TWO RED LETTER SALMON
It is not often that the angling clubs which encourage prize-taking
offer booby consolations for the smallest fish, but I have known
exceptions, especially at the holiday competitions by the seaside. The
biggest fish are another matter altogether. Sooner or later the world
is bound to hear of them. And who dare say us nay? That man was not a
fool who wanted to know, if you did not blow your own trumpet, who was
to blow it? Blowing it need be neither boasting nor defiance. In this
honest belief I shall try for a while to forget the butcher's bill in
Flanders by recalling the capture of my biggest salmon, and that of a
still bigger one by a friend during the same bygone back-end on Tweed,
leaving the general memories of autumn days on the great Border river
for future revival.
It was during Mr. Arthur N. Gilbey's tenancy of the Carham water, and
he was, besides being my host, also the hero of the very best of the
two salmon which are my text. He rented a country house overlooking
the river, with the fishing, and no fortunate angler who sojourned
under his roof in those good days can ever forget the puzzle into which
he fell while deciding whether it was the gentle hostess or the
ever-considerate host who most contributed to his happiness. Among the
bright Carham remembrances no one will omit the after-breakfast descent
of the steep-wooded brae down to the boat animated with eager
anticipation, and the climbing home in the gloaming in whatever mood
the events of the day had warranted.
The Carham fishing is really the lower and the southern section of
Birgham, famous for its dub, the rival in piscatorial fame of
Sprouston, a little higher up-stream. Its situation immediately above
Coldstream and not far from Berwick makes it a characteristic water for
the salmon fisher. The incoming fish sometimes linger there awhile
early and late in the season, and men catch salmon at Carham while
those in the higher beats are waiting their arrival or bewailing their
disappearance. Here, too, you may hook your fish in Scotland and land
it in England, for the Tweed begins to be the boundary between the two
countries at Carham burn.
The Tweed is picturesque rather than romantic, as are so many of the
Highland rivers. They have their legions of admirers, but there is no
Scottish stream that can count so many ardent lovers as the Tweed, and
this for many reasons. It has much varied and positive picturesqueness
of its own, it has associations of legend and history; Walter Scott
lived on its banks, and its dividing course between the nations that
used to harry or be harried invests it with an abiding interest. As a
river it is distinguished by a characteristic dignity, and, save at its
narrowed channel and rocky bed at Makerstoun, maintains a stately yet
irresistible strength of flow from Kelso seawards. Nevertheless, there
are times when it shows moods of sullen rage, and is certainly too full
for the angler, to whom, in spite of faults, it is always Tweed, the
well-beloved.
"How is she the morn?" is, therefore, a common question amongst all
sorts and conditions of men along Tweedside in the fishing seasons, and
at the visit now under course of recall there was assuredly ample
excuse for the formula. It soon transpired that the old-fashioned
barometer in the hall had been having a hard time of it for many days.
The master of the house never passed from drawing- to dining-room
without an anxious tap. While the maids were doing their
ante-breakfast work I myself stole down and consulted it, opened the
front door, studied the sky, and noted the drift of the clouds. I make
my forecast at once if the tokens are depressing. But I had ere this
seen the river. One of my bedroom windows gave direct outlook upon a
shrubbery, the most notable feature of which was a maple of most
brilliant tints, varying from bright red to faint orange; the other
framed a landscape picture of park, grassland, woods, and the broad
Tweed sweeping round towards the lower portion of the water for which
the angler cares. There was, however, another view from the front of
the house--a nearer reach where there was a mass of rough water, and a
certain tongue of shingle thrust out from the further bank. For days
and weeks these river marks had warned the anxious inquirers that they
might not expect sport. The diminution of the tongue of land on the
one side, and a blur in the pure white of the foam on the other, told
the one-word tale "waxing."
At the outset I was saved any anxiety by finding the river dirty.
Travelling through the night, I had turned out at Berwick at half-past
four in the morning in the cold of a roaring gale that sent the clouds
flying express over the moon, and shrieked into every corner of the
deserted station. There had been heavy rain, and, in short, when day
broke bleakly near upon six o'clock, and I caught my first sight of the
river from the early train to Coldstream, my fate was evident. In good
order on Sunday afternoon, the Tweed was in flood when I drove over the
bridge on Monday morning before the village was awake. Not for the
first time, therefore, the kindly welcome of host and hostess was
pointed with mutual condolences.
The October casts, so far, had been disappointing below Kelso. The
Tweed anglers above that town had been more favoured, being beyond the
malign influences of the Teviot, which has a wonderful facility for
gathering up anything that comes from the clouds, and sending down dirt
and volume to the beats eastward of the Kelso Tweedometer.
The records of a week such as this was to be are not worth telling, for
men neither like to write about their own disappointments unless they
can treat them from the comic side, nor to read about the woes of
others unless they have the unhappy gift of gloating over them. Let
this indication, then, cover several days, and no more about it, except
that the time arrived when I caught a fish badly scored by seals, which
infested the tideway, and that I worked hard for odd hits and misses
with small fish on other days.
My best fish, in all senses of the word, was a godsend, and I rose her
with a full-sized Wilkinson. She weighed 31 1/2 lb., and was the
largest baggit which either Sligh or Guthrie could remember being
caught in the Tweed. Up to the date of capture I believe it was the
heaviest fish taken with a fly that season, but a week later a lady
angler in Sprouston dub above took one of 35 lb. My fish gave me a
rousing bit of sport, lasting a little over the accepted average time
of a pound weight to the minute. But the circumstances warranted five
minutes' grace. It was one of the very bad days, with blustering
hailstorms, and evening was coming on. A grilse had risen short, and
contributed another item to the losses account (nine in four days was
the added total), and I was as gloomy as the weather, but fished on in
calm desperation.
At last a long-drawn "Ha" from myself duetted (if I may coin the word)
with "Y'r ento 'm, sir," from Guthrie. The fish walloped an instant
near the surface, and then behaved with orthodox correctness, went down
steady, and swiftly ran out sixty yards of line or so. Of the others I
had said, "I shan't like this fish, Guthrie, till he's in the net." Of
this one I now observed, "I think he's right this time." Guthrie
responded, beaming, "Aye, he's grippit it weel."
It was a piece of good fortune that I hooked my friend so near shore
that I was landed and free on the bank within five minutes. After
running across the strong stream the fish moderated speed, and the
winch could be worked. Some eighty yards below was a dangerous turmoil
of broken water, foaming off to a shallow. The fish was manifestly a
good one, and must be kept from those rocks at all hazards. Once in
the hurly-burly of the foam the chances would be all on its side. Not
a little disconcerting was it to find that it was making to this place
with persevering steadiness. The tackle was tried and good; nothing
was likely to give but the mouth of the fish. At one time my heart
sank, and I feared I was to be outdone again. Pulling hard, the salmon
forced me along the pebbly beach, with every ounce of strain I dared.
There it was at last, within five yards of the rough water, and then it
paused. Gradually it answered my leading, and with a slowness that
became positively exciting, moved upwards, say, thirty yards. I heaved
a sigh of relief, and Guthrie breathed like a bellows.
And now the salmon appeared to be struck with a new idea; it turned
aside and shot across the river at a high speed for fifty yards. What
meant the sudden stoppage? It was not the halt of sulkiness. I knew
that well. Not daring to speak my fear I looked at Guthrie, who at
once put it into words--"Round a rock." Down-stream and up-stream I
cautiously moved, the rod never altering its tension curve. The racing
river was cut by the tight line, so that there was a hissing heard
above wind and stream. Somehow, though the chances were a million to
one against me, I felt that the fish was still held by the hook. Five
minutes of this suspense brought a different verdict from Guthrie: "Ah!
ye needn't bother; ye'll find the heuk, nae doot, but nae fish."
"I am not so sure of that," I said. "Get the boat down, Guthrie, and
we'll go out to him, anyhow." The boat was brought down accordingly,
and out we went. The line was winched in cautiously (I might almost
say prayerfully), and--well, something inside my waistcoat gave a
mighty thump, and I could feel my face whiten. For, behold, the
salmon--marvellous to relate--was still on, and as we approached to
within a few yards of the rock the uplifted rod cleared the line, and
the fish sped up-stream to the sharp music of the reel. Quickly as
might be Guthrie brought me to shore, and the remainder of the battle
was fought out from the shingle. There was one rush of nearly a
hundred yards, then the fish calmed down and answered to the winch,
moving down, nevertheless, much too persistently to Scylla and
Charybdis.
Confound it, the old peril was coming close again. The good sign was
that, as I followed on the bank, I could keep on reeling in line. A
sheer towards the rock of offence prompted the thought that the salmon
had been under its protection before, and I put on extra strain and
kept him this side of it. By this time the fish was getting exhausted,
but the distance from the broken water was so lessening that I
determined to either mend or end the business by a gift of the butt.
"Go below, Guthrie, and I'll bring him in," was the word, and the old
man soon got his opportunity, not to lift it out in the ordinary way,
but to clap the net upon it as it struggled on the shallow, and pin it
most cleverly to the shingle, hauling it out without accident. It was
only done in the nick of time; two yards farther down would have been
ruin. Everybody said it was a perfectly shaped specimen of the bright
autumn Tweed salmon.
The season, as a whole, that year on Tweed was what, in the mildest
form of regret, is termed "disappointing," though our old friend, Henry
Ffennell, in his annual statement of large salmon, was able to mention
a goodly proportion of heavy fish in the autumn. But that particular
back-end was bad during October and November on most of the beats below
Kelso. A few days after I had returned to the glories of Windsor
House, and had Bream's-buildings as the choicest of handy landscapes, I
realised the vast pleasure of learning in "Tweedside's" weekly report
from Kelso, which I was reading in a November fog that pervaded the
entire office, that Mr. Gilbey had been fortunate in catching a 42-lb.
salmon at Carham, his best fish to that date, and, I think, the best
Tweed fish of that season. It was taken on a salmon fly bearing the
troutsome name of Orange Dun, and it was a fancy pattern worked out as
I understood, by Tarn Sligh, one of the veteran gillies of Tweedside.
This fly was a very taking harmony in yellow, and Mr. Gilbey was
fishing with one of the small sizes on a single gut collar. The salmon
was hooked near the Bell Rock, a favourite autumn cast under the right
bank down by the woods below the hut. For some time the angler did not
realise what was at the end of the line. It kept quietly down, and
moved in steam-roller measure up-stream, never taking out more than a
yard of line at a time, which, under the good management of the boat,
fifteen yards or so in rear of the fish, was always recovered with
ease. So the salmon advanced, yard by yard, up to the more streamy
cast of the Craig. Mr. Gilbey landed in due course here on the high
bank, and then for the first time caught sight of the broad-sided
fellow, which the taciturn attendant netted without a mistake. The
fish was pronounced by all who saw it to be as beautifully modelled and
bright a kipper as autumn ever produced. Such a fish deserved to be
caught, recorded, photographed, and cast, and all this was duly done.
The plaster cast was a triumphant success, and you seem to see the fish
itself in form and colour upon the wall which it honours and adorns.