A CONTRAST IN THAMES ANGLING
My personal knowledge of the Thames trout is not profound; but if it
has left me somewhat short of the affection which many anglers
proclaim, it has inspired a high respect; and if my interest in him is
not precisely direct, I always have been able to sympathise keenly with
his multitude of lovers and admirers. On this entrance upon another
Thames trout season I have him in my thoughts, and am pleased to know
that his status, character, and honour are on the whole nothing
diminished as the years revolve. In the past I have, indeed, seen
something of Thames trouting, and though I have, by lack of
opportunity, not engaged largely in it, yet have formed ideas upon the
subject that may be formulated as a seasonable topic. Also I have
reason to remember this fish as figuring in one of the curious
printer's errors of my early journalism. In a special big-type article
in a daily paper I had glorified the breed and the business by the
magniloquent demand "Who that has battled with a fine Thames trout in a
thundering weir will ever forget, etc., etc.?" The step from the
sublime to the ridiculous appeared next morning in the rendering "Who
that has _bathed_ with, etc., etc."
The ichthyologists who have made a study of the interesting salmon
family have, perforce, unanimously agreed that the Thames trout is of
the house of Brown: is in a word a true _Salmo fario_. But these
learned gentlemen seem to have overlooked the equally undeniable fact
that there are three distinct species of this excellent fish. First
comes the Thames trout of the professional fisherman. Of this class
there is an untold number. Their movements are keenly watched, and
often chronicled with surprising minuteness. They are liberally
scattered over every likely district from Teddington upwards, and there
is a degree of familiarity with their habits, on the part of local
observers, that at once whets our appetite and craves our admiration.
You hear about them often by the riverside. At six o'clock yesterday
morning a fish of 7 1/2 lb. appeared at the tail of the third stream
from the right bank and disported for the space of an hour amongst the
trembling bleak. He was rather short for his weight, and had
remarkably white teeth. Later on, another of 5 lb., full weight, with
a cast in his left eye, took a leisurely breakfast at the edge of
yonder scour. Three trout, that can only be spoken of as "whoppers,"
are beyond question in possession of this pool; others are to be found
between four and six of the afternoon at home in hovers, the
whereabouts of which are known to a nicety. The gambols and predatory
raids of this class of Thames trout afford great excitement and
pleasure to the observant passers-by, and there is no doubt in the
world that our friends are not always romancing with regard to them.
Yet it may not be gainsaid that the Thames trout of the professional
fisherman is but too often a Mysterious Unknown to the angler, and a
creature never to be dissected by mortal fingers.
A second species of Thames trout is that of the unsuccessful angler.
Hieing him blithely in the sweet spring morning to the waterside, the
angler beholds this fine specimen to great advantage--by the eye of
faith. His step quickens as, in all its magnificent proportions, it
flashes before his inner vision. Saw you ever such brilliant vesture,
such resplendent fins? By the time the sanguine sportsman has
clambered over the rails in the third meadow, the line of hope has run
out from the winch of imagination, and he has mentally struck that
trout, played it, brought it to the rim of the net, played it yet
again, and finally, after a battle heroic in its every detail, beheld
it gracefully curved in the friendly meshes, and transferred to a
grassy couch, to be the envy of his club and the boast of his family,
even to the third and fourth generation. This also is a numerous
species, for there is not a member of the great army of Thames anglers
who has not, in this manner, seen specimens during the first three or
four hours of that day which witnesses the spiritless return of the
bearer of an empty basket.
The third species of Thames trout is of a more substantial kind, and
although as to its quality we may allow ourselves to be as enthusiastic
as the most hearty of Thames trout worshippers, we dare not blink at
the cruel fact that, as to quantity, it ranks far below the two other
species to which I have so charitably and gently referred.
What it may be to-day I know not, but in my time there was not a more
likely spot than Boveney Weir for one of these goodly Thames trout in
the flesh. From the sill over which the river churns into a splendid
mass of milky foam, past the island, and for a couple of hundred yards
down the water looks as much like the correct thing as any reach can
do. But even in fishing matters, perhaps in them more especially,
things are not always what they seem, and, reduced to the practical
test of results, Boveney Weir, in the estimation of many practical
anglers, is not now what it was, and decidedly not what it ought to be.
On the Saturday after a Good Friday, which fell in April, one of the
experts, as he worked a delicious little bleak in a most artistic
fashion down the middle of the weir, bemoaned himself in my hearing on
this account. Yet he could not complain. He had caught a trout on the
previous Monday. And it has come to this! A man who evidently
understands how to do it takes one fish in the course of a week, and,
being conscientious, admits that he will not sin by complaining.
In the course of an hour, four gentlemen, nicely equipped with spinning
rods, arrived at the scene of action, and paid out in the orthodox way
at the head of the weir. I could see that they had been having brave
sport with the above-mentioned species Number Two; but, so long as I
remained, that was the sum total of their spoil. One could almost
observe, by the gradual melancholy which settled upon their
countenances as the time went on with no thrilling rap to make the top
of the limber rod dance again, the hopeless fading out of these
unsubstantial specimens from even the imagination. The east wind of
course had been against everything ever since the trout season opened,
and it was not surprising to learn that; though the weir had been well
fished from All Fools' day onwards, only six fish had been taken, and
they of the smallest size.
A Thames trout of 2 1/2 lb. is regarded as a mere minnow by the man who
has drunk the deep delight of landing a fish of the normal weight of 6
or 7 lb.; yet this seemed to have been the average. Put it down to the
east wind by all means. An honest Thames trout, properly educated up
to the modern standard, would be unworthy of the confidence of the
great metropolitan angling clubs if he so violated piscatorial law as
to allow himself to be caught under such conditions, and it is but
charity to suppose that these legally sizable but morally undersized
fish were giddy youths, upon whom the example of the veterans, poising
themselves steelproof in the current, yet virtueproof against
temptation, was sadly thrown away.
Fish or no fish, it is, nevertheless, worth something to stand awhile
at the head of the weir and indulge in those soothing reveries which a
running stream provokes. You cross the lock, and by the permission of
the lockkeeper (whose good temper is sorely tried these holiday times
by the incessant passage of pleasure boats, bound for Surley, and maybe
Monkey Island) pass over the pretty island, and enter upon the plankway
which communicates with the further bank. The weir is broad, and its
construction such that the heavy body of water from above stampedes
through at your feet in magnificent force. Shout at your topmost pitch
of voice if you would carry on a conversation with the roar of the
swirl in the listener's ears. No fewer than seventeen distinct floods
are pouring between the beams with never two escaping alike. As
different are they as the current of our individual lives; now quietly
gliding in, but not off, the racket on either side; now confidently
asserting themselves by a semi-turbulent merriness; now all babble and
bubble and surface; now dark, deep, and masterful through hidden force
under a calm countenance; now tearing, and dashing, and running away
with quickly scattered impulse.
Yonder, the sleeping island o'ershadowed by trees on the left, and the
high indented bank on the right, seem to gather these diverse streams
within their arms and reduce them to something like uniformity of
purpose. And then, looking up and around from the seething pool, you
see the stately grey towers of Windsor rising above the land, and the
level meadows stretching green towards the eminences made picturesque
by the woods.
The tradition amongst the fishermen is that Boveney Weir is full of
"rum uns." This I take to be a confession of faith in the existence of
large trout, and at the same time a delicate compliment to their
wariness. All Thames trout are wary, and it is probably their
outrageous artfulness which adds to the rapture of circumventing them.
Old Nottingham George would tell many a tale of cunning trout which had
been angled for so often and pricked so many times that they were
supposed to have become as learned in the matter of fishermen and
fishing tackle as humanity itself. The reader may not have read, or,
reading, may have forgotten, that the principles of the Thames Angling
Preservation Society were very early applied to Boveney Weir, for it is
written that William, the son of Richard de Windsor, in the first year
of the thirteenth century, gave a couple of marks to the king, in order
that the pool and fishery might be maintained in no worse a condition
than it used to be under the reign of Henry II.
Spinning for Thames trout, which is undoubtedly the most legitimate way
of treating them, seeing that they so little appreciate the beauties of
an artificial fly, is an art that requires perhaps more patience than
skill. Your bleak, dace, gudgeon, minnow, or phantom, in point of
fact, humoured fairly into the stream, does its own work; but anyone
who watches the old-timers at such weirs as Eton or Boveney must
perceive that there are many degrees of such science as the catching of
a Thames trout demands. No doubt it is delightful to sit on a
weir-head, reading your favourite author, while the rod is conveniently
placed to give early notice of a run. It is delightful, but it is not
angling. The most dunder-headed trout of the pool, at sight of a
silvery bait racing apparently for dear life half out of water, yet
never advancing, must metaphorically place its forefinger along its
snout, and with a leery wink sheer off into the deep.
The majority of anglers seem too readily satisfied when their bait
spins, whereas their chief aim should be to produce a movement as true
to nature as possible, They spin too fast by half, not sufficiently
calculating the varying force of the streams, and I am convinced that
one of the most common faults of Thames spinners for trout and pike is
working too near the surface. "Spin as deep as the character of the
water will allow you" will be found in the long run a wholesome rule to
follow, and, rather than keep on spinning in the same water, it will
pay the angler to cease fishing for half an hour and begin anew with a
bait as unlike its predecessor as he can make it. I can never fully
understand the frequent admission, "He was a fine fish, but he got
off." The breaking away of a lusty trout upon whom the fine line has
been too heavily strained, or who has been hooked with rotten tackle,
is explainable enough. It is a natural consequence. The "getting off"
of such a fish is quite another matter, and argues something, in nine
cases out of ten, radically wrong in the disposition of the hooks. You
often see three or four triangles so fixed to the bait that only by
accident can one of them get into the mouth of the fish, and not a half
of one _deserves_ to get in. There is no sense in having the hooks too
small, and, if I may venture to offer one more opinion, no spinning
flight for trout is perfect which has not a hook or hooks clear of all
impediment at the tail.
About the tackle and methods of fishing for Thames trout there is
nothing new to say. Of late years the use of the live bait with fine
snap tackle, and on Nottingham principles, has prevailed to an
increasing extent, but the familiar style of spinning from the weir
beams still holds its own. It presents a minimum of toil, and the
rushing water helps you so much that it appeals irresistibly to the
happy-go-lucky instincts of the fair-weather sportsmen, who are
probably, after all, a majority of Thames trout fishers. Our friends
are persevering, but they persevere in the wrong way, contenting
themselves by fishing the same water from morning to night, instead of
working the bait far and near with constant change of tactics. The
Thames trout is particularly cute, and is not such a fool as to be
taken in by a little fish that is always twiddling at one place, in a
strongly running current, yet never gets an inch forward. A good
Thames man spins his bleak everywhere, steadily and naturally, into
eddies, close to piles, under trees, near the banks. The glittering
object is never at rest, but flutters hither and thither, covering new
ground with every yard of advance.
* * * * * *
More through lack of opportunity than dislike, intention, or design, I
have not, at least to the present time, enjoyed my full share of
fishing from a punt, or in the river Thames. On the few occasions when
I have sought it the experience has therefore been a little peculiar,
like that of going to school to learn something. Together with the
very proper keenness of the fisherman who wants to justify himself with
the rod, there have been a spice of inquisitiveness, the wide open eye
of inquiry, the sense of something not quite familiar, in such days as
I have spent in a Thames punt. My acquaintance with barbel is also so
limited that it counts for little. In a well-known barbel hole of the
Kennet I fished in vain; once in April I caught a gravid specimen
spinning for trout in a Thames weir; while spinning for pike I have
hooked small barbel foul by the tail as they stood on their heads at
the bottom of a mill pool when the wheel was stopped. This
acquaintance, in fact, was intermittent and casual. But I bear in mind
one day of close intimacy with the strong, sporting barbel; and on this
March morning, when the windows are being bombarded with snow, hail,
and sleet, making it, I trust, bad for the Zeppelins, I intend to lose
myself in the impressions of that one instance of intimate terms with
the fish. It must have been in late autumn, for I seem to hear a sad
sobbing of wind from the elms, and a whispered dispersal of decayed
leaves, loosened by recent white frosts.
I remember, too, that the professional fisherman, Hawkins, was very
hopeful. He said his comrade, Jorkins, on the previous day, with two
patrons from town, had had fine sport amongst the barbel, although the
fish did not run particularly large, and he added that he had often
known before, in previous years, a sudden eruption of cold weather
sharpen the appetites of the fish and bring them on, as he termed it,
headlong, for a fortnight or three weeks.
After all, there is something pleasant and soothing to the middle-aged
and somewhat lazy man in sitting upon a Windsor chair in a punt, with
pleasant objects to look at on either bank, with a tranquilly flowing
stream between, and an occasional boat or barge moving up or down. The
Castle, the familiar church, and the customary house-tops, were
prominent features in the picture; and now and then the distant scream
of a railway whistle and rumble of a train came in to save us from
imagining that we were altogether in the country. Then, it is not
disagreeable to the lazy man to have a fisherman (especially when it is
a good handy man like Hawkins) fussing about, and handling the nasty
baits, and making himself generally useful, as the deft-handed and
willing professional so well knows how to do when afloat. All this, of
course, was very well for a while. We looked round upon the prospect,
and discussed it. We made inquiries of the fisherman as to whether the
swallows had all departed for their winter quarters. We inquired who
lived in yonder mansion, and heard a long tale about the owner having
made money by inventing a wonderful kind of automatic blacking-brush.
As the story fizzled out, the leger lines having been down for some
little time, I thought, and not without reason, that I saw the point of
my rod trembling. Surely enough it was a bite, but, as Hawkins
suggested (doubtless borrowing the pun from some bygone customer), it
might have been an audacious dace. At any rate, the only result we
achieved at that particular time was the necessity of affixing another
lob-worm to the hook, and the casting out of the bulleted line again.
This story, together with the hearty way in which Hawkins expressed his
contempt for the patentee of the blacking-brush and his family, was so
interesting and amusing that I looked at him instead of at my fishing
rod; and as he at the same time looked at me, the position was left
unguarded, and we were both of us recalled from the realms of scandal
by a vigorous plunge of the rod-top. It was a sharp "knock," in fact,
followed by a series of tugs, so violent that the rod rattled on the
edge of the punt. There was no merit on my part in getting that
barbel, for the fish had hooked himself, and had gone down stream at
racing speed, before I could get command of him.
This, let me tell the young angler, is a dangerous position to be in.
The handling of a rod under such circumstances, with a fine line like
that with which you always ought to fish for barbel, requires great
care. The tendency is to be over excited, and in the agitation of the
moment one frequently commits the grave error of striking hard at a
running fish. The result is obvious. With a fish going strongly away,
and a man striking more strongly perhaps than he imagines in the
contrary direction, it is almost a certainty that something or other
will give way. However, an old stager at that kind of work gets out of
the predicament without any loss, and after the usual resistance
secures the fish. The battle was really fought about fifteen yards
below the punt.
Why the barbel should choose that particular ground to try conclusions
I am not aware. The water I know was deepest there, and, as I
afterwards satisfied myself by plumbing, formed a saucer-like hollow,
and there were also some obstructions about, of what nature I could not
exactly make out. But I shrewdly suspect that there were either stakes
or an ugly piece of wood, or some other object that would be dangerous
to the line, and that the enemy went straight away for this, having
probably tried the dodge successfully before, with the object of boring
and boring until he parted from the hook that held him. A barbel is
artful and apt to play games of this description, and it is prudent
when you find a barbel making for a particular place and again
returning to it after he has been brought away, to use every exertion
compatible with safety to keep him away. This was not a large
fish--something about 6 lb. or 7 lb.--and as he lay in the bottom of
the punt for five or ten minutes after he had been turned out of the
net, he certainly did present a striking picture of pale bronze
colouring and comely shape.
A couple of hours passed by without either myself or my friend being
fortified by a knock, and by that time we had run through the history
of the occupants of every one of the country houses within view of the
river at the place where we were pitched. It was now two o'clock in
the afternoon, and the cold had increased. We discussed the
possibilities, and both of us resigned ourselves to fate, deliberately
arriving at a conclusion, almost in resolution form, that we were to
have no more sport that day. Hawkins, however, would not hear of such
a thing. He said the fish were there, and the fish would come on to
bite sooner or later. Then he consulted us as to the advisability of
shifting the position a little, and we agreed that if he could do so
quietly perhaps it would be well to drop down so that the punt would be
a little below rather than above the pollard willow.
This was done and with immediate effect, for our leger lines had
scarcely reposed to their mission on the river's bed before both rods
were wagging their heads. At one and the same time, and apparently
keeping time, the tops of those rods told us that we might both expect
a fish. We struck simultaneously; in unison we shouted "I've got him!"
and we were each engaged with a fish that we knew to be not small. As
a rule you prefer when in a punt to catch alternately with your friend;
that is more like cricket, and indeed there is nothing more risky,
unless both anglers are remarkably cool, than two lively fish being
played in so small a space. Whether it is that they have a sympathy
with each other, whether it is that the one suspects that he has got
into trouble owing to some diabolical treachery on the part of the
other and is out of temper; whether it is that they know all about it,
and were taught in their childhood that fouled lines are generally
broken lines, so much I know not; but be it in sea fishing or fresh
water fishing, two fish hooked and struggling within sight by instinct
often make towards each other.
This happened in our case. My fish was the smaller, and would have
been the sooner played out if the barbel that my friend had on his hook
would have allowed it; but just as I was winching in, with the
intention of getting it into the net with all possible speed, my
friend's fish made a deliberate dart to starboard, and the result was a
foul. To have attempted playing them with our rods would have been
ruin, therefore we dropped them, and by getting the two lines in my own
hand and using them as one, I managed to haul in the brace of fish by
sheer strength, and the somewhat novel feat was accomplished of getting
into the landing net a 3-lb. and a 5-lb. barbel upon lines that were
entangled. As our lines were of the fine Nottingham description, and
the gut fine also, this was to say the least a piece of good fortune.
There will, I know, be some reader who has been in the predicament here
described, and I feel that he smiles at the thought of the fearful work
of disentangling those clinging, wet, white, undressed silk lines. I
will tell him. We cut them.
The shoal below took time to reflect upon the circumstance of which
they had no doubt been witnesses, and we had no further touch of them
for several minutes. Then they came on again with an inspiring
regularity, distributing their favours alternately to myself and
friend. For an hour a barbel came to net every five minutes; and there
was no chance of loss, as the fish simply gulped at the worms and went
off with them at once, and the hook had to be removed sometimes with a
disgorger. In the very midst of the sport I thought I would make an
experiment in the matter of baits. I had my own box of gentles. One,
I suppose, never goes afloat or engages in any bottom fishing whatever
without this reserve, if the maggots are in season. Hawkins also
happened to have a small supply of stale greaves.
"Don't do it, mister!" Hawkins pleaded pathetically, when he saw me
stringing on a bunch of gentles. "Leave well alone, mister! You
carn't better the business, and you may change the luck if you don't
stick to the lobs."
But I was obstinate, and was very glad that I tried the experiment. It
was not the first time I had discovered that when the fish are really
"on" they do not distinguish much between this and that bait. Even in
fly fishing I have successfully tried the experiment, during a mad
rise, of putting on a fly that was the most opposite I could find to
what was on the water. The barbel took the gentles as freely as worms,
and greaves as freely as gentles, but I noticed that the fish were
smaller.
It will be concluded that our prowess on this occasion came somewhat
into the slaughter zone. So at any rate it occurred to one of us as we
landed, and in the grey mist spreading over land and water, saw the
dead fish laid out decently and in order upon the grass. There were
two dozen and one barbel, the largest 7 lb. and the smallest 3 lb., the
average being about 4 lb. With a few accidental dace and chub thrown
in, there would therefore be over a solid hundredweight of fish. Was
this a thing to be proud of? Though I ask the question I do not answer
it myself. We had enjoyed the outing and even the sport; we looked
down upon the spoil with satisfaction, and if there was a sort of sense
of shame at the back of the mind that was for analysis afterwards.
Even as we pondered, perhaps to the degree of gloating, Hawkins was
enumerating instances of much greater numbers taken by his customers.
Yarrell records 280 lb. of large barbel in one day, and our old friend,
the Rev. J. Manley, who preferred "a good day's leger-fishing for
barbel to any other day's fishing within reach of ordinary or even
extraordinary mortals," states that he took "thirty-seven fish one day
on the Thames at Penton Hook, and there were several over 4 lb. and one
nearly scaled 10 lb."
But these were the good, the great, the red letter days of a past time.
The barbel is extremely capricious, abnormally so of late years in the
Thames, and there are plenty of blanks to one fortunate day. There is,
however, a fascination in barbel-fishing that is not a little
surprising, and men have been known to boast aggressively that it is
the only form of angling that appeals to them. It must be confessed
that if the barbel is of poor esteem as food, he is the very gamest of
the coarse fishes and a fighter to the last. His rushes are fierce and
continuous; and as Providence has provided him with a decided snout, he
bores downward with dogged persistence, relying apparently as much upon
his classical barb appendages as upon his powerful tail for aid in time
of trouble; and an infallible sign of his unconquerable spirit is the
difficulty of bringing him into the net when he is close to it. There
is not to my mind any fish that bolts so often when to all appearance
played out.
The uncertainty of barbel and barbel fishing was illustrated by the
sequel to our day on the Thames. Our adventures were told to the
members of a certain society on the evening of our return, and no doubt
they were envious, miserable, or glad as it might happen. We can only
speculate as to that, but what can be told is that by the first trains
next morning six brethren from different quarters of London went down
and made their way to Hawkins. They had not whispered their intentions
to one another, and looked rather sheepish as they stood in a cluster
to receive the announcement from the fisherman's wife that H. was not
at home. They looked a little more sheepish when they took boat to the
pollard tree swim and found two very young gentlemen with Hawkins
seated in a punt. But they smiled again on learning that there had not
been a touch at either of the three lines, which had been out since
daylight. That swim was diligently tried after our visit, but I had
reason for knowing that not another barbel was taken there during the
entire winter.