in itself it is not an objection. If it were
unfairly successful it would be another story. The object of fly
fishing, whether wet or dry, is the catching of trout, not anyhow, but
by means refined, clean, delicate, artistic, and sportsmanlike in the
sense that they are fair to the quarry and fair to the brother angler.
There can be no doubt that the dry fly honestly fulfils all these
conditions. Let us see where the wet fly fails.
It is said the wet-fly man’s game is a duffer’s game, which needs
neither knowledge nor any skill beyond enough to cast a long line
downstream or across and down; that it leads to a raking of the water,
often with two or three flies; that it leads to the pricking and scaring
of many fish, to the catching of many undersized trout, and to the undue
disturbance of long stretches of water, to the detriment of the nerves
of the fish and the sport of other anglers. All this I am quite willing
to accept and to eliminate from the legitimate all wet-fly fishing which
could come under this description.
What is left to the wet-fly angler? I venture to say a mighty pretty,
delicate, and delightful art which resembles dry-fly fishing in that the
fly is cast upstream or across, to individual fish, or to places where
it is reasonable to expect that a fish of suitable proportions may be
found, and differs from dry-fly fishing only in the amount of material
used in the dressing of the fly, in the force with which that fly is
cast, and in the extreme subtlety of the indications frequently
attending the taking of the fly by the fish, compared to which there is
a painful obviousness in the taking of the dry fly. Add to this that it
provides means for the circumventing of bulgers and feeders on larvæ,
that it furnishes sport on those numerous occasions when trout are in
position and probably feeding under water without ever breaking the
surface, and generally widens the opportunities of sport for the man who
cannot be always on the spot to seize the best opportunities afforded by
a rise of trout to the floating fly.
Is this method open to any of the objections attending the downstream
raking we concur in condemning? Is it a duffer’s game? Is it easier than
dry-fly fishing? Try and see. Does it lead to the pricking and scaring
of many fish which follow a dragging fly? No. Does it unduly disturb
long stretches of water to the detriment of the brother angler? Why, it
is as easy to spend an afternoon on a hundred yards as it is in the
purest cult of the dry fly.
If the trout are feeding, I for one fail to see why they may
legitimately be fished for if they are taking a small proportion of
their food on the surface, but not if they are taking all, or
practically all, of it underneath. There is a sentence from Francis
Francis quoted with approval by Mr. F. M. Halford, which runs as
follows:
“The judicious and perfect application of dry, wet, and mid-water fly
fishing stamps the finished fly-fisher with the hall-mark of
efficiency.”
Nothing could be more just if one reads it with reference to all
streams, whether chalk streams or otherwise; but to read it
distributively so that only the dry fly may be used on chalk streams,
and only the wet fly on other streams, seems an unnecessary renunciation
of opportunity; while to read it as meaning that only the dry fly may be
used on chalk streams, while wet or dry fly may be legitimately used on
others, carries its own condemnation in logic.
Mr. F. M. Halford, with every desire to be absolutely fair, has, I
think, in Chapter II. of “Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice,” done
more than any other man to discredit the wet fly on chalk streams, by
the implications, first, that the principle of the dry-fly method—viz.,
the casting of the fly to a feeding fish in position—is not applicable
to the wet-fly method, and, secondly, that on the stillest days, with
the hottest sun and the clearest water, the wet fly is utterly hopeless.
On both these points I respectfully join issue with him.
On all that his book contains on the positive side about the dry fly I
am in practical agreement. But if the reader considers the rods, the
lines, and the flies, that Mr. Halford recommends, he will see that they
are utterly unsuited to wet-fly fishing, and it would not be surprising
that no success attends them when used for wet-fly work. But if I am
right—and I am—in asserting that, given reasonably suitable gear, the
wet fly _may_ be cast upstream in chalk streams to a feeding fish in
position (whether surface feeding or not is, I submit, irrelevant), and
that on its day—and there are many such in the season—it will kill fish
alike in the hottest, brightest, and stillest weather, and on days and
in places and conditions where the dry fly is hopeless, and also in the
roughest of weather, then I may claim that it is an art worthy to stand
beside the art of the dry fly as a supplementary resource of the angler
that is at once fair, sportsmanlike, and capable of adding immensely to
his enjoyment, his sport, and his opportunities for using the highest
skill, not inferior in any sense (except in the matter of the avoidance
of drag) to that exercised by the dry-fly expert.
CHAPTER XII
APOLOGIA
Having read through the foregoing pages, I am (indeed, I could hardly
fail to be) conscious that I have written dogmatically, that I have used
the first person singular with some freedom—more freedom than I had
supposed. But I am not going to change it. What I had to say, stretched
over a period of years, has been too strong for me. I wanted to
elaborate a system, and all I have done is to tell my personal
experiences in search of a system. If I have written positively, I would
not have it supposed that I claim to be a master of angling, or that I
do not incur by the water-side my full share—perhaps more than my full
share—of mistakes, tangles, bungles, disasters. But, for all that, I
claim to be entitled to speak positively of the things which I have
tried and tested for myself and know of my own knowledge. No man can
really know either these same things or any other things by reading them
in a book or by accepting them upon any authority, whether it be that of
Mr. F. M. Halford or another.
Nothing presents itself to any two minds in an identical light. We all
see the multicoloured facets of truth from a different angle. No
experience is the same to two diverse idiosyncrasies, and the only help
which the writing of a book of this kind can be to others is, not in the
laying down of rules, not in the preaching or advocating of systems, not
in teaching that which the writer has beaten out by his own experience,
but in hints which start or help trains of observation or inquiry in the
reader’s mind, so as to stimulate him to work out, and prove, by
personal thought and experiment, to make his own, the conclusions which
his own personality is capable of drawing from the test.
In this way only is progress possible. In this, and in doing something
to assure that, in the new learning and in the new systems which come
along, that which is of value in the systems of the past shall not be
forgotten, but shall be transmuted to the uses of the present and the
future, is all the justification I can plead for the foregoing pages.
In giving records of my own experience by the water-side rather than in
laying down a system, I am not asking others to do as I do because I say
it, or to accept anything from me. I would have no weight allowed by any
man to tradition or authority until it is proved by himself; no man’s
words accepted as final because they are his; everything questioned,
tested, and brought to the dock of practical experience. If I have
ventured, indirectly, to preach at all, the sum of my preaching is not a
system, a method, but an attitude of mind—the importance of being
earnest, the power of faith, the observant eye, the unfettered judgment,
independence of tradition, and, above all, the inquiring mind.
With these words I commit my pages to the judgment or kindness of my
brother anglers with a cordial
“TIGHT LINES.”
EXPLICIT.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.
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