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THAMES AND TWEED. 
 
THAMES AND TWEED. 
 
 GEORGE ROOFER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "FLOOD, FIELD, AND FOREST. 
 
 CASSELL, FETTER, AND GALPIN, 
 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY CASSELL, FETTER, AND GALPIN, 
 BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS, E.G. 
 
THAMES AND TWEED. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 IT is my belief that, when dominion was given to 
 man over the beasts of the field, the birds of the 
 .air, and the fishes of the sea, certain tribes or fami- 
 lies of the two former were more especially destined 
 for his use and sustenance, and were endued with 
 the instinct of domestication, which rendered them 
 subservient to his will, reliant on him for their 
 support and maintenance, and submissive in at 
 least some measure to his requirements for animal 
 food. Of some beasts, then as now, both the wild 
 and the tame type existed ; of others the wild only, 
 or the tame only. So with birds : there were tame 
 birds and wild birds, and some which, being neither 
 tame nor wild, were capable of sufficient domesti- 
 cation to keep them within the reach of man, 
 although they might not, like Mrs Partington's 
 ducks, "come and be killed/' I think that no one 
 
 M363261 
 
2 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 who, putting aside prejudice and long-received 
 opinion, gives the matter his serious consideration, 
 can doubt this.* 
 
 As to fish, the case was altogether different ; it 
 necessarily was at the Flood. There was no bond 
 of union or sympathy between them and man, no 
 natural dependence ; and his dominion over them 
 was strictly limited to his power of exercising it : 
 the fear of him and the dread of him were innate 
 in the fish, but neither love nor craving for pro- 
 tection, nor voluntary submission to his will. 
 
 From very early, if not from the earliest times, 
 men seem to have enjoyed the pursuit and capture 
 of fish. We find angling in our oldest written re- 
 cords, in the perhaps still more ancient records of 
 the Egyptians. Job, in the earliest of our books 
 (unless the Pentateuch be still earlier), is asked, 
 " Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook, or 
 his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down ? " 
 Cleopatra, we are told, cajoled Mark Antony, 
 
 * Abel was a keeper of sheep of domesticated sheep such sheep 
 as the Eastern shepherd has, ever since the actions of man were 
 recorded, led forth to the green pastures ; not of the Aoudad, the 
 wild type of the race, the active, unsubdued creature, still found in 
 numbers on Ararat and other mountains of the East. Job possessed 
 cattle and asses, but surely neither the bison nor the buffalo, the 
 quagga nor the zebra : untamed and untamable they then were 
 untamed and untamable they continue to the present day. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 "inter alia" by making her slaves dive and affix 
 live fish to his hook, as they sat and enjoyed the 
 sport of angling together. Angling was an amuse- 
 ment in which her very remote Egyptian pre- 
 decessors appear to have delighted, and natives 
 of high rank are depicted as catching fish with a 
 line. I am afraid of appearing too pedantic, or I 
 might quote Oppian, a Greek writer who flourished 
 about AD. 170, and wrote a poem in five books 
 upon fish and fishing ; or Homer, who lived a thou- 
 sand years before him, and who more than once 
 distinctly refers to the art of angling : the monster 
 Scylla is represented as catching dolphins. 
 
 But I need not insist further : angling must be 
 admitted to be one of the most ancient, and I claim 
 for it the credit of being the most scientific, the 
 most absorbing, and the most satisfying amusement 
 that can be followed in the way of sport. Neither 
 is the fascination it exercises over its votaries of an 
 evanescent character. Men " lose their nerve " and 
 give up hunting ; they lack strength for walking ; 
 their eyesight fails and they give up shooting; 
 rowing, after a certain time of life, becomes irk- 
 some ; cricket and football are out of the question : 
 but who ever gave up fishing ? or has heard of any 
 one giving up fishing, so long as he could handle a 
 rod, or hobble along the bank, or even sit in a 
 
4 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 boat ? There is a well-known character at St 
 Boswell's, a man of humble birth, totally blind, 
 who, attended by his dog, gropes his way daily to 
 the Tweed, and there angles, not unsuccessfully, 
 for trout, with a fly. He is a poor man, and has 
 neither help nor guide beyond what casual sym- 
 pathy may bestow ; yet except once, when he 
 caught his dog, who, after ten minutes' exciting 
 play, broke his tackle, and left him groaning over 
 the supposed loss of a huge salmon, I never heard 
 of his coming to grief. Yes ! fishing is a noble art, 
 an absorbing occupation, and one to which a man 
 of high intellect may without shame or scruple give 
 himself up. Its pursuit leads the angler into the 
 most beautiful scenery, at the loveliest time of the 
 year, and the pleasantest hours of the day ; it is 
 not so absorbing as to preclude the contemplation 
 of the beauties of nature or to exclude reflection ; 
 it is a sufficiently active employment for health 
 and exercise, without necessitating the more bois- 
 terous efforts of the chase or the harder labour of 
 shooting. It is a pursuit, the pleasure of which 
 increases with its practice it "grows by what it 
 feeds on" increasing rather than diminishing with 
 age, while the skill and knowledge gained by long 
 experience more than compensate for the absence 
 of youthful strength and vigour. Were I a fish, I 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 should pray to be defended from the attack of an 
 ' old fisherman/ 
 
 With respect to the practical part of the art, of 
 which I purpose to treat in the following pages, I 
 am well aware that there are scores of fishermen 
 with ten times my experience, and ten times my 
 skill, who might write upon the subject ; but they 
 do not. I do not write for such, except that they, 
 as critics, may correct any error of mine, and, ex- 
 posing it in a friendly spirit, add the result of their 
 own experience or observation. In a nation of 
 blind men a one-eyed man is king, according to 
 the French adage ; and on that principle I have 
 jotted down such precepts and such information as 
 appear to me, after a long, if not extensive, practice 
 of the art of angling, to be best worth noting : and, 
 craving the indulgence of the more experienced, I 
 venture to commend the following pages to the 
 perusal of the younger and less-experienced fol- 
 lowers of the noble and most scientific pursuit 
 which can be classed under the head of sporting. 
 
PRELIMINARY. 
 
 FISHERMEN are generally methodical, and it is in 
 deference to the requisitions of method that I "begin 
 at the beginning," and offer a very few preliminary 
 hints on the subjects of dress, rods, tackle, &c. 
 There is nothing particularly new or important or 
 interesting in what I offer ; but, as the result of 
 some considerable experience and observation, it 
 may be found useful to some of my readers. The 
 practised fisherman will, of course, skip the chapter, 
 and the unpractised one will do so or not as he 
 thinks proper. I have advisedly made my observa- 
 tions as brief as possible. I need hardly say that 
 they might have been spun out to any conceivable 
 extent, and that without any especial strain on 
 either my inventive powers or my memory. 
 
 Dress. The fisherman's dress is by no means 
 an unimportant matter. Bright colours or white 
 must be avoided. Let your person be arrayed 
 " intcgumentis nigris vel obfuscis" as the Oxford 
 
HOD'S. 7 
 
 statutes run. Wear a flannel shirt and a low- 
 crowned hat, two pairs of socks at least tinder 
 your wading stockings, and one pair over. Your 
 shoes should be made of good, sound, country 
 leather, the sole as thick as is compatible with 
 comfortable walking, and studded with an abund- 
 ance of the roughest, ugliest nails you can get 
 (wading shoes are not intended to walk on Turkey 
 carpets with) ; grease them thoroughly while wet, 
 which will prevent them becoming hard or crack- 
 ing ; but take care that the grease do not touch 
 the stockings themselves. The more flannel you 
 have about you the better ; and your waterproof 
 garments, however impervious to water, should by 
 no means be tfzr-tight : it is as bad, nay worse, to 
 be wet from within as from without. 
 
 Rods. Of the manufacture of rods I shall say 
 nothing. I recommend the young fisherman to 
 go to a first-rate shop in London, Dublin, or 
 Edinburgh, and pay a fair price ; and I will ven- 
 ture to say that, if the desired result be not 
 obtained, the fault will not be in the tool, but 
 in the workman. For bottom-fishing, trolling, 
 and spinning, no rods in the world excel those 
 made in London. As to fly-fishing rods, opinions 
 differ. The English-made rods are generally stiff, 
 the Irish are generally the reverse; but Irish 
 
8 RODS. 
 
 makers have the advantage, inasmuch as they can 
 make a stiff rod, but English makers generally 
 fail in their pliable ones. English rods, too, from 
 the difference in wages and rent, are necessarily 
 more expensive than Irish. Rods vary in price, 
 from five shillings for bottom -fishing, to five 
 pounds for salmon-fishing. The worst in my 
 possession cost me the latter amount. Great 
 difference of opinion exists as to the respective 
 merits of the stiff and the limber salmon-rod. I 
 prefer the latter, but, as usual, there is much to 
 be said on both sides. The stiffer the rod, the 
 easier it is to throw with, and the less the chance 
 of whipping off the fly. A stiff rod, too, picks 
 the fly more readily off the water, and, deftly 
 handled, will throw a heavy line in the teeth of 
 a Nor'-wester, " bite he never so rudely." But then 
 it seldom happens that the fisherman is compelled 
 to cast in the teeth of the wind. Streams trout 
 and salmon streams especially turn and wind, and 
 bend and double, and present all manner of faces 
 to the wind. If one pool will not fish, another 
 will ; if one stream run counter, the next will flow 
 fair : a side wind, as in sailing, can always be made 
 serviceable ; indeed it is greatly preferable, to my 
 thinking, for casting, whatever it may be for sailing, 
 to one directly astern. The "gentle art" is not 
 
RODS. 9 
 
 to be pursued by rough, defiant methods, but by 
 humouring, as it were, and taking advantage of the 
 chances and changes which natural causes, bent 
 to the desired purposes, present. Although the 
 proper handling of the springy rod, such as is 
 ordinarily used in Ireland, is far, very far, more 
 difficult to attain to, the result is well worth all the 
 trouble, and all the expense in loss of flies, of arriv- 
 ing at it. Of course, if you wish, having hooked a 
 fish, to haul him out, as it were, "by the hair of the 
 head," the object is much better attained by means 
 of a stiff rod than a pliable one ; and when fish are 
 rising freely and taking the fly greedily, a much 
 larger number may be taken within a given time 
 than can possibly be brought to basket with a 
 limber one ; but it is very rarely that fish are in 
 this accommodating humour, and a far larger 
 proportion of those hooked are killed with a pliant 
 rod. Even were it otherwise, the balance, in my 
 mind, would still be greatly in its favour. The 
 sport shown by the fish is infinitely greater in the 
 one case than in the other. The angler's object 
 is not simply to kill a quantity of fish ; were it so, 
 the net would effect the object more readily ; and, 
 on the whole, having regard to the conscious pride 
 of skill and the pleasure in exercising it, as well as 
 to the result, I recommend young fishermen to 
 
i o 
 
 adopt the use of a limber, springy, spliced rod, in 
 preference to a stiff-jointed one. He will find that, 
 having once overcome the little propensity the 
 rod at first evinces for sending it " to grass," the 
 fly drops upon the water in a far more satisfactory 
 manner. It floats out, as it were, and, hovering for 
 a moment when at its utmost stretch, alights like 
 thistledown upon the surface of the water, instead 
 of hitting it with the force of a pebble or the pre- 
 liminary hailstone of a summer storm. If, in the 
 excitement of the moment, you strike somewhat 
 too strongly, the hook is not torn from its hold ; 
 if the fish jump, the rod yields to the strain ; if 
 chance or carelessness slacken the hold, the pres- 
 sure is merely abated, not removed. Even in un- 
 practised hands, a fish finds far less chance of escape, 
 for the limber rod yields to each struggle, and for 
 the fish to obtain a dead pull is impossible. There 
 is something, too, so graceful in the mere use, as 
 well as in the detailed play, of a pliant rod : no 
 exertion, hardly any strength, is required ; the rod 
 itself appears, as though instinct with life, to have 
 shot forth the " imponderable " fly into boundless 
 space. This, I need hardly say, is not the work 
 of the top joint, or of any other joint: the rod 
 plays and works " homogeneously ," to use a long 
 word, from the butt to the tip. The assumed 
 
REELS. 1 1 
 
 trouble of putting up and taking down a spliced 
 rod is purely imaginary, and simply betrays want 
 of experience in those who advance it as an 
 objection. I can tie my splice at any time in less 
 than a minute ; and whether I remain on the river 
 a day, a week, a month, or a season, it would never 
 occur to me to untie it until I go away. 
 
 Reels. Of the means and appliances necessary 
 for fishing, there are none of greater importance 
 than the reel, and none in which, happily, greater 
 perfection in the manufacture has been attained. 
 Excepting multipliers, which are things of a bygone 
 age, no bad reels are now made. Of course they 
 bear the names of their vendors, but, like guns and 
 gun-locks, they are, I take it, generally made at 
 Birmingham, and the difference in quality is fairly 
 represented by the difference in price, which ranges 
 from two shillings to two pounds. The larger the 
 cylinder the better, and where intended to carry an 
 unusual length of line, the increase in size should 
 be rather in the direction of depth than breadth. 
 The handle, if of the ordinary formation, should 
 stand clear of the side, and the edges should be 
 bevelled off, so that in the event of its being caught, 
 the line may not be cut upon it. By far the best 
 principle, however, was invented by my friend 
 Captain H. L., of Dublin, some twenty years since, 
 
1 2 REELS. 
 
 but unfortunately not patented. It is now tolerably 
 common in most shops, the peculiarity being, that 
 the handle, consisting of a bone or ivory cone, is 
 fastened to the circular plate which turns the 
 cylinder, so that, should the line catch, it slips 
 readily off. I have in my possession the first 
 reel that ever was made upon this principle, and, 
 though rather wheezy, it is still a very useful im- 
 plement. One or two cogged wheels are essential 
 to the true working, and these create that glorious 
 "whirr" which strikes so gladly on the fisherman's 
 nerves when his fish is running out line. Irish 
 reels are generally attached to the rod by means 
 of a long spike, terminating in a screw that passes 
 through the butt, a button being screwed on to the 
 opposite side ; but the ordinary English mode of 
 sliding rings is, I think, preferable. Whichever 
 mode is adopted, the reel should be fixed with its 
 handle towards the fisherman's left hand. When a 
 fish is struck, the rod must be at once turned up- 
 wards, the line and the weight of the fish in con- 
 sequence resting upon the rod itself, instead of 
 upon the rings ; the handle will then, of course, be 
 in its proper place on the fisherman's right hand. 
 Rings, by the way, are rarely of sufficient size or 
 in sufficient number. Eighteen may with advan- 
 tage be attached to a salmon-rod, and the smallest 
 
HOOKS FLIES. 13 
 
 should be of sufficient size to allow of the line 
 running through them with perfect ease. 
 
 Hooks. The principal manufactories of hooks 
 are at Redditch, Kendal, Carlisle, Kirby, and Lim- 
 erick. I question whether there is any difference 
 in quality, though of course fishermen will have 
 their predilections on the subject. Hooks are made 
 in sizes, numbered from I to 12, the English 
 ones commencing with No. I, the Limerick with 
 No. 12, as the smallest. The " sneck-bend " is the 
 most approved form for angling purposes. In this 
 the barbed point is not exactly in the same plane 
 with the shank, and, in consequence, more likely to 
 strike into the fish's mouth. A much longer 
 shank is required for fly-tying than for angling 
 purposes, and it is of much greater importance to 
 secure a really good and well-tempered hook. 
 
 Flies. Of flies, so called, the shape, size, and 
 colour are diversified beyond measure, limited, in 
 fact, only by the fancy of their maker. For salmon- 
 fishing, I advise using on all occasions local flies : 
 they may not be so taking to your eye, but you are 
 not a salmon; the "rule of thumb" is generally 
 found infallible, and the experience of genera- 
 tions of fishermen has proved what particular 
 fly is most captivating in each particular water. 
 I think that harmony in colours has more to 
 
14 FLIES. 
 
 do with success than any other quality ; and 
 in looking at the gorgeous and costly flies got 
 up in London shops, it must not be forgotten that 
 if the fly swim truly and well and unless it does so 
 the fish will not rise at it only the breast or lower 
 portion is presented to the fish's ken. I have seen 
 in books of Natural History, the authors of which 
 think it necessary to assign a patent cause for every 
 natural effect, that the gorgeous plumage of the 
 kingfisher is given to him for the purpose of at- 
 tracting the fish towards him. Yet this gorgeous 
 plumage is all on the bird's back, and that pre- 
 sented to his innocent victims is of the most unpre- 
 tending and unobtrusive character. Seen through 
 the watery medium, all colours are blended into 
 one, more or less partaking of the predominant one, 
 red, yellow, or blue. Such will be the colours, when 
 exposed to the air, of numerous marine insects and 
 molluscs on which the salmon feeds in the tide- 
 ways, and for which, if played in the jerking 
 mode peculiar to marine insects, he probably 
 mistakes the fly. It is a beautiful and most useful 
 art, that of tying flies, and one in which, at an early 
 period of my life, I acquired some slight skill ; but 
 the limits of my leisure did not admit of my attain- 
 ing to any proficiency in it : and again, at the risk 
 of being considered a lukewarm follower of the 
 
LINES. 15 
 
 craft,! counsel my readers to repair to the best shops 
 in the immediate vicinity of the river they mean to 
 fish, or to purchase from the professional fishermen 
 who may haunt the water. 
 
 In salmon-fishing one fly only is used. In a 
 recent work " two or three " are recommended, but 
 the suggestion seems to argue some want of expe- 
 rience. THREE flies are never used in salmon- 
 fishing, for obvious reasons. Even with two flies 
 up, the danger is great. Whether in lake or river, 
 there must be banks, rocks, logs, or weeds, upon 
 which a hooked salmon may hitch the disengaged 
 fly; and should you which is quite probable 
 hook a second fish while playing the first, you 
 might as well hope to hold two bulls tied together 
 by the tails as two salmon so coupled. You would 
 sing with Macheath 
 
 " How happy could I be with either !" 
 
 But, rely upon it, both one and " t'other dear 
 charmer " would soon be " away." 
 
 Lines. The best lines are made of silk and 
 hair, in what proportions I am ignorant. They are 
 sold in all shops, from three halfpence to three 
 pence a yard, according to the conscience of the 
 vendor. "Prepared" lines, as they are called that 
 is, lines coated with a preparation of wax and oil 
 are excellent for trolling and spinning purposes, 
 
1 6 CASTING-LINES. 
 
 but are not very commonly used for fly-fishing. 
 About eighty yards I consider sufficient for a 
 salmon-line perhaps a hundred may be better, 
 as allowing for waste ; and, of course, one may 
 meet with fish endowed with extraordinary run- 
 ning powers, or the fisherman may be in 
 positions where a very long line is essential ; 
 but in my personal experience I have never 
 had eighty yards of line entirely run off my 
 reel, though, upon two occasions one on the 
 Makerstoun water on Tweed, and one at Bally- 
 shannon on the Erne only a few feet out of 
 that quantity were left on my reel. The line, 
 whatever its length, should be thickest at the end 
 attached to the reel, and gradually taper towards 
 the casting-line. 
 
 Casting- Lines. The casting-line, like the line 
 itself, should taper from its base, commencing 
 with two or three plaits, and terminating in at 
 least three feet of good, round, sound, single gut. 
 Machines may be bought for the manufacture of 
 casting-lines, as for cartridges, meerschaum pipes, 
 or anything else, with full instructions gratis ; but 
 you will buy far better than you can make at 
 least I can and cheaper too. The gut should be 
 stained before it is made up blue, or green, or 
 coffee- colour, anything but black or white. Un- 
 
FL Y-BooKS LANDING-NET. 17 
 
 stained gut would doubtless be the best if it would 
 retain its transparency ; but it will not. When 
 soaked it becomes opaque and white a colour 
 of all others the most visible in the water. 
 
 Fly-Books. Fly-books, like shooting-coats, are 
 generally made too small. They should be as 
 large as can conveniently be carried in your 
 pocket. Besides flies, your book should contain 
 a skein of fine silk, some strands of gut, a piece 
 of prepared wax, a pair of scissors, half-a-dozen 
 spare casting lines, and some Nottingham twist 
 (with which to splice a broken top). Two or three 
 leaves of some soft, spongy substance I hardly 
 know what, but not flannel should be inserted, 
 wherein to stick used flies to dry. Flannel is too 
 tough, and is apt to retain an inconvenient hold 
 on the hook, should the barb penetrate it. Bottom- 
 fishers' books must, in addition, be furnished with 
 plummet, split-shot, spare lines, disgorger, floats, 
 and quill caps. I take for granted that no fisher- 
 man ever goes out without a good knife, a piece 
 of string, a cork-screw, and a button-hook in his 
 pocket. 
 
 Landing-net. The landing-net for trout should 
 be light and deep, and manufactured of fine 
 but strong twine. When carried by an attendant, 
 the handle can hardly be too long, in reason ; 
 
1 8 GAFF. 
 
 but, when carried by the fisherman, two feet may 
 be quite long enough. It should be stuck by 
 means of a flat piece of metal into a belt ; and 
 Mr Armstrong, of Oxford Street, has invented, or 
 at any rate sells, a hinge fitted with a screw at 
 each end, which enables the net to hang doubled 
 up out of the fisherman's way, and is fixed with- 
 out difficulty in its proper position by a spring- 
 catch. The invention, whoever may claim it, is 
 an admirable one. 
 
 For salmon, the net cannot, in reason or out, 
 be too long, or too large, or too deep, or too strong, 
 so long as your attendant can readily use it. The 
 hoop should be iron, three feet across, the net 
 five feet deep, and of the strongest material, the 
 handle eight or nine feet in length. After the 
 capture of each fish the net should be thoroughly 
 washed ; there is a sort of slime, especially on the 
 autumn fish, which, if not removed, rots the net 
 very rapidly, and a salmon will go through a 
 rotten net like harlequin through a paper hoop. 
 
 Gaff. The gaff should be made of well-tempered 
 steel, not too large or too small, about the size of 
 a small butchers-hook. There should be an elbow 
 or curve in the back, which gives a better hold. 
 A barbed gaff is an abomination, a poaching im- 
 plement, a sense of the enormous mischief per- 
 
BA G AND BA SKE T. 19 
 
 petrated by which I have in vain endeavoured to 
 instil into Mr Frank Buckland's mind. It is 
 the main instrument of poaching in the Welsh 
 rivers, and without it the poacher's occupation 
 would be gone. A barbed gaff spoils the fish, and 
 no true sportsman would think of using one. 
 " Delenda est" The handle of the gaff should be 
 four feet long, not too heavy or stiff, and in some 
 degree elastic ; the great secret in using it is to 
 pass it under the fish, not to be in a hurry, to make 
 sure of your stroke, and never to relax your hold. 
 
 Bag and Basket. Waterproof bags have come 
 into fashion of late years. They are most useful 
 articles, but should supplement, and not supersede, 
 the basket. They are essentially nasty things as 
 receptacles for fish ; the fish soon spoil, and they 
 impart a vengeful smell, which water will not wash 
 away. The best bags I know are made by Mr 
 Woolgar of Ludgate Hill. They have, or ought to 
 have, three smaller pockets inside, in which to de- 
 posit your pipe and tobacco, cigar-case, flask, knife, 
 note-book, and other trifles ; the bag itself accom- 
 modating your lunch, your sketch-book, a copy of 
 " Thames and Tweed," " Flood, Field, and Forest/' 
 or some other readable book, wherewith to wile 
 away any non-fishing hours of the day. 
 
 The fisherman's basket requires no special de- 
 
20 THROWING THE FLY. 
 
 scription do not have it too large. It is astonish- 
 ing how many pounds of trout will pack in a small 
 basket ; and salmon are always worth carrying by 
 hand. 
 
 Trout-flies are, to some extent, like salmon-flies, 
 local ; but there are certain " standard " flies, with 
 which, in two sizes, every angler's fishing-book 
 should be furnished. These are the blue dun, the 
 hare's ear, the March brpwn, the Marlow buzz 
 (Welsh cock-y-bondhu), the black gnat, and the 
 palmers, black, brown, and red. 
 
 Flies are assumed to represent not only the in- 
 sects so called, but also beetles, and caterpillars. 
 The latter are known as palmers why, I cannot 
 say, excepting, perhaps, that they are both 
 "crawling beggars" Beetles, of which the " Welsh 
 button " is one of the most killing, are generally 
 used on hot days. The winged flies are best on a 
 windy day, when they may be assumed to have 
 been blown into the water. Flies tied without 
 wings are called " buzz/' and are supposed to re- 
 present the drowned insect. Duns are the imma- 
 ture, spinners the perfect insect. 
 
 Throwing the Fly. Reading and writing, Dog- 
 berry says, come by nature, and in the main Dog- 
 berry was right. No written or oral instruction can 
 make a horseman, a sportsman, or a fisherman. 
 
THROWING THE FLY. 21 
 
 Each one, like " Poeta," " nascitur, non fit." Still, 
 some general rules may be laid down for the 
 guidance of the tiro. The grand rule to be ob- 
 served is to make your rod do the work. To " keep 
 a dog and bark yourself" is proverbially foolish; 
 and, having acquired an implement so beautifully 
 adapted for its purpose as a well-made rod, it is 
 absurd not to make full use of it. Strength I 
 mean muscular power is not necessary. I do not 
 say that a strong man, " cceteris paribus" will not 
 throw a better line than a weak one ; but strength 
 is not "the one thing needful/' 
 He whose 
 
 " Rod was made of a sturdy oak, 
 His line a cable that ne'er broke, 
 Whose hook was baited with a dragon's tail, 
 Who sat on a rock and bobbed for a whale," 
 
 could not have thrown ten yards of line if his life 
 depended on it. 
 
 As I have said, let your rod do the work. Be- 
 gin with a short line without a hook, practise on 
 the land till you have got the line, to some extent, 
 under command, and when you commence real 
 fishing, do not attempt too much. Far more fish 
 will be caught by a short line, well thrown, than 
 a long one, badly thrown ; indeed, it will be a 
 miracle if the latter ever succeed. Theoretically 
 
2 2 , THR WING THE FL Y. 
 
 your line must stretch backwards as far as it is in- 
 tended to be cast forward, and ample time must be 
 afforded for the fly to reach the furthest point be- 
 fore you return it, or it will be whipped off. 
 
 Practice, however, will greatly modify the first 
 part of this rule, and enable you to get your line 
 out where rocks or trees are close behind your back. 
 Let the beginner avoid all difficulties of the sort, 
 and simply essay to throw the line clear and well 
 away from him. This he will do by a plain up- 
 and-down stroke, the spring of the upper portion 
 of the rod being brought into play. The knack 
 once acquired, any degree of excellence may be 
 obtained by practice, and, so far as I know, by no 
 other means. Teaching is of no avail, and I, there- 
 fore, abstain from attempting it. 
 
I. 
 
 THE GUDGEON. 
 
 I BEGIN with the gudgeon. Why ? Because, as a 
 much-respected friend of mine, formerly a trades- 
 man, remarked, in explanation of his refusal to visit 
 a captain on half-pay, who, covered with scars and 
 glory, supported his rank, his wife, and four chil- 
 dren on 300 a year "One must draw the line 
 somewhere." I draw mine at the gudgeon, other- 
 wise I would fain give the little urchins, who some- 
 times fish for minnows and fry in the Serpentine 
 with crooked pins, some hints for their guidance. 
 Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing 
 well, and the pin might be crooked more artisti- 
 cally, more scientifically ; the broken match which 
 does duty for a float might but I abstain. One 
 dogma only will I enunciate, and that more for the 
 benefit of the owners of aquaria than that of the 
 little Arabs. If you wish to transport your min- 
 
24 THE GUDGEON. 
 
 nows, especially in hot weather, from one place to 
 another, fill the bottle half full of water, insert the 
 fish, and cork it tightly down. Of course, this is 
 all against philosophy, analogy, and so forth, but 
 it is the true method, I have proved it. Now for 
 the gudgeon. 
 
 Gudgeon-fishing may be considered as the very 
 accidence of the grammar of fishing, and, unless 
 with the minnows I have referred to, I could hardly 
 commence lower in the scale than with the phase 
 of Thames angling known as " gudgeon-fishing." 
 Reader ! do not curl your lip in scorn ! Thames 
 angler! dread not a sneer! We have heard your 
 craft contemned, we have known it mentioned 
 with deprecatory and faint praise, as though it 
 required an excuse. In our estimation, nothing of 
 the sort holds place ; we are fishermen pure and 
 simple. As a learned judge said to his brother 
 judge at a bar-dinner, "No, brother; not bad 
 port wine : there is no bad port wine ; some port 
 is better than other but there is no bad port 
 wine." So say we of fishing : some fishing is 
 better than other, but there is no bad fishing ; and 
 we would rather angle for a stickleback in a ditch, 
 or a newt in a tank, than not angle at all. There 
 are degrees, too, in gudgeon-fishing. Every man, 
 .no doubt, can catch gudgeons; but one will catch a 
 
THE GUDGEON. 25 
 
 hundred, while another catches a score one will 
 catch a score, while another catches a dozen. 
 
 But before we approach the subject of catching 
 him, let us consider what he is. The gudgeon is 
 one of the " Cyprinidcz " a branch of the great 
 carp family, which, with a few exceptions, populate 
 the Thames. His scientific name is ^ Gobio" a 
 word originally applied to any fish of small value 
 " Gobiofluviatilis" and he enjoys, in common with 
 most other fishes therein contrasting favourably 
 with birds the advantage of having only one name, 
 English or Latin. The appearance of the gudgeon 
 is too well known to require description, but it 
 may be remarked that, like his cousin the barbel, 
 he is gifted with two small " barbules " pendant 
 from the angle on each side of his mouth. The 
 exact purpose of these appendages it is difficult to 
 assign, but no doubt they act in some way as 
 feelers, like the whiskers of a cat, and assist the fish, 
 which is essentially a bottom-feeder, in detecting its 
 prey in the gravel among which it loves to "routle." 
 
 In fishing for the gudgeon, a lengthy rod is un- 
 necessary ; it is naturally a bold fish, greedy, and, 
 like most others which feed in shoals, ever anxious 
 to snatch the worm from its neighbour's mouth, 
 and almost proverbially easy of capture. The 
 gudgeon is not, in fact, more stupid than other fish ; 
 
26 THE GUDGEON. 
 
 but, swimming in immense shoals, and distributed 
 over the greater portion of the rivers it inhabits, 
 there are always young and inexperienced fish 
 ready to snap at the bait offered to them. There 
 is no doubt, however, that gudgeons, like all other 
 fish, have learned wisdom from experience, and 
 the numbers formerly taken sixty in an hour was 
 no unusual quantity are now unheard of. 
 
 To fish for gudgeon, the depth of water should 
 be first accurately plumbed, and the bait a small 
 red worm allowed actually to trail upon the 
 ground, being carried down by the force of the 
 stream, acting on a sufficiently-leaded quill float. 
 The line, as in every description of angling, should 
 be kept well out of the water not so tight as to 
 impede the swimming of the float, but never so 
 loose as to allow an appreciable interval of time 
 between the strike and its effect. In rapid streams 
 the strike can hardly be too quickly made, but in 
 slower ones, the float should be allowed to disappear 
 beneath the surface ; and it must be ever borne in 
 mind that the strike, to be effective, must be made 
 while the fish is running from you. If the float has 
 begun to rise, the slight turn of the wrist which 
 effects the strike is made in vain. A rather oblique 
 direction, with reference to the assumed position 
 of the fish, we have generally found the best 
 
7 HE GUDGEON. 27 
 
 It is customary for the puntsman to use a long, 
 heavy iron rake, with which he disturbs the bed of 
 the stream, thereby exposing the myriad of insects 
 and partially-developed forms of insect life on 
 which the gudgeons feed, and towards which they, 
 with small perch, ruffs, young barbel, and other 
 fishes, eagerly rush. For ourselves, we, upon the 
 principle of " nee Deus intersit" &c., prefer trying 
 a few swims before we rake. It is easy to see the 
 shoals of fish where they exist, and the bottom 
 being level and clear of weeds, to make your pitch 
 accordingly. When the appetite of what may 
 be called your invited guests is to some extent 
 satiated, it is time enough to use the rake, to call 
 distant friends and strangers to the feast 
 
 This fish is in season from June. to September, 
 after which they retire to the deep holes, and are 
 rarely, if ever, taken remaining probably in a 
 semi-torpid state throughout the winter. It spawns 
 early in the season the end of March or beginning 
 of April. 
 
 The gudgeon, properly dressed fried in oil, or 
 abundance of lard, we consider the best mode is 
 a dish worthy of an epicure, and a few hours may 
 occasionally be spent in capturing him with both 
 pleasure and profit. 
 
28 2 HE ROACH. 
 
 THE ROACH. 
 
 THE roach is a far-away cousin of the gud- 
 geon, another of the great family of Cyprinida, 
 which ought to be canonised as affording, at 
 their proper cost, the greatest amount of sport 
 to the greatest number of anglers. Laugh and 
 jeer as ye may, ye fishers for trout and salmon ! 
 we maintain that there is more delicacy of 
 touch, more pride of art, more artistic skill 
 in roach-fishing than in any other sort of angling 
 whatever. The roach is not naturally a shy 
 fish ; he is, as beseems his somewhat aldermanic 
 figure and the amplitude of his white waist- 
 coat, a free liver, and ready to take at any time 
 almost any bait that may be offered to him. In 
 lakes, and ponds, and unfished waters, the roach 
 may be taken in any number by the rudest 
 devices ; but in the Thames, where generations 
 of fishermen have continually exercised their craft 
 at the expense of successive shoals of roach, he 
 has become shy and wary to a degree ; and though 
 we read in " Land and Water " daily records, on 
 the respected authority of W. H. Brougham, of 
 twelve dozen and upwards killed in a day, we 
 well know that the numbers, like the " fifty 
 
THE ROACH. 29 
 
 thousand additional lamps " in the long-extinct 
 Vauxhall Gardens, are rarely counted, or rather 
 counted with rare liberality ; at all events, they 
 consist principally of the youthful fry, all in- 
 experienced in the wicked devices of the angler. 
 " Non cuivis contingit" it is not every one who 
 can fill the well of his punt with really good roach, 
 each from half a pound to a pound and a half 
 in weight, in a day's angling. The fisherman 
 who can do this in ordinary circumstances may be 
 sneered at by the mighty salmon-fisher, but give 
 him the same opportunity, and rely upon it he 
 will make good use of it ! 
 
 The roach affects deep running, but not rapid 
 water ; he feeds near, but not on, the bottom ; 
 and, after plumbing, the bait should be regulated 
 so as to travel two or three inches from the 
 bottom. The roach may be fished for either 
 from a punt or from the shore, and to the bank- 
 fisher there is no inhabitant of the Thames that 
 affords such constant and unintermittent sport. 
 The rod for this purpose is made of bamboo, 
 eighteen or twenty feet in length, the last joint 
 of the butt end being readily removable to facili- 
 tate the landing of the hooked fish. When a reel 
 is used, it must be carried in the pocket, but a 
 reel is generally dispensed with, the length of the 
 
30 THE ROACH. 
 
 rod admitting of sufficient line wherewith to play 
 a fish so averse to locomotion as is the roach. 
 
 The bank-fisher is generally a character in his 
 way, and enthusiastic in the art ; he carries with 
 him a large flag-basket, containing, besides his pipe 
 and his luncheon, all the implements of his craft ; 
 he has, too, a camp-stool and a forked stick on 
 which his long rod rests. Patient and contempla- 
 tive, like his prototype the heron, he sits through 
 the long day watching his well-balanced float, and 
 not unfrequently carries home to his sympathetic 
 and admiring family a considerable weight of fish. 
 
 ' ' Pleasant is the fisher's life 
 By the waters streaming." 
 
 But our business is not with him. 
 
 The roach is the king of fishes to the genuine 
 punt-fisher. And here we may describe the 
 operation of " fixing the punt," which is by no 
 means so simple or easy as it may appear to 
 the uninitiated. It should be stated that roach- 
 fishing differs from gudgeon-fishing in this, that 
 while in the latter a constant change of place 
 is desirable the fish going off their feed after 
 some twenty minutes or half an hour, and always 
 taking best in new and unaccustomed places 
 the former seem to affect the same localities 
 continuously. The longer you fish and the more 
 
I HE ROACH. 31 
 
 ground-bait you throw in, as a rule, the more 
 roach you will take. With gudgeons the converse 
 will be found to be the case. Having arrived at 
 your swim, a known resort of the roach, taking one 
 " ripeck" in hand, and leaning forwards up-stream 
 as far as you can reach, bringing the iron-shod 
 end almost under the boat, you proceed by a 
 wriggling motion of the arms, requiring some con- 
 siderable strength and more skill, to fix it in the 
 hard bottom, at an angle of something like forty- 
 five against the stream ; then using the fixed pole 
 as a lever, you swing or pass the boat gradually 
 round, walking with the other ripeck to the 
 opposite end, your companion in the meantime 
 tying the rope to that already fixed, and then 
 finishing the operation by tying your own. There 
 is some art even in the simple operation of fasten- 
 ing the ropes. If tied too closely the punt will 
 lift the poles, if not closely enough, its working, 
 from the action of the stream, will loosen the hold 
 on the bottom. The string should be cross-gartered, 
 Malvolio-fashion, and fastened some two feet above 
 the gunwale with a simple half-hitch. 
 
 Your punt being properly pitched, the next 
 operation is to manufacture ground-bait, the 
 materials for which clay, bran, soaked bread, and a 
 few scalded greaves it is assumed, have been pre- 
 
32 THE ROACH. 
 
 viously provided. These materials are kneaded 
 into round balls somewhat bigger than one's fist, 
 the object being to amalgamate as much bread, and 
 more essentially bran, as the clay will carry to 
 the bottom. Boys delight in the essentially nasty 
 operation of manufacturing ground-bait, and casting 
 the balls into the swim. The action of the water 
 disintegrates the ball, and the floating particles 
 pass down the stream, offering a lure to the fish, 
 which they follow up from great distances. The 
 ground-bait should be thrown in at intervals now 
 and again a lump not continuously, or it is pos- 
 sible that the fish may make their dinner off what 
 is intended merely as a whet to the appetite. 
 
 The rod required for roach-fishing from a punt is 
 not nearly so long as that used from the shore, the 
 bottom joint of which, as has been said, is generally 
 taken off before the fish is landed ; but as compared 
 with that used for gudgeons it should be lengthy 
 say thirteen or fourteen feet. It must be tolerably 
 stiff, too, to ensure rapid striking, which is absolutely 
 essential in roach-fishing. The line should be fine, 
 the reel true, and the bottom of the very finest gut, 
 or, which is generally preferred by the accomplished 
 angler, of single hair ; the float of cork, long, large, 
 and tapering, heavily shotted with numerous fine 
 shot, until it swim with not more than half an inch 
 
THE ROACH. 33 
 
 above the surface : the shot should be about a foot 
 from the hook, a single one being affixed three 
 inches above it to keep it in its proper place. 
 The object of the powerful, well-balanced float with 
 a quantity of shot is to insure the rapid sinking of 
 the bait, so as to get the full advantage of the 
 swim, and at the same time to indicate the slightest 
 possible bite. The line after each swim should be 
 brought back quite close to the gunwale of the 
 boat, and the bait occasionally examined to see 
 that it has not become dead and sodden. 
 
 The strike must be instantaneous, or you will 
 never catch your fish ; and it is well, whether you 
 observe a bite or not, invariably to strike at the end 
 of your swim, as a fish may be, and frequently is, 
 at that moment testing the quality of your bait, 
 which he is certain to eject, with that marvellous 
 and unexplained power which all fish possess, some 
 twelve inches from him, the moment he becomes 
 aware that there is something unwholesome in the 
 just-coveted dainty. The line as well as the rod 
 must be much longer than for the gudgeon, the 
 roach being the shyer fish, and not inclined to feed 
 so near the boat ; but it is far more necessary to 
 keep your line " in hand," as it were, not tight, but 
 well out of the water, and ready for a short, sharp 
 strike at any moment. The " whisk " made by the 
 
 3 
 
34 THE ROACH. 
 
 line through the water is a token of bad striking, 
 as is the pulling of the line completely out. 
 
 If the fish be missed, the bait should travel on 
 as if nothing particular had happened ; the clumsy 
 fish that has missed his mark is well entitled to 
 another turn, or perhaps some greedy companion 
 may snatch the envied morsel from him. 
 
 Roach spawn towards the end of May, later than 
 the gudgeon. They are in season from July to 
 January, perhaps later, but it is cold work fishing 
 for them in November, which is the best month. 
 Up to October the gentle is the most taking bait : 
 two or three should be put on the hook together, 
 and frequently changed, for when dead and flabby 
 they cease to be attractive. In default of gentles, 
 which are not always obtainable, bread-paste, 
 kneaded up with wool to make it tenacious, is 
 perhaps the best bait. A piece about as big as a 
 pea should be stuck on to the hook by a single 
 movement ; it does not do to manipulate it after it 
 is once fixed. For winter-fishing a small red worm 
 is the most enticing lure, and when the Thames is 
 flooded, great quantities are taken with this bait by 
 the fishermen, who then, poor fellows ! are exercis- 
 ing their craft on their own account. 
 
 The worst of roach-fishing is, that the roach 
 himself, when taken, is utterly useless, except 
 
THE ROACH. 35 
 
 as bait for the pike (of which hereafter). We 
 have tried him in all ways fried, boiled, broiled, 
 water-souched each successive mode worse than 
 the last. We never tasted it, but we conceive that, 
 like Caesar and Pompey, paper-pulp flavoured 
 with mud, and roach must be very much alike 
 especially roach ; but, like " P. P.'s" phlebotomy, 
 he may do for " the poor." * 
 
 The general weight of the roach taken in the 
 Thames is from two ounces to a pound ; but we 
 have heard of them as large as three pounds. The 
 biggest I ever took was a little over a pound 
 and a half. The roach is on the whole a game 
 fish, and capable of considerable resistance to 
 any proposal for transporting him from his native 
 element. The extraordinary fineness of the tackle 
 used renders this, in the case of a large fish, a 
 work of some difficulty ; and we do not hesitate 
 to say that a really good roach-angler is capable 
 of any other species of fishing, and if opportunity 
 offered, would excel in it. 
 
 The generic (scientific) name of the roach is 
 " Cyprinus rutihis" It spawns, as stated, early in 
 the summer, and, like most of the family, is very 
 prolific. The fins are red (hence " fittiluf*) ; and 
 
 * " But to bleed adventured I not, except the poor." SWIFT, 
 " Adventures of P. P., Clerk of this Parish" 
 
36 THE DACE. 
 
 this colour furnishes the readiest means of dis- 
 tinguishing it from its cousin the dace, hereafter to 
 be described, whose fins are white, or nearly so. 
 
 We have mentioned "gentles" as the usual and 
 best bait for roach. These may be bought at any 
 tackle-shop, or from any fisherman ; but it may be 
 well to remark, that gentles are not all alike. There 
 are gentles and gentles. Not ex quovis cadavere 
 are the maggots on which the roach delighteth 
 to feed taken. "The sun," "kissing carrion," 
 may breed "maggots in a dead dog," but the 
 roach turns up his nose at them. Gentles are born 
 in bullock's liver, and when nearly full-grown 
 cradled in bran, which scours and sweetens them. 
 Sam, an intelligent young man who acts as my 
 fisherman, tells me they taste " sweetish : " I have 
 never tried them. 
 
 THE DACE. 
 
 The dace (fCyprinus leucisctts"} is not only a 
 near relation, but a companion and associate, of 
 the roach. Their habits and food are the same, 
 and it is very rarely that a good roach-swim does 
 not afford dace, and vice versa. We think, but 
 we are not sure, that the dace affects a somewhat 
 higher level in the water than the roach : the gud- 
 
THE DACE. 37 
 
 geon feeds on the bottom, the roach a little above, 
 and the dace somewhat higher than the roach. 
 The same bait and the same tackle are used for 
 both ; but the dace is the more greedy or the less 
 shy fish of the two, bites more freely, and is taken 
 with larger hooks and coarser lines than the roach 
 will look at. 
 
 The dace does not run nearly so large as the 
 roach : a fish of a quarter of a pound may be con- 
 sidered a good specimen. It is more lively on the 
 hook, and, in proportion to its size, shows greater 
 sport, trusting more to the powers of its fins and 
 tail than the roach does ; the latter being apt to 
 take an unfair advantage of its clumsy figure, and 
 turning broadside to the opposing stream, cheat 
 the guileless angler with the show of dimensions 
 which it by no means possesses. 
 
 The form of the dace is rather elegant than 
 otherwise. Its fins, which are white instead of red, 
 the colour of the roach's, at once distinguish it 
 from that fish ; and its scales, which are small 
 and closely packed, are exceeded in brilliancy by 
 no river-fish (hence the appellation " leuciscus ") 
 except the bleak, and are used in making imita- 
 tion-pearls and other very beautiful ornaments. 
 
 As an article of food for man we mean the 
 dace is beneath contempt ; but as a bait for a 
 
38 THE BARBEL. 
 
 better fish, hereafter to be described, to wit, the 
 jack, it is unequalled. The greedy tyrant of the 
 waters is in some respects an epicure, and besides 
 that the appearance of the dace in the water is very 
 attractive, the fish itself seems to have an especial 
 charm for its devourer. The form, too, of the dace 
 is admirably adapted for fixing on to the flight of 
 hooks used for spinning. A slight " wobble " is all 
 very well in pike-fishing, but a roach is all wobble. 
 We have separated the dace from the roach, and 
 placed him nearly at the end of his class, because 
 with him commences the practice of the great art 
 of fly-fishing. The gudgeon supplies the accidence 
 of bottom-fishing, the dace of fly-fishing. In the 
 spring and summer months the dace is altogether 
 a surface-feeder ; and with reasonably fine tackle, 
 a midge, a blue dun, or a red ant, great execution 
 may be done on the gravelly shallows without 
 much strain on the skill of the fisherman. In the 
 autumn he affects the same diet as his cousin the 
 roach. 
 
 THE BARBEL. 
 
 Like a small minority of the intelligent youth 
 of the present day, this fish is principally distin- 
 guished by its beard, from which it derives its 
 
2 'HE BARBEL. 39 
 
 name, and which consists of a pair of wattles 
 pendant from either jaw. The precise mode in 
 which these appendages are utilised by the fish 
 in seeking out or providing food is not clear, but 
 that in some manner they assist in the search, if 
 not in the capture, there can be no question. 
 
 The barbel is the very hog of fishes ; it feeds 
 at the bottom, "routling" like a pig with its long 
 snout among the stones, rotten weeds, and debris 
 at the bottom of the stream. It is omnivorous, 
 feeding largely on water-weed as well as worms, 
 insects, fish, and garbage. That it feeds on the 
 first we assert from the unanimous testimony of 
 Thames fishermen ; on the fourth, from the fact of 
 our having frequently taken the fish while spinning 
 for jack ; and that it feeds on the last we assume 
 from the fact of greaves being an excellent bait for 
 it. Worms, however, are the ordinary bait used, 
 and you often take barbel while fishing for roach 
 with gentles. 
 
 Although voracious when on the feed, and by 
 no means particular either as to the nature or 
 quality of its food, no other fish which we are 
 acquainted with is so capricious as the barbel. 
 When they are in a taking mood, the well of the 
 punt may be filled with them in a few hours; but 
 one may fish for days or weeks without feeling a 
 
40 THE BARBEL. 
 
 " tug." The capture also depends, in some inscrut- 
 able manner, on the locality. There are barbel 
 holes swarming with fish, which may be seen at all 
 times chasing one another about, turning on their 
 broad backs, and performing all sorts of clumsy 
 antics in the cool depths they rejoice in, but which 
 are never known to take a bait. They are like the 
 Laird of Macfarlane's geese, which are recorded to 
 have " liked their play better than their meat." 
 There is a barbel-hole near the mill-tail by Cavers- 
 ham Lock of this unproductive nature. We will 
 venture to say there is a ton weight of fish within 
 a very moderate space, but after long and fruitless 
 endeavours, the attempt to catch them has been 
 given up as hopeless by all the fishermen in that 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 The mode of fishing is peculiar. The barbel- 
 pitch must be baited for several days or nights 
 previously with quarts of great dew-worms em- 
 bedded in clay. The fish collect in great numbers 
 to feed upon the dainty morsels, and having grown 
 bold from impunity, fall, occasionally at least, vic- 
 tims to the angler, who offers them just the same 
 thing, with the slight addition of a barbed hook 
 attached to a slender line within each. A hun- 
 dredweight and upwards may thus be captured in 
 a morning ; but the line is often used in vain, the 
 
THE BARBEL. 41 
 
 fish is not in the mood for taking, and three times 
 out of four the worms expended, or assumed to be 
 expended, by the fisherman, are thrown away. 
 
 The orthodox mode of angling for barbel is with 
 a reel and line, both of considerable length, and 
 the latter of moderate thickness, ending with eight 
 or ten feet of gut, the last eighteen inches passed 
 through a bullet, which is kept from slipping down 
 by a No. 4 shot, playing the bait (the most taking 
 is a large well-scoured lob-worm) just clear of, but 
 almost on, the bottom. Ten or twelve yards of 
 line are let off the reel, coiled at the bottom of the 
 punt, and, aided by the weight of the bullet, are 
 thrown out down the stream to the full extent of 
 the length. The bait having reached the bottom, 
 any slack there may be is at once taken up, and 
 the line being moderately taut and passed under or 
 round the fisher's finger so as to give immediate 
 notice of a bite, the point of the rod but a few 
 inches above the water, he waits with what pati- 
 ence he may for the desired result. This, as we 
 have said, is sometimes long a-coming, sometimes it 
 never comes, but when it does the fact is signified 
 by a smartish jerk on the line. To this first 
 summons, you, like an over-worked waiter in a 
 second-class inn, pay no attention, but should your 
 customer persevere, and ring the bell a second 
 
42 THE BARBEL. 
 
 time, which he will do somewhat impatiently, you 
 may strike, but not too hard ; hard striking is 
 always objectionable, and the barbel represents a 
 heavy mass of matter, which is very apt to operate 
 as a break upon tackle, when force is too roughly 
 applied. When struck, your fish is absolutely safe, 
 barring breakage ; for your hook would be as likely 
 to lose its hold on a piece of india-rubber as on this 
 essentially leather-mouthed fish, and it is just a 
 matter of discretion or taste what time you may 
 spend in landing him. His piggishness is never 
 more manifest than when he is hooked ; he neither 
 jumps out of the water nor runs out the line, but 
 spreading his broad fins, putting his head well 
 down, and opposing his great body to the weight 
 of the water, he pulls in an obstinate, swinish way, 
 never yielding an inch, but succumbing at last to 
 main force an ignoble prize, for the barbel is 
 coarse to look upon and worthless to eat. 
 
 Another and a better mode of barbel-fishing is 
 one more generally practised on the Trent than on 
 the Thames. A longer, lighter rod than that used 
 as already described is fitted with a " pirn," a kind 
 of wooden reel, which runs round on the slightest 
 possible pressure, without check of any kind, and 
 which requires some little skill and experience to 
 manage properly. This is furnished with some 
 
THE BARBEL. 43 
 
 eighty or a hundred yards of " Nottingham line," 
 a float eight or ten inches long, of trifling bulk, and 
 a light lead of just sufficient weight to keep the 
 bait at the bottom without stopping the float, 
 which is then allowed to travel down the stream, 
 dragging the bait with it, to any distance within 
 the reach of the line which the nature of the 
 bottom will allow. This is by far the most scien- 
 tific, the most sportsman-like, and the most killing 
 mode of angling for the barbel, and I commend 
 it to the attention of my readers. 
 
 In the days of my youth, barbel were more con- 
 fiding or more greedy than at the present time. 
 Ignorant and unskilled as I was, and provided 
 with the most ordinary tackle, I never failed to 
 kill five or six fish in Shepperton Deeps, under the 
 auspices of Purday (I think his Christian name 
 was John), the father or grandfather of the Pur- 
 days who still practise the craft in the same 
 locality. Although of late years I have generally 
 spent the autumn months on the banks of the 
 Thames, and have frequently fished for barbel, I 
 have had but one really successful day. The 
 Court journalist was pleased to notify my success 
 to the world ; and if the record of that excellent 
 paper be true and I have no reason to doubt it ? 
 though I did not myself weigh the fish I killed 
 
44 THE CHUB. 
 
 twenty-five fish, weighing eighty-four pounds, and 
 but for the intrusion of a stranger, who coolly 
 stationed himself at the tail of my swim, and 
 whose fisherman caught a good many fish which 
 he hauled out, I should, no doubt, have killed 
 many more. 
 
 The barbel is known as the largest of the family 
 of Cyprinida (" Cyprinus barbus"\ sometimes at- 
 taining the weight of twelve or fourteen pounds. 
 It spawns early in the summer. As an article of 
 food it is utterly worthless, at least to man, Pike 
 appreciate it when young, and its shape, like that 
 of the dace, peculiarly adapts it for a spinning 
 bait. I recommend its being used as such when- 
 ever taken. I cannot doubt but that this fish 
 operates beneficially in the humble capacity of 
 scavenger in the localities he affects. His large 
 size, voracious and indiscriminate appetite, and 
 habit of feeding at the bottom, justify the assump- 
 tion. Mr Frank Buckland should take him under 
 his especial protection. 
 
 THE CHUB. 
 
 The last of the " Cyprinida " to which I shall 
 refer (for though both the tench and the carp 
 
THE CHUB. 
 
 45 
 
 may be found in the Thames, they are of com- 
 paratively rare occurrence, and not commonly 
 objects of the angler's pursuit) is the chub, a fish 
 for which, albeit he, like the majority of his con- 
 geners, is bad for food, and not good for sport, I 
 have a latent affection. Although not properly a 
 surface-feeding fish, like the trout or grayling, the 
 chub seems really to go out of his way to afford 
 the best sport in his power to the young fly-fisher 
 who may have graduated with the dace on the 
 shallows ; and although a hungry, not to say greedy 
 fish, to take him with the artificial fly is by no 
 means an easy matter. The skill required to hook 
 one large chub would suffice for a dozen trout or 
 salmon. Of course, the youth and hobbledehoys 
 are green, inexperienced, and easily captured ; 
 but to kill an old chub from two to five pounds 
 weight with the fly (I have never met with one 
 above the latter weight) is a credit even to the 
 experienced fisherman. It is only during the late 
 spring and summer months, or the early autumn, 
 that the chub will take what is by courtesy called 
 a "fly" on the Thames. This is generally an 
 imitation of a humble bee or a great hairy cater- 
 pillar. At such times of the year, the chub 
 occupies a station close under the bank, beneath 
 an over-hanging willow, and immediately behind a 
 
46 THE CHUB. 
 
 substantial mass of weeds, into which, as a place 
 of refuge, he is prepared to retire upon the small- 
 est provocation. There is not a shyer or more 
 easily-startled fish ; it is therefore essential to 
 throw a very long line, and to throw it deftly over 
 the weeds and under the bough and short of the 
 bank. To do this properly is not the work of the 
 tiro, and the fisherman who brings home a good 
 basket of fine chub is capable of far greater things 
 in the art of angling. However long the line 
 thrown, the approach of the fish towards its de- 
 stined prey is plainly visible in the clear and 
 comparatively shallow water it frequents, and it 
 requires no inconsiderable amount of self-restraint 
 to avoid the fly-fisher's besetting sin striking too 
 quickly. Strike, however, you must, and that 
 sharply, so as to fix the barb into the by no means 
 unaccommodating palate or lip of the fish. Un- 
 less this is done, the chub is nearly certain to 
 escape, for, lying as it generally does, close to the 
 bank, it could not run from you if it wished, which 
 it does not, for its refuge and hope of safety are in 
 the bed of weeds between it and you. The most 
 dangerous manoeuvre a fish can adopt is therefore 
 of necessity put in practice : it rushes towards, not 
 away from you, and a slack line is inevitably the 
 result. Of course, the opposition tactics are to 
 
THE CHUB. 47 
 
 throw the point of the rod well back, and wind up 
 your line as rapidly as possibly ; once get "a pull" 
 upon him and the result is certain, and far too easy 
 for sport ; the fish, however large, comes heavily, 
 stolidly to your hand, and the landing-net secures 
 him. What to do with him, is the next question, 
 and one which I confess I am unable to answer. I 
 generally give him to a semi-civilised bargee, or 
 an ambitious bank-fisher, who takes him home, 
 and, I fear, gets the unmerited credit with his 
 wife and family of having himself captured the 
 " delicate monster." 
 
 A poaching but very killing way of taking this 
 fish is to fasten a cockchafer, a humble bee, a 
 hairy caterpillar, or, better than any, a large 
 grasshopper, to a naked hook, and creeping under 
 cover of the willows to the brink of the stream, 
 yourself entirely concealed, pass the rod with a 
 short line twisted round it, through the leafy screen, 
 and unwinding the line, drop the bait on to the sur- 
 face of the water as though it had been accidentally 
 detached from the tree. This being exactly what 
 the fish was looking for, he chuckles at his own 
 prescience, and swallows the coveted insect with 
 an audible smack of his lips, and a considerable 
 appreciation of his own knowledge of the ways of 
 the world. With a short line and a secure hold 
 
48 THE PERCH. 
 
 there is no possibility of your losing your prey, 
 except by breakage of tackle, and that is an 
 accident of rare occurrence, thanks to the general 
 excellence of London makers. 
 
 In the autumn the chub takes the worm readily, 
 but except in the mode first described, it is not in 
 my opinion a fish at all worth fishing for. 
 
 The chub is known in the north as the "skelly," 
 perhaps on account of the large size of its scales. 
 Its scientific name is " Cyprinus cephalus" The 
 epithet (Greek for a head) refers to its head being 
 rather disproportionately large, particularly about 
 the jaws (we talk of a chubby-cheeked boy or a 
 chubby-headed fellow). Like most of the tribe, the 
 chub spawns during the spring months, about May : 
 the fins are a dusky red or brown colour. 
 
 THE PERCH. 
 
 The Thames, as has been said, is occupied 
 almost exclusively by fish of the order Cyprinid&> 
 just as Argyleshire is by Campbells, and Wales 
 by the once-regal family of Jones ; but a few other 
 tribes are represented by isolated families. Such 
 is the case with the Percidce, a type of which, 
 " Perca fluviatilis, is one of the commonest and 
 
THE PERCH. 49 
 
 .most appreciated, for food, if not for sport, of the 
 denizens of the river. 
 
 This fish is too well known to require description ; 
 a clumsily-shaped, awkward fish, but handsomely 
 marked, and, when in good condition, by no means 
 unpleasant to look upon, though essentially so to 
 handle, the strong sharp spines on the dorsal fin in- 
 flicting a painful and not easily-cured wound. The 
 hungry pike, although, when no more accommo- 
 dating food is at hand, he will swallow the smaller 
 ones, shrinks instinctively from any interference 
 with adult members of the family ; and this immu- 
 nity from the attacks of other fish tends greatly to 
 the increase in the numbers of the perch. Some 
 of the Cumberland and Westmoreland lakes are 
 stocked with them to the absolute exclusion of any 
 others, and so quarrelesome and greedy are they, 
 that the only wonder is that they have not, like 
 the Kilkenny cats, annihilated themselves. 
 
 It frequently happens while fishing for gudgeon, 
 that those confiding little fish suddenly, and with- 
 out apparent cause, leave off biting. If you shorten 
 your line a few inches, remove the red worm, and 
 replace it by a minnow, the hook carefully passed 
 through the upper lip, you will probably catch the 
 responsible cause in the shape of an intrusive perch; 
 and though he afford little sport, for a more faint- 
 
 4 
 
50 THE PERCH. 
 
 hearted fish does not exist, there are few if any in 
 the Thames that can compare with him for eating. 
 The smaller perch should be water-souched, or, if 
 for breakfast, fried. The larger ones, say from half 
 a pound upwards, are never better than when boiled, 
 and, with the addition of a little plain sauce of 
 melted butter and anchovy, afford a dish for an 
 epicure. 
 
 The ordinary mode of fishing for perch is with a 
 light rod, a long line, and a large float. Fine fishing 
 is thrown away, for the perch is a greedy fish, rushes 
 incontinently at the bait, and if given time enough 
 is pretty certain to hook himself, though, as in the 
 case of other fish, it is necessary to strike by way 
 of clinching the bargain. 
 
 He is, as has been intimated, fond of gudgeon, 
 although the feeling is not reciprocated ; but his 
 " favourite vanity " is the minnow, and great havoc 
 the perch must make among that long-suffering 
 race. I have taken six or eight out of the stomach 
 of a perch of half a pound weight. The mode of 
 baiting is very simple. Pass the hook (No. 7) 
 through the upper lip, a good-sized shot having 
 been previously attached to the line a few inches 
 above ; regulate the float a large one to a depth 
 varying from four to six feet, and if in a stream, 
 allow the line to run out, as in barbel-fishing, as far 
 
THE PERCH. 51 
 
 as you please. If there be no current, throw it 
 cleverly, so as not to disengage the bait, to a con- 
 siderable distance from your punt. The perch is 
 a free biter, and no great amount of the assumed 
 one thing needful to a fisherman patience is 
 requisite. If you do not get a run soon, shift the 
 place of the bait ; that failing, shift yourself, and 
 seek another pitch. In summer the perch, in 
 common with pike and most other fish, affects the 
 weed, and you cannot do better than fish in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of a heavy mass im- 
 pinging upon deep water. In autumn and winter 
 they seek deep holes, and great numbers, sometimes 
 twenty or thirty, may be taken from one such 
 place. You must, however, be careful not to let 
 many escape, for, once pricked, the perch becomes 
 very restless, and is apt to lead or drive the shoal 
 away. 
 
 This is not a treatise on Natural History, or I 
 might comment upon a singular fact which has 
 forced itself on my observation. I have hardly, if 
 ever, opened a fish that did not prove to be a female, 
 and, at what ever time of the year, always with spawn 
 fully developed, yet the spawning-time of perch 
 is in April or May. I have twice referred to this 
 curious fact in "Land and Water," with a request 
 for information on the subject, but without effect. 
 
5 2 THE EEL. 
 
 My attention was first drawn to it by Sam Scott, a 
 clever young Thames fisherman, who fishes for his 
 livelihood at Laleham, and whose means of obser- 
 vation are naturally very extensive. 
 
 The weight of perch varies from a few ounces up 
 to three or four pounds. I once saw three killed 
 of the latter weight, or very near it, in one day ; 
 but although larger-sized ones are occasionally 
 recorded, I have never seen one. 
 
 THE EEL. 
 
 We may assume that no one angles for eels; 
 still, as the eel is an inhabitant of the Thames, 
 we will not ignore its existence ; and for culinary 
 purposes it perhaps enjoys more consideration 
 than many of the more sought for denizens of 
 that stream. Eels are of three kinds : the snig 
 which, coated with sand, occupies the coster- 
 monger's shallow basket, and is so accustomed to 
 be skinned alive as to have acquired a proverbial 
 indifference to the process the flat-nosed eel, and 
 the round-nosed eel. Their ordinary food consists 
 of worms, fish alive or dead, and animal matter of 
 all kinds, whatever its state and condition. 
 
 A most effective mode of taking them is, to 
 
THE EEL. 53 
 
 enclose in a large-meshed net some carrion enve- 
 loped in straw or hay, and attach it by a rope to 
 the bank. A considerable number will be captured 
 by pulling the mass suddenly to land after it has 
 lain a week in the water. Another mode, more in 
 the retail line, is to thread a quantity of worms on 
 worsted, tie them together in a lump, and dropping 
 the slimy ball from a stiff rod into the deep water, 
 pull it suddenly up ; after sufficient time has been 
 given for the eel to gorge two or three, he will 
 find himself landed before he can make up his 
 mind to part with the mouthful. 
 
 The most legitimate mode of fishing for eels is, 
 however, by night-lines or bank-runners ; and we 
 would suggest that for this purpose a single hook 
 is better than a double, a worm a better bait than 
 a fish, and four or five loosely-twisted strands of 
 strong hemp or lightly-twisted line better than 
 the strongest gimp. The power the eel possesses 
 of breaking anything of the latter description is 
 simply marvellous, and a single line he will as- 
 suredly bite through ; but the loose strands get 
 between his teeth. The line must be sufficiently 
 long, but care must be taken that it will not reach 
 to a rock, a post, or even a large bank of weeds, or 
 the eel will avail himself of the purchase, and 
 break your line though he die for it. 
 
54 THE EEL. 
 
 A most exciting sport is eel-spearing, though the 
 spear is plunged blindly into the deep mud. We 
 practised this art long years ago in the fen ditches 
 in Huntingdonshire, and with considerable success. 
 Terrible hard work that eel-spearing is, and the 
 man who can stick to it for a couple of hours may 
 aspire to six shillings a day as a navvy ! In the 
 lakes of Westmeath the process is more scientific, 
 at least requires more skill. On a sunny day the 
 boat floats over the shallows of the lake, and the 
 great eels are detected through the bright clear 
 water, half in, half out of their holes, sitting on the 
 threshold of their houses, as it were, enjoying the 
 fine weather. Spearing them under such circum- 
 stances is very like spearing a trout or salmon as 
 practised in the olden time, a sport in which we 
 have joined, though we suppose we ought to be 
 ashamed to own it. 
 
 Eels run down to sea in the autumn, for the 
 purpose of depositing their spawn, and are then in 
 their best condition. When they return does not 
 appear quite clear ; but the fry, the " eel-fair," as 
 it is called, proceed up the rivers in May, meeting 
 the smolts who are then descending. That eminent 
 naturalist Mr Buckland has stated, in a recent ar- 
 ticle in "Land and Water/' that the smolts devour 
 the young eels ; but I do not think they are open 
 
THE EEL. 55 
 
 to the imputation, neither has any testimony been 
 produced in support of it. The smolts in salmon 
 rivers go down in myriads, the eel-fry ascend in 
 equal numbers. Nothing stops them, no obstacle 
 stays their course, they wriggle over the damp 
 stones, they cross the dewy meadows, they climb 
 the perpendicular sluice-gates, they ascend every 
 ditch and streamlet, they occupy every water, run- 
 ning or stagnant, and afford food not only to man, 
 but to numberless birds, beasts, and fishes. 
 
 I know that it has been doubted, but I take it 
 as a recognised fact, that under no circumstances 
 do eels ever breed in fresh water. A given num- 
 ber of eels turned into a pond having no outlet 
 whatever, may, and probably will, decrease in num- 
 ber ; they will never increase. It is well known 
 that they occasionally quit the water at night, and 
 wander over the dewy grass in search of food or 
 suitable dwelling-places; and the instinct by which 
 they find their way to the water is as marvellous 
 and inexplicable as are all the operations of instinct 
 when judged by the light of reason. In Ireland 
 and Scotland eels abound, but are held in a sort of 
 superstitious horror by the natives. A Highlander 
 would as soon eat a snake as an eel, and can hardly 
 be persuaded to touch one for the purpose of ex- 
 tracting the hook. The Irish Celt spits at the 
 
56 THE EEL. 
 
 mention of its name, as he does when he talks of 
 a toad or a lizard, or other object of St Patrick's 
 anathema. There are, however, eel-fisheries in 
 some Irish rivers Ballyshannon, for instance, 
 which are highly productive; and I have often 
 wondered that one has not been set up in Tweed, 
 which swarms with the brightest, whitest, and 
 largest eels I have ever seen. They are, moreover, 
 terrible enemies to the Salmonida. 
 
 The reader will please to bear in mind that the 
 eel is a fish, and has scales and fins, as a fish ought 
 to have. It is classed by Yarrell &s"Anguilla" 
 with the distinction "acuti-" or "lati-rostris" accord- 
 ing to the shape of its nose. According to this 
 author, they are capable of a considerable amount 
 of domestication, at any rate of taming. They will 
 come to call, eat out of your hand, and distinguish 
 their feeder. Eels, however, can hardly be con- 
 sidered as eligible pets, and would, I think, be quite 
 incapable of anything like disinterested friendship. 
 
 The eel is a great sleeper, and spends all the 
 winter in its muddy bed, from whence it is some- 
 times rudely extracted by the eel-spear above- 
 mentioned. 
 
THE PIKE. 57 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 In these days of broad-cloth and "financing," 
 it seems strange that this truculent, greedy 
 tyrant of the fresh waters should have been 
 selected (perhaps, however, merely in " canting 
 heraldry") for the cognisance, and adopted under 
 its various synonyms as a surname, for many old 
 families of good repute. The "Peakes" still 
 flourish in Derbyshire ; the Geddes, once a war- 
 like race, are still numerous in the Lothians ; the 
 Broughams bear the " three white luces/' and they, 
 we know, were "an ancient coat" in the days of 
 Shakespeare. In the old time, however, might 
 made right, and the rough of mood and ready of 
 hand ruled the vassals of the land. 
 
 " Little reck'd they of a tame liege lord." 
 
 And the attributes of the pike courage, strength, 
 and swiftness were arrogated to themselves by 
 the noble and the chivalrous. 
 
 No fish is more common, or more hardy, than 
 the pike. He inhabits alike stagnant pools, 
 ponds, lakes, and streams comparatively rapid, like 
 the Avon or the Trent. The still waters, how- 
 ever, are essentially his habitat ; and though fre- 
 quently found at the tail of a rapid, he affects 
 
58 THE PIKE. 
 
 quieter parts of running streams, and thrives 
 best in great lakes, where food is plentiful and 
 readily procurable. Except that he eschews vege- 
 table matter, and prefers fish to any other kind of 
 food, the pike is simply omnivorous. Fish, flesh, 
 fowl, are alike to him ; the young of his own 
 species, the dace, the gudgeon, the roach, a young 
 duck, a moor-hen, a gaping frog, a bunch of gar- 
 bage all are seized with equal avidity when he is 
 in the humour to feed ; and, to do him justice, it 
 is very rarely that he is not in the humour. A 
 gentleman, who has no wish to communicate his 
 name to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
 to Animals, once threw thirty young sparrows and 
 starlings, one after another, to a large pike in a 
 lake, and he seized and swallowed the last with 
 the same avidity as the first. 
 
 No one wishes Mr Buckland success, in his 
 praiseworthy attempt to make the Thames a 
 salmon river, more fervently than myself; but so 
 long as pike exist there in the numbers they do 
 and they will continue to exist in those numbers 
 so long as the Thames flows down to the sea it 
 is simply waste of that pearl of fishes to introduce 
 it to the water for the mere purpose of being 
 swallowed by "Esox Lucius" as it inevitably is 
 within a week of its leaving the breeding-ponds. 
 
THE PIKE. 59 
 
 When salmon were found in the Thames (they 
 were never abundant, for the Thames is not natu- 
 rally a salmon-river), pike, a fish of comparatively 
 modern introduction, were unknown. Even should 
 one smolt in ten thousand find its way to the sea 
 and return a grilse, which, so far as I know, has 
 never yet happened, there are pike in the Thames 
 that would swallow him like a gudgeon. I have 
 seen a jack, of three pound weight, which had 
 taken a trimmer bait, seized by his grandfather, 
 or some other elderly relative, and have had a 
 great fight before, to our mutual disappointment, 
 the elder was compelled to loose his hold. Last 
 year, in the Thames, I caught a barbel of nearly 
 six pounds weight that had evidently been seized 
 and severely bitten by a pike ; and there are well- 
 authenticated instances of great fish being taken 
 from the water, choked in their effort to swallow 
 a moor-hen or a full-grown duck. One instance 
 of the latter in Norfolk, and another in Rutland, 
 have come within my own knowledge.* 
 
 There are several ways of fishing for the pike ; 
 and as it undoubtedly affords the very best and 
 
 * In Mr F. Buckland's museum there is a cast of two pike, about 
 five pounds each in weight, the one choked in his attempt to swallow 
 the other. There is no appreciable difference in their size, yet the 
 one is half-way down the throat of the other. 
 
60 TRIMMERING. 
 
 most exciting sport within their scope to those 
 who do not throw a fly for trout, and have not the 
 luxury of salmon-fishing, I shall describe those 
 several ways ; and though, individually, I may 
 hold one kind in higher estimation than another, I 
 am well aware that great skill, perseverance, and 
 knowledge of the art, are required in making a 
 successful practitioner in any. 
 
 TRIMMERING. 
 
 Trimmers and night-lines may, in the opinion of 
 many of my readers, come within the category of 
 poaching implements, and I confess they somewhat 
 savour of irregular proclivities in a sportsman ; 
 still a fish is sometimes wanted for dinner ; time is 
 sometimes wanting for regular fishing ; jack must 
 sometimes be taken by proxy ; and some young 
 sportsmen are, happily or unhappily, ready to 
 take the sport the fates provide them, and be 
 thankful 
 
 " Turning to mirth all things on earth," 
 
 as only the young in heart can. In a great lake 
 or a large mere well stocked with pike, no better 
 or more productive sport can be desired than that 
 of trimmering. I have killed a hundredweight and 
 upwards of jack in a day. 
 
TRIMMERING. 6 1 
 
 The best mode of setting night-lines is by what 
 are called bank-runners. I do not mean a peg 
 with a slit in it, and a coil of line at foot, though 
 many good fish are so taken ; but one made with a 
 round piece of wood like a cotton reel in its upper 
 part, and a long strong spike to fasten it on to the 
 bank, or, a safer mode, into the bed of the river, a 
 foot below the surface. The reel is passed through 
 a circular iron nail, round which it runs freely ; 
 twenty yards at least of good water-line must be 
 attached, with a leaden bullet tied some two feet 
 from the end, to which a single hook on six or 
 eight inches of gimp, strong, but not over-thick, is 
 fastened by a slip knot. There are various modes 
 of baiting, and various baits are used gudgeon, 
 dace, roach, or frogs. Agreeing probably with 
 .dace, roach, and frogs, I prefer the first, and, in- 
 deed, have placed them in order of precedence 
 according to my own judgment. Some fishermen, 
 with a baiting-needle, pass the gimp down the side 
 of the bait under the scales, or under the skin of 
 the frog, " handling him tenderly," as old Izaak 
 has it, so that the poor creatures may keep alive for 
 many hours. This is, without doubt, a most killing 
 method, but unnecessarily cruel, for a jack will 
 take a dead bait, or at least one which he believes 
 to be in a dying or helpless state, almost, if not 
 
62 TRIMMER ING. 
 
 quite, as freely as a live one, or a bait so cleverly 
 spun as to have the appearance of vigorous life. 
 
 To bait with a dead fish, it is merely necessary 
 to pass the gimp by means of a baiting-needle 
 right through it from the mouth to the fork of the 
 tail : there is no need of tying. The bullet, which 
 lies at the bottom when the line has been thrown 
 in a few yards from the shore, will give the play, 
 the lighter bait floating above it in the most capti- 
 vating manner, and, if not too heavy, offering no 
 appreciable resistance to the removal of the sup- 
 posed victim to the lair of the savage ogre, who 
 conveys it thither to be devoured. I think that, 
 unless very ravenous, a pike never bolts his fish at 
 the moment of capture. He seizes him by the 
 head or across the body, holds him hard and fast, 
 and retires to his resting-place among the weeds 
 to swallow him in private. Night-lines should 
 always be laid in the neighbourhood of weeds. 
 
 Except dead fish, however, the pike eschews 
 dead animals as food. He may be taken by what 
 is called a fly, which he no doubt mistakes for a 
 young duck, or rnoor-hen, or a water-rat ; but in 
 such case the strike must, as we shall hereafter 
 explain, be instantaneous. No sooner is the sham 
 bait taken into the mouth, than it is ejected with 
 a force, common to all fish, but to me perfectly 
 
TRIMMERING. 63 
 
 incomprehensible, and the nature of which I would 
 gladly learn. I have known a dead bait, though 
 firmly fastened, driven upwards from the hook at 
 least eighteen inches along the line. The pike 
 will, as I have said, swallow a dead fish, but I 
 think nothing else dead. When Scott's affrighted 
 Sacristan listened to the ominous song of the 
 water-kelpie, 
 
 " A blue swollen corpse is a dainty meal, 
 And I '11 have my share with the pike and the eel," 
 
 he might have taken comfort from a knowledge of 
 this fact ; as Cuvier may when he told the devil, 
 who threatened to eat him, that " it was all bosh, his 
 horns and hoofs showing him to be graminivorous" 
 Marryat, too, libelled the fish in " Jacob Faithful." 
 " I shouldn't wonder," said old Jacob, when he 
 heard a splash in the water, " if that wasn't Bill." 
 Sure enough it was Bill ; and when recovered a week 
 afterwards, he was so disfigured " by the pike and 
 the eels, that he was ' no good to nobody/ " This, 
 I say, is a libel on the pike ; the ravenous brute 
 will eat almost anything, but it must have at least 
 a semblance of life. 
 
 To return to our trimmer. This engine is too 
 well known to need description. I would merely 
 suggest, that in extensive waters it is necessary to 
 lay them well to windward, and advisable to stick 
 
64 TRIMMERING. 
 
 a feather (black, as most visible) on the red or 
 lower side, which, when taken by a fish will become 
 the upper, and afford a mark more readily caught 
 by the eye than the peg. 
 
 The mode of baiting is, to pass a single hook (a 
 good-sized salmon-hook is about the best) through 
 the skin just under the back-fin. The fish sustains 
 little injury, and, if strong and healthy, may be 
 released at the end of four or five hours, with free- 
 dom in lieu of "a good-service pension/' and very 
 little the worse (in our opinion his might be less 
 unbiassed) for the discipline he has undergone. 
 Of course, having in the first instance taken the 
 bounty, in the shape of a gentle, a fly, or a red 
 worm, he ought to have been prepared for the 
 chances of war. 
 
 The best bait for a trimmer in English lakes is 
 the roach, as being, for his sins, the strongest and 
 most tenacious of life ; in Scotch, the parr not 
 the young salmon, but the barred-trout " Salmo 
 salmulus" so classed, and properly classed, by 
 Yarrell, the greatest of authorities on fish, and 
 recognised as such by every observant sportsman 
 whom I have ever met, though contradicted by 
 inexperienced persons who talk or write of what 
 they know not. A young salmon, however care- 
 fully put on the hook, dies in a very short time. 
 
TROLLING. 65 
 
 Poor little one ! soft and unused to hardships, it 
 speedily succumbs, and is useless as a lure; but 
 a parr, an adult gudgeon, or a roach, will tow a 
 trimmer about for hours without material damage, 
 and if its praiseworthy attempts to catch a flat 
 are unsuccessful, may, as suggested, be released 
 by the grateful and humane fisherman, with the 
 conviction that its span of life will be by no means 
 shortened (it may have been made to seem long 
 enough) by the ordeal it has undergone. It is 
 great sport hunting a trimmer which has been 
 taken by a big fish. A pair of strong oars will 
 scarcely catch the bobbing, diving, disappearing 
 cork ; and, when caught, it requires delicate hand- 
 ling to hold and properly play the struggling fish. 
 There is no aid from the yielding, elastic top-joint 
 of a rod, but the exact strain that line and hook 
 will sustain without breakage must be carefully 
 calculated ; and I have known a run to last pretty 
 nearly as long, and, while it lasted, to afford nearly 
 as much excitement, as a fox-chase. On the whole, 
 trimmering, under proper restrictions, and in suit- 
 able waters, is by no means bad sport. 
 
 TROLLING. 
 
 I have already quoted the learned judge's dictum, 
 " Some port is better than other, but there is no bad 
 
 5 
 
66 TROLLING. 
 
 port." Many modes of fishing are better than trol- 
 ling, but trolling is not a bad mode ; and as it is a 
 very killing mode, I shall venture to describe it. 
 
 The implements necessary for a troller are a 
 baiting-needle, a piece of brown thread, a pair of 
 scissors, and a dead-gorge hook. The latter, like 
 almost everything else, to be good, should be 
 moderate in all its parts of moderate weight, 
 moderate length, the hooks moderately curved, 
 first inwardly, and secondly, more slightly, in an 
 outward direction ; a swivel is not essential, but 
 very advantageous. The rod, about fourteen feet 
 in length, must be stout and stiff; in fact, if not 
 too heavy, the stouter and stiffer the better. The 
 rings should be fixed, and can hardly be too large, 
 the great object being, as will be shown hereafter, 
 to allow the line to run out, without check or 
 hindrance. 
 
 Almost any fish of proper size will answer as 
 a bait, but perhaps a large gudgeon is the best 
 that can be used : it is tough, well shaped for the 
 purpose, and its flavour much appreciated by the 
 greedy jack. The mode of baiting is, after killing 
 the fish, to draw the shank of the hook, by aid of 
 the baiting-needle, clean through it, entering at the 
 mouth, and bringing it out at the fork of the tail. 
 A few twists of the thread below the gills and 
 
TROLLING. 67 
 
 behind the tail fasten it securely. Your scissors 
 are then brought into play ; the fins are cut close 
 off, and the tail neatly cropped, so as to afford no 
 catching point for the weeds in which you are to 
 fish. It is true that a fish thus manipulated bears 
 no greater resemblance to its original self than a 
 swathed pappoose to a sprawling baby ; but the 
 pike is probably guided at least as much by smell 
 as by sight, and it is intended to drop this delicate 
 morsel immediately under his worship's nose. He 
 looks upon the lure as a maimed and helpless vic- 
 tim, and at once takes advantage of its assumed 
 condition. 
 
 Many Thames fishermen troll throughout the 
 season, but the practice is more general in the 
 early part, from July to October, before the weeds 
 have rotted down sufficiently to render spinning 
 practicable. Standing at the head of the punt, 
 you throw your bait with an easy spring to a 
 moderate distance, right or left, dropping it under 
 the bank, beneath roots, or in any casual opening 
 in the weeds which will admit of its passage. Long 
 casts are not necessary, but an adept will toss the 
 bait to an inch where he intends it to drop, and 
 the leaded weight carries it at once to the bottom 
 where the great sulky pike, 
 
 " Husn'd in grim repose, expects its evening prey." 
 
68 TROLLING. 
 
 It is possible that the indignation roused by 
 the sudden intrusion of a despised small fish, 
 evidently in bad circumstances, into his domestic 
 privacy, may have something to do with the 
 result; for the pike is not very keen at this 
 time of the year, and rarely leaves his lurking-place 
 in search of food, taking, like the spider, whatever 
 good luck may send him. Be that as it may, the 
 temptation is irresistible, at least unresisted, and 
 a slight curl in the water, a scarcely visible wave 
 in the weeds, with an almost imperceptible check 
 on the line, tell you that your bait is taken. 
 Later in the year say in October when the 
 pike comes out to feed, this is followed by a 
 sharp run of a few feet or yards, as the case may 
 be, towards his lair ; to which, with the fish cross- 
 ways in his mouth, as a dog carries a bone, he 
 invariably returns before swallowing it. In the 
 early part of the season, however, but a few inches 
 of line are taken, sometimes none, and the fisher- 
 man is in pleasing doubt whether he has hold of 
 a jack, a root, or a weed. Whichever it be, his 
 tactics are of the simplest order a masterly in- 
 action. Letting out two or three yards of line, 
 in case they should be wanted, you have nothing 
 to do but look at your watch, note the time exactly, 
 and then smoke the pipe of expectation ; read your 
 
T^ROLLING. 69 
 
 " Land and Water," or a chapter of some book on 
 field or forest, or, better still, a page in the great 
 book of Nature, passim. Do you see that water- 
 rat ? water- w/<? is his proper designation the sole 
 representative of the ancient race of beavers in 
 Great Britain. He is running along the water's 
 edge, stopping at intervals to wash his whiskers 
 and gaze fearlessly into your face. He is an inter- 
 esting beast to watch, and, when fairly scanned, 
 not so ugly as his long yellow teeth and angular 
 visage might make you fancy ; there is an air of 
 benevolence, too, in the water-rat's face, when you 
 examine it closely, which is expressive of his char- 
 acter, and quite unlike that of his distant cousin 
 "mus rattus" the land rat. Guiltless, or all but 
 guiltless, of animal, food, the water-rat feeds almost 
 exclusively on vegetable substances. He may nibble 
 a dead fish if he find one, but has neither the will 
 nor the power to injure a live one ; therefore harm 
 him not, but watch him as he moves towards you 
 like a clockwork animal, his short legs hidden 
 under his thick body, never diverging from his 
 track, but swimming across the water as he meets 
 it in exactly the same plane so buoyant is his 
 body as that in which he runs. But you look at 
 your watch, and at the movement your cool visitor 
 turns up his inelegant little tail and dives down 
 
70 LIVE-BAIT FISHING. 
 
 out of sight, reappearing at the mouth of one of 
 his numerous holes on the distant bank. Ten 
 minutes have elapsed, and now you strike pretty 
 sharply, and the wretched jack, who has swallowed 
 without compunction what he considered a helpless 
 fish, his appointed prey, finds the barbed hook 
 inextricably fixed in his vitals or in the lower part 
 of his throat. Under such circumstances the 
 pluckiest of fish could not be expected to show 
 sport. The pike is never very plucky, and on a 
 dead-gorge hook shows very little pluck indeed. 
 On the whole, many, I think most modes of fishing 
 are preferable to trolling. 
 
 LIVE-BAIT FISHING. 
 
 Predaceous birds and beasts affect certain locali- 
 ties with surprising constancy. There are jungles 
 in India, and, thank goodness ! coverts in England, 
 that always hold a tiger or a fox respectively, what- 
 ever the number of either that may have been 
 killed out of them. Shoot a pair of falcons or of 
 owls, if you can find it in your heart to do so, and 
 in a very short time a fresh pair will assuredly 
 take their places on the same cliff or in the same 
 hollow tree. 
 
 The same rule holds good, if possible, more 
 invariably, with respect to fish. Whether salmon, 
 
LIVE-BAIT FISHING. 7 1 
 
 trout, or pike be the object of your pursuit, there 
 are certain traditional holes or lairs that will 
 never fail you. An old Scotch keeper, on tak- 
 ing affectionate leave of me the night before I 
 returned southward, said, solemnly, " A' may be 
 deed before ye come back, but there 's ae thing I 'd 
 warn ye in yonder hole, where the swirl comes 
 round the mickle stane, there 's aye a trout beastie, 
 an a grand ane.!" I never verified his words, 
 but I am quite sure John Mclntyre spoke the 
 truth, and kill as many as you will from that 
 particular spot, there shall never lack others to 
 take their place. As with British soldiers in a 
 breach one man down, another steps gallantly 
 into his place so it is with trout and pike. I know 
 an especial run in Penton Hook, a noted place for 
 live-bait-fishing, out of which I have taken two, 
 three, or four in a day, and out of which, within the 
 space of a few yards, I verily believe that hundreds 
 are taken in the course of every year. 
 
 You may use your trolling-rod for live-bait-fish- 
 ing, with the reel and line thereunto appertaining ; 
 a large, fat float, as big as a dumpling, must be 
 provided, through which some three feet of the 
 line are to be drawn" and firmly fastened with a 
 peg. The hook, which is of course tied on gimp, 
 consists of a single eel-hook with a triple-hook 
 
72 LIVE-BAIT FISHING. 
 
 floating free four inches below it. The single 
 hook is passed either through the lip of the bait 
 or under the back-fin. As in trimmering, a small 
 bullet counteracts the bait's propensity to swim 
 on the surface of the water. 
 
 Standing at the head of the punt, which for the 
 time is stationary, your boatman hanging on to 
 the rushes, or the willow, or the bank, you drop 
 your bait quietly a few feet in advance, or laterally 
 according to the current, and work the line in 
 such a manner that the float, though pulled in a 
 different direction, shall drag the bait willy-nilly 
 into all sorts of odd corners and casual openings 
 in the weeds near which the pike may be supposed 
 to lurk. 
 
 A large roach is your best bait, and if there be 
 a pike within a reasonable distance of your swim, 
 he is almost certain to take. His presence is 
 intimated by the violent agitation and partial 
 immersion of the float caused by the poor roach's 
 vain efforts to escape his enemy. Another moment, 
 and your bait is seized, and the float disappears 
 beneath the surface, travelling rapidly towards the 
 pike's headquarters. Strike, but not too quickly 
 nor too hard ; your fish is almost certainly hooked, 
 and if of large size, will show capital sport. 
 
 I am aware that many fishermen look upon this 
 
SPINNING. 73 
 
 mode of fishing as poaching ; but though akin to 
 it, I cannot admit it to be so, though it may be 
 neither very artistic nor very exciting. Pike are 
 such ravenous, gluttonous brutes, that all sentimen- 
 tality is out of place with regard to them ; and 
 they are so prolific, and the larger ones so wary, 
 that no possible harm can accrue from any mode 
 of rod-fishing however destructive. Besides, the 
 hooks are not large, and are not bolted like a dead- 
 gorge ; a fish has a fair chance of making a good 
 fight for his life, and he generally makes it. Live- 
 bait-fishing should always be carried on in the 
 immediate vicinity of weeds : in the open water, 
 spinning will of course be practised, between 
 which and trolling live-bait-fishing may be con- 
 sidered as intermediate. 
 
 SPINNING. 
 
 Spinning is certainly the most scientific, the most 
 artistic, and, on the whole, the most killing mode 
 of fishing for pike ; it may also be fairly called the 
 most sportsman-like. Trimmering depends little 
 upon personal skill or experience ; live-bait-fishing 
 is but little above it ; and trolling though I am 
 loath to say anything in dispraise of it, seeing that 
 it is an art thought worthy of culture by a large 
 proportion of Thames fishermen strikes me as 
 
74 SPINNING. 
 
 rather akin to shooting pheasants running or hares 
 sitting. 
 
 Spinning takes a high class in the noble school 
 of fishers ; and the man who excels in it may 
 fairly rank himself as the equal of any other pro- 
 fessor of the art. 
 
 The best bait for spinning is a dace ; the fish 
 is sufficiently tough, and admirably shaped for the 
 purpose. The roach is too broad in proportion to 
 its length to spin properly, and the scales of the 
 gudgeon are not sufficiently bright to attract the 
 notice of the pike. I think, too, that this fish has an 
 especial affection for the dace. On one occasion 
 last year, I was fishing in company with a gentle- 
 man who was certainly not my superior, either in 
 practical or theoretical knowledge of the art. He 
 was provided with dace, I fiad only roach to fish 
 with ; he caught nine fish to my one, and when he 
 kindly gave me a couple of dace, I killed two pike 
 with them. No doubt a dace spins much more 
 truly than a roach, but I do not consider that the 
 result was much affected by this fact ; for, as I 
 shall state hereafter, a " wobble " in the bait is 
 rather advantageous than otherwise ; but I believe 
 that the pike, being well fed and dainty, felt and 
 manifested a decided predilection for the one fish 
 over the other. 
 
SPINNING. 75 
 
 I would not trespass on the ground taken by 
 one of the best practical fishermen of the day, Mr 
 Cholmondeley Pennell, or attempt to add any- 
 thing to the instructions given in his admirable 
 work on the pike, by laying down rules either for 
 baiting the hook or using it when baited. My 
 readers cannot do better than consult his pages ; 
 but I may say, that the S hook invented by him- 
 self is the simplest and best form of spinning- 
 tackle that can be used. With it I captured the 
 thirty-pound fish recorded below. In fixing the 
 bait, the great point is the tail, which must form a 
 slightly obtuse angle to the line of the body ; and 
 the body should, by a careful adjustment of the lip- 
 hook, be made as stiff and straight as possible; this 
 shape is more readily obtained by the use of 
 Pennell's hook. You will require at least forty 
 yards of line, plaited, not spun, and thoroughly 
 prepared to prevent kinking ; your rod, of fourteen 
 or fifteen feet, should be sufficiently pliable, not so 
 much so as a fly-rod, but of far greater strength, 
 and something between it and a trolling-rod. The 
 bait is thrown out with a sort of jerk, requiring 
 very little exertion, but when made by skilful hands 
 astonishing the beholder by the distance to which 
 the bait is thrown. Many Thames fishermen will, 
 without apparent effort, shoot out twenty-five or 
 
76 SPINNING. 
 
 thirty yards of line ; but distant throwing is not 
 all that is required. To spin well, you must throw 
 to exactly the spot you intend. A punctual 
 man is not one who gets to his train ten minutes 
 before it starts, neither is a good spinner one who 
 throws ten yards beyond the mark; he must know 
 to a foot where he intends his bait to drop, and if 
 he mean to throw twenty-five yards of line, he 
 must neither cast twenty-four nor twenty-six. 
 
 There are many accomplished fishermen who, in 
 anticipation of a kink or stoppage in the running 
 of the line, will twist it round their little finger and 
 thumb, and allow it to run off in the most artistic 
 manner. This is the poetry of the art, and I com- 
 mend its exercise to those who would excel in it, 
 but I confess it is beyond my powers ; and as a 
 rule, you will do well enough with a well-prepared 
 line, if you coil it as you draw it in, foot by foot, 
 at your feet. 
 
 Fish down-stream ; keep your punt within a few 
 yards of the weedy side, the head at an acute 
 angle from it ; make your cast across, and well 
 in advance ; work the bait towards you, so as to 
 cover the whole stream, and finish by a few strokes 
 from the top of the rod in the space between the 
 head of the punt and the bank of rushes or weeds 
 alongside. If a fish strike, return the blow as 
 
SPINNING. 7 7 
 
 quickly as possible (" bis dat" &c.) I know this is 
 controverted, but, so far as my experience goes, I 
 have never, while spinning, lost a jack by striking 
 too quickly. When he is struck, hold him hard, 
 and play him cannily. 
 
 If in good condition, well baked, with a pudding 
 inside, and very simple sauce, the pike will satisfy 
 you that your labour has not been thrown away. 
 
 I hardly know whether I shall appear to be pre- 
 suming on my readers' patience, but I cannot resist 
 the temptation to give an account of the capture 
 of a very large pike I was fortunate enough to 
 catch last autumn. 
 
 One does not go to Scotland for //^-fishing. 
 The fisherman who travels northward is supposed 
 to be in search of higher game ; and there are 
 many lakes in Scotland abounding with pike 
 which are rarely or never fished for them, the 
 angler being generally ignorant of their existence. 
 In fact, the introduction of pike to Scottish waters 
 is of comparatively recent date. Fifty years ago 
 there was not one in Loch Awe ; they were put in 
 by some evil-disposed or officious " person or per- 
 sons," and have since increased, as their nature is, 
 beyond all reason, to the manifest diminution of 
 the trout, perhaps of the salmon. Every reedy bay 
 or shallow inlet is now stocked with this ravenous 
 
78 SPINNING. 
 
 fish; and Kilchurn Bay, near Dalmally, at the head 
 of the lake, perhaps affords as good pike-fishing as 
 is to be found in the United Kingdom. 
 
 I wonder have any of my readers ever visited 
 Dalmally ? If not, let them shape their course 
 thither the first opportunity that a dull season 
 or a long vacation offers. There is no scenery 
 in Scotland, or, to my thinking, out of it, that 
 surpasses there is very little that approaches 
 that of the Western Highlands. Its beauty 
 is only equalled by its variety ; moss, moor, and 
 mountain alternate with rich r pastures and fer- 
 tile corn-fields ; the streams and rivers tumble 
 down the most precipitous courses, presenting a 
 succession of broken water and cascades endless 
 in their variety, and falling at last into lakes 
 stretching to an extent correspondent with the 
 grandeur of the scenery, and studded plentifully 
 with wooded islands. Loch Awe is twenty-four 
 miles in length. Ben Cruachan, the monarch of the 
 mountains which reflect themselves in her bright 
 waters, rises well nigh four thousand feet, and 
 some of the mountains that are his companions 
 are of little inferior height. 
 
 At Dalmally, nestled among woods and rocks, 
 stands one of the most comfortable, unpretending 
 hotels to be met with in the North country, and I 
 
SPINNING. 79 
 
 have found very many most comfortable and 
 most reasonable hostelries in that much-abused 
 land. I have no faith in the accounts of those 
 bilious, grumbling tourists, who, year by year, in- 
 dite their prosy complaints of ill-usage and extor- 
 tion for the benefit of the readers of the Times in 
 " the silly season," when alone they have a chance 
 of a column. No one is more impatient of impo- 
 sition than myself; but my motto is, " live and let 
 live ;" and if tourists would take to their hearts the 
 fact that a Scotch innkeeper has a short twelve 
 weeks out of the year during which he must earn 
 his livelihood, and get the means of paying rent, 
 rates, and taxes, they would hardly complain of 
 being charged is. gd. or 2s. for their breakfast, and 
 3s. 6d. for their dinner, charges I have seen held 
 up to execration in the public prints, and which I 
 declare I have been almost ashamed to pay, when 
 I considered their inadequacy as compared with the 
 awful amount of the liberal and often expensive 
 viands provided for the vigorous appetite gained in 
 the keen Scotch air. However, to return to the 
 inn at Dalmally. After fishing in Tweed for 
 salmon, I arrived there one afternoon late in 
 October last. I found the lake, like the river which 
 ran into it, in high flood ; indeed, it had been 
 raining almost incessantly for six weeks, and, 
 
8o SPINNING. 
 
 judging from appearances, was likely to continue 
 for six weeks more. A slight change in the tem- 
 perature, which capped the loftier peaks with snow, 
 added greatly to the beauty of the scenery, but by 
 no means lowered the lake, the waters of which 
 spread over miles of meadow lying around it, and 
 almost laved the walls of the picturesque old castle 
 of Kilchurn. A lake, however, will fish more or 
 less at all times and under all circumstances, so I 
 determined to spin for a pike. My fisherman, one 
 Malcolm, a civil, sturdy Highlander, with a strong 
 predilection for whisky, very keen and well 
 skilled in his craft, led me, by a sloppy walk of 
 two miles, to the mouth of the " Orchy," the 
 largest of the rivers which empty themselves into 
 Loch Awe. Here we found a useful sort of boat 
 securely fastened by chain and padlock to a pro- 
 jecting alder. Malcolm produced the key, and 
 loosing the boat, after baling her out, for she was 
 half-full of water, we rowed for a mile or more 
 down-stream, and " commenced " fishing under the 
 walls of the old castle, but for some hours with 
 little success. Bad as the weather was, there was 
 evidently worse coming. The wind blew in gusts 
 and squalls, driving the mist and foam before it over 
 the troubled waters of the lake; the wild ducks 
 skimmed along close to the surface ; the gulls and 
 
SPINNING. 8 1 
 
 rooks flitted and drifted high above it ; and the 
 sensitive fishes, as usual, lay sulking and fasting in 
 the depths below. I had hooked and returned, 
 very much to Malcolm's disgust, two or three 
 handsome but undersized fish, and killed one of 
 three or four pounds, when he proposed that we 
 should run out some distance into the lake, round 
 a point of the island on which the castle stands. It 
 was a hard pull, for our course lay into the very eye 
 of the wind. The waves by this time ran very high, 
 and the boat pitched and tossed as she might have 
 done off the North Foreland. At last we reached 
 our ground, and making a long cast from the boat's 
 head as she topped a wave, I struck and hooked a 
 heavy fish. For a minute or more I imagined it was 
 off, and had left my hook stuck in a rock, so solid, 
 heavy, and motionless was the strain on the line. 
 At the end of that time, however, my doubts were 
 removed by the fish stirring, and to some purpose, 
 running out at least forty yards of line, and then 
 stopping abruptly, as though to consider what was 
 next to be done under existing circumstances. 
 With some difficulty, Malcolm kept the boat's head 
 to the wind, and rowed towards the place where, in 
 very deep water, my intended victim lay, doggedly 
 motionless. The strain on the tackle was con- 
 siderable, for the rod was not, like a salmon-rod, 
 
 6 
 
82 SPINNING. 
 
 springy to the butt, but comparatively stiff, as 
 spinning-rods must be; and I was forced to humour 
 " Esox Lucius" a good deal, as the boat danced up 
 and down. " He's twenty pound, Malcolm, if he's 
 an ounce ! " " Hoo ! hoo ! there 's nae fish here the 
 noo more than fifteen or maybe saxteen pun, and 
 few eneuch of them. It 's a big beast though, deil 
 doot it." At length I came nearly over the fish, and 
 tried to lift it a bit. I might as easily have lifted 
 the rock behind which it lay. But in a second or 
 two it took the matter entirely into its own hands 
 (as I might say in the West of Ireland], running 
 up the lake, at a slower pace certainly, but with 
 greater strength, and for a greater distance, than 
 any salmon I had ever hooked. I began to think 
 that the hundred and twenty yards of line which 
 the author of a recently-published fishing-book 
 talks of so glibly, as commonly run out by a 
 salmon, might be the fact in the case of a pike. 
 However, after clearing my reel of some sixty or 
 seventy yards, I felt I had a pull on the fish, and 
 winding up my line as quickly as possible, I 
 brought it under the point of the rod, and event- 
 ually raised it to the surface. Such a monster I 
 had never before beheld ! A salmon of thirty 
 pounds is a grand fish, but there is nothing terrible 
 in his appearance, as there really was in that of 
 
SPINNING. 83 
 
 my monster pike. As the head appeared above 
 the wave, the beast made a rush, the shoulders and 
 part of the back well above water, the savage 
 mouth wide open, and for fifteen or twenty yards 
 dashed along with a force which, if resisted, would 
 have broken a rope, making the water boil again, 
 lashing it, seemingly more in rage than despair, 
 with its powerful tail. Happily my gear worked 
 well, and dropping the point of the rod, and easing 
 the line a bit, I let it run as far as it would, and 
 then brought it cannily back again. Three times, 
 each with diminished force, did the deluded beast 
 try with mad rushes to break the good tackle, and 
 then, grimly succumbing, floated helpless on its 
 side. Fortunately, I had brought a gaff with me, 
 and Malcolm, by its aid, speedily transferred my 
 capture to the boat. It was a splendid fish, in 
 capital condition, and weighed fully thirty pounds, 
 the largest pike that has ever come under my 
 personal notice as killed by rod and line. I for- 
 warded it at once to Mr Frank Buckland, who most 
 kindly " cast" it for me. The cast was painted by 
 the eminent artist Mr H. L. Rolfe, and having been 
 " set up " in a case by Edon, of Chichester Terrace, 
 Kilburn Park, the best fish-stuffer of my acquaint- 
 ance, forms a most interesting object in my house. 
 It is, independently of the great size of the object, 
 
84 FLY-FISHING FOR PIKE. 
 
 really a work of high art, and could not possibly 
 be distinguished, lying in a bed of dried rushes, 
 from a real fish. The skin was afterwards stuffed 
 by the same taxidermist, and is now honoured by 
 a place in Mr Buckland's museum at South Ken- 
 sington. The skin was, however, much shrunk by 
 the heat of the plaster, and a very inadequate 
 notion of the original dimensions can be obtained 
 from the stuffed specimen. Mr Buckland, in his 
 notice of the fish in " Land and Water," says : 
 " The pike arrived by the limited mail in perfect 
 condition. She is one of the handsomest fish I 
 ever saw. The tiger-like, dark chocolate markings 
 are beautifully seen. She is full of roe, the total 
 weight of which is twenty-one ounces. By weigh- 
 ing a series of separate grains, and averaging the 
 result, I find the total number of eggs in this one 
 fish is 292,320." 
 
 FLY-FISHING. 
 
 Fly-fishing for pike sounds somehow like a con- 
 tradiction in terms. Flies for jack seem something 
 like Mr Bumble's cheese for the sick pauper, or 
 the economical Lady Bountiful's Soyer-soup at 
 three farthings a quart. We have, however, taken 
 jack under a pound weight, certainly, but still 
 jack both with the May-fly and the March brown. 
 
FLY-FISHING FOR PIKE. &5 
 
 We need hardly say that in both cases we were 
 fishing for trout, but the fish took the fly and was 
 taken. 
 
 We have, however, little doubt that the so-called 
 fly used in fishing for pike is taken by that vora- 
 cious monster for a newly-hatched moor-hen, dab- 
 chick, or duck, for which he has a decided pre- 
 dilection, clearing off, one by one, a whole brood of 
 the twittering, unconscious, helpless victims. No 
 doubt the increase of water-fowl is greatly kept in 
 check by the ravages of the pike. No sooner is a 
 brood launched upon the waves of life, and of their 
 native element, than, by some telegraphic means 
 of which we are ignorant, the fact seems to be 
 communicated to the biggest jack in the neigh- 
 bourhood, who immediately commences " decimat- 
 ing" them after an Irish fashion, that is, by eating 
 nine out of ten of the downy morsels. 
 
 Fly-fishing, as it is styled, for jack, is, however, a 
 very artistic and sportsman-like mode of capturing 
 him. There is much skill required in playing the 
 lure, and the fish, with a single moderate-sized 
 hook slightly struck into his hard jaw, shows more 
 sport, and enjoys a better chance of escape, than 
 under any other circumstances. The method is 
 very little understood or practised ; indeed, except 
 in stews and still lakes, where the fish is abundant 
 
86 FLY-FISHING FOR PIKE. 
 
 and the bait scarce, it would be ineffective. I 
 therefore give it by no means the prominence it 
 would otherwise deserve. The original inventor, if 
 I may so style it, of the system, was I think Lord 
 Gage, who has practised it successfully for upwards 
 of thirty years in the large pieces of artificial water 
 in his park at Firle, near Lewes, out of which 
 water I have myself taken with the fly fish of 
 fifteen pounds weight. Perhaps the most success- 
 ful fisher in this line is Mr Hayes of Hertingford- 
 bury, near Hatfield, who kills from eighty to one 
 hundred fish a year. His flies, if flies they can 
 be called, are composed almost exclusively of the 
 gray feathers taken from beneath the mallard's 
 wing. A thin silver twist is wound round the body 
 to attract the attention of the fish, and the head 
 is indifferently black, red, or blue. In addition to 
 the large salmon-hook generally employed, a 
 smaller one is tied under the feathers on the 
 same plane, but on the opposite side, and is 
 doubtless very effective. So far from dressing the 
 fly in a fashion to make it swim truly, a great 
 desideratum in salmon-flies, Mr Hayes makes a 
 slight bend in the tail to cause a " wobble " when it 
 is drawn through the water, so as to resemble as 
 nearly as possible the action of a newly-born 
 aquatic bird. The rod required for this sport is 
 
FLY-FISHING POR PIKE. 87 
 
 the same as that used for salmon-fishing, but 
 rather more than ordinarily stiff. Fine gimp must 
 be attached in lieu of the gut casting-line, or the 
 fish will nip it in twain with his sharp teeth, as a 
 sempstress bites her thread. 
 
 The pike is classed by Yarrell as the chief of 
 the family of " Esocida" which numbers among 
 its members the flying-fish. It is the " Esox 
 Lucius" of Linnaeus, the "picked!!" of ancient 
 writers. The family is tolerably old, being noticed 
 by various writers as early as the reign of Richard 
 II. When in condition, the pike may be con- 
 sidered a handsome fish; and being bold and fear- 
 less of close examination, is liked in ornamental 
 waters; but there is something savage and un- 
 pleasing in its aspect. The single dorsal fin is 
 placed very far back, near the tail, and is of large 
 size and immense power. To their united action 
 is due the wonderful rapidity with which the fish 
 moves through the water when in pursuit of its 
 prey or escaping from danger. 
 
II. 
 
 THE TROUT. 
 
 I CONFESS to approaching the subject of trout- 
 fishing "trouting," as it is generally called in 
 the North with considerable diffidence. So much 
 has been written on the subject, and so well 
 written, that it seems a work of supererogation 
 to add to the quantity ; but a fishing-book con- 
 taining no chapter upon trout-fishing would be 
 " Hamlet " with the part of Hamlet left out ; and 
 I therefore, as in previous chapters, ofTer to the 
 young angler the results of my own experience and 
 observation for just what they may be worth. 
 
 When I commenced writing the present volume, 
 I determined not to " read up," to consult no 
 authorities, and to record no experiences except 
 my own ; this on no principle of vanity, or sup- 
 posing that I could learn nothing, but from a 
 
THE TROUT. 89 
 
 desire of avoiding repetition of truisms, or the 
 promulgation of erroneous dogmas vouched for 
 by recognised authorities. I have observed, in all 
 books of Natural History, the great mischief which 
 arises from the system of " reading up." Naturalists 
 are not infallible, however scientific, accurate, and 
 observant they may generally be ; and if one in 
 good repute make a mistake and I never read a 
 book on the subject without detecting many 
 every subsequent writer adopts, and so per- 
 petuates it. 
 
 The only two books on the subject of fishing 
 that have come under my notice for many years 
 are Walton's " Complete Angler " and Stewart's 
 " Practical Angler." From the former I am free 
 to confess I have derived neither pleasure nor 
 profit. There is no doubt but that in his day the 
 worthy citizen was an excellent angler; he was 
 also a simple-minded, kindly, prosy, and very 
 vain old gentlewoman ; but he lived in days when 
 coaches travelled at the rate of five miles an hour, 
 and Izaak Walton must even then have been con- 
 sidered a very slow coach indeed. I would not 
 whisper it at the "Walton's Head" or the "Wal- 
 ton's Arms," or hint it at the "Jolly Anglers" or 
 the " Rest," or any other resort of his so-called 
 disciples, but to my readers I will impart my 
 
90 THE TROUT. 
 
 private conviction that there is now at least little 
 practically to be learnt from Izaak Walton's 
 " Complete Angler," and that the reading of it 
 is rather heavy work than otherwise. 
 
 Mr Stewart's admirable little book is of a dif- 
 ferent stamp. I am convinced that a more skilful 
 angler than Mr Stewart does not exist. He has 
 probably killed a hundred trout where I have 
 killed one, and in a day's fishing would give me 
 a start till lunch-time and then beat me. With 
 this firm conviction, I shall still venture to recom- 
 mend to my readers an entirely opposite mode of 
 fishing to that so ably advocated by that gentle- 
 man. 
 
 Before discussing the subject, I will record only 
 to show the extreme divergence of opinion that 
 existed, and probably still exists, among writers on 
 the subject of angling a few random notes which 
 I accidentally stumbled upon in an old memoran- 
 dum-book, and which I had extracted from various 
 authors some thirty years ago, when I first be- 
 came a follower of the " gentle art." Here they 
 are : 
 
 "Rods. A rod cannot be too stiff; it is impossible to 
 throw a line lightly, or at all against the wind, with a pliable 
 rod." 
 
 " Purchase your rod in Ireland ; they are always pliable, 
 
THE TROUT. 91 
 
 and play from the butt : no fisherman will condescend to use 
 
 a stiff rod." 
 
 "Flies. The colour of your fly must be adapted to that of 
 
 the water a dark fly for dark water, a bright fly for bright 
 
 water." 
 
 " It is useless fishing in dark water with a dark fly." 
 "The brighter the water, the darker the fly, and vice 
 
 versa!' 
 
 "In trout-fishing three or four flies should be used." 
 
 " No fly-fisher requires more than one or two flies on his 
 
 cast.' 1 
 
 " Reels. A multiplying reel is indispensable in fly-fishing." 
 " A multiplying reel is a mockery and a snare ; it is sure 
 
 to fail you at the pinch." 
 
 I cordially assent to this last dogma; but I have 
 merely selected the above, from some dozens more 
 or less contradictory, to show how widely really 
 practical men differ in their opinions on the most 
 essential points, and to justify my offering advice 
 founded exclusively on the results of my own ex- 
 perience and practice. 
 
 With regard to rods, I very much prefer a light, 
 rather long, pliable one, one that plays nearly 
 down to the grasp, an Irish rod, in short; and my 
 favourite maker is Kelly of Dublin. No doubt a 
 rod of this description is bad to throw against 
 wind ; but I hate throwing against wind, and I 
 never do so if I can possibly help it ; the necessity 
 is of rarest occurrence. Mr Stewart, the great 
 
92 THE TROUT. 
 
 advocate for stiff rods, urges that the strike is so 
 much more quickly made than with a springy one. 
 I have never experienced any failure from want of 
 rapidity in striking, and when a fish is struck, 
 though you cannot haul him out of water by the 
 hair of his head, as it were, you are very much 
 less likely to lose him ; and the sport shown by a 
 fish hooked with a springy rod is far greater than 
 when a stiff one is used. To fish up-stream is 
 Mr Stewart's grand specific for sport ; and in slug- 
 gish streams, with the wind blowing up, no doubt 
 it is the true way to fill your basket, and should, 
 where practicable, be adopted. I once found myself 
 fishing in a Hampshire stream of this description. 
 The water was not only sluggish but very dirty. I 
 had one side only, and three gentlemen were fish- 
 ing the other. They fished down-stream and killed 
 three fish; I fished up-stream and killed ten. 
 
 Most trout streams, however, run rapidly ; and it 
 is to me more of a toil than a pleasure to keep 
 perpetually whipping, while your flies are returned 
 almost instantaneously, and, unless you are very 
 expert, occasionally in a state of entanglement. 
 In worm-fishing, no doubt the up-stream fashion 
 is very much the most killing; and as you fish with 
 but one hook and a short line, the objections I 
 have referred to do not apply ; but I hate (I won't 
 
THE TROUT. 93 
 
 say despise ; for no one has a right to despise a 
 mode adopted and much esteemed by others) I 
 hate worm-fishing for trout. There is something 
 refined and poetical about trouting which is hardly 
 in unison with an impaled worm. The play shown 
 by a fish thus hooked is very inferior, as the bait 
 is generally swallowed, and your pull is from the 
 gullet at best, instead of the hard palate or bony, 
 unsensitive lip. All fishermen who fish for their 
 livelihood, and not for sport, adopt this killing, 
 and, to my mind, less sportsman-like method. 
 However, there are times of drought and flood, 
 and times of the year when the fly is worthless as 
 a lure, and there are streams so small in their 
 dimensions as to preclude its use. In such cases, 
 the worms may be fairly used. Scour them 
 thoroughly. This is best done in clean, dampish 
 moss, changed daily for four or five days, always 
 pressing it tightly, and placing the worms at the 
 top. They will squeeze themselves through to the 
 bottom of the vessel, and in so doing, get rid of 
 the earthly aliment always present in them when 
 freshly dug. Use a No. 8 hook, and unless the 
 water is very fine, tolerably strong tackle. A 
 single shot, three or four inches above the hook, 
 will sink it and cause the bait to play. Your rod 
 is short and stiff. Walk up the stream, and throw 
 
94 THE TROUT. 
 
 a very short line a few feet before you, allowing 
 the bait to fall back with the stream into every 
 little hole or eddy caused by a sudden turn or a 
 submerged stone. When conscious of a bite, allow 
 a short time to elapse before striking ; and though 
 you may not have much sport, you will catch 
 plenty of fish. 
 
 The best months for trouting with the fly are 
 April and May, or, in some waters, May and June.* 
 When the May-fly goes down, about the middle or 
 end of June, the trout are fat, shy, and lazy. They 
 come on to the feed again in the autumn, and, 
 though the fish then taken are undoubtedly smaller, 
 as heavy a basket may be made in the Northern 
 streams with the fly in September, as in any month 
 of the year. 
 
 The best days for trout-fishing are cloudy, breezy, 
 and warm, the water slightly coloured from recent 
 rains, but not swollen ; and if, having these advan- 
 tages, the glass is rising, and really there are trout 
 in the water, it is your own fault if you do not 
 catch them. 
 
 Fishing-tackle makers and fishing-books, which 
 are generally written in their interest, provide a 
 change of flies for every month in the year, and 
 
 * Worm-fishing begins in July, and may be advantageously car- 
 ried on to the end of the season. 
 
THE TROUT. 95 
 
 almost for every day in the month ; but the best 
 trouters I have ever known carry but few varieties 
 in their books, and are generally chary of changing 
 their cast, even though the fish decline taking as 
 readily as might be wished. Of course, I do not 
 mean that one fly, like one Irishman, is as good 
 as another, "or better;" but I think that, with 
 one or two exceptions, where nature can be closely 
 imitated, the March brown, the red ant, the stone 
 fly, the gray and green drake, the black and brown 
 palmers, for instance, size and colour have more 
 to do with the question of taking than anything 
 else has. There are some flies which fish in cer- 
 tain rivers affect, but which are almost useless else- 
 where. I have never killed trout in any Southern 
 stream with the little " white-tip," so famous on 
 Tweed, and I believe that neither the " governor " 
 nor the " coachman " are of much avail out of the 
 Southern and Midland Counties. My object is 
 not, however, to go into detail on this or any other 
 branch of my subject. I advise my readers to 
 provide good store of the flies I have named as 
 standard flies, and trust to local experience and 
 the advice of friends in filling up the spaces of 
 their book as occasion arises. 
 
 In fishing for trout, it is essential to keep as far 
 from the bank as you reasonably can, and never to 
 
96 THE TROUT. 
 
 allow your shadow to fall on the water. Shadows 
 terrify fish even more than they did the Third 
 Richard on the eve of battle ; and though fishes 
 are supposed I think proved to be incapable of 
 hearing, in the ordinary sense, I am convinced that 
 the quieter you are, the better your chances. 
 Although unfurnished with ears, fish are singularly 
 sensitive, and may be perfectly conscious of the 
 vibration of the air caused by sound, though not 
 striking on a tympanum. 
 
 The wind being to your back, or on your quarter, 
 commence (fishermen, I know not why, always 
 use the term " commence " for " begin ") com- 
 mence fishing at the head of the pool or rapid ; 
 throw a short line at first, and cover the ground 
 nearest to you, gradually lengthening your throw 
 as you proceed, but never letting out more line 
 than you can perfectly well manage. If loose in 
 the water, you cannot strike rapidly ; and though 
 a fish may hastily mistake a sham for a real fly, 
 he speedily finds out the mistake, and before you 
 can get the line taut, as it ought to have been at 
 first, has spit it out contemptuously three feet 
 from him. The fall of the fly on the water is the 
 most killing moment, and you must, therefore, 
 be careful that thejfy touches the water first. A 
 yard or two of line flopping in the water is apt to 
 
THE TROUT. 97 
 
 scare the fish, and take off his attention from the 
 falling fly, though he may not connect the two 
 together in his own mind. Under the bank is 
 generally the most likely lie for a trout ; but there 
 is no absolute necessity for him to choose the 
 opposite one.* If the further bank be beyond 
 reach, content yourself with fishing under the one 
 on which you stand, which you may do cleverly by 
 throwing a little short of the centre of the stream, 
 and working the cast round. A tremulous motion 
 imparted to the stretcher as it falls on the water 
 is decidedly captivating ; but the killing movement 
 is that which, without dragging, impels the fly 
 along the water in a more or less gliding fashion, 
 stopping at intervals as water-insects do. The 
 stretcher, by the way, is the end fly, and gene- 
 rally the largest, the more readily to retain its 
 precedence ; the others are called " droppers," and 
 when two or more are used, should be fastened by 
 a small loop to the casting line, five and three, or 
 eight, six, and three feet from the stretcher. If 
 your cast be composed of flies of the same size, fix 
 the most likely one as a stretcher the chances are 
 three to one in favour of its first attracting the 
 
 * An angler, especially a young one, is apt to be bitten ripa 
 ulterioris amore^ and in straining after the distant shadow, neglect 
 the proximate substance. 
 
 7 
 
98 THE TROUT. 
 
 notice of the fish, and first impressions are, as 
 every one knows, all important. 
 
 In trouting from the bank, under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, a landing-net is not necessary the 
 largest fish may be coaxed on to a shelving bank 
 without difficulty, and if a lift be necessary, use 
 your hands, not the line. When wading, it is 
 different ; unless you are prepared to lead every 
 fish to the bank, which in broad streams is a sad 
 waste of time, a landing-net is indispensable. A 
 belt round the waist will be found very convenient 
 to stick the handle through, and if kept well be- 
 hind, will not be in the way. 
 
 Spinning the minnow is a deadly mode of 
 capturing trout, especially large trout. In the 
 Thames it is almost the only recognised method 
 of fishing, and many gentlemen among whom we 
 may mention Mr Gould, the naturalist, Mr Sachs, 
 and Mr Lukyn have attained marvellous skill in 
 the art of throwing and working the lure. A good- 
 Sized minnow is without doubt the most effective 
 bait ; but there are various imitations, such as 
 Ogden's "kill-devil" and "phantom" minnow, which 
 are almost as effective, and much less troublesome. 
 Whether a real or sham bait be used, the great 
 object is to make it spin truly ; the wobble, appar- 
 ently so seductive in the case of the pike, has the 
 
THE TROUT. 99 
 
 very opposite effect with the trout : your bait must 
 spin as evenly and truly as the worm of a screw. 
 A long cast is frequently necessary, and great 
 skill in the management of the bait when it falls 
 in the water is essential to insure success. A fish 
 once hooked, however, ought never to escape. 
 Your hooks are strong and numerous, your tackle, 
 though not coarse, capable of bearing any reason- 
 able strain ; and a Thames trout, though a strong 
 fish, and sometimes weighing from eight to 
 twelve pounds, does not display anything like the 
 generalship of a salmon when fighting for his 
 life. A few trout have lately been taken with 
 the fly in the Thames, but the prevalence of the 
 pike must ever, in spite of the praiseworthy 
 efforts of Mr Buckland and Mr Ponder, pre- 
 vent the Thames from becoming a good trout 
 river. 
 
 In the Tweed, the Esk, the Dee, or in any broad 
 wading river in Scotland or Wales, where good 
 trout abound, the fisherman should not only be 
 provided with his bait-kettle, duly immersed in 
 some cool, sequestered spot, but also with a small 
 can attached to the strap by which his landing- 
 net is suspended, such can containing six or eight 
 live minnows with which to rebait when necessary. 
 Trout will no doubt take a stale bait, a salted bait, 
 
ioo THE GRAYLING. 
 
 or a sham bait, but they have a decided predilec- 
 tion for a fresh one. 
 
 The trout, I need not say, is of the noble family 
 of " Salmo" and is distinguished as " Salmo fario" 
 Wide differences will be observed both in size, 
 shape, and colour in specimens taken from differ- 
 ent streams, lakes, and rivers. The weight varies 
 from a few ounces to ten or twelve pounds ; and 
 while some streams afford fish of handsome shape 
 and bright colours, others are inhabited by lanky, 
 dusky specimens, pale-fleshed and almost worthless 
 to eat. I consider that the great cause of these 
 differences is the food. Where that is plentiful 
 the fish grow and thrive ; where it is not, or there 
 are too many mouths to partake of it, they are, as 
 a natural result, lean and ill-favoured. No doubt, 
 however, there are many distinct species of trout 
 which have never yet been classed by the ichthy- 
 ologists. 
 
 THE GRAYLING. 
 
 The grayling (" Salmo thymallus ") is essentially 
 a monkish fish ; at least it is said to have been 
 introduced by the monks, who 
 
 " Made gude kail 
 On Fridays when they fasted." 
 
 And the legend is corroborated by the alleged fact 
 
THE GRAYLING. 101 
 
 of the fish being found in no streams but those on 
 the banks of which old monasteries stood. 
 
 I must remark that I do not recollect having my- 
 self met with grayling in Thames, or even Tweed. 
 
 The term " thymattus" is derived from a sup- 
 posed smell of thyme emitted by the fish when 
 first taken out of the water. I confess that, 
 though I have smelt with the nose of faith, I have 
 never been able to detect it. 
 
 " When cats is out," Sam Weller tells us, " fruit 
 is in." When trout are out of season and cease to 
 rise at the fly, grayling are in season and afford 
 most excellent sport. The mode of fishing is pre- 
 cisely the same as that adapted for trout, but the 
 flies should if possible be smaller and finer, and the 
 strike more instantaneous on the rise in fact, it is 
 impossible to strike too quickly. In deep clear 
 water the fish may be seen rising almost from the 
 bottom, and the moment you see him you must 
 strike, and when you strike you do so with a 
 tolerable certainty of hooking your fish. The 
 enormous back fin enables the grayling to rise with 
 a rapidity no other fish can : it shoots upwards, 
 seizes the fly, and descends in less time than the 
 motion of your hand can follow : the dive of the dab- 
 chick, which disappears at the flash of the gun, is 
 the only thing in nature which, within my ex- 
 
102 WHITE TROUT. 
 
 perience, equals the grayling's quickness ; strike 
 therefore, as I have said, at the rise. The grayling 
 comes into season in September, and may be fished 
 for throughout the winter months. The best 
 streams are the Derbyshire Wye and Derwent, 
 but it has been introduced into many others. As 
 a rule, it avoids the swift streams, and when intro- 
 duced into such is generally found to descend gradu- 
 ally lower and lower, until it finally disappears. 
 
 WHITE TROUT. 
 
 Whether the white trout " Salmo trutta" of 
 Linnaeus and of Yarrell be, as some naturalists 
 affirm, identical with the bull or gray trout " Salmo 
 eriox" it is not my purpose in this place to inquire. 
 I think not; I think that the fish are entirely 
 different, and that there are a great many distinct 
 species of trout which have not yet been classed 
 or described. There is the " sewin," for instance, 
 which may or may not be the grilse of the white 
 trout. I cannot believe it to be so ; if it were, why 
 should it be confined to Welsh rivers only ? There 
 is the " parr " " Salmo salmulus" which is so like 
 the young salmon as to be considered identical with 
 it, and which has very properly obtained legislative 
 protection in virtue of the similarity. There is a 
 
WHITE TROUT. 103 
 
 little barred fish, abundant in the Western Irish 
 lakes, which the natives call a "gub," the dimin- 
 utive of " gubberhorn," a term which I believe 
 means " little" in Erse, and is commonly applied 
 to a tricksy, semi-malignant spirit recognised by 
 the Irish peasant. These " gubs," which run from 
 an ounce to a quarter of a pound, are in number 
 numberless, and from their constantly rising at the 
 fly constitute a serious hindrance to white trout 
 fishing. They are yellow, well-shaped fish, with five 
 or six well-defined dusky marks across the back 
 and sides. I do not think that any naturalist has 
 as yet classed or named them, but I trust they 
 may find a place in the next work on the natural 
 history of fishes. 
 
 To resume the subject of white trout, I am con- 
 tent to follow Yarrell, and to consider it a distinct 
 fish, and fully entitled, by its various good qualities, 
 to the precedence over other trout apparently ex- 
 pressed by the affix " trutta^ Handsome in shape, 
 harmonious in colour, delicious to eat, a free riser, 
 and a sufficiently game fish, there is in my opinion 
 none that excels, none that equals, the white trout 
 in the qualities most desired in a fish ; and I hold 
 that a good day's white trout fishing in one of the 
 western Irish lakes is about as enjoyable as any- 
 thing that falls to man's lot in this weary world. 
 
104 WHITE TROUT. 
 
 I have said that the white trout is sufficiently 
 game ; by that, I mean that he gives most excel- 
 lent sport, running out many yards of line, jump- 
 ing out of the water three or four times in succes- 
 sion, to such a height as to bring your heart into 
 your mouth, and try all your skill, dashing hither 
 and thither, sometimes round the boat, sometimes 
 under it, but never sulking, never attempting to cut 
 the line or rub the hook out of its mouth, or take 
 any other unfair advantage of the honest angler, 
 but, when fairly beaten, admitting the fact, and 
 coming into the net without useless resistance. 
 
 The best days for white trout fishing are rough, 
 stormy ones, the rougher and stormier indeed the 
 better. I have been out when four strong men 
 could with difficulty keep the boat's head to the 
 wind, or prevent her drifting bodily on to a lee- 
 shore ; but there is comparatively little art in 
 killing fish in such weather, they are certain to 
 hook themselves, and neither coarse tackle nor 
 rough flies will materially prejudice your sport. 
 When tlie sun shines bright, and the water is clear, 
 and the weather calm, it is a different thing alto- 
 gether ; fine tackle and good throwing are abso- 
 lutely essential ; and the longer the cast, the finer 
 the tackle, and the softer the fall of the fly on the 
 water, the better the result. 
 
WHITE TROUT. 105 
 
 I consider a limber, springy rod quite necessary; 
 the wild jumps of the fish are rendered ineffectual 
 by the give-and-take action of the elastic rod ; and 
 when, as is frequently the case, the fish rushes 
 under the boat, you have only to let the point 
 descend well into the water, and passing under the 
 keel renew its position on the other side. 
 
 White trout fishing is generally practised with 
 two rods in the boat, one at each end ; the boat is 
 rowed up-wind,and allowed to drift back over the 
 favourite spots, "broadside on." Various flies are 
 used on different lakes, the size and colour de- 
 pending upon the state of the water ; but whatever 
 the fly, it should never be without a piece of gold 
 or silver twist round the body the latter for choice. 
 The mode of playing is to draw it rather rapidly 
 towards the end of the boat from which you are 
 fishing, but quite clear of it. It is scarcely possible 
 to strike too quickly at a rise. 
 
 A fresh-run white trout, cooked within a few hours 
 of its capture, is about as delicious a dish as can be 
 set before an epicure. Those who purchase salmon- 
 trout from their fishmonger in London have very 
 little notion of what the fish was when first taken. 
 
 The best white trout fishing in the United 
 Kingdom perhaps in the world is to be found 
 in the West of Ireland. It was there that, in direct 
 
io6 WHITE TROUT. 
 
 opposition to the views of better and more experi- 
 enced fishermen than myself, I established, to my 
 own satisfaction at least, the principle of fine 
 fishing for white trout. I had arrived at one of 
 the most beautiful and most hospitable dwellings 
 in that beautiful and hospitable country, one 
 lovely morning in August. I had been travelling 
 all night and all the preceding day, but there is 
 nothing more refreshing after & long journey than 
 a day's fishing, especially if not of a fatiguing 
 nature. Lake-fishing is always easy, at least 
 to the principal parties concerned ; though the 
 boatmen in that stormy district often have a hard 
 time of it. I have known four strong men, pull- 
 ing with all their might, occupy two hours in 
 getting to the head of a lake not two miles distant, 
 and scarcely then attain their object. Such was 
 not the case on the occasion I refer to. The sur- 
 face of the lake was smooth as a mill-pond ; the 
 mountains, which formed a natural wall a thousand 
 feet in height, against which the waters rested, 
 and which, for aught I know, sustained them to 
 an equal depth below, the red berries of the rowan, 
 and the white fleeces of the sheep which fed, in 
 some miraculous manner, along the almost per- 
 pendicular face of the rock, reflected as in a mirror. 
 Fishing was pronounced to be out of the question, 
 
WHITE TROUT. 107 
 
 a delusion, an absurdity, a mockery; but I had tra- 
 velled six hundred miles to fish, and fish I would, 
 though offered all sorts of apparently more feasible 
 outlets for the destructive energy which Cobbett 
 declares, not without truth, to be the distinctive 
 mark of all English country gentlemen. " Come, 
 let us go forth," says my host after breakfast, 
 " and see which of God's creatures we can slay !" 
 Rabbit-shooting, sea-fishing, seal-shooting, flap- 
 per-hunting, grouse-shooting, even goat-stalking 
 (for there is a wild breed of goats which inhabit 
 those mountains, active as chamois, and difficult to 
 approach as red-deer), were in vain suggested and 
 in turn rejected. In the end I had my way, and, 
 like " the swans on sweet St Mary's lake/' we 
 floated double on the surface of ours, "boat and 
 shadow/' With a light, springy rod, a fine line, 
 and a London-made bottom scarce thicker than a 
 hair, I commenced fishing, and, to the surprise of 
 my companions, shortly rose and hooked a good 
 fish. There were better fishermen than myself 
 in the boat, but their tackle was comparatively 
 coarse, and I think that I am within the mark 
 when I say that I caught two fish to their one. 
 In the course of the day we killed full thirty white 
 trout, and the merits of fine fishing have ever since 
 been recognised in those pleasant quarters. 
 
io8 THE SALMON. 
 
 THE SALMON. 
 
 " How you, who are so fond of hunting, can have 
 patience for fishing!" is a remark that has fre- 
 quently been made to me. " Fish ? No ! I have 
 not patience for fishing/' is a remark I have often 
 heard. What, then ! is patience, not the least 
 among the cardinal virtues, sunk so low in modern 
 estimation that its possession is rather deemed 
 derogatory than otherwise ? But patience alone, 
 highly as we prize the virtue, will not make a 
 fisherman, far less a fisher of salmon. Have you 
 a quick eye, a light hand, a strong arm, a swift 
 foot ? above all, have you strong nerves and a cool 
 head ? Have you skill to throw a long, light line, 
 and coolness to stand on a slippery rock to do it ? 
 Is your wind all right, and does your pulse beat 
 true time ? All these physical qualities will find 
 ample scope in salmon-fishing, and without them 
 do not hope to excel. I remember, years since, 
 
 "When my limbs were strong and my courage was high," 
 
 going forth with my rod one close, hot day in Sep- 
 tember, to a favourite pool in the Owen Duff, in 
 Ballycroy at that time my own property from 
 mouth to source to throw a fly for the last time 
 
THE SALMON. 109 
 
 that season. It was because I was bound to leave 
 the same evening that I went out ; a more hopeless 
 attempt was never made. The sun was bright, 
 there was " no wind in the air," it was a' breathless 
 calm ; the heavy rain of the previous night had 
 swollen the river, and it was at the time coming 
 down in a dark flood, level, and sometimes over 
 the banks. However, as it was my last day, I was 
 determined to throw a fly, though but for the 
 pleasure of throwing it. Walking up to the 
 Greensod Pool, I commenced operations. My fly 
 was an Inch-y-quin of the largest size, as is fitting 
 in heavy waters, and there are few, if any, more 
 killing flies on the Western Irish waters. Kelly, of 
 Dublin, ties it admirably, and old Mr Lees, of sport- 
 ing and post-office celebrity, never fished with any 
 other. " Commencing," as both Irish and Scotch 
 fishermen term it, at the tail of the rapid which 
 feeds the pool, I threw a long line well over. At 
 the first cast there was a palpable break in the 
 water. Could it be a fish ? In such a state of 
 things I could not believe it possible ; it must have 
 been a piece of floating bog-wood, or a mass of 
 turf torn from the bank, and hurried down the 
 boiling stream ! Again I threw, and the fly floated 
 with the stream a few feet above the spot where 
 the break, if break it was, had been. There was 
 
no THE SA LMON. 
 
 no mistake this time, the dorsal fin and several 
 inches of the back of a monstrous fish were plainly 
 visible above the surface of the dark water. My 
 heart was in my mouth, but I had recourse to the 
 old formula, which ought to be present to every 
 salmon-fisher's mind one, he comes up! two, he 
 goes down! three, I strike! I did so, perhaps more 
 forcibly than was altogether safe or necessary : it 
 is curious how little force, if properly applied, is 
 required to fix the hook. I struck with effect ; 
 and in another second I was dashing along the 
 rough, flooded, dangerous bank at the speed 
 of a foxchase after my destined prey. No 
 time for thought or pause no chance of picking 
 footsteps or choosing my course. The stream was 
 running ten miles an hour, and the fish appeared 
 to resign himself entirely to it ; sometimes rolling 
 over, sometimes sailing almost on the surface, 
 sometimes diving to the depths below, he carried 
 on directly towards the sea, from whence no doubt 
 he had travelled that very morning ; fortunately, 
 my line at the first cast was not of any great length, 
 and the fifty yards in reserve constituted a handi- 
 cap in the unequal race ; but every nerve was 
 strained to the utmost to prevent a breakage, 
 which wjDuld inevitably have occurred had I failed 
 for a moment in wind or speed. A ditch, some 
 
THE SALMON. in 
 
 fourteen feet wide, full to the brim, intersected my 
 path. " Run round, Jemmy, and give me a help 
 on the other side ! " Jemmy did so, and in his 
 excitement offered me, as I jumped, the sharp end 
 of the gaff the gaff itself, in fact, instead of the 
 handle. I sprang over, and avoiding the proffered 
 aid (?), was safely lugged up the opposite bank by 
 my faithful but confused attendant. A terrible 
 moment of suspense ensued. In the jump I had 
 necessarily slackened the line ; had the fish es- 
 caped ? . For a moment my heart sank within me, 
 but throwing the butt of the rod well forward and 
 rapidly winding up the line, I found, to my intense 
 joy, that the fish was still firmly hooked. We 
 were now in Pwlgarrow, and for the first time I 
 got a real pull at him. The broad, deep water 
 apparently suggested a change of tactics ; and 
 after swimming for a few minutes up and down, 
 the fish sought the depths below, and rested like a 
 log at the bottom, with the weight of thirty feet of 
 water upon him. Meanwhile, with my arms fully 
 employed, and almost altogether held high above 
 my head, I was exposed to the attacks of myriads 
 of midges, and troops of horse-flies. The air, as I 
 have said, was still, sultry, and oppressive ; and 
 surely the fox in the fable, or the carrier at Gads- 
 hill, was never better bitten or stung. I suffered 
 
ii2 THE SALMON. 
 
 terribly. The fish lay like a log, or rather a rock, 
 at the bottom : how to move him was the point. I 
 then tried for the first time what I believe to be 
 the only available "tactic" under such circum- 
 stances. Lowering the point of my rod until it 
 touched, nay entered the water, I kept up a long, 
 strong, steady, continuous pull at the full tension 
 which my tackle would bear, in a direction almost 
 at a right angle with the line of the fish, as he lay 
 with his head up-stream. The effect, though it 
 was some time before it became apparent, was, 
 no doubt, to cause him considerable difficulty in 
 holding his position ; gradually, and by slow 
 degrees, he would attempt to ease the strain upon 
 him, slightly turning his head in the direction of 
 the pull. As in all temptations, the first downward 
 step was a stride on the road to ruin. The large 
 surface of his side exposed obliquely, in however 
 small a degree, to the force of the stream, rendered 
 the position untenable, and in half a minute more 
 he was careering through Mr Lee's then new pool, 
 and running his headlong race seaward. There is 
 a gorge not far below, through which the water 
 hurries at great speed, the bank on one side 
 shelving abruptly down to the rocky edge. Here 
 Jemmy, well knowing that the salmon would pass 
 down the rapid at a comparatively slow pace, and, 
 
THE SA LMON. 113 
 
 of necessity, close to the shore, had stationed him- 
 self in advance, the ready gaff, already plunged 
 into the water, in his hand. As the fish passed, 
 Jemmy, standing knee-deep in the stream, struck 
 him well and fairly, and, half overpowered with his 
 weight and the strength of the stream, struggled 
 manfully ashore, landing him at my feet with a 
 triumphant yell that might have graced the victor 
 in a faction-fight. The salmon weighed full twenty 
 pounds. I overheard Jemmy subsequently giving 
 a detail of the exploit to a brother fisherman ; his 
 narrative was more poetic, but less accurate, than 
 my own. "The weight was near thirty pounds. 
 The master, more power to him ! had run two miles 
 without stopping, barrin' the halt the skaming 
 vagabond" (not meaning the master) "had made 
 in Pwlgarrow; he'd surely have got to the say 
 itself," but for the prodigious acumen and won- 
 derful pluck of Jemmy himself; winding up with 
 "and when his honour saw the baste lying there, 
 and me atop of him, 'Jemmy, you blaggard/ 
 he says, 'that's the foinest gaff that ever was 
 made in or out of Ballycroy/ says he, 'and 
 there 's half-a-crown for ye!"' Whether the hint 
 was taken matters not to my readers, and I 
 must apologise for the egotistical character of 
 
 this episode; but I was anxious to show that 
 
 8 
 
1 14 THE SALMON'. 
 
 patience is not the only requisite in salmon- 
 fishing. 
 
 I have said that I greatly prefer a springy rod 
 to a stiff one. This, I know, is contrary to the 
 opinion of many good fishermen; and they say, 
 with truth, that with a springy rod it is impossible 
 to throw a long line against the wind. I answer, 
 like the lodger who met his friend's objection that 
 there wasn't room to swing a cat in his lodgings, by 
 saying he didn't want to swing a cat. I seldom want 
 to throw a long line, and never against the wind. 
 You may sail pretty close to it with such rods as I 
 use, made by Kelly of Dublin ; no better are made, 
 and their pliability is of enormous advantage in 
 such a race as I have just described, rushing madly 
 along over stock and stone, sometimes jumping, 
 sometimes scrambling, sometimes tumbling. It is 
 impossible with a stiff rod to keep that steady, 
 constant hold on the fish which maintains the grip 
 of the hook on the mouth, but the springy yield- 
 ing rod compensates, as it were, for all irregu- 
 larities, by its accommodating elasticity, and I 
 firmly believe, from its persistent, though no doubt 
 weaker strain, kills the fish in less time. I hate 
 the drivelling, tedious, delicate mode of handling 
 a fish practised by many no doubt good fishermen. 
 J read of men being four, five, or six hours killing 
 
THE SALMON. 1 1 5 
 
 their fish. Miss Lloyd was reported in " Land and 
 Water" to have had one on for, I think, twelve 
 hours, and it escaped after all. " The play is not 
 worth the candle." I have been an hour, nay 
 n'iQre, before I killed my fish, but that has been 
 under special circumstances. As a rule, little over a 
 minute to the pound is sufficient, just as a penny 
 a minute will, under ordinary circumstances, pay, 
 if it do not satisfy, a cabman. I know I ought to 
 kill more deliberately securidum artem^s Moliere's 
 doctors would say, but I am content to kill absque 
 morel. The largest fish I ever captured, he whose 
 antecedents are duly recorded in "The Auto- 
 biography of Salmo Salar " weighed thirty pounds, 
 and was gatfed within little more than forty-five 
 minutes from the time he was hooked. I killed 
 several fish last season from eighteen to twenty 
 pounds, and not one took more than twenty-five 
 minutes to kill, A fish, from the time he is 
 hooked, should never be allowed one second to 
 breathe, far less to collect his ideas and mature his 
 plans for escape. " Butt him, yer sowl ! " howls 
 Paddy; "Gie him the butt, mon 1" shouts Sandy; 
 " Stick to him, run with him, never let him rest," 
 say I. 
 
 The art and mystery of fly-tying is a great art 
 and a great mystery. You must "tie" something 
 
1 1 6 THE SA LMON. 
 
 which has no " correlative " existence in the 
 heavens above or in the earth beneath, or, which is 
 most to the point, in the waters under the earth, 
 and which, at the same time, must differ in no im- 
 portant requisite of motion, appearance, or colour 
 from things which really have existence. A 
 superstition long existed that salmon, during their 
 sojourn in fresh water, lived like the last victim to 
 incredulous science the Welsh fasting-girl with- 
 out food. The fact that unscrupulous fishermen 
 found a parr-tail, or half an eel, or a dollop of fat 
 worms, a most killing bait, rather shook the theory ; 
 and although there are some still credulous enough 
 to believe that their victim is seduced into toying 
 with the exquisitely-painted morsel they have pro- 
 vided for him out of sheer admiration for the 
 artistic merit displayed, just as there are some 
 very young men who believe that the bouncing 
 school-girl he sits next to really keeps up her 
 stamina on the tiny morsels she so daintily toys 
 with at the dinner-table, the notion is now ex- 
 ploded. The salmon is in truth a most greedy 
 feeder; his digestion, like his appetite, is very 
 active, and, in common with birds and beasts of 
 prey, when in difficulties, he ejects the food re- 
 cently swallowed ; hence the myth which no one 
 takes the trouble to verify or disprove, that no 
 
THE SALMON. 117 
 
 food is ever found in the stomach of the recently- 
 killed fish. What a salmon conceives an artificial 
 fly to be it is difficult to say, probably some 
 marine insect or embryo form he has been accus- 
 tomed to in the recently-quitted sea, or which his 
 instinct tells him he may expect to find in his new 
 quarters. The latter hypothesis explains to my 
 mind the superiority of one fly over another in 
 different waters ; there is no question but that 
 local flies, even of the roughest manufacture, are 
 far more effective than the most beautifully-tied 
 specimens which are used with deadly results in 
 other waters. Try, for instance, one of those gray 
 or red, rough, wingless, palmer-like monstrosities 
 (locally designated " grubs " and " scorpions ") 
 so deservedly popular on the Usk, try it on the 
 Spey, or the Tweed, or in fact on almost any 
 other river, and what will be the result ? I 
 venture to say you would never raise a fish ; and I 
 am bound to say that the best of my Tweed flies 
 have been treated on the Usk with a contempt they 
 hardly deserved. I doubt not that, were the insect 
 inhabitants of the different rivers captured and com- 
 pared, there would be found some striking points 
 of resemblance between the artificial flies and the 
 respective living creatures which they accidentally 
 simulate. My readers may object that the gaudy 
 
n8 THE SALMON. 
 
 feathers employed present a gorgeous spectacle 
 quite unlike the sober colours of the creatures 
 which inhabit the slimy depths of salt or fresh 
 water ; but they must remember that the confused 
 mass soaked in the water is totally different from the 
 bright hues with which, dry and finished, it comes 
 from the tyer's hands ; besides, except that of the 
 jay, which is always used in the breast, and the 
 golden pheasant, which generally somewhat pro- 
 trudes, the brightest feathers are on the back of 
 the fly, and, if it float properly, concealed from the 
 vision of the fish. For myself, I cannot tie a 
 fly I tried formerly, and partially succeeded, 
 but I can buy infinitely better ones at a very 
 moderate cost, and in general the fisherman on the 
 water will, for a trifling consideration, especially if 
 you are genial in manner and skilful in practice, 
 supply you with far better flies than the most 
 skilful amateur can produce, or money purchase. 
 Still, I by no means decry the art ; it is most 
 useful, and to those whose time is sufficiently at 
 their own command I strongly recommend the 
 acquirement of it. The best way is to take lessons 
 at one of the London or Dublin shops : the fee 
 is, I believe, generally a guinea. 
 
 To my mind, a knowledge of the size and per- 
 vading hue of the fly is much more important than 
 
THE SALMON. 119 
 
 the pattern, the size must be regulated by that of 
 the water, and the colour in a great degree by its 
 colour. Fish object to startling incongruities ; a 
 small fly is useless in a heavy water, and in a light 
 one a large fly only scares the fish ; small, bright 
 flies are essential in small, bright water, and large 
 flies, conspicuous with gold or silver twist, tell best 
 in heavy, dark water. 
 
 The number of flies to be used depends upon 
 circumstances. Mr Francis, in his comprehensive 
 work upon angling, published two years ago, 
 says, if I remember rightly, "two or three;" but 
 except in his valuable work, I never heard the 
 latter number suggested, or of their being used by 
 any salmon-fisher. In rivers like the Tweed, the 
 bank, on one side of which, at least, is shelving, 
 and generally free from rocks, and in lakes 
 clear of water-weed, two flies may sometimes 
 be used with advantage ; but I question whether 
 the disadvantages do not preponderate. Two 
 flies, no doubt, afford the opportunity of practi- 
 cally testing the questions what size and what 
 predominant colour is for the time being most 
 in accord with the fishes' capricious taste, and you 
 have, as it were, a double chance ; the extent of a 
 fish's vision must begin and end somewhere, and 
 one fly may be within while the other is beyond 
 
120 THE SALMON. 
 
 his ken. Two flies, again, are more likely to attract 
 his attention than one. On the other hand, if 
 there be a rock, or a weed, or a post, you are sure 
 to be hung up on it, in which case you inevitably 
 lose your fish. This you constantly do at the last 
 moment by the disengaged fly catching in the 
 landing-net, a weed, a twig, or the bank itself, up 
 which the fish is actually being raised. Again, it 
 not unfrequently happens that while you are most 
 artistically playing your fish on the stretcher, your 
 fish all unconsciously is as artistically, and with 
 equal effect, playing the dropper the result, the 
 hooking of a second fish of equal or larger size, 
 the two immediately commencing a wild round 
 dance, diversified with occasional antagonistic 
 tugs, and ending with breakage of tackle and the 
 escape of both. There is, however, sometimes an 
 advantage in fishing with two flies, which, though 
 it must come under the category of a " fluke," may 
 fairly be placed to the credit side, as may flukes in 
 skittles, croquet, or billiards. Without, therefore, 
 condemning the use of two flies, or altogether 
 ignoring their advantages on some occasions, I 
 advocate and practice the fishing with only one. 
 
 A fish foul-hooked, if small, affords capital sport. 
 I assume that most of my readers know that a fish 
 is foul-hooked when, by some chance, the barb 
 
THE SALMON. 121 
 
 has struck on the side, or the tail, or the fin. 
 If small, I say, a fish thus hooked shows 
 capital sport, but a large one has the odds too 
 much in his favour ; you may find in such case 
 that you have caught a tartar, one you cannot take 
 with you, one that will not let you go it is like 
 riding a pulling horse in a halter ; not only does 
 the fish experience no sense of pain (a fish's pain 
 under ordinary circumstances is probably but 
 slight), but you have no command over his move- 
 ments. Steering apparatus, to be effective, must act 
 either at stem or stern, but here your rudder is like 
 one fixed amidships, and operates as the weather- 
 board of a barge. The fish of course turns " broad- 
 side on" to the stream, and it would be no easy 
 matter to bring to land even a board or other in- 
 animate substance by means of a line so attached. 
 Add to this the liberty of breathing enjoyed by 
 the fish, the absence of interference with the free 
 play of his gills, and the odds in his favour may 
 be more readily conceived than calculated. 
 
 Under such circumstances a fish must of neces- 
 sity take a long time in killing ; but there must be 
 something essentially wrong in the system of fishing 
 when eight, ten, or even twelve hours are occupied, 
 which is not unfrequently the case, in the capture 
 of a single fish. 
 
122 THE SALMON. 
 
 I will transcribe for the benefit of my readers an 
 abridged account of the killing of a fish thus 
 hooked, with which my friend Mr Tyler favoured 
 
 me while fishing on the water, and which 
 
 shows the occasional advantage, before referred to, 
 of having two flies up. Mr Tyler, I should say, 
 although a worthy, is essentially a prosy individual; 
 he tells stories of intolerable length, in which the 
 point bears the same proportion to the verbiage as 
 Mercutio's two grains of wheat did to the bushel of 
 chaff. Omitting incessant "I says" and "says he," 
 and much other surplusage, the narrative ran as 
 follows (I had been detailing the account, as re- 
 corded in "Land and Water," of Miss Lloyd's twelve 
 hours' struggle with a salmon): "I'll no say but 
 that if a beast be foul heukit he may gi'e an awfu' 
 deal of trouble an' tak' a deal of killin' ; but twa 
 hours ! hoo ! hoo ! ! it 's joost nonsense ! Did I 
 ever tell ye of a ploy I had on this varra pool wi' 
 one of those foul-heukit gentlemen ? (Let oot a 
 wee bittie mair line.) Weel, it was last spring ; I 
 wor oot at five o'clock, an* Duncan Gilroy the 
 precentor (that's line eneuch oot) had joost askit 
 to hae a throw for a fash (canny noo ! yon's a 
 grand \^\\: for a saumon) an' I allowed him. Weel, 
 he fashed the stream abune, an' he fashed the 
 pool doon to this varra stane we're noo on, an' 
 
THE SALMON 123 
 
 deil a fin he moved (yon wor a bad cast do it 
 again) so I said, ' Duncan, lad, gi'e me the wand 
 ye 're better at psalmody than saumon-fishing ;' so 
 I joost cast ower yonder big stane where the 
 whirlie is. (That was a grand cast, I 'm 'maist 
 sure ye rose him then bide a wee and try 
 that ane again.) Weel, he rose at the bob an' I 
 heukit him ; it wor a grand rise, an' I felt I had 
 him fast a big fash he was, an' clean run, an' 
 varra unaccommodatin' he showed himself, for deil 
 tak' him ! he wad gang na gait but his ain, an' 
 that aye the wrang ain. (There he came agen ! ye 
 didna touch him ; let me change the flee for ane a 
 wee bittie smaller, an' gi'e him time to turn him- 
 self round.) Aweel I had him on mebbe ten 
 minutes, an' he was beginning to come in, when 
 Duncan, who I 'm thinking was more handy wi' 
 the gaff than wi' the rod, stept into the water 
 an' tried to cleik him as he hung on the stream. 
 Weel, he joost missed him, an' the fash made a 
 dash doon-stream. I thocht he was clean lost 
 for gude an' a', but he wasna', he was on fast 
 eneuch; but siccan an' uncanny brute I never had 
 to deal with he was bad before he was ten times 
 worse now, an' it was twa good hours before 
 Duncan stuck the cleik intil him, an' then I found 
 that he had broken the bob out of his mouth, an! 
 
124 THE SALMON. 
 
 the tail fly had stuck into his gill as he made off. 
 Nae wonder he was strong, for he was aughteen 
 pund weight, clean run, an' I don't think that 
 ane of the kye yonder, heukit in the same manner, 
 could ha'e pulled much stronger. (Aye, mon ! ye 
 hae him noo /) " 
 
 We have storms in England, storms in London, 
 when umbrellas are turned inside out, old ladies 
 blown against the lamp-posts, and falling chimney- 
 pots make pious sailors thankful that they do not 
 exercise their calling on such a dangerous element 
 as the land ; but such storms as these are Zephyr's 
 play when compared with the storms that visit the 
 wild Western coast of Ireland : the waves of the 
 Atlantic come rolling in, each a mile or more in 
 length, and of an unknown altitude, dashing them- 
 selves against the everlasting rock with a force 
 which would be irresistible, were it not exerted 
 against the immovable, then resolving themselves 
 into harmless spray, flung five hundred feet into 
 the air, or forming huge balls of foam, which bound 
 across the country like boys' footballs forty times 
 magnified. Further inland the mighty wind, 
 divided but not conquered by opposing head- 
 lands, rushes down through gorge and valley in 
 impetuous blasts, the more dangerous that they 
 come from all sorts of unsuspected quarters and 
 
THE SALMON. 125 
 
 uncalculated directions, lashing the waters of the 
 lakes into no despicable resemblance to those of 
 the mighty ocean. I have known a heavy boat, 
 two or three tons weight, which had been laid keel 
 uppermost on the strand, lifted bodily into the air, 
 like one of Mr Home's mediums, and dashed down 
 two hundred feet off, breaking in its descent every 
 oaken rib in its body. I have known sheep blown 
 from the rock on which they were feeding and 
 drowned in the lake below. I have seen the waters 
 collected in the form of a wheel, whirled round and 
 carried upwards a hundred feet or more, and then 
 descend in a mass sufficient to swamp a boat. For 
 lake-fishing, especially salmon-fishing, the weather 
 cannot be too wild, the water cannot be too rough ; 
 and it was on one of the wildest and roughest of 
 days that my friend G. H., one of the best fishermen 
 who ever threw a fly, and myself, accompanied by 
 Captain H. as our Palinurus, embarked on the 
 " Black Lake." We had scarcely a mile to row to 
 our fishing-ground, but it was considerably over 
 an hour when we reached it. But for the excite- 
 ment, it would have been wearisome to mark the 
 bunch of heather or the black stone precisely 
 opposite to which, for some five minutes, despite 
 the strongest efforts of our men, we would pitch 
 and toss, apparently without gaining an inch 
 
126 THE SALMON. 
 
 There were odd points of rock which took longer 
 time to weather, the wonder being that we ever 
 got round them at all. 
 
 " It was by dint of passing strength, 
 We reach'd our fishing-ground at length." 
 
 The stern, the post of honour, was kindly and 
 considerately allotted to me. I do not think I 
 could have fished from the bow, as my more ac- 
 customed companion did ; besides which, I had the 
 benefit of the Captain's advice and Tom Roy's 
 comments. Tom is a character in his way : he loves 
 me because I bring him 'baccy, and will fish on 
 against all odds of wind and weather ; he adores 
 " Master George/' it was himself that taught " the 
 young idea" how to fish ; and he reveres "the 
 Captain " as the chief of all sportsmen. " Sit 
 down, yer honour, or ye '11 be tossed out of that 
 entirely ! Sit down, Master Gaarge, and don't 
 mind how ye play yer fly; sure it's the water 
 will do all the work and cost ye nothing. Master 
 Gaarge ! Master Gaarge !" with a yell, " he came 
 at ye then aisy now ! back all of ye ! BACK, I 
 say ! " No eye but that of a practised fisherman 
 could have seen the break in that wild waste of 
 waters, but Tom was right, and as, after about five 
 minutes' hardest pulling, we regained the spot from 
 whence we had drifted in about ten seconds, 
 
THE SALMON. 12 7 
 
 dued grunt of satisfaction told that a fish was 
 hooked. The Captain, so placid before, was all 
 excitement. " Pull out ! pull in ! pull away from 
 the rocks ! easy in the bow ! pull Mick ! pull 
 Tom ! " then to me, " Get your line in ! wind up ! 
 wind up, or you'll be entangled !" For once I did 
 not obey with that readiness which I generally 
 exhibit where orders are given the authority of 
 which I recognise. One more cast I could not 
 resist I made it, and I too was " stuck in a fish." 
 Then the wild excitement was at its height : the 
 salmon rushed hither and thither, the reels sung, 
 the lines ran out, the boat pitched and tossed more 
 madly than before, the Captain shouted/ the men 
 -hurraed and bent to their oars till they quivered 
 again, and the spray dashed over the bows in a 
 torrent. The fear of course was that in their reck- 
 less dance the fish, instead of harmlessly "pousset- 
 ting" to each other, should perform a " cJiasser 
 croiser" figure, hands across and back again, and 
 so double the lines one on another, and inevitably 
 escape. I confess that for a minute or more there 
 was not that unanimity of action or counsel which 
 ought to prevail in great emergencies. " Let him 
 run ! " shouted the Captain. " Howld him hard, 
 Master George!" screamed Tom, "give him line, 
 yer honour ! hold up your hand ! drop your point! 
 
128 THE SALMON. 
 
 you '11 lose him ! pull in to the rocks ! pull out 
 of the weeds ! aisy, or he '11 be under the boat ! 
 holy mother! but that was a great jump! pull 
 away now, he J s under the boat !" and amid half a 
 dozen other contradictory orders and cautions, we 
 were borne round a jutting rock, over which a 
 friendly ash stretched its light stem and enabled 
 my companion to obtain a secure hold on the 
 slippery rock. Leaving him to fight it fairly out 
 by himself, the boat's head was turned towards 
 the middle of the lake, and it was not till we were 
 a hundred yards from the shore, that, all chance of 
 entanglement being over, I breathed freely and 
 calmly set my wits and sinews to work in opposi- 
 tion to those of the deluded salmon. It were 
 tedious to narrate the various efforts of the fish to 
 escape. Once hooked in open water clear of weeds 
 and rocks, if the fish get off, the man must be a 
 muff; and in less than fifteen minutes from the 
 time we left the shore, a beautiful salmon of thirteen 
 pounds weight, well shaped and fresh run from the 
 sea, was gasping at the bottom of the boat. We 
 reached the shore just in time to gaff the other 
 fish, and that half hour lives in my memory " albo 
 lapide notata" 
 
 No treatise, however lucid or comprehensive, 
 can by any possibility, without practice, make a 
 
THE SALMON: 129 
 
 fisherman ; but the tiro will undoubtedly be better 
 able to profit by the lessons which he will at first 
 be perhaps somewhat roughly taught, if he bear in 
 mind some hints which I am endeavouring to im- 
 plant ; at any rate, he will not, or should not, be 
 entirely taken by surprise at the manoeuvres of a 
 hooked fish, if he has had patience to wade through 
 these pages. 
 
 There is nothing more wonderful in nature than 
 the similarity, nay, the identity, of the means 
 adopted, under similar circumstances, by all ani- 
 mals to escape the danger which immediately 
 threatens them. 
 
 " When the hound 's in the green wood, 
 
 The deer keeps the hill ; 
 When the gled's in the blue sky, 
 The laverock lies still." 
 
 When the mole disturbs the ground, the worm 
 rushes into the light of day ; when the hedgehog 
 is assailed, it curls itself up ; the squirrel, under 
 like circumstances, seeks the tree ; the rabbit, its 
 hole ; while the hare scuds across the country 
 trusting to show her pursuer a fair pair of heels. 
 These are the natural modes of escape from natu- 
 ral enemies ; but how is it that a salmon, nay, a 
 grilse, under similar circumstances, almost invari- 
 ably practises similar, and by no means simple, 
 
 9 
 
130 2 HE SALMON. 
 
 manoeuvres to escape from what must be considered 
 an artificial shape in which danger is presented, 
 and of which the creature can have no experience, 
 and those manoeuvres always admirably adapted 
 to the end in view ? One of the commonest and 
 most effective of these, especially when you are 
 fishing with a long line, is to run in directly towards 
 you, thereby loosening the line and gaining the 
 opportunity of shaking the hook out of its mouth. 
 You must, at any risk, at any sacrifice of dignity, 
 prevent this. Run backwards, throw the point of 
 your rod well behind you, wind up in mad haste, 
 do anything except pulling the line through the 
 rings with your hand, as practised in Thames 
 fishing. This may answer with a phlegmatic bar- 
 bel, or a sulky pike, but never with the astute, 
 vigorous salmon. Wind up ! wind up ! ! wind up ! ! ! 
 Your reel, if made as recommended, with an extra 
 large cylinder, will aid in this; but rapidity of 
 motion is the great point, and unless you succeed 
 in giving check by regaining a tight line, the fish 
 will assuredly checkmate you and be lost. A 
 lightly-hooked fish will invariably shake, flounder, 
 and jump repeatedly into the air : your effort must 
 be, by a light, firm, unswerving pressure, to fix the 
 hold, and in this your pliable rod will greatly 
 assist ; but nerve is everything. If you are fright- 
 
THE SALMON. 131 
 
 ened and it is no reflection on your courage to say 
 you may be not you, but the jumping fish is lost. 
 Another mode, equally efficacious, must have 
 been handed down traditionally from salmon to 
 smolt, or how should the latter, when he arrives at 
 salmon estate, practise it as though he had been 
 hooked every day of his life ? Rushing down- 
 stream, taking out fathoms of line too freely given, 
 the crafty savage returns on his tracks, swimming 
 deep down in the bed of the stream, and trusting 
 to the weight of the water to belly out the line and 
 leave the fisherman under the mistaken impression 
 that the intended victim is still pursuing a down- 
 ward course, the fish eventually brings such a strain 
 upon the line that either it or the rod, or perhaps 
 both, give way, and the finale is announced by 
 the bright vision of Salmo saliens some twenty 
 yards up-stream. To prevent this, you must ever 
 be chary of giving out line ; use your legs as well 
 as your arms ; keep as nearly opposite to your 
 fish as you can ; and when constrained to lend him 
 line, take it back with as much usury as your con- 
 science will allow. As in every other pursuit, well 
 begun is half done, and a fish well struck may be 
 said to be half killed. Striking is a delicate and 
 artistic movement, and, to be effective, must be 
 made with some degree of variation, according to 
 
132 THE SALMON. 
 
 time and place. As a rule, you can hardly strike 
 too lightly, and hardly strike too slowly. The for- 
 mula I have before enunciated One, he comes up ! 
 two, he goes down! three, you strike! is invaluable. 
 It is like Mr Jorrocks's specific, " counting twenty " 
 when a fox broke before he hallooed. More salmon, 
 we venture to say, are lost by too quick striking 
 than by any other error, and next to that, by too 
 hard striking ; a short, sharp turn of the wrist is 
 all that is required. If the hook has struck on a 
 reasonably soft part of the mouth, the barb of the 
 hook will be covered, and that is all that is requisite ; 
 if the point of the hook has struck upon an impene- 
 trable bone, the harder the blow, the more likely 
 it is to rebound innocuously. 
 
 In the autumn, when the fish run larger, and are 
 comparatively far more sluggish than in the sum- 
 mer, we hold striking to be entirely superfluous, 
 nay, mischievous. Fish deep, wait till you feel a 
 " tug, 57 and then tighten your line. Your fish has 
 hooked himself, and all you have to do is to kill 
 him if you can. It is usual, no doubt, to lay 
 down arbitrary rules respecting wind, water, and 
 weather, to be conscientiously observed by fish for 
 your especial gratification, but I have found them 
 remarkably and unjustifiably independent on all 
 these points. As in the case of scent, the longer a 
 
SALMON, 133 
 
 man hunts, the less he admits he knows about the 
 rules which govern it ; so, the longer he fishes, 
 the more readily he acknowledges his ignorance of 
 the moving causes which affect the fishes' inclina- 
 tions, or, as I contend, appetites. When the water 
 is low, bright, and clear, it is useless fishing with 
 a fly ; but I attribute this more to the impossibility 
 of concealing yourself and disguising your opera- 
 tions than to any other cause. Under such cir- 
 cumstances, salmon are frequently taken with a 
 great coarse lob--worm, at which a chub or a carp 
 would turn up his nose. The most favourable state 
 of the water for fishing is when the river is toler- 
 ably high, and neither rising nor falling rapidly, 
 coloured, but not too deeply, and cold rather than 
 warm. Soft winds, however essential in trout-fish- 
 ing, are by no means desirable when the salmon 
 is your object ; and I think the best sport I have 
 ever had has been with an easterly wind blowing. 
 Still, as I have said, there is no golden rule, and 
 your most experienced fisherman will be a better 
 judge of the appearances of water and weather 
 when he returns at night than when he went out 
 in the morning. 
 
 In a rocky stream, whether the rocks are sub- 
 merged or jut out from the bank, nothing is more 
 common than the loss of your fish from the casting- 
 
134 THE SALMON. 
 
 line being " cut" by the sharp edges against which 
 it is forcibly dragged. Not unfrequently, too, the 
 salmon will run round a rock which projects suffi- 
 ciently far into the water from the opposite side to 
 allow of his doing so, thereby getting a dead pull 
 at the line and breaking away. In such a case, 
 when you feel the strain on the line relax, 
 by no means give up the game as lost. Pass 
 over, or, better still, let your attendant pass over 
 to the other side, quietly release the line, and it 
 will not unfrequently happen that the fish is still 
 firmly attached to it ; he, too, has felt the relief 
 from the strain, and is quietly resting in fancied 
 security after what he considers a release from 
 unaccustomed and altogether incomprehensible 
 labour. It must not, however, be supposed that 
 all the salmon's manoeuvres are premeditated or 
 calculated as means to an end. We are apt to 
 refine too much, and to attribute, without due con- 
 sideration, reasoning motives to actions which ori- 
 ginate solely in an instinctive avoidance of danger. 
 A salmon runs your line against a sharp rock by 
 pure accident, and not from malice prepense, with 
 the express object of cutting it, although such 
 result undoubtedly ensues. He runs round a rock 
 because, terrified and excited, he knows not at the 
 moment whither he is rushing, and frequently stops 
 
THE SALMON. 135 
 
 the moment he has gained the other side. As I have 
 said before, his object seems to have been achieved, 
 because from the absence of the strain he vainly 
 assumes that it is so. In a rocky stream it is 
 always advisable to use triple gut next to the 
 hook, as though one strand may be cut, the others 
 will still hold ; but, as a rule, I hold twisted gut in 
 abomination, and invariably fish with three or four 
 round sound links next the fly, which will be found 
 strong enough, if properly handled, to land a shark. 
 I have elsewhere compared the running of a fish 
 with that of a fox, but the analogy would be more 
 perfect if compared with that of a horse that has 
 broken loose. A fox in a country full of small 
 coverts, lanes, and spinneys, runs short and dodges, 
 because he wisely expects thereby to bewilder his 
 pursuers. A salmon in a confined rocky stream 
 runs short and dodges about for the same reason 
 that a horse in a confined space runs short and 
 dodges about ; he is afraid of running against or 
 upon the opposing obstacles. Give the runaway 
 horse a free open plain, and he stretches away at 
 full speed ; give the salmon an extent of free open 
 water, and he will run you out all the line you will 
 permit, and frequently a great deal more than you 
 ought to permit ; indeed, the great secret in killing 
 a salmon is to restrict him as far as possible in the 
 
136 THE SALMON. 
 
 article of line ; hardly a manoeuvre he practises, "seu 
 ratio dederit seu sors objecerit" but is based upon 
 that fallacy too much line out. Of course there 
 are situations in which you have no alternative but 
 to trust to the effect of unlimited concession and 
 give unlimited rope, in the hope that the fish will 
 hang himself. You may be standing upon an iso- 
 lated, slippery rock you may be fishing upon one 
 side of an island when your fish perversely runs up 
 or down the other you may be unable to follow 
 him through the particular arch of a bridge he 
 affects; but all these contingencies must be endured 
 or met as they arise. I have said somewhere, in 
 talking of riding at a fence, that there are some 
 fences you must ride at slowly, some you must 
 ride at rapidly, but that there are none that you 
 should ride at with a loose rein. I had almost 
 said the same with regard to the line holding a 
 salmon, but there is a case in which a loose, nay 
 the loosest, line affords the best chance of killing 
 your fish ; this is when the pool in which you are 
 fishing empties itself by a rapid, perhaps impass- 
 able fall or torrent. At the very brink of this, on 
 the " torrent's smoothness ere it dash below," your 
 fish will frequently pause, hang motionless for 
 several seconds, uncertain whether he should bear 
 here above " those ills he has/' or seek below those 
 
THE SALMON. 137 
 
 "he knows not of." In the boiling water, the sharp 
 rocks, and the headlong fall, a breakage is almost 
 certain, and your mind is bent upon preventing it. 
 Now, salmon, in private life, doubtless, differ in 
 character and disposition ; but when in public, they 
 invariably manifest a decided objection to being 
 either led or driven, and if in any way they can 
 make out what you wish them to do, they won't 
 do it. When the fish is poised in the situation I 
 have described (recollect he always descends a 
 rapid tail-foremost), if you pay out your line 
 hastily and liberally, it will be carried by the 
 stream far behind him, and effect a very strong 
 pull in a downward direction. The fish takes the 
 hint and rushes upwards exactly as you desired ; 
 and if you give him an opportunity of retrieving 
 his error it is your own fault. Should your 
 manoeuvre fail, and he persist in his original 
 intention, the free line is all in your favour, as 
 he never gets that dead pull which, in the heavy 
 rapid water, must of necessity be fatal. 
 
 I cannot conclude this chapter better than by 
 giving a sketch of the natural history of the salmon, 
 a creature about which more has been written and 
 less is accurately known than almost any other. 
 
 The ova are deposited in their gravelly bed 
 during the winter months, principally November 
 
138 THE SALMON. 
 
 and December. They are hatched in about eighty 
 days, according to the temperature of the season. 
 Salmon occasionally spawn in the sea, but the eggs 
 are never hatched there ; not unfrequently in lakes, 
 but, except in those which fall and rise frequently 
 and rapidly, the eggs perish. The fry in its early 
 stage is barred, and improperly called a parr ; the 
 true parr " Salmo samulus " of Linnaeus, Yarrell, 
 and many other authors differs materially from 
 the "salmon parr/' but they are sufficiently like 
 for confusion ; and much confusion and much 
 bitter discussion have ensued from the two fish 
 being called by the same name. In the spring 
 of the following year the young fish assume a 
 silvery scale, and with the first May floods visit the 
 sea as smolts. Some remain for a year or upwards 
 in the salt water, but a large proportion return to 
 the fresh water in the same autumn, invariably 
 seeking the streams from which they went forth. 
 They are then called " grilse," or "peel," and run 
 from two to five and six pounds in weight. The 
 male salmon is called a kipper, the female a baggit, 
 after spawning both are called kelts. In this state 
 they are poor and out of condition, and terribly 
 voracious. They may be taken in any numbers by 
 any kind of bait, but are always bad food, and until 
 " weel mendit " show little sport. In Tweed, how- 
 
THE SALMON. 139 
 
 ever, and rivers where food is abundant, they appar- 
 ently recover their condition, and for a short time 
 before returning to the sea, which they continue 
 to do until the middle or end of May, they are as 
 strong and vigorous, and show as much sport, as a 
 fresh-run fish, frequently more. The kelts are pro- 
 tected by law, but oddly enough the baggits, though 
 on the eve of spawning, may be killed with impunity. 
 Next to poachers, who destroy the fish on the 
 spawning-beds, and the bad sportsmen, who kill 
 the female on her way thither, the worst enemies 
 the salmon has to contend with are of its own 
 race. The old kelts not only drive the young ones 
 away, but fight among themselves to the death, and 
 hundreds, nay thousands, float down the stream 
 dead from the spawning-beds every year. The 
 baggits have a clumsy knack of selecting their 
 beds where others have been before them, and a 
 very large proportion of the early-sown seed is 
 destroyed by being routed up to make room for 
 the later and less valuable deposit. The larvae of 
 dragonflies and other insects infest the spawning- 
 beds, and destroy vast quantities of eggs. I am 
 not aware of any other serious danger to the egg 
 than the above. It is true that both the common 
 and bull-trout devour them with avidity, and wait 
 in large numbers immediately below the spawning- 
 
140 THE SALMON. 
 
 beds for that purpose, but they can only operate 
 upon the light, unfecundated eggs which float 
 down, or such as have not been covered by the 
 gravel, or those which, after having been deposited, 
 are routed up again as before-mentioned, and none 
 of which could, by possibility, ever be hatched. 
 The greatest benefit that can be bestowed on a 
 river is the establishment of hatching-pools, to which 
 the ova may be removed, and out of which the 
 young are allowed to escape so soon as they have 
 absorbed the little sack of nutriment provided by 
 nature for their sustenance while in the baby state. 
 It is waste of time and money to keep them longer. 
 The amended legislation which, in my humble 
 opinion, is required to insure the enormous increase 
 of this invaluable fish would provide for the short- 
 ening of the annual close-time for rods, and the 
 lengthening of the weekly close-time for nets 
 twelve hours extra for the latter would make an 
 immense difference, and the closing of the netting- 
 season should vary according as the rivers are late 
 or early ones. (The fishery inspectors, however, 
 have so admirably argued this point, that I need 
 not insist upon it.) Rod-fishing, either for trout or 
 salmon, should be absolutely prohibited from the 
 end of November to the 1st of March ; no gaff 
 should be used after the 1st of September at latest ; 
 
THE SALMON. 141 
 
 and the barbed gaff, one of the most pernicious 
 poaching implements in use, should be absolutely 
 prohibited. Enlarged powers of entry on lands 
 and searching suspicious persons should be given 
 to water-bailiffs and keepers ; and if fine and 
 imprisonment were awarded to the purchaser as 
 well as to the vendor of fish killed out of season 
 to the receiver as well as to the thief we should 
 soon see our rivers, the impurities and obsta- 
 cles being removed, as well stocked with fish as 
 in the days when the mythical apprentice objected 
 to having salmon more than three times a week. 
 No salmon, excepting such as are demonstrably 
 imported from Holland or elsewhere, should be 
 allowed to be sold from 1st November to 1st 
 March ; after that date the sale might be free. 
 No doubt there are plenty of kelts in the river ; 
 but a well-mended kelt is in no respect unwhole- 
 some, and not one person in a thousand knows him 
 from a clean fish. It is absurd to legislate for 
 individuals, and the public would soon learn the 
 difference, though now in ignorance, and in the 
 meantime little harm would result from the destruc- 
 tion of a few tons of what are, after all, for the time, 
 barren fish. 
 
 THE END. 
 
"A Book for the Naturalist and Sportsman." 
 
 New Edition, Price $s., 
 
 FLOOD, FIELD, AND FOREST. 
 
 BY GEORGE ROOFER. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SALMO SALAR, ESQ. 
 II. A Fox's TALE. 
 
 III. BOLSOVER FOREST. 
 
 IV. THE BAGMAN. 
 
 f h e ; 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 "A small volume is here recommended, not only to the sportsman but to the 
 _ ineral reader, which while it deals with all field sports even with the rat and 
 the badger and deals with them all lovingly as things of beauty and joys for 
 ever, while it delights by the freshness of its story-telling, and ascends to high 
 pathos in its incidents, is replete with a knowledge which nothing short of a 
 life study can have given." Fortnightly Review. 
 
 " The contents of this volume are formed in part of magazine papers which 
 have already received the approbation of the sporting public, in part of original 
 matter, which equally deserves to receive it. The two autobiographies of the 
 salmon and the fox were much admired at the time for the freshness and vigour 
 of the narrative, as well as for the knowledge they displayed both of natural 
 history and field sports. In our judgment, however, the third portion of the 
 work, now published for the first time, with the title of ' Bolsover Forest,' is 
 the most interesting of the three, dealing as it does more particularly with that 
 delightful border-land on which the sportsman and the naturalist meet. . . . 
 'Bolsover Forest' is a history of bird's nesting, rat-catching, badger-hunting, 
 snake-taming, and such other sports, partly juvenile, partly common to all ages, 
 as he who has once tasted will always look back upon with pleasure." Pall 
 Mall Gazette. 
 
 s, ut e as many oter merts. e wrtes on sportng wtout exaggera- 
 ion or vulgarity. Confining himself almost exclusively to what he has seen 
 imself, he is at once original and accurate." Spectator. 
 
 kn 
 
 fishe 
 
 his s, 
 
 may concern." Contemporary Review. 
 
" This handsome, though not costly, volume is, in our judgment, a book of 
 mark. . . . ' Flood, Field, and Forest,' comprises several very clever and amus- 
 ing tales, replete with interesting facts and incidents in natural history. . . .We 
 must confess that (of course recognising a few well-known exceptions) we have 
 almost despaired of seeing any one writing popularly upon hunting without 
 vulgarity, or upon fishing without insipidity ; but these tales are written by a 
 man who is at once a keen sportsman, a quick-eyed diligent naturalist, and a 
 gentleman ; last, but not least, a practical master of good, simple, animated 
 style, in whose compositions we detect no bad English, scarcely one slip-shod 
 sentence or awkward expression. . . . We repeat we feel a personal obligation 
 to Mr Rooper for the pleasure his writings have afforded us." Land and 
 Water. 
 
 '"The Autobiography of Salmo Salar, Esq.,' 'A Fox's Tale/ 'Bolsover 
 Forest,' and 'The Bagman,' are the headings of the four chapters which com- 
 pose this volume, and in each the writer has striven with marked success to 
 blend the description of facts in natural history with incidents such as fire the 
 soul, and spur the imagination of the sportsman. . . . All sportsmen will enjoy 
 reading it." Daily Telegraph. 
 
 "We are all of us ready to be pleased with a good description of flood, field, 
 and forest, and that the author has given us. Perhaps, with the exception of 
 Whyte Melville, Mr Rooper is the best historian of a run with the foxhounds 
 that we have had. ... It has no doubt been a recreation to him to write the 
 book ; certainly it has been a recreation to us to read it." Examiner and 
 London Review. 
 
 " Mr Rooper may be credited with having accomplished his purpose in a 
 manner that will render his book acceptable to young sportsmen, and highly 
 popular with those who have a taste for natural history." Atheneeum. 
 
 "The object Mr Rooper appears to have in view is, to impart the knowledge 
 which he has gained from his own experience to the unskilled tyro in handling 
 the rod, the whip, or the gun ; and whether he is giving his lessons in the guise 
 of the salmon, the fox, or ' Master B.,' he equally contrives to render them both 
 useful and entertaining." Morning Post. 
 
 " 'Flood, Field, and Forest' is precisely the book it was meant to be, and 
 may therefore be said to have attained perfection after its kind. . . . Even 
 those who care little or nothing for field sports will find the book very amusing, 
 and by no means unprofitable reading. . . . Mr Rooper is evidently a master 
 of his subject, from fox-hunting and salmon-fishing down to rat-catching and 
 bird's-nesting, and his pages teem with information and useful hints for the 
 benefit of novices." The Echo. 
 
 "We need simply recommend to all lovers of sporting Mr George Rooper's 
 ' Flood, Field, and Forest.'" Daily News. 
 
 " The true excellence of the work rests in the author's powers of description, 
 which are of no mean order." Brighton Gazette. 
 
 " Mr Rooper has given us in this volume a very pleasant mtlange of sport 
 and natural history, full of fresh and spirited pictures of country life and Eng- 
 lish scenery. . . . He writes in a genial and agreeable style, with a graphic 
 power unusual among mere sporting men." The Australian. 
 
 "Mr George Rooper has deservedly arrived at the second edition in his 
 Flood, Field, and Forest,' and as there are many readers of sporting works, we 
 can recommend them this. The Helluo Librorum, among many tit-bits, will 
 find in Mr Rooper's pages some most pleasant writing about field-sports, and a 
 rattling description of a run with the hounds, which excels similar works by 
 other eminent hands." The Graphic. 
 
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