THE MAY FLY.
THE May fly is up! Every year, about the first week in June, telegrams
to this effect are hurriedly despatched to those favoured few who own
or rent water where this member of the _ephemeridæ_ disports himself.
It used to be called the May fly Carnival. There are, however, grave
disadvantages in connection with our friend that greatly discount the
apparent advantages. Fish gorged with this luscious food are wont to
try a course of semi-starvation after their over-indulgence, and for a
long time will not look at smaller and more wholesome diet. Then, to
my thinking, a May fly is a horrible thing to cast with. It is not at
all like casting with the more delicate duns or quill gnats. There is a
clumsy feeling about it; it is exceedingly difficult to dry, and if you
catch a fish a change of fly is at once necessary, the old chawed-up
imitation being rendered useless. It is also not easy to get exactly
the right pattern to suit, though for choice the small dark-winged May
fly has given me the best results. It is, unless you live near your
water, very difficult to hit off the precise day--you are always too
early or too late; you are told "You should have been there yesterday;
there was a grand rise of fly, and the fish were simply mad after them,
and no one was on the water"--and so on. Cheery news, no doubt, when
you find the fish all lying near the bottom. When they really are on,
there is excitement enough; mad splashes all round you, frequently made
by the smaller fish. Your proffered imitation may produce a rise or
two, but somehow or other the fish don't take hold as you think they
ought. You are inclined to lose your calmness of mental balance, to
cast without sufficient care and with a half-dried fly. In desperation
you put on a fair-sized red quill, fish more carefully, and probably
get better results.
The main charm, however, lies in the fact that the advent of _Ephemera
Danica_ does bring up the big fish of the water in a way that no other
fly food does or can. Hence its popularity, and in waters where the
May fly is hatched in quantity, and there are heavy, big fish that as
a rule find cannibalism pay better than duns, then the May fly has a
real value. In other waters, however, were these big monsters taken out
in order to secure a larger numerical stock of comparatively small but
sizeable fish, I would have none of it; I would prefer to extend my
angling season rather than take a large bulk of it condensed into one
week of questionable pleasure.
Certainly, the May fly season comes at about the best time of the year
to enjoy angling. A fine week about the commencement of June is most
enjoyable on any river. All nature is at its best--leafy June, when
sauntering by the riverside, even with scanty sport, is in itself a
pleasure not to be despised.
Mr. Sidney Buxton, in his admirable "Fishing and Shooting," graphically
describes a day in the Carnival time, when he grassed thirty fish
from two pounds down, and of another when he creeled forty; but, good
sportsman as he is, I rather fancy he would have enjoyed even more a
day with half to a third of the basket when each fish had been stalked
and picked out with a small fly. Not for a moment would I suggest or
imply that equal care is not needed in casting with the May fly if
you wish to fill your creel; but, all said and done, a bungling cast
will often secure a good fish with that lure which would inevitably
have put him down and scared him had he been feeding upon the ordinary
flies. It is very noticeable nowadays how capricious the rise is.
Indiscriminate weed cutting has almost entirely eradicated the May fly
from some waters, and quite entirely on others--a boon to some minds,
my own included, but a boon that bears sour fruit in other ways, for
irregular and injudicious weed-cutting hits other fly food hard. It is
curious, also, that in places where more judicious weed farming has
been resorted to of late the May fly has begun to return, patchily and
scantily enough, but nevertheless in increasing quantities every year.
I would fain leave them to hatch out upon the Kennet and the Colne and
similar waters, and leave our bonnie streams alone, but here there is
no choice; if they come, they come, and we must make the best of them.
A big rise of May fly is indeed a wonderful sight, the drakes flopping
into your face, covering everything, seeming almost like a plague of
locusts. Fat, luscious insects, enjoying to the full their brief spell
of winged life, after having spent months in the larval state. See that
one floating down-stream, airing and drying his wings, floating on his
nymphal envelope. He is floating dangerously near that trout that has
already annexed a goodly number of his fellows. Will he be taken too?
No; he flutters off, clumsily enough, making for the shore, only to be
swallowed by a hungry chaffinch. So his brief period of air life is
over. And what a feast he and his congeners provide for the swallows,
the finches, and other birds. Towards sunset, males and females of the
green drake tribe float and flutter about in the air, make love and
pair, then the female deposits her eggs on the water, and at last both
fall on the river with outspread wings, forming what we call the spent
gnat.
The trout take heavy toll of the nymphæ rising upwards before they
reach the water surface, and will not then look at a floating
imitation; and when the act of reproduction is completed they feed
greedily upon the empty shucks and the spent gnats. Altogether, our
friend the May fly seems to spend a hazardous and somewhat inglorious
life. Could he but see himself in his larval state, I feel sure he
would lose his self-respect. He is then no beauty, and to grovel and
lie low in the mud at the bed of the river for, as some say, two years,
cannot form a very exciting kind of life; whilst if he escapes in
the imago state, countless enemies lie in wait for him, and his very
love-making costs him his life.
The return of the May fly to a certain well-known chalk stream in
Yorkshire seems to be an accomplished fact, though one not altogether
to the satisfaction of the members of the club that fish its waters.
This stream, known as the Driffield Beck, ranks high amongst kindred
waters, the dry fly reigns supreme, the stream is as swift and even,
the water as crystal clear, and the trout as fully educated as those
of their brothers of the Itchen or Test. In former times the May fly
hatched in countless numbers on this stream, and the Carnival used in
those days to be reserved strictly for the members of the club; but
whether it were attributable to over-cutting of the weeds, or to some
other cause, the May fly died away entirely from the stream, and for
many a season not a fly was hatched. We members of the club--a very
old one, by the way--rather congratulated ourselves on this change,
as, instead of gorged fish who would not look at a dun for weeks after
the May fly period, we were treated to an even rise at the small fly
throughout all the angling months. But two seasons before we had
noticed, to our surprise, the advent of a few May flies. I recollect
impaling one upon a hook and drifting it down cunningly over a good 2½
lb. fish who had taken up his position under a thorn bush on my side
of the river, and the scared bolt he made when it got to him and he
had had a good look at it was a thing to remember. And, in fact, the
few May flies which that year floated over fish in position made them
all bolt as if they had been shot. Then in the next season there was a
more considerable hatching of the fly, and in one spot in particular
a few fish were taken with the green drake. The third year we arrived
at the right time for the hatch, then a very local one on our stream;
but in that particular part of the river there was a rise of May fly
to satisfy the most gluttonous of those who love that form of angling.
But the curious thing was the way in which the fish treated the fly.
Every now and again the ½ lb. and ¾ lb. fish would take them boldly,
and here and there a fish of that size would settle down to a regular
feed, taking all within reach; but the heavier fish seemed to be
thoroughly disinclined to take them. The bolder young ones now and
again paid the penalty of their temerity, being consigned to the basket
if fully 11 inches in length, or returned to the water if, as was too
frequently the case, they were not sizeable. I do not pretend to any
great experience of May fly fishing, though I have been a devoted
dry-fly angler for many years; but I do not remember to have seen fish
act so capriciously in my previous experiences. The birds, however--the
warblers, chaffinches, &c.--were quite equal to the occasion, and took
heavy toll of the _ephemeridæ_. I particularly noticed what I never
remember to have seen before, _i.e._, a cock blackbird darting out of
the bushes at intervals to secure a fluttering _Ephemera Danica_, and
returning to his shelter to pick the luscious morsel to pieces at his
leisure.
My luck was not considerable; the rise of dun was insignificant, the
wind was simply abhorrent, and my baskets, naturally, were not as
heavy as I could have wished. The water was in perfect order, the fish
abundant, but sport indifferent. One day I went up one of the upper
feeding streams, where I had often, poor performer though I may be,
secured a really good basket of good fish. After rising and pricking
more than a dozen fish, all of which rose short, and turning over and
getting a short run out of a three-pounder which had permanently taken
up his position above a bridge by a garden-side under some sedges in
a difficult position--rendered more difficult by the violence of the
wind--I had to content myself with a poor brace of 1¼ pounders, going
home feeling regretfully that I had done that day a good deal in the
way of educating fish!
The last day of my visit (June 10) I had somewhat of a more interesting
experience. The wind was still high, though warmer, and, though no rain
fell, there was a feeling that rain was not far off. The report that
the May fly was up and in quantity had brought out a number of anglers,
and when I got to the water-side, armed with a box of May flies given
me by a prince among anglers, I found all the 'vantage spots (in the
small extent of the water where the fly hatched in any quantity) duly
occupied by an ardent angler ready for the fray. So I quietly gave that
game up and retired to a small island between two branches of the river
near the keeper's cottage. I had but a couple of hundred yards to fish,
while the ground where I was standing was sedge covered elbow-high with
charmingly and conveniently placed bushes here and there behind me,
ready to hitch up any fly that, in the backward cast, should be driven
by the wind into their embrace. The only chance was to keep up a kind
of steeple cast, as the stream was a fair width across. The charm of
the position, however, was that on the other side was a high bank with
a plantation on it, which shed a welcome shade over the bank fish on
that side. It was very difficult to locate a rise, but the stream was
even and there was no drag. Nor was it an easy matter to land a fish,
as the fringe of sedges was wide and thick, and the water deep; my
landing-net was also over-short--a bad fault--and caused me to lose
three good fish, one well over 2 lb. I spent nearly all the day on this
place, and managed to hook every fish I saw rise, and that was not a
great number, the rise of dun being so small and the wind blowing them
off the river almost as soon as they started on their swim down-stream.
However, I managed to land five fish, all on a 000 gold-ribbed hare's
ear, the best one 1 lb. 9 oz. and the smallest a little over a pound;
but as they were all in the pink of condition, and each fish was a
problem to get, I enjoyed the day far more than a more prolific one,
when the duns might be sailing steadily, the fish all in position, and
where catching them would be far more of a certainty, and where even a
duffer could not have failed to score.
Perhaps I may have been somewhat unfortunate in my May fly experiences,
and most anglers would be disinclined to agree with my faint
appreciation of this insect and of the sport he assists to produce.
Most of my friends speak of this form of angling in a totally different
strain, therefore, presumably, I must be wrong in my view. To me,
however, the May fly (as a means to an end) is of great value in
tempting up the bigger cannibal fish, but as an adjunct to sport, I am
inclined to consider him overrated.
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