Mostly about trout

Front matter

PAPER a ee

TEXT.

Method of Printing INSERTS COVER__.

Preface

HE fishing-stories in this book are all true.

Brother-fishermen will realize that I have given only the cream of fishing experiences, which extend over half a century; successes like these that I have described would soon pall if they were the rule rather than the exception.

GEORGE SOUTHCOTE.

SALISBURY, 1921.

My sincere thanks are due to the Editors of the Cornhill Magazine, the Nineteenth Century and After, Country Life, the Pall Mall Gazette, John o’ London’s Weekly, The Englishman and the Liverpool Courier for their concurrence in the inclusion of the portions of this book which have appeared in their pages.

Aa

Contents

PAGE

PREFACE : : i z ‘ ; ; 9 PART I.

INTRODUCTORY I.. PHILOSOPHIES OF A FISHERMAN : . : 15 Ili. My First TrRovut : ; y : . 20 PART II

Part IV Holidays And A War Memory

Avaust IN NortH DEVON A BurrERFLY Hunt .

A SEASIDE IDYLL 4 : if <

A WAR MEMORY ; : ; ‘

PAGE

I PHILOSOPHIES OF A FISHERMAN

ISHERMEN are lucky folk in these days.

Their standard is not a money standard. They envy not, as a master of their art once said, those who wear better clothes than they do, or those who have better food or bigger houses; they envy him, and him only, who catches more fish than they do. Really keen fishermen are seldom rich. For myself, I pity affluent youths, with a love of fishing in their souls, who catch their first trout before they are ten, their first salmon in their early ’teens, and their first big trout with a dry-fly—the most difficult feat of all—before they are twenty. Success has come to them too young, and its joy depends so much upon the work that leads up to it, the infinite labour, the many blank days, the moments of despair, and all the difficulties to be overcome. I once knew a very wealthy man who had kept his sense of proportion true and well-balanced. He under- 15 stood fishermen. He lived in a beautiful old place in the Test Valley, and was one of the most hospitable men I have ever met. Those of his friends with so little soul as to be happy indoors on a June evening could fare sumptuously in the great dining-hall, in fine apparel, upon all the luxuries which wealth could provide; for the fishermen of the party the butler spread a light repast outside the front door, on the door-mat.

““1’m sure I should never care for fishing ; I haven’t got the patience.”” How many times in his life has every fisherman heard those words from a friend? You cannot explain things to such folk. Sir Edward Grey (as he was when he wrote his book on fly-fishing) gave an answer to that question: “ People talk sometimes as if a sort of still, slow patience were the great quality experienced by angling. It ought much more properly to be called selfcontrol, and if another quality essential to success be added, let it be endurance.’’ Those are the qualities of fishermen and of philosophers, who look into the depths of affairs and are not misled by the bubblings and boilings on the surface. Fishermen, like philosophers, are rich in contentment. They wear comfortable old clothes and the best boots. They love

PHILOSOPHIES OF A FISHERMAN 17 their fellow-men individually and avoid them in mobs. A mob is often an evil thing, ignorant, prejudiced, easily led by an appetite to slaughter or destroy, far more prone to shout “ Away with him!” than “‘ Hosannah!” Taken individually, its every member—if you can only

‘get him to yourself—is a very good fellow, better in many respects than you are. Taken collectively, a mob of men is capable of any enormity. For instance: there was talk some time ago about a “ Union ”’ of honest and kindhearted men starving a whole nation into submission because of some petty question as to how many months should be allowed for discussing a question of wages. Is it possible to imagine any individual in that Union deliberately starving man, woman or child in order to attain his ends, be they just or unjust ? The thing is inconceivable. It was talked of seriously as a praiseworthy and desirable procedure, if carried out collectively. No. Humanity is not at its best in crowds, so fishermen know better than to mingle in them; they place too high a value upon friendship with their fellow-men; and, if friends fail, they are happy alone, trying to learn a little about Nature’s laws. Izaak Walton is their prophet ; he lived in times of turmoil and of civic strife, 2 but throughout them he lived at peace with himself and in harmony with Nature; his philosophy and love of angling have for centuries sweetened the lives of many, long after the hatreds and bickerings of his time have worn themselves out. Charles Kingsley, again, a keen fisherman of another and more strenuous type, lived in times of war and of riots; his philosophy of life stood him in good stead, and his precepts and example have brought peace to many virile souls struggling with the problems which darkened his own youthful days. But fishermen do not sermonize. They would have no influence at all in the world if they did. As it is, they have too little.

There is a chalk-stream hereabouts, and the grayling are rising: the autumn tints are more gorgeous to look upon than even the Victory Medal ribbon, and far more softly blended. The mere sight of the gentle flow of the clear stream would make the most rabid fighter for his own rights and privileges feel at peace with all mankind.

I had the good luck myself not to have been one of the affluent youths. I caught my first trout when I was about thirteen, my first salmon when I was over forty, my first three-pound trout on a dry-fly when I had reached the ripe

PHILOSOPHIES OF A FISHERMAN § 19 decrepitude of “present day.” That triumph occurred in this same stream, during a short holiday snatched from those strenuous wardays that seem so long ago. What different days those were, in these parts! The sky in this valley was filled with the “ cavalry of the clouds,” training for oversea service. The country lanes were dotted with the hospitalblue of the wounded, who had learned new life-values in the great conflict and stood first in the public estimation. Money was of little moment. The folk who look at the swirlings on the surface of our national life, and do not think of the deep waters below, would have us think that we have lost our war-time goodfellowship, that we cannot face the future without an unseemly scramble between different _ classes to best each other, when only physical strength and ruthlessness will tell and the weakest will go to the wall. Fishermen are not so foolish. It takes all sorts to make a world and a good many pike to spoil a good trout- Stream.

II MY FIRST TROUT

S a fly-fisher born or made, or both? I think

that I was both. My first memory of living fishes takes me back to a terrifying walk, at the age of four, along a jetty, with planks wide apart and a view between them of clear green sea-water and little fishes swimming amongst branches of seaweed, swaying with the tide. Then a long sea-voyage, and a whole day spent at anchor at St. Helena. It was a baking-hot day, the sun blistering the pitch caulking between the deck-planks ; but lying on those warm planks, I could see the calm sea through the hawse-pipe and _ jelly-fish innumerable floating in the clear water. No one could get me away from that hawse-pipe. I had secured a reel of cotton and a bent pin, baited with gingerbread biscuit, warmed in a hot little palm and softened by the sea air. Nothing would persuade me that the morsels would not be as succulent to the — taste of a jelly-fish as they were to my own: I

MY FIRST TROUT 21 cherished that illusion during the whole time we were at anchor.

Then a gap of many months in my fishing experiences. Next comes a memory of being taken for walks along the tow-path of a canal, constantly inspired by wonder about the mysteries of living fishes under the surface. Once I saw in the muddy water the dimly outlined form of something, probably a roach, and I longed passionately for a rod and a red-topped float to watch with never-satisfied faith, as I had once seen a man so employed on the banks of that canal. I pass over the realization, a year or two later, of that longing, and the capture, after many days of patient watching, of an evil ‘and bloated-looking little fish taken on a leathery morsel of limpet from a rock-pool on the coast of South Devon; and then, after a few more years, came the day.

I can see myself now, desperately proud of a huge fishing-basket strapped over my shoulder and containing a packet of sandwiches, a slice of cake, an old leather flask fitted with a cup and filled with weak sherry and water, and, greatest joy of all, an old fly-book with parchment pages and cover of russia leather, smelling deliciously. I was spending a summer holiday with an uncle in Glamorganshire, a fine old sportsman who gave me the first chance of seeing real country; I had had the great misfortune to spend my childhood in a town. On the great occasion it occurred to him to entrust to my care a ten-foot greenheart fly-rod, made by Farlow, and, I think, about thirty years old, with a hollow butt to contain the spare top. I had no landing-net. Every step of that walk —it was about fifty years ago—comes back to me now. First a short-cut across a grass field and through a gate to the main road near three Scotch fir-trees. Then about three-quarters of a mile along a dusty road, soft to the foot, and then, at last, the trout stream. It was the Ewenny, and I had leave to fish the Ewenny water. There was a little pool below a hatch, and above the hatch the main stream, with its level raised by an embankment. Both pool and stream were ruffled by a gentle up-stream breeze.

With infinite care I had managed, with the help of my uncle, to attach three small flies to a cast of gut of a thickness that I should not dare to offer to the trout of this generation. This cast I remembered to soak carefully, and made it fast to an old-fashioned plaited silk and hair line, with occasional ends of horsehair sticking out where it had become worn: an abomination in these days, but a delight in

MY FIRST TROUT 23 those unsophisticated times. The reel was a *‘ multiplier ’’ of an ancient design, with a small drum and prominent handle on a long spindle. First came the thrill of excitement over the first cast. I had had a lesson or two in casting a fly from the gardener’s boy (a confirmed poacher), and I managed somehow, with the wind in my favour, to get the line out and the east and flies to fall (in a bunch) on the water. A few more casts, the line helped out every time by the wind, and then—— But there is no language to describe the thrill of it. Something had hold of one of the flies under the water, and that something was giving wriggling tugs. The rod throbbed deliciously to the very butt; through the butt and through my wrist and arm those throbbings passed through nerve and brain, seemingly to my very soul. Two or three seconds in doubt what to do, and then the memory of a word recalled from a_ book on fly-fishing, the word “strike ’’—a word that has cost many young fishers many fish and much expensive tackle. I “struck,” and far behind me on the long grass fringing the mill-pool lay, struggling, a four-ounce trout. There had never been such a trout. Its head was small, its body of a fatness adorable, gleaming like copper above and like gold below. Its spots were scarlet, of the scarlet of poppies, rimmed with white and set off with other spots of black. It was my very own. |

That was a wonderful day with the trout; in fifty years I have never known another like | it. Nothing seemed to put them down, and nearly every one of them took the same fly, a yellowish-green silk body and a soft grey hackle, with no wings. I put one up as a dropper and one as the tail-fly, with a coch-ybondhu as the other dropper, and during the day, my first day’s fly-fishing, in a clear stream, I caught 64 Ib. weight of sturdy little trout, mostly from four to six ounces, but one or two much larger. I should say that one of them weighed ten or twelve ounces, or thereabouts, and nearly all of them came out of one tiny little pool and about fifteen yards of the stream above. Once I had two on at a time. The droppers were fastened to the cast with oneinch loops of thick gut that would send the trout of these days away full speed to their weed-shelters, and I must confess that I cannot claim to have caught my first trout—he insisted upon catching himself. There was one that day that did not. Something took hold deep under water, and to my dismay I seemed to have no control over its movements. In a

MY FIRST TROUT 25 frenzy of excitement I threw down my rod, seized the line and pulled with my hands. There was a commotion—and the cast broke, just above the tail-fly.

In the light of the experience of after years I should say that I thereby lost a sewin of about two pounds weight, freshly up from the sea.

Tired out in body, but exultantly happy, I found my way home to tea, stopping twice by the way to take the trout one by one out of the basket and lay them on the dusty roadside grass. I washed them carefully at the scullery tap, and then the final triumph, as they lay on a big dish, nearly slithering off it as I carried them to the study for my old uncle’s inspection—the biggest carefully arranged to show up, and, in the place of honour, on the top of all, my first trout.

ss PART I

A FLY-FISHER’S YEAR a 4 ) A

I

THE TURN OF THE YEAR

INTER is a time of suspended animation for the lover of streams and running water. For a dry-fly fisher especially, if the little infirmities coming with advancing age prevent him from enjoying a grayling day after the last glories of autumn have passed away.

In the words of that delightful poem of Edward Fitzgerald’s with which Mr. E. V. Lucas begins his Open Road:

When such a time cometh, I do retire

Into an old room Beside a bright fire, and settle the affairs of the nation with that mighty weapon, the fountain-pen of the arm-chair critic. Some day, real life will return ;

to quote again from the same source: 29

Thus, then, live I, Till, mid all the gloom, By heaven! the bold sun Is with me in the room, Shining, shining !

Then the clouds part, Swallows soaring between ; The spring is alive, And the meadows are green!

I jump up like mad, Break the old pipe in twain, And away to the meadows, The meadows again !

That man must have been older than I am. Or perhaps there was no one to stir him out of his study and to tell him sooner of the turn of the year and the sunshine without.

The turn of the year comes long before the swallow. Some say that it comes on that dreary day in December when you know that the days really do begin to lengthen, although — you shave (if you do shave) by candlelight, — and even Christmas is not quite yet. No; the turn of the year is some time after Christmas. When is it? At New Year? Not quite; but in these parts, if the weather is mild, there is an indication some time in January that the turn is coming. Little crimson stars show on the hazel-nut buds, waiting

THE TURN OF THE YEAR 31 to catch the pollen from the lamb’s-tail catkins hanging in tassels above. There is a_ hazel in the corner of my garden outside the study, and I make a daily pilgrimage thereto in the hope of seeing those little stars of promise. They came early in January this year. So did the aconites, periwinkles and snowdrops; so did the yellow crocuses—very early indeed ; they were fully open in the bleak sunshine of one day in late January, a record for these parts. And in the second week in February our first daffodil was fully out in a sheltered spot in the garden.

Once upon a time, when I lived in a town, in my youth—— Could not some philanthropist so arrange matters that every town boy and girl should spend at least one whole year in the country, amongst sympathetic folk inspired by some knowledge of nature, to see all the changes of the seasons? The “nature study ”’ creeping into our scheme of national education for the youth of cities is a step in the right direction, but a poor substitute for the real thing. To get back to my “once upon a time’”’: I used to imagine that there was no colour in a winter landscape, except brown. Trees, fields, hedges and roads, all seemed to me to be brown in winter during the fleeting glimpses I had of them, until the time when the marsh-marigolds began to blaze at me in the water-meadows. Now—but I must begin to-day, the turn of the year, from the beginning.

There was something indescribable in the air that came into open bedroom windows early this morning. Something that made me want to be out of bed and out of doors. Very different from the usual winter-morning feeling of resentment at having to leave a warm bed, and of envy of dormice and _ such-like folk who are credited with spending their whole winter in warm sleep. The feeling was forgotten with the beginning of the morning’s task in the study. Newspapers to be studied, to keep abreast with public affairs for the sake of an article thereon, for which an Editor is clamouring. Letters to be read and answered; accounts, bills, and so on. Then a settling down to the day’s work, the article itself. The writing-table in the little study faces away from the morning sun, and I work © contentedly for a time, when—enter Herself, from the garden, by the French window facing east. The sunshine enters, too, no longer cold winter sunshine, but life-reviving sunshine. ‘Why don’t you leave that, and spend the day up the valley ?”

THE TURN OF THE YEAR - 33

The Editor’s visage fades from my remembrance. He is human; he would drop his blue pencil, even as I drop my pen, if the poor fellow could only see the sun over the chimneypots as I see it over the trees. There is something different, some new life in the air; it smells of new life. The turn of the year has come, and “indoors” is stuffy and impossible. I must see that valley again.

No colour in the winter months? When I get to the valley I find the elm-trees spangled with scarlet specks in the sunshine (in my youth I never knew that elms had red flowers !) and the beech woods and birches a soft purple, the withy-beds blazing orange and red. Almond-blossom is out in a cottage garden. In one sheltered and sunny spot a pear-tree is just showing signs of flowers: no pears from that tree! There are bad times ahead, bitter east winds, probably, and snow and sleet, before the real spring comes. But the turn of the year has come, and that means that the sun will gain daily in strength. As in the late war, creative power will get stronger after every onslaught of hate and destruction, and _ the sunshine will grow constantly warmer until * Break-a-pipe day.’ That is the name by which we call the day described by Edward 3

Fitzgerald above. Then, equipped for fly-fishing, we'll go off to his ‘‘ Meadows in Spring ” to meet the swallows. For the present we will keep to the road; the water-meadows — look cold and uninviting. But the turn: of the year has really come. The soft silver-grey *““ pussy-cat’’ catkins are showing already, the “palms” of the country folk; soon they - will be yellow, powdered with golden pollen. Then the marsh-marigolds will bloom again in the water-meadows. | These words may be read on a bitter day, © with cold winds and driving snow or sleet. But the sun will win. The turn of the year has passed. |

II FEBRUARY FILL-DYKE

WONDER whether there is a close-time

for pike, and what the penalty is for disregarding it. I suppose that as a fisherman I ought to know, but there might just as well be a close-time for rats in a wheat-stack as for pike in a trout-stream. For all I know they may be out of season in February, so perhaps I had better not mention the name of the river referred to in these notes of a February day, lest I be pursued by those whose business it is to deal with breakers of the law. In such matters the activities of upholders of the law are confined to their own fishery districts. It is not their business to pursue malefactors beyond those limits. The main point is that the pike must be got rid of by every imaginable device, and they seem to take better in these parts in February and March than at any other time of the year.

Spinning for pike in fast-running water is great 35 sport, when they are taking. It is a chilly business when there is nothing in the way of excitement to warm one, when the water-meadows look dreary in the grey light, and constant casting without result gets more and more monotonous as the hours go by. February generally justifies its name of fill-dyke. Many of the meadows are flooded for a time, and even for the keenest of sportsmen of mature years there is not much fun in splashing through them under such conditions, with every chance of stumbling into a concealed deep channel where icy-cold water will pour down one’s leg over the tops of long wadingboots. The floods subside towards the end of the month, enough to show up the river-bank, always the driest part of the average water-meadow. When that happens and a fine day comes, it is high time to put up the pike rod. There is a certain white-railed bridge © about two miles above this old cathedral city (I do not think that is enough information — to afford a clue to its whereabouts). About — three-quarters of a mile above that bridge is a huge boiling hatch, very deep, with a heavy flow of water. Above that hatch the “ happy valley ” begins, a valley of little villages about — a mile or so apart, and between them some really good trout water. The river there is netted for pike and other coarse fish, for the sake of the trout. Below the hatch the pike have it all their own way as far as the city, in which for some curious reason the trout flourish again. There are always a few big ones to be seen under each of the three or four bridges, and generally a row of good townsfolk leaning over the parapet to look at them. They remind me of the fisherfolk in a certain village on the Cornish coast. The saying in those parts is that you can always tell the men of that village because the elbows of their coats are worn out by leaning on them over the low wall of the little breakwater. The wall of the breakwater by the next village is lower, and the men who dwell there can be distinguished by inspecting the seats of their trousers. But we will leave all thoughts of the townsfolk behind us, after buying a hot mutton-pie at a pastry-cook’s and wrapping it up in a cloth to take with us, ready for eventualities. A small thermos flask full of hot soup is not a bad thing to have with one, as well, on a February day. It is a grey, cold day, with a cold wind blowing, and there is no sense in not being supplied with creaturecomforts, in case there should be a blank day in prospect and a long walk home with an empty bag—much more tiring to carry than a full one, after a long fishing-day.

I wish that I was better at this casting business with a light wagtail bait and a wind blowing. It is so difficult to get fly-fishing out of one’s head and to realize that it is a different art altogether. I remember that I used to find it fairly easy from a boat, with a nice flat board to coil the spare line on before swinging out with the bait, but what with grass and mud and old rushes and pools of water along the banks, that way will not do, so, years ago, I provided myself with a very extravagant contraption in the way of a patent reel which runs free if you press a little trigger, less freely if you do not, and with a heavy check on the line if you touch another thing. I suppose that it would be all right if one fished for pike every day, and it would come naturally to touch the right thing instead of the wrong one, but, as it is, 1 sometimes in casting keep the free-wheel arrangement on after the wagtail has dropped in the water on the other side of the river (or wherever else it may have fallen after a bad cast). If you press the trigger for a fraction of a second too long, the drum goes on free-wheeling and overruns yards and yards of line. It takes ages and much patience to set matters right, and meanwhile the wagtail bait, bristling with triangle hooks, sinks to the bottom and catches in a snag or a weedroot before you can reel in. Probably the trouble is in the word “casting,” because what you really do if you can is to swing the bait smoothly out, with only just enough force to send it where you want to, slip your finger off the trigger the instant, or just before, it touches the water, and then reel in slowly at once to take up any slack line and let the current spin the bait. It would all be easier if I used a lead, I suppose, but the river is not very deep, and as a pike’s eyes are on the top of his head, I have a notion that he sees things better if they are well above him in the water. But I do like good big, bright metal spinners to keep the bait spinning well and showing good flashes as it spins. I find the wagtail (which is just two flat strips of rubber) painted reddy-brown and gold outside better than the pattern’ painted blue-and-silver. Both are painted red inside the strips.

Well, here we are at the river, and it certainly is good to see running water again and to have a rod in one’s hand at last, even if not a fly-rod. I only wish that I had a telescopic gaff, as a long-handled one will get between one’s legs, somehow, wherever it is slung. All this sounds rather critical and not in holiday mood, which only means that we have not got into things properly yet, but we soon shall. In a few minutes we get an extraordinary bit of luck: a kingfisher flits by in a flash of blue. We put one or two snipe up as we go through the water-meadow and a wild duck as we get near the bank. Then, as we wander away from the road, comes complete solitude: not a sign of life anywhere; at least, none visible or to be heard. With the silence and solitude comes peace, and soon keenness, as the bait goes out and is wound in past a likely place for pike. Time after time it goes out, swings round with the stream as I wind in slowly, dwelling under the near bank, and leaving the bait spinning under water till close to my feet. Sometimes a pike will follow it all the way round and only take at the last moment, and here and there are _ patches of reeds along the bank and likely spots for pike to lie amongst them.

So it goes on for an hour or two: swing across, reel in, recover, Swing across, reel in, recover, monotonously and with no success, until the face of the water looks blank and as if there can be nothing alive behind it. Then a convenient rail to sit upon is suggestive of a rest and luncheon. One weak spot of water-meadows for the fisherman in need of rest is that you cannot sit down in them, and it is no use carrying a shooting-stick or campstool, because it sinks in the mud if you try to use it. Hot soup from a thermos is good. So is the mutton-pie, still warm; but before it is finished a subtle change seems to come in the air, or the light—quite indescribable ; but the effect is that instead of the river looking as if it contained nothing alive, it looks as if its slightly coloured waters concealed many great fishes. Such times are not to be spent in feeding; the mutton-pie, with a bite out of it like the one in the Mad Hatter’s slice of bread and butter, goes into the napkin again, and into the pocket, and I resume fishing, full of hope and too keen to wait even to fill a pipe.