A COTSWOLD TROUT STREAM.
"We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: Doubtless
God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did; and so,
if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent
recreation than angling.'"--_The Compleat Angler_.
Very few trout we have caught this season ('98) are pink-fleshed when
cooked. Last year there were a good number. The reason probably is that
they have not been feeding on the fresh-water shrimps or crustaceans,
owing to the abundance of olive duns and other flies that have been on
the water. Last winter, being so mild, was very favourable for the
hatching out of fly in the spring. A hard winter doubtless commits sad
havoc among the caddis and larvae at the bottom of the river; the
trout, not being able to get much fly, are then compelled to fall back
on the crustaceans. The food in these limestone rivers is so plentiful
that the fish are able to pick and choose from a very varied bill of
fare. This is the reason they are so difficult to catch. One is not able
to increase the stock of trout to any great extent, thereby making them
easier to catch, because the fish one introduces into the water are apt
to crowd together in one or two places, with the result that they are
far too plentiful in the shallows, where there is little food, and too
scarce in the deeper water. Of the Loch Leven trout, turned in two years
ago as yearlings, more than two-thirds inhabit the quick-running,
gravelly reaches; in consequence, they have grown very little. The few
that have stayed in the deeper water have done splendidly; they are now
about three-quarters of a pound in weight. No fish, not even sea trout,
fight so well as these bright, silvery "Loch Levens." They have cost us
no end of casts and flies already this season,--not yet a month old.
Experience proves, however, that ordinary _salmo fario_, or common brook
trout, are the best for turning down; for the Loch Leven trout require
deep water to grow to any size.
When a boy, I made a strange recovery of an eel that I had hooked and
lost three weeks before. I was fishing with worms in a large deep hole
in Surrey. My hook was a salmon fly with the feathers clipped off. I
hooked what I believed to be an eel, but he broke the line through
getting it entangled in a stick on the bottom. Three weeks afterwards,
when fishing in the same fashion and in the same place, the line got
fixed up on the bottom. I pulled hard and a stick came away. On that
stick, strange to say, was entangled my old gut casting-line, and at the
end of the line was an eel of two pounds' weight! On cutting him open,
there, sure enough, was the identical clipped salmon fly; it had been
inside that eel for three weeks without hurting him. This sounds like a
regular angler's yarn, and nobody need believe it unless he likes;
nevertheless, it is perfectly true. I had got "fixed up" in the same
stick that had broken my line on the previous occasion.
That fish have very little sense of feeling is proved time after time.
There is nothing unusual in catching a jack with several old hooks in
his mouth. With trout, however, the occurrence is more rare. Last season
my brother lost a fly and two yards of gut through a big trout breaking
his tackle, but two minutes afterwards he caught the fish and recovered
his fly and his tackle. We constantly catch fish during the may-fly time
with broken tackle in their mouths.
Who does not recollect the rapturous excitement caused by the first fish
caught in early youth? My first capture will ever remain firmly
impressed on the tablet of the brain, for it was a red herring--"a
common or garden," prime, thoroughly salted "red herring"! It came about
in this way. At the age of nine I was taken by my father on a yachting
expedition round the lovely islands of the west coast of Scotland. We
were at anchor the first evening of the voyage in one of the beautiful
harbours of the Hebrides, and, noticing the sailors fishing over the
side of the boat, I begged to be allowed to hold the line. Somehow or
other they managed to get a "red herring" on to the hook when my
attention was diverted; so that when I hauled up a fish that in the
darkness looked fairly silvery my excitement knew no bounds. After the
sailors had taken it off the hook, and given it a knock on the head, I
rushed down with it into the cabin, where my father and three others
were dining. Throwing my fish down on to the table, I delightedly
exclaimed, "Look what I have caught, father; isn't it a lovely fish?" I
could not understand the roars of laughter which followed, as one of the
party, with a horrified glance at my capture, shouted, "Take it away,
take it away!" _Non redolet sed olet_. Oddly enough, although after this
I caught any amount of real live fish, I never realised until months
afterwards how miserably I had been taken in by the boat's crew on that
eventful night.
Not long afterwards, whilst fishing with a worm just below the falls at
Macomber, in the Highlands, I made what was for a small boy a remarkable
catch of sea trout. I forget the exact number, but I know I had to take
them back in sacks. They were "running" at the time, and it was very
pretty to see them continually jumping up the seven-foot ladder out of
the Spean into the Lochy. Underneath this ladder, where the water boiled
and seethed in a thousand eddies, hundreds of trout lay ready to jump up
the fall. Into this foaming torrent I threw my heavily leaded bait. No
sooner was the worm in the water than it was seized by a fine sea trout.
Some of them were nearly two pounds; and although I had a strong
casting-line, they were often most difficult to land, for a series of
small cataracts dashed down amongst huge rocks and slippery boulders,
until, a hundred feet below, the calm, deep Macomber pool was reached.
As the fish, when hooked, would often dash down this foaming torrent
into the pool below, they gave a tremendous amount of play before they
were landed. There was an element of danger about it, too, as a false
step might have led to ugly complications amongst the rocks, over which
the water came pouring down at the rate of ten miles an hour. A boy of
twelve years old, as I was then, would not have stood a chance in that
roaring torrent. A terrible accident happened here a few years
afterwards. A party went from the house, where I always stayed, to fish
at Macomber Falls. There were four ladies and two men. Whilst they were
sitting eating their luncheon at this romantic spot, an argument arose
as to whether a man falling into the seething pool below the fall would
be drowned or not. The water was only about two feet deep; but the place
was a miniature whirlpool, and, once started down the pent-in torrent, a
man would be dashed along the rocky bed and carried far out into the
deep Macomber pool beyond. A gentleman from Lincolnshire argued that in
would be impossible for any one to be drowned in such shallow water.
This was at lunch. Little did he imagine that within half an hour his
theory would be put to the test. But so it was; for whilst he was
standing on the rocks fishing, with a large overcoat on, he slipped and
fell in. His fishing-line became entangled round his legs, and he was
borne away at the mercy of the current. Unfortunately only ladies were
present, his friend having gone down stream. Twice he clutched hold of
the rocky bank opposite them, but it was too slippery, and his hold gave
way. A man jumping across the chasm might possibly have saved him by
risking his own life, for it was only fourteen feet wide; but it would
have been madness for any of the ladies to have attempted it. So the
poor fellow was drowned in two feet of water, before their eyes, and in
spite of their brave endeavours to save him. He must have been stunned
by repeated blows from the rocks, or else I think he would have baffled
successfully with the torrent. The overcoat must have hampered him most
dreadfully. It was a terrible affair, reminding one of the death of
"young Romilly" in the Wharfe, of which Wordsworth tells in that
beautiful poem, the "Force of Prayer." Bolton Abbey, as everybody knows,
was built hard by, on the river bank, by the sorrowful mother, in honour
of her boy.
"That stately priory was reared;
And Wharf, as he moved along
To matins, join'd a mournful voice,
Nor failed at evensong."
How many a beautiful spot in the British Isles has been endowed with a
romance that will never entirely die away owing to some catastrophe of
this kind! Macomber Falls are very beautiful indeed, but one cannot pass
the place now without a shudder and a sigh.
It has been said that "the test of a river is its power to drown a
man." There is doubtless a peculiar grandeur about the roaring torrent;
but to me there is a still greater charm in the gentle flow of a south
country trout stream, such as abound in Hampshire, Wiltshire, and in the
Cotswolds. I do not think the Coln is capable of drowning a man, though
one of the Peregrine family told me the other day that the only two men
who ever bathed in our stream died soon afterwards from the shock of the
intensely cold water! But then, it must be remembered that the old
prejudice against "cold water" still lingers amongst the country folk of
Gloucestershire; so that this story must always be taken _cum
grano salis_.
* * * * *
There are few trout streams to our mind more delightful from the
angler's point of view than the Gloucestershire Coln. Rising a few miles
from Cheltenham, it runs into the Thames near Lechlade, and affords some
fifteen miles or more of excellent fishing. The scenery is of that quiet
and homely type that belongs so exclusively to the chalk and limestone
streams of the south of England.
From its source to the point at which it joins the Isis, the Coln flows
continuously through a series of parks and small well-wooded demesnes,
varied with picturesque Cotswold villages and rich water meadows. It
swells out into fishable proportions just above Lord Eldon's Stowell
property, steals gently past his beautiful woods at Chedworth and the
Roman villa discovered a few years ago, then onward through the quaint
old-world villages of Fossbridge to Winson and Coln-St-Dennis. Though
not a hundred miles from London, this part of Gloucestershire is one of
the most primitive and old-fashioned districts in England. Until the new
railway between Andover and Cheltenham was opened, four years ago, with
a small station at Fosscross, there were many inhabitants of these
old-world villages who had never seen a train or a railway. Only the
other day, on asking a good lady, the wife of a farmer, whether she had
ever been in London, I received the reply, "No, but I've been to
Cheltenham." This in a tone of voice that meant me to understand that
going to Cheltenham, a distance of about sixteen miles, was quite as
important an episode in her life as a visit to London would have been.
On leaving Winson the Coln widens out considerably, and for the next two
miles becomes the boundary between Mr. Wykeham-Musgrave's property of
Barnsley and the manor of Ablington. It flows through the picturesque
hamlet of Ablington, within a hundred yards of the old Elizabethan manor
house, over an artificial fall in the garden, and passes onward on its
secluded way through lovely woodland scenery, until it reaches the
village of Bibury; here it runs for nearly half a mile parallel with the
main street of the village, and then enters the grounds of Bibury Court.
I know no prettier village in England than Bibury, and no snugger
hostelry than the Swan. The landlady of this inn has a nice little
stretch of water for the use of those who find their way to Bibury; and
a pleasanter place wherein to spend a few quiet days could not be found.
The garden and old court house of Bibury are sweetly pretty, the house,
like Ablington, being three hundred years old; the stream passes within
a few yards of it, over another waterfall of about ten feet, and soon
reaches Williamstrip. Here, again, the scenery is typical of rural
England in its most pleasing form; and the village of Coln-St.-Aldwyns
is scarcely less fascinating than Bibury.
After leaving the stately pile of Hatherop Castle and Williamstrip Park
on the left, the Coln flows silently onwards through the delightful
demesne of Fairford Park. Here the stream has been broadened out into a
lake of some depth and size, and holds some very large fish. Another
mile and Fairford town is reached, another good specimen of the Cotswold
village--for it is a large village rather than a town--with its lovely
church, famous for its windows, its gabled cottages, and comfortable
Bull Inn. There are several miles of fishing at the Bull, as many an
Oxonian has discovered in times gone by, and we trust will again.
From what we have said, it will easily be gathered that this stream is
unsurpassed for scenery of that quiet, homely type that Kingsley
eulogises so enthusiastically in his "Chalk Stream Studies," and I am
inclined to agree with him in his preference for it over the grander
surroundings of mountain streams:
"Let the Londoner have his six weeks every year among crag and heather,
and return with lungs expanded and muscles braced to his nine months'
prison. The countryman, who needs no such change of air and scene, will
prefer more homelike, though more homely, pleasures. Dearer to him than
wild cataracts or Alpine glens are the still hidden streams which Bewick
has immortalised in his vignettes and Creswick in his pictures. The long
grassy shallow, paved with yellow gravel, where he wades up between low
walls of fern-fringed rock, beneath nut and oak and alder, to the low
bar over which the stream comes swirling and dimpling, as the
water-ouzel flits piping before him, and the murmur of the ringdove
comes soft and sleepy through the wood,--there, as he wades, he sees a
hundred sights and hears a hundred tones which are hidden from the
traveller on the dusty highway above."
But _chacun à son goût_! Let us now see what sort of sport may be had in
the Coln. To begin with, it must be described as a "may-fly" stream.
This means, of course, that there is a tremendous rise of fly early in
June, with the inevitable slack time before and after the may-fly time.
But there is much pleasant angling to be had at other times. The season
begins at the end of March, when a few small fish are rising, and may be
caught with the March brown or the blue and olive duns. Few big fish are
in condition until May, but much fun can be had with the smaller ones
all through April. The half-pounders fight splendidly, and give one the
idea, on being hooked, of pulling three times their real weight. The
April fishing, at all events after the middle of the month, is very
delightful in this river. One does not actually kill many fish, for a
large number are caught and returned.
In May, when the larger fish begin to take up their places for the
summer, one may expect good sport. This season, however, has been very
disappointing; and, judging by the way the fish were feeding on the
bottom for the first fortnight of the month, one is led to expect an
early rise of the may-fly. Until the "fly is up," the April flies,
especially the olive dun, are all that are necessary. For a couple of
weeks before the "fly-fisher's carnival" sport is always uncertain.
If the wind is in a good quarter, sport may be had; but should it be
east, the trout will not leave the caddis, with which the bed of the
river is simply alive at this time. Of late years good sport has been
obtained at the latter end of May with small flies. The may-fly
generally comes up on the higher reaches about the last week in May, or
about June 1st, though at Fairford, lower down, it is a week earlier. A
good season means a steady rise of fly, lasting for nearly three weeks,
but with no great amount of fly on any one day. A bad may-fly season
means, as a rule, a regular "glut" of fly for three or four days, so
that the fish are stuffed full almost to bursting point, and will not
look at the natural fly afterwards, much less at your neatly "cocked"
artificial one.
Large bags can, of course, be made on certain days in the may-fly
season; but I do not know of any better than one hundred and six fish in
three days, averaging one pound apiece.
Sport, however, is not estimated by the number of fish taken, and there
is no better day's fun for the real fisherman than killing four or five
brace of good fish when the trout are beginning to get tired of the fly,
but are still to be caught by working hard for them. The "alder" will
often do great execution at this time, and a small blue dun is sometimes
very killing in the morning or evening.
After the "green-drake" has lived his short life and disappeared, there
is a lull in the fishing, and the sportsman may with advantage take
himself off to London to see the Oxford and Cambridge cricket match. All
through July and August, when the water gets low and clear, the best and
largest fish may be taken from an hour before sunset up to eleven
o'clock at night by the red palmer. Although it savours somewhat of
poaching, I confess to a weakness for evening and night fishing. The
cool water meadows, the setting sun, with its golden glow on the water,
add a peculiar charm to fishing at this time of day in the hot summer
months. And then--the splash of your fish as you hook him! How magnified
is the sound in the dim twilight, when you cannot see, but can only hear
and feel your quarry! And what satisfaction to know that that great
"logger-headed" two-pounder, that was devouring goodness knows how many
yearlings and fry daily, is safe out of the water and in your basket!
On rainy days in these months good sport may be had with the wet fly;
and in September a yellow dun, or a fly that imitates the wasp, will
kill, if only you can keep out of sight, and place a well-dried fly
right on the fish's nose.
The dry fly and up stream is of course the orthodox method of fishing in
this as in other south-country chalk or limestone streams. No flogging
the water indiscriminately all the way up, but marking your fish down,
and stalking him, is the real game. For those who fish "wet" sport is
not so good as it used to be, owing to the "schoolmaster being abroad"
amongst trout as well as amongst men; but on certain windy days this
method is the only one possible. There is a good deal of prejudice
against the "chuck-and-chance-it" style among the advocates of the
dry-fly method of fishing. That a man who fishes with a floating fly
should be set down as a better sportsman than one who allows his fly to
sink is, to my thinking, a narrow-minded argument, and one, moreover,
that is not borne out by facts. True, in some clear chalk streams the
fish can only be killed with the dry fly; and in such cases it is
unsportsmanlike to thrash the water--in the first place, because there
is no chance of catching fish, and in the second, in the interest of
other anglers, because it is likely to make the fish shy. And therefore
it is a somewhat selfish method of fishing.
But let those accomplished exponents of the art of fishing who are too
fond of applying the epithet "poacher" to all those who do not fish in
their own particular style remember that there are but few streams in
England sluggish enough for dry-fly fishing; consequently many
first-rate fishermen have never acquired the art. The dry-fly angler has
no more right to consider himself superior as a sportsman to the
advocate of the old-fashioned method than the county cricketer has to
consider himself superior to the village player. In both cases time and
practice have done their work; but the best fishermen and the most
practised exponents of the game of cricket are very often inferior to
their less distinguished brethren as _sportsmen_. At the same time, were
I asked which of all our English sports requires the greatest amount of
perseverance, the supremest delicacy of hand, the most assiduous
practice, and the most perfect control of temper, in order that
excellence may be attained, I would unhesitatingly answer, "Dry-fly
fishing on a real chalk stream"; and I would sooner have one successful
day under such conditions than catch fifty trout by flogging a
Scotch burn.
In the Coln the fish run largest at Fairford, where the water has been
deepened and broadened; and there three-pounders are not uncommon. Then
at Hatherop and Williamstrip there are some big fish. Higher up the
trout run up to two and a half pounds; and the average size of fish
killed after May 1st is, roughly speaking, one pound. The higher reaches
are very much easier to fish, for the following reason: at Bibury, and
at intervals of about half a mile all the way down, the river is fed by
copious springs of transparent water; the lower down you go, and the
more springs that fall into the river, the more glassy does it become.
The upper reaches of this river may be described as easy fishing. The
water, when in good trim, is of a whey colour, though after June it
becomes low and very clear. The flies I have mentioned are the only ones
really necessary, and if the fish will not take them they will probably
take nothing. They are, to sum up:
(1) March Brown.
(2) Olive Dun.
(3) Blue Dun.
(4) May-fly.
(5) Alder.
(6) Palmer.
"Wykeham's Fancy" and the "Grey Quill Gnat" are the only other flies
that need be mentioned. The former has a great reputation on the river,
but we ourselves have used it but little.
The food on the Coln is most abundant, and to this must be attributed
the extraordinary size of the fish as compared with the depth and bulk
of water. That one hundred and fifty brace of trout, averaging a pound
in weight, are taken with rod and line each year on a stretch of water
two miles in length, and varying in depth from two to three feet, with a
few deep holes, the width of the water being not more than thirty feet
for the most part, is sufficient proof that there is abundance of food
in the river.
Where the water is shallow we have found great advantage accrue by
putting in large stones and fir poles, to form ripples and also homes
for the fish. By this means shallow reaches can be made to hold good
fish, and the eddies and ripples make them easy to catch. The stones add
to the picturesqueness of the stream, for they soon become coated with
moss, and give the idea in some places of a rocky Scotch burn. A
pleasant variety of fishing is thus obtained; for at one time you are
throwing a dry fly on to the still and unruffled surface of the broader
reaches, and a hundred yards lower down you may have to use a wet fly in
the narrower and quicker parts, where the stones cause the water to
"boil up" in all directions, and the eddies give a chance to those who
are uninitiated into the mysteries of dry-fly angling.
The large fish prefer sluggish water, but in these artificial ripples
fish may be caught on days on which the stream would be unfishable under
ordinary circumstances. It would be invidious to make comparisons
between the Coln and the Hampshire rivers--the Itchen and the
Test,--these are larger rivers, with larger fish, and they require a
better fisherman than those stretches of the Coin that we are dealing
with, although the lower reaches of the latter stream are difficult
enough for most people.
Otters used to be considered scarce on the River Coln, but two have
lately been trapped in the parish of Bibury. With pike and coarse fish
we are not troubled on the upper reaches, though lower down they exist
in certain quantities. Of poachers I trust I may say the same. Rumour
has sometimes whispered of nets kept in Bibury and elsewhere, and of
midnight raids on the neighbouring preserves; but though I have walked
down the bank on many a summer night, I have never once come upon
anything suspicious, not even a night-line. The Gloucestershire native
is an honest man. He may think, perhaps, that he has nothing to learn
and cannot go wrong, but burglaries are practically unknown, and
poaching is not commonly practised.
To sum up, the River Coln affords excellent sport amid surroundings
seldom to be found in these days. The whole country reminds one of the
days of Merrie England, so quaint and rural are the scenes. The houses
and cottages are all built of the native stone, which can be obtained
for the trouble of digging, so there is no danger of modern villas or
the inroads of civilisation spoiling the face of the country. And
moreover, these country people; being simple in their tastes, have never
endeavoured to improve on the old style of building; the newer cottages,
with their pointed gables, closely resemble the old Elizabethan houses.
The new stone soon tones down, and every house has a pretty garden
attached to it.
I have just returned from a stroll by the river, with my rod in hand, on
the look-out for a rise. Not a fish was stirring. It is the middle of
May, and this glorious valley is growing more and more glorious every
day. An evening walk by the stream is delightful now, even though you
may begin to wonder if all the fish have disappeared. The air is full of
joyful sounds. The cuckoo, the corncrake, and the cock pheasant seem to
be vieing with each other; but, alas! nightingales there are none. As I
come round a bend, up get a mallard and a duck, and beautiful they look
as they swing round me in the dazzling sunlight. A little further on I
come upon a whole brood of nineteen little wild ducks. The old mothers
are a good deal tamer now than they were in the shooting season. Many a
time have they got up, just out of shot, when I was trying to wile away
the time during the great frost with a little stalking. A kingfisher
shoots past; but I have given up trying to find her nest. There is a
brood of dabchicks, and, a little further on, another family of
wild duck.
The spring flowers are just now in their flush of pride and glory.
Clothing the banks, and reflected everywhere in the blue waters of the
stream, are great clusters of marsh marigolds painting the meadows with
their flaming gold; out of the decayed "stoles" of trees that fell by
the water's edge years and years ago springs the "glowing violet"; here
and there, as one throws a fly towards the opposite bank, a purple glow
on the surface of the stream draws the attention to a glorious mass of
violets on the mossy bank above; myriads of dainty cuckoo flowers,
"With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears,"
are likewise to be seen. Farther away from the stream's bank, on the
upland lawn and along the hedge towards the downs, the deep purple of
the hyacinth and orchis, and the perfect blue of the little eyebright or
germander speedwell, are visible even at a distance. In a week the lilac
and sweet honeysuckle will fill the air with grateful redolence.
Ah! a may-fly. But I know this is only a false alarm. There are always a
few stray ones about at this time; the fly will not be "up" for ten days
at least. When it does come, the stream, so smooth and glassy now, will
be "like a pot a-boiling," as the villagers say. You would not think it
possible that a small brook could contain so many big fish as will show
themselves when the fly is up.
In conclusion, we will quote once more from dear old Charles Kingsley,
for what was true fifty years ago is true now--at all events, in this
part of Gloucestershire; and may it ever remain so!
"Come, then, you who want pleasant fishing days without the waste of
time and trouble and expense involved in two hundred miles of railway
journey, and perhaps fifty more of highland road; come to pleasant
country inns, where you can always get a good dinner; or, better still,
to pleasant country houses, where you can always get good society--to
rivers which always fish brimful, instead of being, as these mountain
ones are, very like a turnpike road for three weeks, and then like
bottled porter for three days--to streams on which you have strong
south-west breezes for a week together on a clear fishing water, instead
of having, as on these mountain ones, foul rain spate as long as the
wind is south-west, and clearing water when the wind chops up to the
north,--streams, in a word, where you may kill fish four days out of
five from April to October, instead of having, as you will most probably
in the mountain, just one day's sport in the whole of your
month's holiday."
[Illustration: A bridge over the Coln. 171.png]