TROUT-FISHING IN THE TRAUN

"Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves

for a time from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be

said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I

should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life

in travelling abroad if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend

afterwards at home."--WILLIAM HAZLITT: On Going a Journey.

The peculiarity of trout-fishing in the Traun is that one catches

principally grayling. But in this it resembles some other pursuits

which are not without their charm for minds open to the pleasures of the

unexpected--for example, reading George Borrow's The Bible in Spain with

a view to theological information, or going to the opening night at the

Academy of Design with the intention of looking at pictures.

Moreover, there are really trout in the Traun, rari nantes in gurgite;

and in some places more than in others; and all of high spirit, though

few of great size. Thus the angler has his favourite problem: Given an

unknown stream and two kinds of fish, the one better than the other; to

find the better kind, and determine the hour at which they will rise.

This is sport.

As for the little river itself, it has so many beauties that one does

not think of asking whether it has any faults. Constant fulness, and

crystal clearness, and refreshing coolness of living water, pale green

like the jewel that is called aqua marina, flowing over beds of clean

sand and bars of polished gravel, and dropping in momentary foam from

rocky ledges, between banks that are shaded by groves of fir and ash and

poplar, or through dense thickets of alder and willow, or across meadows

of smooth verdure sloping up to quaint old-world villages--all these are

features of the ideal little river.

I have spoken of these personal qualities first, because a truly moral

writer ought to make more of character than of position. A good river

in a bad country would be more worthy of affection than a bad river in

a good country. But the Traun has also the advantages of an excellent

worldly position. For it rises all over the Salzkammergut, the summer

hunting-ground of the Austrian Emperor, and flows through that most

picturesque corner of his domain from end to end. Under the desolate

cliffs of the Todtengebirge on the east, and below the shining

ice-fields of the Dachstein on the south, and from the green alps around

St. Wolfgang on the west, the translucent waters are gathered in

little tarns, and shot through roaring brooks, and spread into lakes of

wondrous beauty, and poured through growing streams, until at last they

are all united just below the summer villa of his Kaiserly and Kingly

Majesty, Francis Joseph, and flow away northward, through the rest of

his game-preserve, into the Traunsee. It is an imperial playground,

and such as I would consent to hunt the chamois in, if an inscrutable

Providence had made me a kingly kaiser, or even a plain king or an

unvarnished kaiser. But, failing this, I was perfectly content to spend

a few idle days in fishing for trout and catching grayling, at such

times and places as the law of the Austrian Empire allowed.

For it must be remembered that every stream in these over-civilised

European countries belongs to somebody, by purchase or rent. And all

the fish in the stream are supposed to belong to the person who owns

or rents it. They do not know their master's voice, neither will they

follow when he calls. But they are theoretically his. To this legal

fiction the untutored American must conform. He must learn to clothe

his natural desires in the raiment of lawful sanction, and take out some

kind of a license before he follows his impulse to fish.

It was in the town of Aussee, at the junction of the two highest

branches of the Traun, that this impulse came upon me, mildly

irresistible. The full bloom of mid-July gayety in that ancient

watering-place was dampened, but not extinguished, by two days of

persistent and surprising showers. I had exhausted the possibilities of

interest in the old Gothic church, and felt all that a man should feel

in deciphering the mural tombstones of the families who were exiled for

their faith in the days of the Reformation. The throngs of merry Hebrews

from Vienna and Buda-Pesth, amazingly arrayed as mountaineers and

milk-maids, walking up and down the narrow streets under umbrellas,

had Cleopatra's charm of an infinite variety; but custom staled it. The

woodland paths, winding everywhere through the plantations of fir-trees

and provided with appropriate names on wooden labels, and benches for

rest and conversation at discreet intervals, were too moist for even the

nymphs to take delight in them. The only creatures that suffered nothing

by the rain were the two swift, limpid Trauns, racing through the woods,

like eager and unabashed lovers, to meet in the middle of the village.

They were as clear, as joyous, as musical as if the sun were shining.

The very sight of their opalescent rapids and eddying pools was an

invitation to that gentle sport which is said to have the merit of

growing better as the weather grows worse.

I laid this fact before the landlord of the hotel of the Erzherzog

Johann, as poetically as I could, but he assured me that it was of no

consequence without an invitation from the gentleman to whom the streams

belonged; and he had gone away for a week. The landlord was such

a good-natured person, and such an excellent sleeper, that it was

impossible to believe that he could have even the smallest inaccuracy

upon his conscience. So I bade him farewell, and took my way, four miles

through the woods, to the lake from which one of the streams flowed.

It was called the Grundlsee. As I do not know the origin of the name,

I cannot consistently make any moral or historical reflections upon it.

But if it has never become famous, it ought to be, for the sake of a

cozy and busy little Inn, perched on a green hill beside the lake and

overlooking the whole length of it, from the groups of toy villas at the

foot to the heaps of real mountains at the head. This Inn kept a thin

but happy landlord, who provided me with a blue license to angle, for

the inconsiderable sum of fifteen cents a day. This conferred the right

of fishing not only in the Grundlsee, but also in the smaller tarn of

Toplitz, a mile above it, and in the swift stream which unites them. It

all coincided with my desire as if by magic. A row of a couple of miles

to the head of the lake, and a walk through the forest, brought me to

the smaller pond; and as the afternoon sun was ploughing pale furrows

through the showers, I waded out on a point of reeds and cast the artful

fly in the shadow of the great cliffs of the Dead Mountains.

It was a fit scene for a lone fisherman. But four sociable tourists

promptly appeared to act as spectators and critics. Fly-fishing usually

strikes the German mind as an eccentricity which calls for remonstrance.

After one of the tourists had suggestively narrated the tale of seven

trout which he had caught in another lake, WITH WORMS, on the previous

Sunday, they went away for a row, (with salutations in which politeness

but thinly veiled their pity,) and left me still whipping the water in

vain. Nor was the fortune of the day much better in the stream below. It

was a long and wet wade for three fish too small to keep. I came out on

the shore of the lake, where I had left the row-boat, with empty bag and

a feeling of damp discouragement.

There was still an hour or so of daylight, and a beautiful place to fish

where the stream poured swirling out into the lake. A rise, and a large

one, though rather slow, awakened my hopes. Another rise, evidently made

by a heavy fish, made me certain that virtue was about to be rewarded.

The third time the hook went home. I felt the solid weight of the fish

against the spring of the rod, and that curious thrill which runs up the

line and down the arm, changing, somehow or other, into a pleasurable

sensation of excitement as it reaches the brain. But it was only for a

moment; and then came that foolish, feeble shaking of the line from

side to side which tells the angler that he has hooked a great, big,

leather-mouthed chub--a fish which Izaak Walton says "the French esteem

so mean as to call him Un Vilain." Was it for this that I had come to

the country of Francis Joseph?

I took off the flies and put on one of those phantom minnows which have

immortalised the name of a certain Mr. Brown. The minnow swung on a long

line as the boat passed back and forth across the current, once, twice,

three times--and on the fourth circle there was a sharp strike. The rod

bent almost double, and the reel sang shrilly to the first rush of the

fish. He ran; he doubled; he went to the bottom and sulked; he tried to

go under the boat; he did all that a game fish can do, except leaping.

After twenty minutes he was tired enough to be lifted gently into

the boat by a hand slipped around his gills, and there he was, a

lachsforelle of three pounds' weight: small pointed head; silver sides

mottled with dark spots; square, powerful tail and large fins--a fish

not unlike the land-locked salmon of the Saguenay, but more delicate.

Half an hour later he was lying on the grass in front of the Inn. The

waiters paused, with their hands full of dishes, to look at him; and the

landlord called his guests, including my didactic tourists, to observe

the superiority of the trout of the Grundlsee. The maids also came to

look; and the buxom cook, with her spotless apron and bare arms akimbo,

was drawn from her kitchen, and pledged her culinary honour that such a

pracht-kerl should be served up in her very best style. The angler who

is insensible to this sort of indirect flattery through his fish does

not exist. Even the most indifferent of men thinks more favourably of

people who know a good trout when they see it, and sits down to his

supper with kindly feelings. Possibly he reflects, also, upon the

incident as a hint of the usual size of the fish in that neighbourhood.

He remembers that he may have been favoured in this case beyond his

deserts by good-fortune, and resolving not to put too heavy a strain

upon it, considers the next place where it would be well for him to

angle.

Hallstatt is about ten miles below Aussee. The Traun here expands into

a lake, very dark and deep, shut in by steep and lofty mountains. The

railway runs along the eastern shore. On the other side, a mile away,

you see the old town, its white houses clinging to the cliff like

lichens to the face of a rock. The guide-book calls it "a highly

original situation." But this is one of the cases where a little less

originality and a little more reasonableness might be desired, at least

by the permanent inhabitants. A ledge under the shadow of a precipice

makes a trying winter residence. The people of Hallstatt are not a

blooming race: one sees many dwarfs and cripples among them. But to the

summer traveller the place seems wonderfully picturesque. Most of the

streets are flights of steps. The high-road has barely room to edge

itself through among the old houses, between the window-gardens of

bright flowers. On the hottest July day the afternoon is cool and shady.

The gay, little skiffs and long, open gondolas are flitting continually

along the lake, which is the main street of Hallstatt.

The incongruous, but comfortable, modern hotel has a huge glass

veranda, where you can eat your dinner and observe human nature in its

transparent holiday disguises. I was much pleased and entertained by

a family, or confederacy, of people attired as peasants--the men with

feathered hats, green stockings, and bare knees--the women with bright

skirts, bodices, and silk neckerchiefs--who were always in evidence,

rowing gondolas with clumsy oars, meeting the steamboat at the wharf

several times a day, and filling the miniature garden of the hotel

with rustic greetings and early Salzkammergut attitudes. After much

conjecture, I learned that they were the family and friends of a

newspaper editor from Vienna. They had the literary instinct for local

colour.

The fishing at Hallstatt is at Obertraun. There is a level stretch of

land above the lake, where the river flows peaceably, and the fish

have leisure to feed and grow. It is leased to a peasant, who makes a

business of supplying the hotels with fish. He was quite willing to give

permission to an angler; and I engaged one of his sons, a capital young

fellow, whose natural capacities for good fellowship were only hampered

by a most extraordinary German dialect, to row me across the lake, and

carry the net and a small green barrel full of water to keep the fish

alive, according to the custom of the country. The first day we had only

four trout large enough to put into the barrel; the next day I think

there were six; the third day, I remember very well, there were ten.

They were pretty creatures, weighing from half a pound to a pound each,

and coloured as daintily as bits of French silk, in silver gray with

faint pink spots.

There was plenty to do at Hallstatt in the mornings. An hour's walk from

the town there was a fine waterfall, three hundred feet high. On the

side of the mountain above the lake was one of the salt-mines for which

the region is celebrated. It has been worked for ages by many successive

races, from the Celt downward. Perhaps even the men of the Stone Age

knew of it, and came hither for seasoning to make the flesh of the

cave-bear and the mammoth more palatable. Modern pilgrims are permitted

to explore the long, wet, glittering galleries with a guide, and slide

down the smooth wooden rollers which join the different levels of

the mines. This pastime has the same fascination as sliding down the

balusters; and it is said that even queens and princesses have

been delighted with it. This is a touching proof of the fundamental

simplicity and unity of our human nature.

But by far the best excursion from Hallstatt was an all-day trip to the

Zwieselalp--a mountain which seems to have been especially created as a

point of view. From the bare summit you look right into the face of the

huge, snowy Dachstein, with the wild lake of Gosau gleaming at its foot;

and far away on the other side your vision ranges over a confusion of

mountains, with all the white peaks of the Tyrol stretched along the

horizon. Such a wide outlook as this helps the fisherman to enjoy the

narrow beauties of his little rivers. No sport is at its best without

interruption and contrast. To appreciate wading, one ought to climb a

little on odd days.

Isehl is about ten or twelve miles below Hallstatt, in the valley of the

Traun. It is the fashionable summer-resort of Austria. I found it in the

high tide of amusement. The shady esplanade along the river was crowded

with brave women and fair men, in gorgeous raiment; the hotels were

overflowing; and there were various kinds of music and entertainments

at all hours of day and night. But all this did not seem to affect the

fishing.

The landlord of the Konigin Elizabeth, who is also the Burgomaster and a

gentleman of varied accomplishments and no leisure, kindly furnished

me with a fishing license in the shape of a large pink card. There were

many rules printed upon it: "All fishes under nine inches must be gently

restored to the water. No instrument of capture must be used except

the angle in the hand. The card of legitimation must be produced and

exhibited at the polite request of any of the keepers of the river."

Thus duly authorised and instructed, I sallied forth to seek my pastime

according to the law.

The easiest way, in theory, was to take the afternoon train up the river

to one of the villages, and fish down a mile or two in the evening,

returning by the eight o'clock train. But in practice the habits of the

fish interfered seriously with the latter part of this plan.

On my first day I had spent several hours in the vain effort to catch

something better than small grayling. The best time for the trout was

just approaching, as the broad light faded from the stream; already they

were beginning to feed, when I looked up from the edge of a pool and saw

the train rattling down the valley below me. Under the circumstances the

only thing to do was to go on fishing. It was an even pool with steep

banks, and the water ran through it very straight and swift, some four

feet deep and thirty yards across. As the tail-fly reached the middle

of the water, a fine trout literally turned a somersault over it, but

without touching it. At the next cast he was ready, taking it with a

rush that carried him into the air with the fly in his mouth. He weighed

three-quarters of a pound. The next one was equally eager in rising

and sharp in playing, and the third might have been his twin sister

or brother. So, after casting for hours and taking nothing in the most

beautiful pools, I landed three trout from one unlikely place in fifteen

minutes. That was because the trout's supper-time had arrived. So had

mine. I walked over to the rambling old inn at Goisern, sought the cook

in the kitchen and persuaded her, in spite of the lateness of the

hour, to boil the largest of the fish for my supper, after which I rode

peacefully back to Ischl by the eleven o'clock train.

For the future I resolved to give up the illusory idea of coming home by

rail, and ordered a little one-horse carriage to meet me at some point

on the high-road every evening at nine o'clock. In this way I managed to

cover the whole stream, taking a lower part each day, from the lake of

Hallstatt down to Ischl.

There was one part of the river, near Laufen, where the current was very

strong and waterfally, broken by ledges of rock. Below these it rested

in long, smooth reaches, much beloved by the grayling. There was no

difficulty in getting two or three of them out of each run.

The grayling has a quaint beauty. His appearance is aesthetic, like a

fish in a pre-raphaelite picture. His colour, in midsummer, is a golden

gray, darker on the back, and with a few black spots just behind his

gills, like patches put on to bring out the pallor of his complexion. He

smells of wild thyme when he first comes out of the water, wherefore St.

Ambrose of Milan complimented him in courtly fashion "Quid specie tua

gratius? Quid odore fragrantius? Quod mella fragrant, hoc tuo corpore

spiras." But the chief glory of the grayling is the large iridescent fin

on his back. You see it cutting the water as he swims near the surface;

and when you have him on the bank it arches over him like a rainbow. His

mouth is under his chin, and he takes the fly gently, by suction. He is,

in fact, and to speak plainly, something of a sucker; but then he is a

sucker idealised and refined, the flower of the family. Charles Cotton,

the ingenious young friend of Walton, was all wrong in calling the

grayling "one of the deadest-hearted fishes in the world." He fights and

leaps and whirls, and brings his big fin to bear across the force of the

current with a variety of tactics that would put his more aristocratic

fellow-citizen, the trout, to the blush. Twelve of these pretty fellows,

with a brace of good trout for the top, filled my big creel to the brim.

And yet, such is the inborn hypocrisy of the human heart that I always

pretended to myself to be disappointed because there were not more

trout, and made light of the grayling as a thing of naught.

The pink fishing license did not seem to be of much use. Its exhibition

was demanded only twice. Once a river guardian, who was walking down

the stream with a Belgian Baron and encouraging him to continue fishing,

climbed out to me on the end of a long embankment, and with proper

apologies begged to be favoured with a view of my document. It turned

out that his request was a favour to me, for it discovered the fact that

I had left my fly-book, with the pink card in it, beside an old mill, a

quarter of a mile up the stream.

Another time I was sitting beside the road, trying to get out of a very

long, wet, awkward pair of wading-stockings, an occupation which is

unfavourable to tranquillity of mind, when a man came up to me in the

dusk and accosted me with an absence of politeness which in German

amounted to an insult.

"Have you been fishing?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Have you any right to fish?"

"What right have you to ask?"

"I am a keeper of the river. Where is your card?"

"It is in my pocket. But pardon my curiosity, where is YOUR card?"

This question appeared to paralyse him. He had probably never been asked

for his card before. He went lumbering off in the darkness, muttering

"My card? Unheard of! MY card!"

The routine of angling at Ischl was varied by an excursion to the Lake

of St. Wolfgang and the Schafberg, an isolated mountain on whose rocky

horn an inn has been built. It stands up almost like a bird-house on

a pole, and commands a superb prospect; northward, across the rolling

plain and the Bavarian forest; southward, over a tumultuous land of

peaks and precipices. There are many lovely lakes in sight; but the

loveliest of all is that which takes its name from the old saint who

wandered hither from the country of the "furious Franks" and built his

peaceful hermitage on the Falkenstein. What good taste some of those old

saints had!

There is a venerable church in the village, with pictures attributed to

Michael Wohlgemuth, and a chapel which is said to mark the spot where

St. Wolfgang, who had lost his axe far up the mountain, found it, like

Longfellow's arrow, in an oak, and "still unbroke." The tree is gone, so

it was impossible to verify the story. But the saint's well is there, in

a pavilion, with a bronze image over it, and a profitable inscription

to the effect that the poorer pilgrims, "who have come unprovided with

either money or wine, should be jolly well contented to find the water

so fine." There is also a famous echo farther up the lake, which repeats

six syllables with accuracy. It is a strange coincidence that there are

just six syllables in the name of "der heilige Wolfgang." But when you

translate it into English, the inspiration of the echo seems to be less

exact. The sweetest thing about St. Wolfgang was the abundance of purple

cyclamens, clothing the mountain meadows, and filling the air with

delicate fragrance like the smell of lilacs around a New England

farmhouse in early June.

There was still one stretch of the river above Ischl left for the last

evening's sport. I remember it so well: the long, deep place where the

water ran beside an embankment of stone, and the big grayling poised

on the edge of the shadow, rising and falling on the current as a kite

rises and falls on the wind and balances back to the same position; the

murmur of the stream and the hissing of the pebbles underfoot in the

rapids as the swift water rolled them over and over; the odour of the

fir-trees, and the streaks of warm air in quiet places, and the faint

whiffs of wood-smoke wafted from the houses, and the brown flies dancing

heavily up and down in the twilight; the last good pool, where the river

was divided, the main part making a deep, narrow curve to the right, and

the lesser part bubbling into it over a bed of stones with half-a-dozen

tiny waterfalls, with a fine trout lying at the foot of each of them and

rising merrily as the white fly passed over him--surely it was all very

good, and a memory to be grateful for. And when the basket was full,

it was pleasant to put off the heavy wading-shoes and the long

rubber-stockings, and ride homeward in an open carriage through the

fresh night air. That is as near to sybaritic luxury as a man should

care to come.

The lights in the cottages are twinkling like fire-flies, and there are

small groups of people singing and laughing down the road. The honest

fisherman reflects that this world is only a place of pilgrimage, but

after all there is a good deal of cheer on the journey, if it is made

with a contented heart. He wonders who the dwellers in the scattered

houses may be, and weaves romances out of the shadows on the curtained

windows. The lamps burning in the wayside shrines tell him stories

of human love and patience and hope, and of divine forgiveness.

Dream-pictures of life float before him, tender and luminous, filled

with a vague, soft atmosphere in which the simplest outlines gain a

strange significance. They are like some of Millet's paintings--"The

Sower," or "The Sheepfold,"--there is very little detail in them but

sometimes a little means so much.

Then the moon slips up into the sky from behind the hills, and the

fisherman begins to think of home, and of the foolish, fond old rhymes

about those whom the moon sees far away, and the stars that have

the power to fulfil wishes--as if the celestial bodies knew or cared

anything about our small nerve-thrills which we call affection and

desires! But if there were Some One above the moon and stars who did

know and care, Some One who could see the places and the people that you

and I would give so much to see, Some One who could do for them all of

kindness that you and I fain would do, Some One able to keep our beloved

in perfect peace and watch over the little children sleeping in their

beds beyond the sea--what then? Why, then, in the evening hour, one

might have thoughts of home that would go across the ocean by way of

heaven, and be better than dreams, almost as good as prayers.