such a morning’s sport.
HOST.—Come, then, I will be a fisher for the table. I have one—and
another, that will weigh nearly a pound apiece. Now, there is a cunning
perch that has stolen my minnow; I know he is a large one. He has robbed
me again and again; and if I fish on in this way, with the hook through
the upper lip, will, I dare say, carry away all the minnows in the
kettle. I shall put on a strong small hook, on a stout, though fine,
gut, with slender wire round the top, and pass the hook through the back
fin of the minnow, and try my sagacity against his. Lo! I have him!—and
a very strong fish he is, and gone to the bottom; but even though the
greatest perch in the river, he cannot bite the gut,—he will soon be
tired and taken. He now comes up, and is landed. He must be above
3lbs.—a magnificent perch! Kill him and crimp him, fisherman; take our
two trout, and the three perch, to the kitchen, and let them be dressed
as usual. You shall have a good dish of fish, worthy of such determined
anglers. But I see one of your party coming up by the side of the river,
who seems tired and out of spirits.
HAL.—It is Physicus, who has this day commenced his career as a fly
fisher; and who, I dare say, has been as successful as the uninitiated
generally are. I hope you have followed my advice, and been fortunate?
PHYS.—I caught two trout in the rapid where you left me; but they were
small, and the fisherman threw them in. Below the wear, in the quick
stream, I caught two dace, and what astonished me very much, a perch,
which you see here, and which I thought never took the fly.
HAL.—O yes, sometimes; and particularly when it is below the surface:
and what more?
PHYS.—By creeping on my knees, and dropping my fly over the bank, I
hooked a very large fish which I saw rising, and which was like a
salmon; but he was too strong for my tackle, ran out all my line, and at
last broke off by entangling my link in a post in the river. I have been
very unlucky! I am sure that fish was larger than the great one Ornither
took with the natural fly.
HAL.—Come, you have been initiated, and I see begin to take an interest
in the sport, and I do not despair of your becoming a distinguished
angler.
PHYS.—With time and some patience: but I am sorry I tortured that
enormous fish without taking him.
HAL.—I dare say he was a large fish; but I have known very correct, and
even cool, reasoners in error on a point of this kind. You are
acquainted with Chemicus; he is not an ardent fisherman, and certainly
not addicted to romance; I will tell you an anecdote respecting him. He
accompanied me to this very spot last year, on a visit to our host, and
preferred angling for pike to fly fishing. After the amusement of a
morning, he brought back with him to the house one pike, and with some
degree of disappointment complained that he had hooked another of an
enormous size, which carried off his tackle by main force, and which he
was sure must have been above 10lbs. At dinner, on the table, there were
two pikes; one the fish that Chemicus had caught, and another a little
larger, somewhat more than 3lbs. We put some questions as to who had
caught this second pike, which we found had been taken by our host, who
smiling, and with some kind of mystery, asked Chemicus if he thought it
weighed 10lbs. Chemicus refused to acknowledge an identity between such
a fish and the monster he had hooked; when my friend took out of his
pocket a paper containing some hooks and tackle carefully wrapped up,
and asked Chemicus if he had ever seen such an apparatus. Chemicus owned
they were the hooks and tackle the great fish had carried away. “And I
found them,” said our friend, “in the mouth of that very _little_ fish
which you see on the table, and which I caught half an hour ago.”
HOST.—I answer for the correctness of this anecdote, but I do not
sanction its application to the case of our novitiate in angling. I have
seen a fish under that bank where he was so unfortunate, which I am sure
was above four pounds, and which I dare say was the subject of his
unsuccessful experiment.
POIET.—From what our host has just said, I conclude, Halieus, that fish
do not usually change their stations.
HAL.—Large trouts unquestionably do not;—they always hide themselves
under the same bank, stone, stock, or weed, as I said this morning
before, and come out from their permanent habitations to feed; and when
they have fled to their haunt, they may be taken there by the hand; and
on this circumstance the practice of tickling trout is founded. A
favourite place for a large trout in rivers is an eddy behind a rock or
stone, where flies and small fishes are carried by the force of the
current: and such haunts are rarely unoccupied; for if a fish is taken
out of one of them, his place is soon supplied by another, who quits for
it a less convenient situation.
PHYS.—So much knowledge and practice is required to become a proficient,
that I am afraid it is too late in life for me to begin to learn a new
art.
HAL.—Do not despair. There was—alas! that I must say there was—an
illustrious philosopher, who was nearly of the age of fifty before he
made angling a pursuit, yet he became a distinguished fly-fisher, and
the amusement occupied many of his leisure hours during the last twelve
years of his life. He, indeed, applied his pre-eminent acuteness, his
science, and his philosophy to aid the resources, and exalt the
pleasures of this amusement. I remember to have seen Dr. Wollaston, a
few days after he had become a fly-fisher, carrying at his buttonhole a
piece of caoutchouc, or Indian rubber, when, by passing his silk-worm
link through a fissure in the middle, he rendered it straight and fit
for immediate use. Many other anglers will remember other ingenious
devices of my admirable and ever-to-be lamented friend.
(_They go to dinner._)
* * * * *
(_They return from the house._)
EVENING.
HAL.—You have, I am sure, gentlemen, dined well; no one ever dined
otherwise in this house. It is a beautiful calm evening, and many fish
might be caught where we fished in the morning; but I will take you to
another part of the river; you shall each catch a fish, and then we will
give over; for the evening’s sport should be kept till a late
season,—July or August,—when there is little fly on in the day-time: and
it would be spoiling the diversion of our host, to catch or prick all
the fish in the upper water; and with a gentleman so truly liberal, and
so profuse of his means of giving pleasure to others, no improper
liberties should be taken. I shall not fish myself, but shall have my
pleasure in witnessing your sport. It must be in a boat, and you must
steal slowly up the calm water, and glide like aerial beings on the
surface, making no motion in the water, and showing no shadow. Your fly
must be an orange or brown palmer with a yellow body; for the gray drake
is not yet on the water. The fish here are large, and the river weedy,
so you must take care of your fish and your tackle.
POIET.—We have at least passed over half-a-mile of water, and have seen
no fish rise; yet there is a yellowish or reddish fly in the air, which
moves like a drake; and there are clouds of pale brown flies encircling
the alders. Now I think I see a large trout rise below that alder.
HAL.—That is not a trout, for he rises in a different place now, and is
probably a large roach or chub; do not waste your time upon him. You may
always know a large trout when feeding in the evening. He rises
continuously, or at small intervals,—in a still water almost always in
the same place,—and makes little noise,—barely elevating his mouth to
suck in the fly, and sometimes showing his back-fin and tail. A large
circle spreads around him, but there are seldom many bubbles when he
breaks the water, which usually indicate the coarser fish: we will wait
a few minutes; I know there must be trout here, and the sun is setting,
and the yellow fly, or dun cut, coming on the water. See, beneath that
alder is a trout rising, and now there is another thirty yards higher
up. Take care, get your line out in another part of the water, and in
order, for reaching the fish, and do not throw till you are sure you can
reach the spot, and throw at least half-a-yard above the fish.
ORN.—He rose, I suppose, at a natural fly, the moment before my fly
touched the water.
HAL.—Try again. You have hooked him, and you have done well not to
strike when he rose. Now hold him tight, wind up your line, and carry
him down the stream. Push the boat down stream, fisherman. Keep your
fish’s head up. He begins to tire,—and there is landed. A fine well-fed
fish, not much less than 4lbs. Throw him into the well. Now, Poietes,
try that fish rising above,—and there are two more.
POIET.—I have him!
HAL.—Take care. He has turned you, and you have suffered him to run out
your line, and he is gone into the weeds under the willow: let him fall
down stream.
POIET.—I cannot get him out.
HAL.—Then wind up. I fear he is lost, yet we will try to recover him by
taking the boat up. The line is loose: he has left the link entangled in
the weeds, and carried your fly with him. He must have been a large
fish, or he could not have disentangled himself from so strong a gut.
Try again, there are fish now rising above and below; where the water is
in motion, opposite that willow, there are two fish rising.
POIET.—I have one of them.
HAL.—Now you are doing well. Down with the boat, and drag your fish
downwards. Continue to do so, as there are weeds all round you. You can
master him now; keep him high, and he is your own. Put the net under
him, and bring him into the boat; he is a well-fed fish, but not of the
proper size for a victim: about 2lbs. Now, Physicus, try your fortune
with the fish above that rises so merrily still. You have him! Now use
him as Poietes did the last. Very well; I see he is a large fish,—take
your time. He is landed; a fish nearly of 3lbs., and in excellent
season.
PHYS.—Anche Io son Pescatore—I am too a fisherman—a triumph.
HAL.—Now we have finished our fishing, and must return to the light
supper of our host. It would be easy now, and between this hour and ten,
to take half-a-dozen large fish in this part of the water; but for the
reason I have already stated, it would be improper.
POIET.—Pray would not this be a good part of the water for day-fishing?
HAL.—Undoubtedly, a skilful angler might take fish here in the day; but
the bank is shaded by trees, there is seldom any sensible wind on the
water, and the apparatus and the boat in motion are easily perceived in
the daylight; and the water is so deep, that a great quantity of fly is
necessary to call up the fish; and in general there is a larger quantity
of fly in hot summer evenings, than even in the brightest sunshine.
PHYS.—The fly appears to me like a moth that is now on the water.
HAL.—It is.
POIET.—What flies come on late in the season here?
HAL.—Flies of the same species; some darker, and some with a deeper
shade of red; and there are likewise the true moths, the brown and
white, which, in June and July, are seized with avidity by the fish; and
being large flies, take large fish.
ORN.—Surely the May-fly season is not the only season for day-fishing in
this river?
HAL.—Certainly not. There are as many fish to be taken perhaps in the
Spring fishing; but in this deep river they are seldom in good season
till the May-fly has been on, and a fortnight hence they will be still
better than even now. In September there may be good fish taken here;
but the autumnal flies are less plentiful in this river than the spring
flies.
PHYS.—Pray tell me what are the species of fly which take in these two
seasons.
HAL.—You know that trout spawn or deposit their ova and seminal fluid in
the end of the autumn or beginning of winter, from the middle of
November till the beginning of January, their maturity depending upon
the temperature of the season, their quantity of food, &c. For some time
(a month or six weeks) before they are prepared for the sexual function,
or that of re-production, they become less fat, particularly the
females; the large quantity of eggs and their size probably affecting
the health of the animal, and compressing generally the vital organs in
the abdomen. They are at least six weeks or two months after they have
spawned before they recover their flesh: and the time when these fish
are at the worst is likewise the worst time for fly-fishing, both on
account of the cold weather and because there are fewer flies on the
water than at any other season. Even in December and January there are a
few small gnats or water-flies on the water in the middle of the day, in
bright days, or when there is sunshine. These are generally black, and
they escape the influence of the frost by the effects of light on their
black bodies, and probably by the extreme rapidity of the motions of
their fluids, and generally of their organs. They are found only at the
surface of the water, where the temperature must be above the freezing
point. In February a few double-winged water-flies which swim down the
stream are usually found in the middle of the day,—such as the
willow-fly; and the cow-dung-fly is sometimes carried on the water by
winds. In March there are several flies found on most rivers. The
grannam or green-tail-fly, with a wing like a moth, comes on generally
morning and evening, from five till eight o’clock, A. M. in mild weather
in the end of March and through April. Then there are the blue and the
brown, both Ephemeræ, which come on, the first in dark days, the second
in bright days; these flies, when well imitated, are very destructive to
fish. The first is a small fly with a palish-yellow body, and slender
beautiful wings, which rest on the back as it floats down the water. The
second, called the cob in Wales, is three or four times as large, and
has brown wings, which likewise protrude from the back, and its wings
are shaded like those of a partridge, brown and yellow brown. These
three kinds of flies lay their eggs in the water, which produce larvæ
that remain in the state of worms, feeding and breathing in the water
till they are prepared for their metamorphosis and quit the bottoms of
the rivers, and the mud and stones, for the surface, and the light and
air. The brown fly usually disappears before the end of April, likewise
the grannam; but of the blue dun, there is a succession of different
tints, or species, or varieties, which appear in the middle of the day
all the summer and autumn long. These are the principal flies on the
Wandle—the best and clearest stream near London. In early spring these
flies have dark olive bodies; in the end of April and the beginning of
May they are found yellow; and in the summer they become
cinnamon-coloured; and again, as the winter approaches, gain a darker
hue. I do not, however, mean to say that they are the same flies, but
more probably successive generations of Ephemeræ of the same species.
The excess of heat seems equally unfavourable, as the excess of cold, to
the existence of the smaller species of water-insects, which, during the
intensity of sunshine, seldom appear in summer, but rise morning and
evening only. The blue dun has in June and July a yellow body, and there
is a water-fly which in the evening is generally found before the moths
appear, called the red-spinner. Towards the end of August, the Ephemeræ
appear again in the middle of the day: a very pale small Ephemera, which
is of the same colour as that which is seen in some rivers in the
beginning of July. In September and October this kind of fly is found
with an olive body, and it becomes darker in October, and paler in
November. There are two other flies which appear in the end of
September, and continue during October if the weather be mild: a large
yellow fly with a fleshy body and wings like a moth; and a small fly
with four wings, with a dark or claret-coloured body, that when it falls
on the water has its wings like the great yellow fly, flat on its back.
This, or a claret-bodied fly, very similar in character, may be likewise
found in March or April, on some waters. In this river I have often
caught many large trout in April and the beginning of May, with the blue
dun, having the yellow body; and in the upper part of the stream below
St. Albans, and between that and Watford, I have sometimes, even as
early as April, caught fish in good condition: but the _true_ season for
the Colne is the season of the May-fly. The same may be said of most of
the large English rivers containing large trouts, and abounding in
May-fly;—such as the Test and the Kennet; the one running by
Stockbridge, the other by Hungerford. But in the Wandle at Carshalton
and Beddington, the May-fly is not found; and the little blues are the
constant, and when well imitated, killing flies on this water; to which
may be joined a dark alder-fly, and a red evening fly. In the Avon, at
Ringwood and Fordingbridge, the May-fly is likewise a killing fly; but
as this is a grayling river, the other flies, particularly the grannam
and blue and brown, are good in spring, and the alder-fly or pale blue
later, and the blue dun in September and October, and even November. In
the streams in the mountainous parts of Britain, the spring and autumnal
flies are by far the most killing. The Usk was formerly a very
productive trout stream, and the fish being well-fed by the worms washed
down by the winter floods, were often in good season, cutting red, in
March, and the beginning of April: and at this season the blues and
browns, particularly when the water was a little stained after a small
flood, afforded the angler good sport. In Herefordshire and Derbyshire,
where trout and grayling are often found together, the same periods are
generally best for angling; but in the Dove, Lathkill, and Wye, with the
natural May-fly, many fish may be taken; and in old times, in peculiarly
windy days, or high and troubled water, even the artificial May-fly,
according to Cotton, was very killing.
POIET.—I have heard various accounts of the excellent fishing in some of
the great lakes in Ireland. Can you tell us any thing on the subject,
and if the same flies may be used in that island?
HAL.—I have been several times in Ireland, but never at this season,
which is considered as best for lake-fishing. I have heard that in some
of the lakes in Westmeath, very large trout, and great quantities may be
taken in the beginning of June, with the very flies we have been using
this day. Wind is necessary; and a good angler sometimes takes in a day,
or rather formerly took, from ten to twelve fish, which weighed from 3
to 10lbs., and which occasionally were even larger. In the summer after
June, and in the autumn, the only seasons when I have fished in Ireland,
I have seldom taken any large trout; but in the river Boyle, late in
October, after a flood, I once had some sport with these fish, that were
running up the river from Lock Key to spawn. I caught one day two above
3lbs. that took a large reddish-brown fly of the same kind as a salmon
fly; and I saw some taken that weighed 5lbs., and heard of one that
equalled 9lbs. These fish were in good season, even at this late period,
and had no spots, but were coloured red and brown—mottled like
tortoise-shell, only with smaller bars. I have in July, likewise, fished
in Loch Con, near Ballina, and Loch Melvin, near Ballyshannon. In Loch
Con, the party caught many small good trout, that cut red; and in the
other I caught a very few trout only, but as many of them were gillaroo
or gizzard trout as common trout.
POIET.—This must have been an interesting kind of fishing. In what does
the gillaroo differ from the trout?
HAL.—In appearance very little, except that they have more red spots,
and a yellow or golden-coloured belly and fins, and are generally a
broader and thicker fish; but internally they have a different
organization, possessing a large thick muscular stomach, which has been
improperly compared to a fowl’s, and which generally contains a quantity
of small shell-fish of three or four kinds: and though in those I caught
the stomachs were full of these shell-fish, yet they rose greedily at
the fly.
POIET.—Are they not common trout which have gained the habit of feeding
on shell-fish?
HAL.—If so, they have been altered in a succession of generations. The
common trouts of this lake have stomachs like other trouts, which never,
as far as my experience has gone, contain shell-fish; but of the
gillaroo trout, I have caught with a fly some not longer than my finger,
which have had as perfect a hard stomach as the larger ones, with the
coats as thick in proportion, and the same shells within; so that this
animal is at least _now_ a distinct species, and is a sort of link
between the trout and char, which has a stomach of the same kind with
the gillaroo, but not quite so thick, and which feeds at the bottom in
the same way. I have often looked in the lakes abroad for gillaroo
trout, and never found one. In a small lake at the foot of the Crest of
the Brenner, above 4000 feet above the level of the sea, I once caught
some trout, which, from their thickness and red spots, I suspected were
gillaroo, but on opening the stomach I found I was mistaken; it had no
particular thickness, and was filled with grasshoppers: but there were
_char_, which fed on _shell-fish_, in the same lake.
POIET.—Are water-flies found on all rivers?