Waterside sketches. A book for wanderers and anglers

Front matter

Herbert Tuttle, | | ne = |

ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY

New York STATE COLLEGES OF AGRICULTURE AND HoME ECoNoMICs

Chapter I. Our Opening Day

«« Away to the streamlet, away, away ! The Sun is up in his realms of light.

But it is not alone from his captured prey That the fisherman wins his keen delight. Ah no! ’tis the breath of the infant day, *Tis the air so fresh and the sky so bright — In these is the fisherman’s best delight.”

Tuart is all very true and pretty, but I am still inclined to agree with the late Charles Kingsley—one of the best

B anglers in the moorland country where he lived, died, and lies buried, loved and lamented by rich and poor—that it is best to say nothing about the poetry of sport. “I can see nothing in it,” he says, “but animal excitement, and a certain quantity, I suppese, of that animal cunning which the Red Indian possesses in common with the wolf and the cat, and any other beast of prey. As a fact, the majority of sportsmen are of the most unpoetical type of manhood.

. . . For most of them it is sport which at once keeps alive and satisfies what you would call :their esthetic faculties, and so—smile if you will—helps to make them purer, simpler, more genial men.”

Truly, the worthy Hampshire rector delivered :these sentiments in the red deer country, and rather.in-reference to the huntsman and marksman than the less active angler, but never was truer sentence spoken than that concluding remark of his that we English owe too much to our field sports to talk nonsense about them.

Yet if any sportsman has the right to foster sentimentality it is the fisherman. We anglers of this and every other period have been charged with being coxcombs, fools, and what not; and such we may or may not be. I don’t mind crying “ Peccavi,” however, to one accusation made times out of number against us: we are no doubt a gossiping race, and all we can plead in mitigation of sentence is that our garrulity is at least harmless ; which is more than some gossipers dare aver.

Come with me for an hour or so to a haunt sacred to fishermen’s gossip, and judge for yourself. Following the example of the immortal Izaak, I will trouble you, as we walk, with some preliminary prosing. You will find, then, that angling is not the thing it was when Piscator overtook Venator and Auceps on the road to Ware; Auceps on his way to look at a hawk at Theobald’s, Venator to join in an otter hunt at Amwell, and Piscator, the avowed brother of the angle, to pursue his gentle art, sitting and singing under the high honeysuckle hedge, while the showers fell gently upon the teeming earth, and gave a sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorned the verdant meadow. Hawking no longer takes place at Theobald’s ; there is no necessity for rising before the sun to meet the otter pack on Amwell Hill; and the times are gone when the Hertfordshire milkwoman would offer the passing angler a syllabub of new verjuice, a draught of the red-cow’s milk, and her honest Maudlin’s sweetly sung song.

The modern Waltonian, nevertheless, has, on the whole, little cause to grumble at the change which has come about ; there still remain pleasant haunts and moderate chances of sport, and if he be unable to kill roach at London Bridge and fill his basket within an hour’s walk of town, increased facilities by rail and steamboat bring opportunities within his reach never before enjoyed. In the great law of compensation upon which the world is said to move the modern Waltonian shares. ‘Fhe mines, manufactories, and mills do their best to pollute the few fish-breeding rivers that are left to us ; but there is a keen spirit of preservation abroad, and all over the country influential associations are continually imitating the noble example set them by the Thames Angling Preservation Society.

Taking us the country through we are a very numerous body ; year by year additional recruits avow their conversion to the ‘‘ Contemplative Man’s Recreation.” Some of B2 these fine days, when English anglers hold a grand Waltonian /#/e at the Crystal Palace, or, being nearer the scene of Walton’s perambulations, in Alexandra Park, the world, I venture to say, will be not a little astonished at the numbers who will take part in the demonstration. Angling fraternities with various names and mottoes flourish in many a town; aye, in the most dismal and poorest quarters of London’s City. For angling literature there is a healthy and perpetual demand.

The town fishing club somehow is treated with a derision it hardly deserves by the fortunate gentleman who is able to kill salmon in Norway or Ireland, deer in Scotland, and trout in Wales; its members are regarded with contempt by the lordly sportsman who would faint at the sight of a lobworm, and be aghast at the notion of ground-bait. This is neither fair nor considerate. The city-pent Cockney, poor fellow, must do what he can, and the shabby apprentice who walks from Shoreditch to Tottenham, bait-can in hand, every Sunday morning, and is content with such results as his humble rod and line may bring, may be at heart—why not ?—as true a sportsman as the happy individual who goes forth with a couple of keepers at his heels, and the costliest tackle and finest streams at his command.

But a truce to prosing, at least for the present, for here is the Waltonian’s home. You may see that we are a very united family, and not ashamed to avow ourselves followers of quaint, pure-hearted Izaak Walton. We aim, in our several ways, to emulate his spirit, which was eminently unselfish. We are unknown to the world, but we know each other, and hold as a primary article of faith that the man who possesses a good fishing-rod, a stout walking-stick, and the opportunities and means of using both in moderation, ought to be happy and healthy. This brotherhood of men who love the gentle art with unswerving fidelity includes persons through whose estates well-stocked salmon-rivers sweep, but some of these days you shall see them enjoying with the keenest relish an afternoon’s roach or gudgeon fishing by the banks of a prosaic stream. We earn our right to recreation by work of divers kinds—on Exchanges, in Government offices, in establishments where printingpresses groan and struggle, in Westminster Hall, in chambers; we buy and sell, we toil by brain and hand, we are rich and poor, we are old and young, but we are not ashamed a second time to avow ourselves followers of quaint, pure-hearted Izaak Walton, whose nature was eminently unselfish. ;

By listening quietly awhile you will discover how true it is that we are a gossiping race; but note that our talk is all of one warp and woof. This is the hour when the smoking rooms of clubs where politicians and the great ones of the earth do congregate are handling freely public and private scandals, questions of national pith and moment, controversies weighty and bitter. Here we are in the town, but not of it. We are bodily present, but in spirit far away. Possessing in common a devotion to angling, there are all kinds of branch fondnesses by which certain men are known, each warranting, however, Washington Irving’s observation, “There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a gentleness of spirit and a pure serenity of mind.”

There is not a man present to whose love of angling there is not grafted some other pleasant pursuit or liking.

Here is a fern lover who has actually been known to miss the striking of a fish on suddenly espying a goodly specimen of his favourite plant. To another the pocket sketch-book is the most necessary item of his fishing kit; his friend is full of learning as to forest trees and wild flowers ; ‘ornithology is a common acquirement with the majority. “I could point you to one who captures more butterflies than fish; to a second whose weakness. lies in tadpoles, newts, and snakes. Out of the fullness. of the heart the mouths speak, producing a medley of conversation truly, and an exchange of miscellaneous experiences, but no ill-humour, no treason, no railing.

It is the last night in March, and we muster in force amongst our old acquaintances, the trophies encased around the walls. How we fight our piscatorial battles over again! That monster pike glares as if he were cognisant of the story re-told of his folly and fall—how,. greedily grabbing at the gudgeon that was intended for a passing perch, he, twenty-eight pounder though he was, was struck, played, exhausted, and landed with a single hook, which you may observe coiled up in the corner: of the museum, to his everlasting disgrace.

The eyes of our old friend whose prowess amongst the salmon and white trout is a proverb at Glendalough and Ballina, and has been known there these twenty years, will glisten again as he describes the history of the three large trout overhead, caught in three casts within a space of thirty minutes. And soon a patriarch takes up the parable; he is as enthusiastic at three score and ten as he was when, a truant, he slew small perch near Sadler’s Wells) Theatre, and he will set.

us in a roar by his comic recital of a day’s bream fishing on one of the Norfolk Broads, and the cowardly behaviour of the flat bellows-shaped brute in the compartment next but one to the sixty-three-ounce perch.

And so we pass the time, silently overlooked by carefully preserved tench, carp, barbel, dace, roach, rudd, and pike, which strangers come from afar to admire, and which recall many a pleasant memory to be fondly lingered over and cherished ; and smiled upon benignantly by the ancient picture of a wholesome looking old man, with long white hair, smooth face, steeple crowned hat, and broad white collar—the man who is father of us all.

To-morrow a small party are bound on an expedition to the waterside according to annual custom. We begin our campaign on the 1st of April. News of fish feeding and moving has arrived by express to gladden our hearts. Some of us have already opened our fly-books by the early streams elsewhere, and are hoping to do gallant deeds with a particularly neat March brown that is never out of season. Others have been busy during the day removing rods and tackle from their winter resting-places, and in lovingly preparing them for active service.

Do you smile at the high character given to so simple an occupation? Then you know not how fertile are the sources whence spring the angler’s joys. When the north winds blow, and the east winds bite, and the yellow floods overflow the spongy banks, and the fisher is a prisoner at home, he forgets, in overhauling his stock, both his ill-tuck and the unfriendly elements. He sits at the blurred window with his scissors, waxed thread, varnish, feathers, fur, and wool spread out before him; he tests his lines and casts,

& WATERSIDE SKETCHES.

oils his winches, and resolves himself into a committee of inquiry respecting the joints and tops of his rods, which he regards as companions to be communed with, praised for merits, and remonstrated with for faults. Rest satisfied, therefore, that our friends who to-day have brought their implements into the light for the first time since autumn have set about their task in the spirit of no common or vulgar ransackers.

To-morrow arrives: All Fools’ Day, as we pleasantly remind each other. Happily March had come in like a lion, or rather like a bellowing bull, and had, true to tradition, departed like a lamb, leaving immediately behind it the loveliest of spring mornings. Three hours before we had the smoke and noise of London; now we are surrounded by sights and sounds that make us glad at the mere thought of life. Our veteran, whose rod the keeper is carrying, drinks in the balmy air in great gulps, and if the grass were a trifle less wet, would frisk it merrily amongst the lambkins in the mead. The birds, still in their honeymoon, make unceasing melody in the hedges, and you can hear a grand responsive chorus away in the dark wood, from whose trees the grip of winter has just been relaxed. The impudent water rats evidently hold us i supreme contempt, scarcely deeming it necessary to plunge from their holes and perform that light-hearted somersault which so often startles the unsuspecting rambler. There is life and the promise of life everywhere, and we revel in it, and feel kindly towards all mankind.

Rods are put together, and it will go hard with not a few innocent fish if the eager looks of certain of our band carry out all they express. April clouds are scudding softly over an April sky, and there is a friendly breeze from the west ready to aid the angler. The river runs smooth and deep here, but a little space ahead it tumbles into a noisy weirpool, boiling and fretting, and ejecting from its troubled depths an occasional weed or stick. At the rear of the osier bed a placid backwater winds, and here one, two, three, and four of our brotherhood are settling down to a few hours’ special correspondence with the tench, just now in their prime, and, with this wind and water, almost certain to be off their guard.

We will stroll round that way by-and-by. But e# passant I would advise you never to hurry by this corner with your eyes shut, for as the April days multiply there will appear in all their vernal glory a host of marsh flowers and plants. The village children, romping and hallooing in the distance, are bound for the copse to search out wood anemones, the woodruff, the wild hyacinth, lords and ladies, strawberry blossoms, primroses, violets, crane-bills, and (as they will call them) daffydowndillies; but our ruddy-faced little friends are too early in the season, and will meet with but a portion of the treasures they seek.

Now let us pause at the weir, and watch our gay young comrade do his will with the phantom minnow. If he handle his papers at the Circumlocution Office as deftly as his spinning-rod he ought speedily to reach a distinguished position in the Civil Service. But he does not find a fish instanter, nor will he succeed until the cast places his bait in command of the furthest eddy and scour. This our gay young comrade in due time neatly accomplishes, and his reward is a vicious snap, a taut line, and a thrilling rod.

It is a heavy trout, as you ‘may see by his pull; a lively

TO WATERSIDE SKETCHES.

trout, from the speed with which he darts round and across the pool; an artful trout, by his rush for the shallows; a beautiful trout, selfproclaimed in a succession of leaps into the air, during which the sun lights up his ruby spots and burnished vesture 3 a princely trout, as you must admit, for the keeper, who knows that the first fish of the season is always an extra coin in his pocket, stands by with the weighing machine, and announces him a few ounces short of five pounds. He isa goodly fish, yet personally I hold him in light respect, being convinced that nothing would ever induce him to rise at a fly. We have been long familiar with these lusty trout, with their haunts, their vices, their virtues, their dispositions. Sometimes they take a clumsy dead gorge bait, sometimes a live roach, or gudgeon, sometimes minnow or worm, but ever a fly, artificial or real.

This straight level run is a roach swim, famous amongst. us; by these fast-springing flags three years ago a young gentleman who had never seen the water before, and was. apparently a novice in the craft, in one afternoon caught a great weight of roach, four individuals of which turned the scale at eight pounds, several of which were over a pound, and none of which were less than six ounces. Presently we reach another weir, and soon a third, and in each our gay young friend will before night seek a companion for the beauty we assisted, a few minutes since, to smother in newly cut rushes.

We are now, let me whisper, making our way to a tributary streamlet, upon whose rippling surface the flies dangling over my shoulder will receive their first baptism. The brotherhood have various tastes, and agree to differ with perfect good humour. Our friends at the backwater are

OUR OPENING DAF. IL not unfriendly to me, personally, but they pity my weakness for fly-fishing. I dote on our victorious young comrade of the weir, but nothing could induce me to toil throughout the live-long day spinning for ajbrace of trout, if the chance remained for me of a dozen troutlets fairly killed with the artificial fly. Each man to his liking, and good luck to us all: that is our motto.

When we turn out of the next meadow, in whose trenches a few weeks hence will blow—

“« The faint sweet cuckoo flowers,”

and where—

“« The wild marsh marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows grey,’” look straight at the rustic bridge spanning the ford, and you will see a couple of fellows lounging upon the hand. rail. They are poaching rascals on the watch for the prowling trout that push up from the wider water below to chase the small fry on the shallows, and when the sun. comes that way it would be worth while spiking your rod into the coltsfoot-covered bank, lighting another cigar, creeping stealthily behind the willow bushes, and watching the actions and habits of the fish. Such time is never thrown away, and you will soon discover that the fish are not unworthy of your inquiring study. As to the hulking scoundrels beyond, after nightfall there will be a splash and a struggle, and an hour later the poachers will probably be offering a couple of handsome trout for sale at some village pothouse.

Across a bit of young wheat, down a lane where we could find a.posy of white violets if we had the leisure to pluck them out of their modest retirement, and we reach the narrow winding streamlet where, fortune favouring us, I may ply the fly to some purpose. But what with poaching, the increase of anglers, and vile pollution everywhere, trout, alas! except in very remote parts, are becoming scarcer and scarcer every year, and it requires the utmost skill tg bring the fish to basket. Unfortunately this streamlet is poorly stocked, and there is not a solitary tree or bush to cover its banks. On the other hand, the water is neither too high nor too low—an inch makes a vast difference here—and the factory above has been good enough not to pour out its discolouring refuse to-day. But I must creep to the water and move stealthily.

As it is a small stream, of course, on that strange law of contraries which guides the angler in these matters, full sized flies must be employed—the invaluable March brown as stretcher, the cowdung (considering the warm wind) for dropper number two, and the blue dun number three. You cannot detect the ghost of a rise anywhere, and cast after cast ends in the same monotonous disappointment. Try every art within your knowledge, still no success. Put on the stonefly for the blue dun; the result is the same, although the flies fall light as snowflakes on the ripple.

At last I have carefully covered every yard of the short length of streamlet at our disposal, fishing according to orthodox rules, and—pardon the egotism—fishing it thoroughly. J am too much accustomed to the certain uncertainties of angling to be disheartened, although it must be confessed I am anxious not to return to the brotherhood empty-handed. Now let me be unorthodox. One of the lessons I was taught in the early days was not to use a red spinner till May. The red palmer is permissible in both February and March, and often very killing; and in April your] book is not complete without both brown and grey spinner; but the red spinner by very many worthy folks is not regarded as appropriate till May. In that case I mean to anticipate the season by a month, and substitute my favourite red spinner for the stonefly, which has been unsuccessful. The cowdung-fly must remain, for that insect is unmistakably abroad, circling in the wind with its usual activity. The March brown has been so firm a friend that I seldom discard it, early or late, and it shall not be discarded now. Still something must be done.

One method is left untried. I plump down upon my bended knees, well away from the brink, winch up the line to a few yards, and cast close under the opposite bank, upon it if possible, and rather below than above. This, too, some dogmatists would condemn as unorthodox : but is not the proof of the pudding in the eating? The flies, sinking somewhat, are borne with the stream, and I am keeping my eye closely upon the red spinner, which the wind dances naturally upon the surface, and which it is my intention to work slowly, dibbing fashion, across to the hither bank. In a few minutes I feel a trout, and I want no information as to his quality; he has shot athwart stream with a deep strong pull, and bent my light rod like a whip. He- was lying almost close to the bank on my side of the water, and never broke the surface in seizing the fly: he waited until the red spinner dipped, and then in a business-like way closed upon him once for all.

Twice afterwards my attendant has the pleasure of using

‘the landing net, but only with the normal half-pounders of the stream. Yet we are quite content and happy, and ‘stroll lazily back to the brotherhood with clear consciences. The gay young comrade it seems at mid-day has found a ‘fitting mate for his captive from the weir, and is, aS we pass, engaged with his friends and the keeper in a vain endeavour to rescue his spinning flight from a submerged tree trunk. We comfort him with the assurance thatthe chances are twenty to one in favour of the willow-wood holding its own. Our brethren at the backwater, comfortable on their campstools, with many an empty bottle ‘upon the trodden grass, and the débris of a heavy luncheon at their feet, have had the premier sport of the day— measuring sport by results. The tench have behaved themselves in a freehearted and appreciative manner, and, save that they manifested an unaccountable dislike to one gentleman, showed no preference for particular anglers. Four rods have been constantly at work, and three have been constantly taking fish. The fourth is in the hands of the undoubtedly best angler of the party, and he uses the finest gut and hooks, but, to his chagrin and surprise, while his friends have caught fish whether careful or careless, he has not perceived so much as an accidental nibble. Finding him accordingly in a despondent frame of mind, we ‘cheer him with such cheap comfort as we can find at a moment’s notice. Even as we speak his delicate float trembles, and then rises slowly and mysteriously until it lies flat upon the sluggish water. Every angler knows the meaning of that welcome token. There is much jubilation over such a beginning, and we feel it right in duty bound to drink each other’s health in a flask of brown sherry, which one of the brotherhood—a City man of course—produces svith a flourish.

What follows aptly illustrates the unexplainable fancies of the fish.world. For an hour the previously unsuccessful fisherman hauls out as fast as he can bait his hook, and his three friends, who had been pitying him for hours, are now recipients of our compassionate regrets. There is no rhyme ‘or reason for this sudden whim of the tench, and at the termination of the hour, the biting ceases as suddenly as it ‘began, and not another fish is brought to land.

The tench had taken well-scoured marsh worms, absolutely refusing to touch either striped brandlings, tempting lobs, or able-bodied gentles, and it was noticed as a curious ‘circumstance that while at one spot the bites were sharp and vigorous, the float disappearing without much hesitation, a few yards off the fish dawdled over the bait, as tench frequently do, leaving the angler in doubt whether the ‘movement of the float was not a mere accident. As the bottom was muddy rather than gravelly, the anglers had naturally fished a couple of inches from it, and, all told, were, on quitting the field, able to show a total of over twenty pounds, which, for so capricious a fish as the tench, may be considered great sport.

Our Opening Day we deem on the whole all that could be wished. We can say with the philosopher ‘“ Our riches ‘consist in the fewness of our wants.” If we can boast of no sensational creels, we are all satisfied and at peace with -each other. Hungry as hunters, we gather in the eventide round the table of our pleasant room, beneath whose bal- -cony a bye-stream hurries, mad with the impetus received from a weir at the bottom of the garden, and foaming with

16 WATERSIDE S KREZCEHLS.

anger as it shoots under the roadway. Incidents of the day, trifling in themselves perhaps, and bits of observation and experience, not startling or profound it may be, are exchanged, while the clink of the knife and fork beats time to the soothing plash and flow outside the window.

And so our Opening Day, like all other days, runs to its close, and to-morrow we shall be at our posts in the busy spheres of the big city, better surely rather than worse for those pleasant hours by the waterside ?

PracticaL Notes ON APRIL FISHING.

Trout are in prime season in April, which in many rivers is the angler’s most remunerative month. It is also not the least pleasant, since the world of beauty towards its close begins to open on every hand. In spite of its proverbial showers, trout streams are on an average in excellent order in April, being neither too much coloured nor too low. Each day of warm weather brings out new insects, which the trout, after their long recess, are fully able and willing to appreciate. In the matter of flies, though it is well to understand the art of dressing them oneself, fly manufacture has been brought to such a pitch of perfection that it is cheaper and more convenient, as a tule, to trust to the tackle shops. The ordinary trout in April has a good deal of Cassius-like leanness about it, and is very different in colour and firmness of flesh to the fellow who has had his gorge of the Mayfly.

The tench may not be the physician the old fishing masters believed him to be, nor an object of superstitious. veneration to the pike, as many living anglers think, but he is a much better subject for the table than is supposed. A fat tench weighing about a pound, coming as it does in a month when our fresh water fishes available for the table are very limited in number, is‘ excellent eating, and it is amazing that it is not better known to the cook. The fish spawns about, but seldom -before, Midsummer, and is, if river bred, most delicate eating in March and April. It thrives nowhere so well as in the ornamental lakes of private grounds; on a hot July day fish of from two to seven or eight pounds may often be seen floating near]the surface, or moving uneasily amongst the weeds under which they spawn. The angler for tench requires a double stock of patience; in the early morning, before the hoar frost has vanished from the spring grass, rapid sport may be sometimes had with fine tackle. Later in the summer in warm rains and on cloudy days a good dish may be reasonably expected, and it may as a rule be held that large worms take large fish. I have taken tench with plain paste while fishing for roach, but this was doubtless an accidental occurrence. A well-scoured marsh worm is in every way the best bait for tench; wasp-grub is also a taking lure. The cookery books prescribe the stew-pan for this fish; to get out of it all that it is worth there is nothing like filleting; and the same cleanly method of cooking holds good with almost every kind of fish, The tench is often spoiled by fancy sauces of wine and other ingredients. Tench and eel skinned and boned, in a savoury pie, and eaten cold, make a most toothsome combination for the breakfast table. Perhaps the quickest and easiest way of cooking a tench is to split and fry it thoroughly brown.

Cc

Chapter II. The Mayfly

“Fly disporting in the shade,

Wert thou for the angler made ?

To grace his hook—is this thy fate ?

And be some greedy fish’s bait ?

Fly aloft on gladsome wing!

See one comes with eager spring,

He’ll dip thee far beneath the wave:

May has nearly run its course. We have an ancient promise that the seasons shall never fail, and though sometimes our variable climate makes it difficult to draw a hardand-fast line between summer and winter, in the long run you may be sure seed-time and harvest come round in very much the same fashion as they appeared to our forefathers. I pack my portmanteau as I make these sage reflections, and am grateful that the spring has been one of the time-honoured sort. March winds prevailed at the proper time, the April showers fell soft, and the May flowers bloomed without delay. And there has arrived a letter announcing the advent of the green drake.