The practical fisherman : dealing with the natural history, the legendary lore, the capture of British freshwater fish, and tackle and tackle making

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Chapter I. Introductory

Thb angler who may, perohanoe, be also a bit of a bibliographer, will probably exclaim at the appearance of another treatise on the gontlo craft. So many works on this charming subject have been written and published, from Oppian to the present time, that another would seem superfluous, and only capable of yain repetitions. This need not be so, howeyer, and in the following chapters I shall take care that it is not so. A seyerely practical, careful rSsv/m4 of what is known and proyed, and a concise account of what the writer has himself experienced, need not come under the category of yain repetition, and may be useful tomany learners seeking those a^ost Parnassian heights, whence the fully initiated smile at the scoffers and mockers of the art which Byron so ill-naturedly termed 'Hhat solitary yice." And, indeed, there ara seyeral other reasons why a dissertation on practical angling may not be unwelcome. The price of eyery really capable work on the subject is generally prohibitory to that class of persons who make the art their chief recreation during the interyals of work at the mill or factory,, counter or desk. To such what I haye to say will I hope at least be interesting, and it is to such chiefly that I shall address myself. It would probably be presumption on my part to suppose I could say anything on so trite a subject which would enlighten those who haye the power of consulting a whole library of flashing authors, whose chief merit, howeyer, seems to be prolixity. The importance,

B also, of the pnrsnit may be another reason why additional consideration of angling oonld adyantageoasly be given. The number of anglers is so yast and so oontmnally increasing that it yery appropriately now bears the title of a "national sport." With increasing numbers of anglers the scarcity of fish, although not appreciably becoming greater, undoubtedly does increase, and the education of the fish, combined with this scarcity, require g^reater finesse and more subtle means for their capture. Observations on these refinements are, therefore, not out of place. I shall endeavour !n the course of the following pages to give notices of the latest of these, and the most effective, with various little inventions of my own, which have been put in practice in view of the increased skill required in the capture of our quarry.

It is customary at all entertainments to issue a programme of what is intended to be performed, and I will therefore follow so good an example. Briefiy, I may say that, under the title I have chosen, separate consideration is given to the following cognate subjects : The gpeneral history of angling, tackle and baits ; ichthyology, or the science of fishes ; nearly every fish inhabiting the fresh water, or migratory, in Great Britain, described in turn according to classification; and last, but not least, the art of tackle making is considered. Sea fishing may form the subject of another treatise at some future time. It will be observed that special attention is paid to the subject of ordinary tackle making, for, to my mind, one of the chief charms of successful angling is the refiection and knowledge that the fish captured are really and truly, solely and wholly so, by one's own appliances and skill, and thus the sense of possession is rendered doubly sweet. In treating also of each fish for the convenience of reference, the following divisions and subdivisions are observed : Natural history — ^including habitat, food, season, diseases, &c. — ^piscine folk lore, tackle, baits, and gastronomical, &c. Of course, notwithstanding the comprehensiveness of this syllabus, I am well aware that no book or treatise can alone make an angler. Hear what Saint Izaak Walton says on this point: "Now for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how to make a man that was none to be an angler by a book ; he that undertakes it shall undertake a harder task than Mr. Hales, that in a printed book called ' The Private School of Defence' undertook to teach the art of fencing, and was laughed at for his labour. Not but that many useful things might be observed out of that book, but that the art was not to be taught by words ; nor is the art of angling." Indeed, some hare gone to the length of applying the old maxim, Poeta noLsdturf non fit, to the angler — an angler is bom, not made, say they. I do not go quite so far as that, however, but fully believe that one ounce of practice is worth a bushel of theory.

INTKODUCTORY. O

Both are, neyertheless, good in their plaoes. I aak the angler in all cases to proye by experiment, if possible, all that I try to teaoh by words.

After all this explanatory matter, which, albeit necessary, is eminently dry to the reader as it is to the writer, I come to touch upon a much more agreeable topic, yiz., the position angling holds as a sport, and the reason why it exerts such a fascination oyer its yotaries, for this comes properly under the heading " Introductory." To the initiated I am fully aware that a disquisition on this is unnecessary ; but to the vaimi' tiated, who haye probably read or heard quoted Johnson's snarl about *^ a worm at one end and a fool at the other,*' it is desirable to show succinctly why presumably sane men follow such an apparently inane, senseless occupation. Even Plutarch has spoken against it as a *' filthy, base, illiberal employment, haying neither wit nor perspicacity in it, nor worth the labour." Think of that, brother anglers ! Let this man be anathema mcMranatha, likewise all others who rail against the most gentle of crafts !

Man, and indeed all animals, seem to haye an innate desire to hunt, i.e., to acquire by personal exertion. In the lower animals this desire is put in action primarily for the sake of the food it brings ; in man, the hunting, whether of fish, flesh, or fowl, or good red herring, may exist, as in angling, without the desire for the food acquired. The exercise of aU or any of man's powers or desires giyes pleasure, and the fact that the desire to hunt in angling is accompanied in its exercise by the employment of more skilled and yaried accomplishments and subtleties of manipulation than any other sport is the chief reason why so many practise it. That the influence of the spell is lasting is also demonstrated in the truth that few (none, I might say) giye it up until the latest possible minute. The angler has the same undying steady affection as the litterateur is said to haye for his profession. A hundred chances may depriye a man of his cricket, shooting, or hunting, but angling may be and is often pursued till the yeteran ** goes oyer to the many." Indeed, instances of the ruling passion strong in death in connection with the gentle art are not wanting. Jesse, in his delightful "Angler's Bambles," says that the answer to the captor of a beautiful Thames trout, who had sent oyer to his friend to come and see it, was, that the friend was dying, but " that it would be a yast satisfaction to him if he could see the fish, proyided it would not be injured by being conyeyed to his house for that purpose." This wish was gratified, and Jesse remarks, " Mr. T. feasted his eyes upon it, and soon afterwards closed them for eyer." This " ruling passion " has been yery beautifully expressed by Mr. Westwood, in the *' Newcastle Fishers* Garland " for 1863. He represents an old angler dying.

4 THE PBACTICAL FISHEBMAK.

and desiring his son and daughter to place him in full view of the delightfnl river Coquet. This they do, and he says :

Now place my rod beside my hand—

I llye in days gone by : I climb the tteep . I move the deeps,

I throw the ommintr fly.

Wild whirls my reel, fall grows my oreel.

Oh, SOD ! oh, loYing daughter !

In maddest dream was ever stream

Could xaatoh with Coquets water?

And BO on. I know myself of an angler who still wears beneath the weight of eighty-five years a yonng man's heart and spirits, which he says is due to seventy years of angling. I assure my readers I have drawn from his valuable experience in the succeeding chapters. Will these facts recommend the uninitiated to angling P for, like all true believers, I seek ever to proselytise.

The charm this species of amusement exerts over the angler must be powerful to afford such examples as those I have just quoted, and besides the general reason already given for this, there exists another hardly less considerable, and this may be sought for in a quality which most men possess, namely, a love of nature. This is splendidly explained in the oft-quoted passage from the Prioress of St. Albans, which I have rendered into modern English that the reader may the more readily read it, and which I beg leave to reproduce, it being, apart from its special reference to angling, a sweet pastoral prose poem. She says : " And yet at the least he hath his wholesome walk, and merry at his ease a sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead flowers, that maketh him hungry. He heareth the melodious harmony of fowls. He seeth the young swans, herons, ducks, coots, and many other fowls, with their broods, which to me seemeth better than all the noise of hounds, the blast of horns, and the cry of fowls, that hunters, falconers, and fowlers can make. And if the angler take fish surely there is no man merrier than he is in his spirit.*' Old Walton also teems with this love of natural music which so eloquently appeals to the angler's better nature, and which in the end becomes as familiar voices from whose soft fascination he cannot nor does he wish to break. Let my readers listen to a few words from him — Byron terms him a "quaint old cruel coxcomb," with his accustomed sneer — and, after thinking over what they mean, and what I have above said, say whether there is any method or not in the angler's madness. Thus : ''Look ! under that broad beech tree I sat down when I was last this way a fishing. And the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to me to have a friendly contention with an echo whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree near the brow of that primrose hill. There I sat, viewing the silver streams glide silently

INTRODUCTORY. O

towards their centre, the tempestuous sea, yet sometimeB opposed by nigged rooks and pebble stones which broke their wayes and tamed them into foam. And sometimes I begniled time by viewing the harmless lambs, some leaping securely in the green shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful snn. ... As I sat thus these and other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content that I thought) as the poet had happily expressed it :

I was for that time lifted above earth.

And posseesed joys not promised in my birth."

Was ever such a charming scene presented by poet or painter before or since? and to the S3rmpathetic reader this quotation, of many others, unfolds the secret of the formation of the pleasant thraldom with whidi angling — ^not " pot hunting ** — environs its disciples.

For, indeed, what can be more soothing to man's nature than the soft murmur of the breeze as it caresses the slender reeds or soughs gently through the rashes, kissing the slowly flowing stream and raising a smiling dimple of pleasure in the otherwise inanimate water? The artisan from the mill, though his hands be hard and homy, has a man's love of Nature ; the tired business man, with his head hitherto full of shares, bonds, coapons, debentures, and what not; even the statesman, like Lucretius, ''his mind half buried neath some weightier argument" — all are subdued by the tender force of unsophisticated Nature. But they must have had the angler's training to enjoy it. Who but an angler, having learned patience and ^iccepted the gitts of contemplation — ^it is ''the contemplative man's pastime" — could have written this passage anent the nightingale : " He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descents, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoabling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth and say, ' Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the souls in Heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earfch ? ' " Magnificent as is that ode on this bird — of one "whose name is writ in water," John Keats — ^no passage in it can compare to this simple piece of heart poesy. The charm of angling is not broken since this was written.

Now, it may be asked, what special qualifications ought a would-be angler to possess in order to enjoy the pleasures so enthusiastically enumerated? I answer that, inasmuch as that all men cannot be appreciative of Nature and her works, in the same way that all men cannot be poets, painters, or writers, so is it that all men who handle a rod cannot be recipients of the superlative pleasures derivable &om

6 THE PRACTICAL 7I&HEBMAK.

the gentle craft. To be able to accept, and by an inward process to turn all natural examples of beneficence as famished by onr lakes and rivers and general natural scenery to the delectation of the intellectual and moral natnre, in every case implies the tme poetic faculty in its fullest fruition. Many are able to use it in its entirety. The best anglers I have ever met have been keen, intelligent men, of strong, sanguine, sensitive and eloquent natures, and possessed of that rare power of making the hand answer to the eye — intuitive judgment, and, chiefly, strong athletic bodies. This is my experience, and, as such, I think it will bear scrutiny. The gross picture of *' Patience in a Punt," either under the broiling sun or bursting heavens, soma sport, sans cheerfulness, sa/ns everything that makes life endurable, is the absolute opposite to the general truth. Under all circumstances the true angler is infinite in schemes and stratagems — *' dodges " is the better term — is ever hopeful and watchful, spares no pains, and absorbs as a sponge does water the pleasaunce around him, his quick well balanced wrist and his clear eyesight can hook and play the fish and on the finest tackle land him. It is a miracle of fishing — ^to land a large fish on such a fragile thread that a half pound dead weight would break it. The Field reported the capture of a pike in its 'teens, brought to bank by an angler roach fishing with fine hair — ^this captor was an angler-hero.

To show, in conclusion of a somewhat longer '* introduction ** than I at first intended, that there are large numbers of anglers who, in effect, feel and think as I have written, an interesting calculation has been made by Mr. Manley, in his book on *'Fish and Fishing," on London angling, which I am sure he will allow me to reproduce. He says : "I gather that there are at the present time about eighty angling olubs or societies in the metropolitan districts, fifty-three of which are associated together under the name of the United London Anglers, and pay social visits in relation to tlie head centre. The fifty-three olubs have, in round numbers, 1700 members, and the other dubs 500, the very great majority of whom are small shopkeepers, mechanics, and working men. Of the same class there are at least 1000 regular anglers in the London districts who belong to no club. Further, it may be calculated that there are 500 more regular anglers who reside in the vicinity of the Thames and Lea. To these may be added 1000 at least of regular anglers of the upper classes, gentlemen, merchants, and large shopkeepers. These, added together, will give a g^and total of 5000 persons who make angling their chief recreation in a moderately circumscribed area of which London is the centre.'' Now, these figures are certainly within the mark, and the estimate recently made in " The Country ' ' journal that there are 50,000 anglers properly so called in England and

INTRODUCTOET. 7

Wales oannot, I think, be considered too high. The art is spreading more and more every day. The necessity for general legislation in its favour has at last made itself apparent. The hiunanising and peaceful recreation, is esteemed by those who do not practise it, and everyone of thought or appreciation wonld acknowledge it as an'* art/' a category to which it was assigned by Walton 200 years ago.

The space, however, allotted to this most extravagant of '* introductions" fails. I have endeavoured to impress upon readers the real significance of the art. Perhaps, as a sort of postscript to all I have said, the angler's song, entitled ** Invitation,*' the author however of which I do not know, will add a seal to my enthusiasm :

Oh, while fishing lasts enjoy it !

Let ns to the streams lepair ; Snatch some hoars from toil and stady,

Nature's blessed gifts to share.

Ye who stand behind the counter.

Or grow pallid at the loom, Leave the mcusure and the shuttle.

To the rippling stream come, come !

He that clothed these banks witii verdure.

Dotted them with various flowers.

Meant that ye, though doomed to laooar,

W Should enjoy some cheeodng hours ; ipe your reexing brows— come with us.

With your basket and your rod ; And with happy hearts look up from Nature unto Nature's God.

8 THE FBACIICAL FI8EEKUAN.

CHAPTER II. The General History of Angling, Tackle

AND Baits.

Wab Adam an angler P Did lie solace himself in the intervals of his delightful work in med/io Ugni pa/radisi — in the midst of the trees of the garden — ^with Inring the beauties of the four rivers — Gihon, Pison, Hiddekel, and Euphrates P or was angling a pleasure not then included in the plan of human happiness P It boots not to know the answers to these questions, and they may well be passed over, but it may be interest^ ing to my readers to have a slight sketch before them of the general rise and progress of angling from early times, that when I come to an enumeration and consideration of the exigencies and appliances of the art in future chapters they may in some sort compare the ancient fishing with that of to-day.

It has been presumed, and certainly the presumption seems to hold good, that the ancient Egyptians were not only catchers of fish, but artistic anglers also. Certain figures on their monuments clearly exhibit their knowledge of the craft. The Gbeeks also appear to have had some knowledge of it also ; witness a passage in Homer, in which he speaks

Of beetling rookg that overhang the flood.

Where silent angler cast invidious food.

With fraadfnl care await the finny prize.

And sudden lift it quivering to the skies.

Certainly the idea of throwing the fish over one's head does not represent the method of the angler to the best of advantage, but the reference is distinct enough. The Bible furnishes other undeniable references to angling, and, if I am not mistaken, in the Book of Job we find the first reference to the using of a hook : " Canst thou draw out the leviathan with an Jioolc ; canst thou bore his jaw through with a thorn?** Again, in Isaiah, chap. 19, v. 8 : " And the fisher shall mourn and lament, and those that cast the hooh into the river." The word hook is here, I am informed by a celebrated Hebrew scholar, properly

THE GENEEAL HISTORY OP ANGLING, ETC. ^

rendered. Also amongst the resnlts of excayations at Pompeii were some hooks of a rude shape, of bronze, that is, of an alloy of tin and copper most probably, which, as Pliny informs ns, oonld be drawn oat to the thinness of a hair.

Of course the Bomans and Greeks oif a more recent time were well acqnainted with the art, and we need bat glance at Oppian to be sare that these antiqaated anglers belong in spirit to the present commonwealth of fishermen. His spirited description of gorge fishing and the oaptare of the qaarry, when done into good English verse, is generally mach saperior to any such descriptions in modem time except those of 6kiy. Nor may we forget the story of Antony and Cleopatra and the irritating trick her Majesty played her Boman lover when they went a-fishing. Platarch gives the incident thus : *' It woald be very tedious and trifling to recount all his follies, but his (Antony's) fishing must not be forgot. He went out one day to angle with Cleopatra, and being so unfortunate as to catch nothing in the presence of his mistress, he was very much vexed, and gave secret orders to the fishermen to dive under the water and put fishes that had been fresh taken upon his hook. After he had drawn up two or three, Cleopatra perceived the trick ; she, however, pretended to be surprised at his good fortune and dexterity, told it to all her friends, and invited them to come and see him fish the next day. Accordingly, a very large company went out in the fishing vessels, and as soon as Antony had let down the line she commanded one of her servants to be beforehand with Antony's, and, diving into the water, to fix upon his hook a salted fish, one of those which were brought from the Euxine Sea." This is perhaps one of the most delicious of piscatorial jokes, and Plutarch tells it well, but not so well as Shakspeare. The immortal Swan of Avon thus translates it :

Olbo : Oive me mine angle ; we'll to the nver ; there,

My music p b> ing far off, I will betray

Tawny finned fiehes ; my bended hook shall pierce

Their slim> jdkws, and a^ I draw them up

I'll think them everyone an Antony,

And say. Ah ! ah ! you're caught.

Ohab : 'TwaB merry when

Yon wagered on vour aogler. when your diver

Did briug a bait fish on your hook which he

With fervency drew up.

CuBo: Thattime! Otimes!

I laughed him out of patience.

Dr. Badham also, amongst other very amusing and interesting little narratives of ancient angling, transcribes a passage from .Lilian in reference to the Macedonian catching a speckled fish by means of a fly. This I shall refer to further when speaking of baits, but it sufficiently shows that angling was practised widely amongst the ancient civilised natians.

10 THE PEACTICAL FISHEKMAN.

More nearly approaching our own times, it wonld appear that the ancient Britons and their suooessors, the Anglo-Saxons, were not rery accomplished in the capture of fish either for food or sport. Thus Bede tells of the people of Sussex that " The Bishop (Wilfrid) when he came into this proyince, and found so great a misery of famine, taught them to get their food by fishing. Their sea and rivers abounded in fish, yet the people had no skill to take them, except only eels. The bishop's men haying gathered eel nets everywhere, cast them into the sea, and by the help of Gk>d took three hundred fishes of several sorts, the which, being divided into three parts, they gave a hundred to the poor, a hundred to those of whom they had the nets, and kept a hundred for their own use."

In the interim, between this period and the publishing of the first book on fishing (commonly known as the " dark ages," albeit not nearly so black as has been painted), there is evidence that the people became much more educated in the ways of fishes and, presumably, also in the ways of taking them. The remains of monastic institutions indicate the existence of a species of fish culture which is hardly surpassed by the fish culture of to-day. At Stanton Harcourt, for example, there are still to be seen, according to Mr. Francis Francis, dried up stews of such fashion as to demonstrate at once their former uses. ** No doubt," he says, ** many a noble tench, fat carp, and luscious eel, made rich and savoury by all the varied recipes of monastic cookery, humbled the bereaved stomachs and mortified the flesh of abbot and friar and reverend prior at Stanton Harcourt in days gone by."

As if to lend countenance to the supposition that the monks were the chief anglers in Britain during its early history, we find that the first book printed in this land on the subject was by the Prioress of St. Albans, Juliana Barnes, or Bemers. Indeed, it may also claim to be amongst the first books printed in England, for not ten years after Oaxton printed his first book Wynkyn de Worde published the so-called ''Book of St. Albans." This first appeared in the world in 1486, and contained treatises on various other sports ; but that with which we are at present concerned began thus : ** Here begynnyth the treaty se of fysshyne wyth an angle." The directions therein given are very primitive, but were probably sufficient for the fish in these times. This book went through eleven editions, combined with the other treatises before mentioned. Thereafter followed during the succeeding century no book on the gentle craft of which we have any record. Leonard Mascall certainly brought out a book in 1590 "which contains but little improvement on the Book of St. Albans." In 1651 Barker's quaint "Art of Angling" appeared, and may be said to have laid the foundation of all future angling, it containing much practical observation and not a few hints of real value

THE GENBKAL HISTORY OP ANGLING, ETC. 11

to the tjyro. Walton, in 1653, published liia *' Complete Angler,'' wliicli, as all readers are aware, has not been surpassed *by any to this tim» for its unfeigned enthusiasm in reference to matters piscatorial and th» ardent love of nature shown on every page.

The art of fishing at the time of the production of this book was at a. low standard, compared with its present position as an art, nevertheless there is very little in Walton's book to be repudiated, and many of his angling ''wrinkles" are replete with a true knowledge of the habits of fish. Indeed, it is this latter quality which renders the book of value to the angler, and as an example I am bold enough to assert that the description of the habits of the trout is, as a piece of real ichthyolo* gical knowledge, not surpassed by any succeeding writer.

To show the difference between some ancient ideas in reference to the proper times for angling and our own ideas, I may be allowed to quote from an old book in my possession (without a title page), which is probably a compilation with a little superadded matter from Gervase Markham or Leonard Mascall, in reference to the bearing which astrology was supposed to have had on angling. This eld author thus gives his opinions, under the title of "Astrological Elections for Angling in General": "If, as the wise man saith (and I think that there is none which dare question his authority) that there is a proper time and season for every action under the sun, I hope it will not be offensive nor impertinent to show what time and seasons the intelligent angler ought to make choice of that may answer his expectation. For my part I have so often experienced the truth of these rules, that by good will I would never angle but at an elected time; the ingenious will not despise them, and for others .they are not intended. And they are these :

If yon would Neptune's scaly sabjects get.

Night's homed queen in the mid neaven set.

Thence lee her in the Paphian goddess shine r th' west, and »rreet her with a friendly time. Be sure you always fortify the eac^t, And let the maiden star possess the went.

However, let some aquatick nm ascend.

And let all power his happy lord attend ; Then see the setting constellation be Afflicted by some hateful enemy.

At least his lord the sixth with strength defend. Let active power his radiant lord attend : Then you may boldly venture to the flood.

And take from thence what fishes vou see good.

The reader skilled in the use of the astrologe may be able to elucidate this quaint piece of rhyme, but I confess I am not. The directions of a modem author in reference to the best fishing weather are briefly given for comparison, and serve to show how the art has been reduced to simple unequivocal rules from observations of weather chiefly unconnected with the stellar worlds. Ronalds, in the '* Flyfishers'