Like the dormouse, the approach of spring draws forth also the angler.
So early as February trout-fishing begins in the West of England, and
good sport may be had during March and April. May, however, is the
month of months for the trout fisher, certainly in the Midland
Counties, and wherever the May fly is found, and probably in the West
as well. With the first sunny gleams of February that herald the full
burst of spring, Halieus and Poietes may be seen rod in hand down their
streams, rejoicing that the many cold days, during which they have been
longingly fingering flies and tackle at home, are at length ended. So
many eulogies have been heaped upon fishing, which culminate in the
enthusiasm of gentle Isaak, the father of the craft, that the world
must indeed be tolerant if it can read any more.
But between his zeal on the one hand, and the venerable dictum of Dr
Johnson on the other, lies a truer appreciation of the art of angling
with a fly as being the busy man's most suitable recreation, in the
strictest sense of the word, in these feverish days of intellectual and
social bustle. Besides the love of sport for its own sake, fly-fishing
provides numerous secondary delights and occupations for thoughtful,
observant natures. Whatever be a man's hobby, he can ride it as hard as
he chooses down the banks of a trout stream. The rigour of the game is
all very well for whist; but fishing, with no other object than killing
fish, is altogether mean and ignoble. In this pursuit the fisherman may
be conchologist, ornithologist, or botanist as well--nay, he may be all
at once, and probably is so if he be a devoted student of nature. The
poet can throw off a sonnet while he flings his fly; the clergyman will
be taught by angling, as truly as by Shakespeare, how to find sermons
in stones, and books in the running brooks. Did not St Anthony convert
heretics by preaching to the fishes? Like Narcissus of old, the lover
may see his other self mirrored in the quiet waters. Whatever be his
profession, while the angler meditatively saunters on with a blade of
grass between his lips, his thoughts will sooner or later be certain to
find their own peculiar bent. Even the philosopher ought to be
attracted from his study to the brook. Plutarch tells how the
Pythagoreans abstained from eating fish, deeming them, on account of
their dumbness, creatures most kindred to the philosophic mind.
Theology itself has not scrupled to embalm the highest mysteries under
the symbol of a fish; and grave bishops at present do not disdain
exploits with the salmon-rod that are duly chronicled in the columns of
the _Field_. Thus, the true angler may well join Sir H. Wotton in
deeming the hours spent on his favourite sport "his idle time not idly
spent," even if he cannot echo his sentiment that "he would rather live
five May months than forty Decembers."[1] We have always regretted that
good Bishop Andrewes, the model of a saint, a scholar, and a divine,
did not angle. What additional zest would it not have lent to those
rambles of which his biographer speaks in such simple language! "His
ordinary exercise and recreation was walking, either alone by himself,
or with some other selected companion, with whom he might confer and
argue and recount their studies; and he would often profess that to
observe the grass, herbs, corn, trees, cattle, earth, waters, heavens,
any of the creatures, and to contemplate their natures, orders,
qualities, virtues, uses, &c., was ever to him the greatest mirth,
content, and recreation that could be; and this he held to his dying
day."[2]
[1] Walton's Life of Sir Hy. Wotton.
[2] Life of Bishop Andrewes by H. Isaacson, his amanuensis.
Andrewes' works, Anglo-Catholic Library.
"Wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude;
Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,
She plumes her feathers."
There is little doubt that had the writer of these well-known lines
been able to tear himself from his books for any diversion, it would
have been in order to angle. A great authority recommends a man weighed
down with overwhelming mental trouble to learn a new language by way of
diverting his thoughts from self; it would be far more efficacious for
him to sally out fishing, not, certainly, to stand for hours beside a
sullen pool angling with float and worm--this would be to invite
suicide--but to ramble down the bank of some winding stream, burdened
with nothing heavier than a clear conscience and a light fly-rod. Then
may St Nicholas speedily befriend his votary!
Now put on your flies--a green drake, by all means, if it be May--if
not, nothing can be better than the "red spinner," the "coachman," and,
above all, "the professor," from its taking qualities--fit namesake of
Christopher North. We have reached the Beck, and this warm south wind
"will blow the hook to the fishes' mouth." Without the abundance of
trout, which, according to Audubon, characterised the river Sehigh in
North America, where he "was made weary with pulling up the sparkling
fish allured by the struggles of the common grasshopper," the Beck
possesses--what is more grateful to the true angler--a fair amount of
fish, which it requires considerable skill to hook. The local name,
"beck," shows that it runs through a country which was overrun by the
Northmen, and its character is not dissimilar to theirs. It has none of
the abrupt headlong manner of a pure Keltic brook, overcoming all
obstacles by sheer persistent force, as seen in Wales, in the
Highlands, and in North Devon. Nor does it wind along in slow, deep
volume, like a Teutonic brook, or the offshoot of a Dutch canal, bereft
indeed of all the lighter graces which adorn a beautiful stream, but
irresistible withal, and beneficent. It rather unites the two
characters, meandering with crystal eddies and murmurous flow,
"Kissing the gentle sedges as it glides,"
now circumventing a hillock that could not well be sapped, and now, as
befits the length of its course, flowing silently, with full streams,
through a croft knee-deep in daisies and meadowsweet; lovingly cutting
its sinuous S's through the sward, as Izaak Walton carved his initials
on Casaubon's tablet in Westminster Abbey; and yet again, like the
Laureate's brook,
"Chattering over stony ways,
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,"--
happy combination of elements from the diverse nationalities that make
up the English nation. It distinguishes the names of the parishes
through which it passes in some places by the Norman addition to them
of "le beck," while they themselves frequently terminate, after the
Scandinavian fashion, in "by" (_i.e._, dwelling). However, as there are
in Lincolnshire alone two hundred and twelve places which have this
termination, the exact locality of this particular beck can only be
dimly guessed; and, sooth to say, if the angler has a failing, it
consists in a natural dislike to reveal the exact situation of his
favourite "stickles" to another.
Few objects in nature are so beautiful as running water; it soothes the
mind as well as the eye, and disposes to reflection, sobering the jar
of contending passions in the soul as it gleams along, always different
in its chequered eddies, and yet always the same. The vegetation that
springs on the brink of a stream very much heightens its charms to the
true angler, who is always more or less of an artist and poet. Round
this beck there are, indeed, no ferns tufting each projecting shelf,
and seizing upon every bare stone and decayed tree. East Anglian
scenery is wofully deficient in this element of the picturesque; but
wild flowers gem its banks,
"Thick set with agate and the azure sheen
Of turkis blue and emerald green
That in the channel strays."
At every turn the marsh marigold blazes in brilliant golden clumps,
while the water violet and bladderwort, most curious of our
water-weeds, find place round many of the deeper pools. Overhead, too,
hoary willows lend a great charm to the scenery, and patriarchal thorn
bushes, that glitter with snow-flowers every May, and wonder at
returning winter as they view their whiteness reflected below, while
abundance of forget-me-nots, "for happy lovers," seek the most retired
spots. Too often in the south of the county, as, for instance, round
Croyland Abbey, lines of melancholy poplars disfigure the prospect, as
they do (alas! _did_) round Metz, Avignon, and other French towns.
It is curious, by the way, that so vivacious a people as the French
should be fond of this, the most _triste_ of trees. Here, however,
willows are in exact keeping with the landscape; and as they turn the
glaucous under-surface of their leaves to the light in the shivering
breezes, instead of sadness, they speak of joy to the angler, for it is
just when these capfuls of wind blow that the lazy trout in the holes
under their shade rise eagerly at the fly. Once every year, in the city
church of St James, in accordance with a benefactor's will, a sermon on
flowers is preached from some floral text, to a congregation mainly
composed of young people, each of them careful to carry a nosegay with
them to the service. A walk down the beck, to one who knows anything of
botany, or, better still, who really loves our wild flowers, is in
itself a perpetual sermon. And how much are its exhortations
strengthened if the angler be somewhat of an ornithologist! What a
joyous melody proceeds from the ivy-covered fir, as Will Wimble[3]
makes his way to the beck!
[3] "He makes a May-fly to a miracle, and furnishes the whole
country with angle-rods."--_Spectator_, No. 108.
"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never can recapture
The first fine careless rapture."
On this sunny bank, in the first gleam of spring sunshine, may be
noticed a sprightly little bird hopping along, glad to have completed
his migration to our shore--the wheatear, which Tennyson aptly terms
(if we read him aright) "the sea-blue bird of March." And later on, the
cuckoo is first heard down this glade, gleefully "telling her name to
all the hills," till June renders her hoarse, and the clear note
becomes "Cuck-cuckoo! Cuck-cuck-cuckoo!" and endless is the harsh
iteration if another of her family answer the challenge. Peering
carefully round a thicket, too, may be seen the waterhen, proudly
tempting her black brood to cross the stream for the first time; or
haply a wild duck, that has sat on her eggs till the angler's foot
almost touches her, flaps suddenly her wings, and skims under the
overhanging alders. If the fisherman be an observant lover of nature,
these and the like country sights and sounds will bring him great
contentment even though he take no fish. And so speaks Dame Juliana
Berners, in her "Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle"--one of the
quaintest productions of early English literature:--"Atte the best he
hath his holsom walk and merry at his ease, a swete ayre of the swete
savoure of the meede flowres: that makyth hym hungry. He hereth the
melodyous armony of fowles. He seeth the yonge swannes, heerons,
duckes, cotes, and many other foules wyth theyr brodes. And yf the
angler take fysshe, surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in
his spyryte."
Down this beck an artistic eye will find many a feast of colour. The
keeper's cottage stands on a high bank; and a more charming domestic
subject was never painted, even by Millais, than one which may be
noticed there any day in August. His little girl, bare-headed and
rosy-cheeked with the merriest of light-blue eyes, stands under a
forest of sun-flowers, which spread their huge yellow discs above,
while sunbeams break through and leave their gold on the little
maiden's hair, and play round her, earnest, we will hope, of her
future, as she drops a courtesy to the passing angler. A little farther
on, the briony, with its brilliant berries, will festoon the grey trunk
of its cherishing oak with a glory, in autumn, that cannot but charm
the eye. The wild hyacinths of April are like a fold of blue sky that
has descended upon the wooded hollows. In the thatch of the labourer's
cottage is one deeply-set window, with a few tiles under it, on which
lichens and moss have established a footing. It has just rained, and
the contrast between their vivid greens and the brilliant red tiles is
delicious. It is thus that much of the monotony inseparable from a dull
country may be relieved, by judiciously educating the vision to find
beauties where ordinary eyes see nothing unusual. The pensiveness of an
angler's "sad pleasure" will be found agreeable leisure for this
purpose.
The various animals again to be found down the Beck, and the intimate
acquaintance which can be made with them in their native haunts, form
by no means the least of its charms. It is wonderful how tame all wild
creatures become, and how their characters expand to men, who, like
Waterton and Thoreau, the American naturalist, take pains to gain their
confidence. The water rats, timid enough when any other foot
approaches, look with fearless friendship on the gentle angler. At his
ease he may watch them perched on a raft of drifted sticks and weeds
nibbling the arrowhead with the utmost composure, or swimming about
like a miniature colony of beavers. It is cheering to reflect, when
they are seen under such circumstances, that although the miller may
owe them a grudge for undermining the banks of his dam, they are of all
animals the most harmless to the farmer. He is too often, however, apt
to confound them with the destructive pests of the granary, and (though
they are really voles and not rats) to lump all together as vermin, and
issue an edict of universal extermination accordingly. What a blessed
day will it be for the lower animals when farmers imbibe a taste for
natural history! At dusk may often be discerned down the Beck another
innocent creature, the hedgehog, long remorselessly hunted down because
vile calumnies had attached themselves to him of eating partridges'
eggs and being addicted to sucking milk from cows. The latter
accusation is simply an impossibility, while as to the former, we are
afraid it is too true that he has a sneaking liking for eggs; but the
damage he does is infinitesimally small, when not computed by
gamekeepers' arithmetic. A pair of hedgehogs making love in their
curiously awkward fashion, puffing and blowing like grampuses, is a
strange sight; while the piglings, before their spines have grown, form
the most amusing of pets. About the saddest spectacle that we ever
witnessed was an old hedgehog that had been cut asunder by a train, at
a railway crossing, while her brood of six or eight were still round
her, unharmed and wondering what had happened. We transported the poor
orphans to the nearest damp ditch and left them to the rough care of
Mother Nature. Not very far from the Beck is a colony of badgers, an
animal much persecuted where any linger in other parts of the country,
but in this East Anglian shire acquiring a decided commercial value.
Anything that will encourage foxes is here greatly in request,
consequently badgers are deemed useful creatures in a cover, as they
make earths which afterwards tempt Reynard to take possession. An
angler is a subject of perpetual wonder to cows; but too often as he
turns round from the water's edge in some rich meadow, he finds himself
the centre towards which the curved fronts of two or three oxen
converge uncomfortably close, literally placing him on the horns of a
dilemma. The sleek heifers, however, approach him without any signs of
attack or trepidation, and often run the risk of being caught as he
rapidly draws his flies back for a cast. Tame ducks and water rats are
frequently thus caught; but the most singular coincidence of this kind
happened to a friend who, on going down the Otter to fish, had to cross
a bridge. Whirling his flies over this as he passed, a swallow, darting
underneath, took one and was captured. On his return in the evening he
again whisked his flies over the bridge, and a bat, snapping at one
under the arches, was taken in the same ignominious manner.
All this time, as is not uncommon with lovers of nature, we have lost
sight of our main purpose in coming down the brook--fishing, to wit.
The art boasts a long descent, according to Walton, the highest
authority to whom a fisherman can bow. "Some say it is as ancient as
Deucalion's flood; others that Belus, who was the first inventor of
godly and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor of angling,"
with much more to the same purport. It is a curious commentary on the
aristocratic principles of the fifteenth century to find Dame Berners,
in the aforementioned "Treatyse," confining the sport to the well-born.
She could not imagine it a recreation of the multitude, or even of
"ydle persones." With her it is emphatically "one of the dysportes that
gentylmen use." Her enthusiasm for the sport knows no bounds, and must
have made many generations of Englishmen anglers. The treatise
evidently supplied the idea of "Walton's Angler," the book which next
to "White's Selborne," has gone through more editions than any other
secular work in the language. "It shall be to you a very pleasure to se
the fayr bryght shynynge scalyd fysshes dysceyved by your crafty
meanes, and drawen upon lande," she says; but, either fishermen have
become less skilful since her days, or trout more timorous, if we may
judge from her wonderful frontispiece of a man angling (and that
successfully) with a rod like a flail, and tackle resembling the trace
of a carriage.
Neither the salmon, monarch of the salmonidæ, nor the lovely grayling,
which is only found in midland and Welsh waters, is to be expected in
the Beck. Still the common river trout is no mean antagonist for an
angler's mettle. Of all fish trout are most vigilant and suspicious;
the least unwary movement, adventuring even a hand out of shelter or
into bright sunshine, incautiously thrusting his head over the bank, or
interfering in any way with the skyline, will certainly betray the
angler. He may gain a slight advantage over their craft, however, by
remembering that their habit is to feed with their heads to the stream.
A beginner may rest assured that the golden secret of success in
trout-fishing is to keep well out of the fishes' sight by availing
himself of every natural cover, a tree-trunk, bush, &c., or by
approaching the stream, if he is very much exposed, in a stooping
position. He must, for the most part, learn, by observation, the many
singular habits and characteristics of his quarry, and here it is that
the old fisherman excels the tyro. The remarkable manner in which the
fish's colours change with the nature of the stream in which it lives,
is one of these curiosities of the trout. There is all the difference
in the world between a fish taken from the chalky streams of Wilts and
one that inhabits the dark peaty burns of Devon or South Wales, while
both are inferior in beauty to the red-spotted lusty fish of a
Nottinghamshire river. Internally they are of two types, one with red
flaky flesh, like salmon, the other white; these variations, however,
frequently run into each other. The practical fisherman only can
appreciate the great diversity of activity which exists in fish of
different sizes and streams, and probably in the same fish in the prime
and end of the season. In one bickering rivulet the trout will all be
vigorous and bold, leaping out of the water when hooked and dying hard,
"game to the back-bone," in sporting phrase. In a sluggish brook the
fish seem often to participate in its idiosyncracy, the larger ones
tamely surrendering after a few monotonous struggles, the little trout
diving to the bottom, and, like tench, hiding their heads in the mud.
We have had to stir such fish up with the landing net before it was
possible to do anything with them. Another curious fact is, that if a
fish be taken out of a favourite hole, another will almost always be
found to have replaced it the next day. Perhaps the most remarkable
theory which has been advanced concerning the intelligence of trout is
that of Sir H. Davy in "Salmonia," which he terms their "local memory."
A brief outline may furnish one more subject of observation to the
philosophic angler. Sir H. Davy asserts that if a trout be pricked with
a fly (say a blue upright), and then escape, he will never rise again
in the same pool to that particular fly while the surrounding
circumstances are the same. Drive him, however, down to another hole,
or wait till a flood has changed the aspect of his familiar haunt, and
he will take it as greedily as a fish that has never experienced the
deceit of an artificial fly. The associations of bank, stones,
tree-trunks, &c., in his hole, act like visible mentors, and remind
him, as the fly passes overhead, that it was when surrounded by their
associations he was simple enough to rise to its fascinations. Solving
such questions as these is one of the numerous secondary delights of
fly-fishing. Another speculation which may be pointed out to anglers of
an inquiring turn of mind, is to demonstrate why sluggish, muddy
streams invariably produce better fish than the sparkling Devon or
Welsh brooks. Thus in the Beck, down which our ideal fisherman is
wandering, the largest fish which has been taken of late years weighed
three pounds and a half, while trout of a pound and a half in weight
are by no means uncommon. Three-quarters of a pound is a fair size for
the fish of mountainous streams, while the majority of their trout do
not exceed half a pound. Doubtless, the greater abundance of worms and
ground bait in a muddy brook contributes to the larger size of its
fish, but it certainly is not the sole cause of their superiority.
The flies which the modern angler imitates in fur and feathers, belong
mostly to the families which entomology knows under the names of
_phrygancæ_ and _ephemeræ_. All anglers should know something of these
curious tribes; and nowhere is a better account of them to be found
than in that fascinating book, "Salmonia." The _phrygancæ_ (the
"stone-flies" of the angler) have long antennæ, with veined wings which
fold over each other when closed. The eggs of the adult flies are laid
on the leaves of willows or other trees which overhang the water. When
they are hatched, the larvæ fall into the stream, collect a panoply of
gravel, bits of stick, shell-fish, &c., to surround them, and after
feeding for a time on aquatic plants, rise to the surface, burst their
skins, and appear as perfect flies. The _ephemeræ_ (or "May-flies")
were noticed so long ago as Aristotle's time, in connection with the
brevity of their life. They may be known by carrying their wings
perpendicularly on their backs, and by several filaments or long
bristles protruding from their tails. Their aqueous existence, like the
stone-flies', sometimes lasts for two or three years; but as flies
their life is thought never to exceed a few days in length, often but a
few hours. In fact their life is, to all intents and purposes, over
when their eggs are laid, and this function takes place directly they
emerge into the winged state. Besides these, however, there are
multitudes of nondescript flies used by those anglers who commit
themselves to the persuasive powers of the fishing-tackle maker, and
fill their fly-books with his gorgeously-coloured creations; but with
the stone-flies, May-flies, and other simple flies previously
enumerated, most real anglers are contented.
The greatest nuisance to the fisherman on the banks of the Beck are the
hovering swarms of flies and gnats. Nature's profusion is almost
inexhaustible in this division of her kingdom. In hot, sunny weather,
they persecute the angler till he well-nigh gives up his sport, and
betakes himself to moralize how his situation, lonely though it be, is
no inapt type of a man's spiritual loneliness in the midst of that
crowd of his fellows called Society,
"Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies."
Yes, here is the whole winged legion avenging, as it were, the slight
the angler puts upon them by his grotesque imitations, in number and
description more fell than Walton ever imagined in the marvellous flies
he directs his disciples to dub--"the Prime Dun, Huzzard, Death Drake,
Yellow Miller, Light Blue, Blue Herl," and all the rest! It would
require a piscatorial entomologist to identify them; and when they buzz
around their victims, how well can these enter into Dante's grim fancy
of the wicked in hell being exposed naked to the stings of wasps and
flies! It is useful, however, to be thus reminded that even so innocent
a sport as angling has its drawbacks. Perhaps such small annoyances
should be received as part of the discipline of fishing; winged
blessings they then become, modes of teaching unpleasant, perchance, at
the time, but none the less fraught with profit to the true angler, who
is always more or less of a moralist.
It is time, though, to turn homewards. Our endeavour has been to depict
some of the charms connected with angling, and to recommend it as a
recreation specially adapted for the feverish agitation of modern
social life. Over and above its immediate end, it is a school for moral
virtues and the observing faculties which cannot be too highly
honoured. The fisherman, like the poet, must be born; but he owes his
success, even more than the poet, to perseverance and observation.
However long the sport may be intermitted, when a man has once tasted
its joys, and imbibed a thorough love of angling, he resumes it with
eagerness on the first favourable opportunity. Nay, the taste is one
which deserts not its votary in death. Few angling reminiscences are
more touching than the scene which his daughter has described so
pathetically, when poor Christopher North lay on his death-bed. In the
intervals of his malady, he had his fly-books brought to him, and
derived a melancholy pleasure from taking out his old favourites one by
one, and lovingly caressing their bright plumage and carefully tied
wings, as they were spread out on the sheets. It must be confessed that
angling is justly open to the charge of being a solitary, taciturn,
meditative sport, which shuts a man out from his kind. We are cynical
enough to fancy that if he be shut up with Nature instead, he will
suffer no great harm. Indeed, to admit the impeachment is only
tantamount to owning that fishing, after all, is but of this world, and
necessarily an imperfect energy. Herein lies its chief excellence in
the eyes of hard workers; so there is no need elaborately to refute the
objection. Let a man try it, and _solvitur ambulando_. So good is it
that the aforesaid Dame Juliana indulges in no exaggeration when she
says--pardon once more an angler's loquacity--"Ye shall not use this
forsayde crafty dysporte for no covetysenes to th'encreasynge and
sparynge of your money oonly, but pryncypally for your solace, and to
cause the helthe of your body and especyally of your soule." Though it
be to our own loss, we would nevertheless invite every reflective mind
to the Beck, to derive inspiration and satisfaction from communion with
the simple joys of nature. May skill and perseverance there bring the
angler the usual happy results, and--blessing of blessings where
fishing is concerned--may his shadow never be less!