SUNDRY CONSIDERATIONS
OF THE RELATION OF PATTERN TO THE POSITION OF TROUT, AND HEREIN OF THE
TAKING OFF OF WARY WILLY.
It is perhaps a small matter which is treated under this head, but
anything which helps the angler to a correct selection of fly is so much
to the good, and the point I want to make here is that the haunt of a
fish is an item to be taken note of in deciding what items to put upon
the menu to be offered for his selection. For instance, if your trout be
in position in the middle of a fairly wide stream, and that be his
habitual post, it is practically little good giving him an imitation of
any insect which haunts the bank only, such as alder in its season,
sedge, grass-moth, or willow-fly, which, on the other hand, may be tried
in their season, with every prospect of success, upon fish under the
banks.
Well do I remember how marked this rule was in its application on a day
in September, 1903, on a German limestone river. In the middle the
willow-fly, which was out in quantity that day, was no good. The trout
wanted duns, and willow-flies were no use to them, or probably there,
away from the banks, were practically unknown; but under the alder and
willow-fringed banks on either side the trout took the spent willow-fly
freely, and, of thirty-seven trout, no less than thirty-four fell that
day to the willow-fly under the banks, but not one from mid-river. Many
a time the trout will take a sedge or an imitation of the grass-moth
under the banks when quite shy of them in midstream. In connection with
this I may record an incident which is framed in my mind as the strange
disappearance of Wary Willy.
Wary Willy was almost a public character. He inhabited a club water not
far from Winchester, and was always at his post when duty called. But he
was of an obliging turn of mind, and always ready to show sport to the
new-comer who might be tempted to put a fly over him. Yet it was not for
nothing that he had earned his name, for, though many had risen him,
none was recorded as having hooked him. His holt was under a grassy bank
(right of the river), about three yards above the spot where a willow
stump extended a solitary branch at right angles to the current, a foot
above and about two yards out into the stream, so that any angler who
paid his respects to William had to send his invitation across the
willow-bough, a state of things which led to difficulties and language
for the angler, and to an amused retreat on the part of Willy. Yet a
short time later he would be back at his post, adding to his collection
of the Ephemeridæ with undiminished zest.
I was not a member of the club, but I paid a visit to a friend who had a
rod, and he very good-naturedly insisted on my trying his nine-foot
Leonard over Wary Willy, and he brought me to the place. I had no tackle
with me, so I had to use my friend’s floating flies. The wind was light
and in the right direction, and I got my fly over the branch nicely and
covered him several times, and as I let my reel-line drop on the water
below the branch the current carried my fly back successfully a number
of times; but at length I was hung up, and when I tried to release
myself Willy had business elsewhere.
On this water the club members and the keepers said that sedges were no
use. It was a dun and spinner water only. So when in the afternoon I met
the head-keeper, and saw a small Red Sedge in his cap, I made no bones
of asking for it, as it was of no use. Borrowing the Leonard once more,
I tied on the Red Sedge, and stole up cautiously to Willy’s abode. But
just ere I got to position a fish rose to the right of his place, about
three yards out from the bank. I did not wish him to scare Willy, so, to
get him out of the way first, I dropped the sedge upon his nose, and he
had it immediately. He was very indignant at the imposition that had
been put upon him, and turned several somersaults in the air, and
altogether put up quite a good fight for a fish of his ounces, which
numbered twenty-five, before my friend’s landing-net received him. I
had, however, steered him carefully, so that his antics should not
disturb William, and I approached that worthy’s holt with a modest
confidence that William stood in the way of getting a surprise. But
William was not there. William never came back. He couldn’t. He was
dead, and in my friend’s landing-net. But it was several days before
remorse began to work in me, for it was not till a week or so later that
my friend told me of the disappearance of Wary Willy. But Willy had
always been fished with duns. He knew all the patterns of Holland and
Chalkley and Ogden Smith, but never had he had cause to suspect the
genuineness of a sedge—and so, good-bye Willy!
OF THE USE OF SPINNERS DURING THE RISE OF DUNS, AND HEREIN OF THE
VAGARIES OF THE BLUE-WINGED OLIVE.
“The Red Quill,” says Mr. F. M. Halford, “is one of the sheet-anchors of
the dry-fly fisherman on a strange river when in doubt.” Never was a
truer word spoken. Mr. Englefield of Winchester, I believe, conducted
the experiment of confining himself to the Red Quill (in a variety of
sizes and shades, and with and without the addition of gold and silver
tags) for a whole season, and did as well with the one fly as in other
seasons with a larger selection. And it is a remarkable fact that the
Red Quill, bearing more resemblance to a Red Spinner than to a dun, will
frequently kill during a rise of duns as well as, or better than, quite
a good imitation of the dun itself. It will also be found that during
the rise of any kind of dun its spinner will often take as well as, if
not better than, the subimago pattern. For instance, a Red Spinner
during a rise of olives, a Claret Spinner when the iron blue dun is on,
and a Sherry Spinner when the blue-winged olive is on.
All the spinners do not die and fall spent on the water over night. Some
come on to the water in the cool of the early morning, and if the angler
tries in the hot weather for an early morning trout, the spinner may be
commended to him as giving him his best chance, so far as floating
patterns are concerned. And when, before the rise comes on, an odd fish
or so may be found in position putting up occasionally at something,
spinners may legitimately be suspected. Therefore it may be that, when
the rise comes on, the memory of a recent acquaintance with more
delicious morsels than the current duns leads to a readiness on his part
to absorb the floating imitation spinner.
The blue-winged olive is a large and handsome fly, and its hatch is
usually an evening matter, though I have seen it at all hours of the
day. But when it is on, and there are other duns at the same time, it is
always possible to distinguish the trout which are taking the
blue-winged olive by the curious shape of the boil they make in taking
it; a kidney-shaped boil, with two distinct whorls right and left. And
if the angler is provided with Orange Quills on No. 1 hooks, and will
pick out these fish, he may count on sport worth remembering, though
possibly not a spinner may be on the water at the time. Curiously
enough, such a thing as a good imitation of the blue-winged olive in the
subimago form has yet to be invented. Patterns are tied which will kill
an occasional trout, but the Orange Quill, if the rise be anything like
a good one, means three or four brace, and probably all big fish.
One evening, June 24 in 1908, I ran down to Winchester by the 6.50 train
to see Eton v. Winchester on the next day, and I got down there about
eight o’clock. I had not meant to fish overnight, but I thought there
was time for a cast before the dusk drew in, and I picked up a nine-foot
Leonard and a landing-net, stuck a damper with a cast in my pocket, and
a small box of flies, and got down to a broad shallow. I found several
fish rising, and at once diagnosed the blue-winged olive. So I tied on a
large Orange Quill and cast to the nearest. Up he came, and was off with
a flounder. Without losing a moment, I covered the next with the ensuing
cast. The same thing occurred, and I promptly dropped my next cast a
yard to the right over the third fish. He, too, came up and fastened. He
went straight to weed, but, holding him quite lightly, I soon had the
satisfaction of feeling him beat himself free of the weeds, and
presently I netted him out. The fly was quite soaked, and I tried to
change it, but it was too dark, and so I knocked off, having risen three
trout to the Orange Quill in three successive casts.
Some years ago I dressed for my friend, M. Louis Bouglé, of Paris and
the Fly-fishers’ Club, a winged imitation of the blue-winged olive,
which is at certain seasons almost the only dun on the chalk streams of
Normandy, and he can kill an occasional fish on it. Its dressing is
immaterial, for I never could do any good with it myself; but one
evening I was fishing the Varennes with M. Bouglé, when there came on a
good fall of blue-winged olive spinner. My friend caught a trout with
his pattern, and by the aid of a spoon I got from its stomach, and
turned into a glass, three large greenish-amber spinners, with the
distinctive three setæ; and next morning in a capital light I tied an
imitation of these insects, spent-gnat-wise, with seal’s fur body of
palish yellow-green olive of appropriate mixture of furs. Next evening
we each got fish with these imitations, M. Bouglé more than I, and I
have always been promising myself that I will put it up one blue-winged
olive evening on the Hampshire rivers; but when the occasion has come,
and that distinctive rise is seen, I have never been able to resist
taking the Orange Quill rather than the spent olive pattern out of the
box where they repose together. It is hard to resist three or four
brace.
OF GENERAL FEEDERS, AND HEREIN OF THE UNDOING OF AUNT SALLY.
There are places in most rivers—generally, I think, about the spots most
frequented by man—where trout establish themselves, which seem, though
willing enough to take duns as they come, to be independent of them as a
staple food, and to take gaily every day and all day long, and often far
into the night, whatever fly-food comes along, always excepting, _bien
entendu_, the angler’s flies, however delicately offered. Such trout are
readily put off their feed, but not for long, and the angler, returning
to the spot after a short absence, may make up his mind to find his
friend back in position, pegging away as freely as ever. Everyone has a
chuck at these fish—no one can resist them; but it is a rare thing for
one to be caught—and the Coachman may account for a few. A strong ruffle
in the water _may_ enable you to take one unaware, but, generally
speaking, the ordinary tactics, whether dry-fly or wet, are thrown away
on such fish, and the only chance is to fall back on something
exceptional either in lure or in method of attack, or both.
Followeth the example of
_The Undoing of Aunt Sally._
She was called Aunt Sally because everyone felt bound to have a shy at
her. Her coign of vantage was near the bottom of the water, where the
fishery begins, and her irritating “pip, pip,” as she took fly after fly
in the culvert that was her home was too much for the nerves of nine
anglers out of ten, so that the absurdest efforts to circumvent her were
made daily—efforts to float a dry upwinged dun down the culvert from the
top: result, immediate and irremediable drag; efforts to flick a fly
upstream to her in the culvert from below: result, broken rod-tops,
barbless hooks, flies flicked off against the brickwork, and other
disasters, leading to profanity.
The _locus in quo_ was a stream in the South of England, flowing some
fifteen yards or so wide at a good even pace, with a nice purl on it,
down to and past a deep hole used for bathing by the farmers’ lads. From
this hole, a culvert in the left bank, a yard wide and, say, four yards
long, diverts a considerable body of the stream into a new channel, to
drive a mill in the town below. This was the fastness in which Aunt
Sally had taken up her abode, and throughout the spring and summer had
defied all efforts to dislodge her.
It was my first visit to the stream that year, and from 9 a.m. till 3
p.m. on an August day I had worked away for meagre results. There was no
rise of fly after ten o’clock, and a strong rise of water-rats. Three
trout had I turned over, and one of one pound two ounces reposed in my
bag. I had not seen a rising fish for hours, when, weary and
disappointed, I drifted down the right bank to the bottom of the
fishery, and sat down to rest on the steps which are set in the hole to
assist bathers in clambering out.
“Pip!” I heard coming from somewhere. I looked upstream, I looked under
my own bank, but not a sign of a ring was to be seen. “Pip, pip!” again.
At last, leaning low and looking through the culvert, I saw, some two
yards down, what I took to be a dimple of a rising fish. Watching a few
moments, I saw it repeated, and my spirits revived. My point was fine,
so I took it off and knotted on a yard of sound Refina gut, and ended it
with a brown beetle with peacock’s herl body and red legs. I soaked him
well, so that there should be no drag on the surface, and then, getting
my length for the other side, let the fly and gut drag in the stream
till the moment I made my cast. Fly and gut together struck the brick
face of the culvert, and fell in a heap at the mouth. Instantly the
current caught the fly and gut, and extended it down the culvert. Almost
at the same moment the current of the main stream, across which my
reel-line lay, began to drag upon it, and completed the extension of the
gut by the time the beetle had run a short two yards down the culvert.
At once it began to drag back. This was too much for Aunt Sally—to have
that beetle scuttling from her when it was almost in her mouth. She came
at it, and in a flash secured it ere it could escape from the culvert;
and before she could turn she was skull-dragged out of her fastness and
turned down into the stream below. She made a determined fight for it,
but she was very soundly hooked, and I gave no needless law, so that her
fifteen inches were soon laid out upon the grass. Not knowing of her
fame, I was quite content with her one pound eleven ounces; but an
angler who told me of her reputation said she had always been put down
as a much bigger fish. An hour later I looked down the culvert again,
but the water had dropped some inches, and there was not enough current
through the culvert to make it fishable. I had hit the happy moment for
the undoing of Aunt Sally.
OF ATTENTION TO CASUAL FEEDERS.
The happening fish is a godsend to the angler whom time or trains,
failure to find the taking fly, or other act of God or the King’s
enemies, have prevented from making his basket during the main hatch of
duns. By the “happening fish” is to be understood, not the chance riser
to a chance cast, but the trout which, by reason of a larger stomach
capacity, misfortune of position, shortage of fly, disinclination for
the society of tailers, or the pursuit of the succulent shrimp, or
neglect of his opportunities during the main rise, is left hungry, or at
least hungry enough not to have left off feeding after—often long
after—the main rise has faded out; and also the trout whose hearty
appetite ranges him under the bank in advance of the rise, in a state of
impatience for his meal, which leads him to sample such _hors d’œuvres_
as the stream may bring his way. For reasons which shall be made
apparent, both of these classes of trout offer themselves an easier prey
to the angler than the trout who is busy with a steady diet of hatching
duns. It is doubtful whether the advice often tendered to the
over-eager, to allow the rising trout to get well set at the wicket, is
really sound, as, by the time he is well set, his appreciation of what
is offered him has become greatly sharpened by a prolonged experience of
it as it should be, and he is as likely as not to refuse anything that
does not appeal to him as being identical with the natural insect he has
been absorbing so much of; and I know no more likely fish to take, if
you get your fly to him right, than a trout which is cruising up to his
feeding-ground, picking a fly or two on the way. Freely I confess that
whole rises have passed me too many a time without my having succeeded
in ascertaining what the trout would take, and on such days—and again on
days when trains have borne me to the water too late for the morning
rise—I might frequently, but for my friend the casual feeder, have
brought home a toom creel.
The places where the casual feeder is to be found at home are various;
but, speaking generally, the casual feeder’s position depends on the
nature of the fare which the time of day affords him, and the odds are
long that from the end of May, when the first of the sedges (the
so-called Welshman’s Button—the “Dun Cut” of the fathers of angling)
comes upon the water, that position will be found under the banks where
sedge-flies and other bank insects most do congregate, and from which
they venture upon the water; at bridges where a constriction of the
current concentrates the food; at bridges where spinners are apt to
dance until their dancing minutes be done, and sedges often shelter in
brickwork; at hatches where woodlice and other insects harbour in the
wood, and are prone to drop into the current; in pockets in the weeds;
and in ditches and carriers where the hatch of duns is sparse and
unsatisfactory, and a trout must rely upon other resources for his daily
sustenance. This may be floating or subaqueous, but is more likely in
carriers and swift waters to be subaqueous, inasmuch as it is only for a
brief period that a hatch takes place; but subaqueous forms of fly-life
are always about (though, no doubt, sparsely at other times than that of
the rise), and experience proves that when no definite rise is in
progress, no trout that is on the alert finds it easy to resist a nymph
who has left his shelter. Hence, given the willingness of the trout to
feed, and the absence of a steady diet of dominant attractiveness, there
is every inducement for him to be of an open mind as to the provender
that will seduce him.
Then there is our friend the “tailer,” of whom more elsewhere.
Thus, instead of spiking his rod when the morning rise is over, and
taking his Walton or his Marcus Aurelius or his Omar Khayyám from his
pocket, let the wise angler concentrate on the casual feeder; and if his
reward be not great, there is every chance of its being quite
respectable, and he may be saved the humiliation of an empty creel.
OF THE FREQUENTATION OF DITCHES, DRAINS, AND CARRIERS.
I know of no sight more gloomy than that of a golfer painfully tramping
from shot to shot. But perhaps the next gloomiest sight is the angler
who, with perhaps but a single day at his disposal, lounges hour by hour
by the side of the main river, waiting with such patience as he can
muster for the rise which comes not. Let us suppose that he is either
unable or too magnanimous to fish the wet fly, that there are no fish
lying, either visibly or inferentially, in convenient places under his
own bank, so that they could be fished to with a dry sedge or a Red
Quill. Let him come with me, and we will pull some sport out of adverse
conditions. Let us begin here, where this hatch is letting a goodly
supply of water into this carrier for the watering of the meadows. Be it
known unto you, O angler, that the trout of ditches and carriers are far
less affected by the rise of duns, and far readier to feed at all times
or any time, than those fish of the main river. Here our choice is to
fish either a sunk fly, suggesting a nymph (for here an upwinged dun can
hardly get through undrowned), a floating fly resembling one of the
sedges which dodge about the camp-sheathing or a good-sized Wickham’s
Fancy. Search all the tail of the run carefully with one or the other of
these patterns, and it shall go hard with you if you do not get a
chance, at any rate, from a passable fish—possibly more than one.
A little lower down the carrier runs through a culvert, and, if the
hay-makers have not got him out, one is likely to find quite a
respectable trout just below the arch, and he is to be had if you fish
him right. Farther down there is a low wood bridge, through which the
stream flows briskly, and below this there are usually two or three
feeding fish. For some reason these are specially sensitive to shadow. I
have had many fish from this spot from both sides, but never one from
the right, or west, side after two o’clock, or from the other side
before two. Having fished these fish, and caught or lost or put them
down, let us move over to the next piece of water. It is slow, and has
little weed. If it had been a day with a ruffle of wind, or had the
drowners turned a good current through, we would have fished it up yard
by yard; but to-day it is no good. But here, a bit farther on, a brisk
stream runs through a little hatch, and for a hundred and fifty yards or
so makes a most merry little length. Keep low in the long grass, fish it
foot by foot, and, so far as you can, turn _down_ all the fish you
scare. If you send one up, sit down and wait. It will not be long ere
the others recover their equanimity. On a good day you should get your
two brace from this length, either with No. 1 Red Sedge, No. 1 Red
Quill, No. 0 Pink Wickham or No. 0 Tup’s Indispensable wet, or No. 0
Wickham’s Fancy. Now let us wind up along another brisk little piece of
water, perhaps fifteen feet wide, which races in a series of runs, and
stretches right across the meadows. It is known as the Highland Burn,
and it is full of sporting fish, and you must take the chance of hooking
a half-pounder along with your chance of a fish nearer two pounds. And
do not neglect the ditch which runs in at right angles halfway up. I
have seen a past-master take no less than three capital trout from those
few yards in one day, turning each as hooked down into the Highland
Burn, and killing him there.
OF THE NEGOTIATION OF TAILERS.
Authority hath it that “the best policy is, perhaps, to leave tailing
fish alone”; but the busy man, who only gets an occasional day’s
fishing, to whom that advice is too trying and disappointing (meaning
me), was recommended to try an Orange Bumble or a Furnace. With an
exception I shall presently refer to, it is some years since I have had
any experience of tailing trout, for an alteration in a weir has made
such a difference in the pace and level of a length on the chalk stream
I most do fish, that whereas in the old days the tailer used to be a
common sight there, nowadays it is the greatest rarity. But in those old
days the tailer was my stand-by. If—as was frequently the case—I made
naught of the morning rise, I would betake me to this length and sit
down gaily to the siege of each tailer in succession, with the
confidence that, unless I made some mistake and scared the fish—and
tailers are not too easily scared—sooner or later he was my fish. It was
often later, for I had to go on casting, casting, casting, in the hope
that the moment might come when my fly would be passing over the trout
at the moment when his head was raised, and he was taking breath before
another big go at the shrimps and other food in the weed-beds. The
frequent casting gave much opportunity for mistakes, and not
infrequently I scared my fish, after wasting half an hour or more over
him; but, on the other hand, I seldom failed to secure at least one
fish, and oftener a leash. The method was simplicity itself. I sat down
below my fish, and dropped a Pink Wickham a yard or so above where his
tail dimpled the surface, and floated it down over him quite dry. This
was repeated so long as the fish was there, but if he lifted his head in
time to see the fly come over him, there seemed to be some mysterious
attraction in that pattern which forbade him to refuse it. Whether this
is so in other waters I know not, but I often regret the obliteration of
the old race of tailers. They were a great stand-by, and always put up a
big battle when hooked. The size of fly was 00 for smooth water, but in
a ruffle the single cipher size proved better medicine.
The single occasion above referred to was in May, 1909, in a different
part of the river. The water was running thinly over a broad shallow,
very full up with weed-beds, and, instead of standing nearly
perpendicularly on their heads in order to tail, large numbers of trout
and grayling were grubbing at an acute angle with the bottom among the
weed-beds, and with violent wriggles of head and body dislodging small
insects, which they pursued with rushes plainly marked upon the surface,
ending, at the moment of capture of the prey, with swirls. I did not put
up a Pink Wickham, because I had another experiment to make. In the
previous July I had caught three brace before eleven o’clock on a nymph
imitated in olive seal’s fur from one found in the mouth of a trout on
the previous day, and I wanted to give it a trial here, on the chance
that it might be found that it was nymphs, and not shrimps, that the
tailing fish were shaking out. So, keeping the artificial nymph soaking
at the end of my line in the run at my feet, I despatched it every now
and then across the course of the trout, when, desisting from their
grubbing, they pursued the flying quarry. It was generally the case
that, by the time the fly lit, the fish was careering off in some
different direction; but several fish pursued my fly and swirled at it,
and one takable trout and one short of the regulation twelve inches
succeeded in taking it. It was a short and most inconclusive experiment,
but, if occasion serves, it will be renewed.
OF THE FASCINATION OF BRIDGES.
Years ago, before ever I knew the Upper Itchen, there was a wooden farm
bridge which crossed the main river to carry produce. Whether the bridge
fell into decay through disuse and neglect consequent upon the fields on
the east side being separately let to another farmer, or whether the
separate letting occurred because the bridge became dangerous, and would
have cost too much to repair, anyhow, when I came first to know this
particular part of the river in the early eighties, there was nothing
left of the bridge except a stump or two, green with slime, brown with
rot, showing just above water, or intercepting weed—just that and a band
of bottom a little higher than the river-bed above and below, as if the
made bottom which had carried the bridge still persisted. Even the
stumps are long gone the way of all stumps, and the made bed is only
just traceable if you know where to find it. But for all that, after all
these years, this is the place in the river where trout are to be found
feeding, if they are found feeding anywhere; and they feed in much the
same way, seeming secure, yet really shy, as the trout feed under or
just below all the bridges on the river. All bridge trout seem to be
shy. Some bridges make shyer trout than others. I knew one—a
railway-bridge on that length—under which in four-and-twenty years I
never got a trout, or even a rise, for all I tried persistently, wet and
dry, until 1908, and then only because on that particular day a strong
ruffle of wind blew up the arch and made good big waves. Then I got a
brace to a floating Tup’s Indispensable, and lost another fish. Whether
it is the holt into which to run at hint of danger, or the insects which
haunt the woodwork, or the clear space of unweeded water in which to
swim, or what not, bridges seem to have a special fascination for trout;
and if the fly (preferably a small sedge) can be delicately dropped over
the fish as if it fell from the woodwork, the chances of getting him are
much increased.
Trout seem specially watchful at bridges, and, if the water be not too
fast, will turn to take a fly which is aimed to hit them on the tail.