AND NOW WE COME to a group of books wherein angling and natural history—two sisters that should wander hand-in-hand in peace by the riverside—have had a struggle for mastery. Of these books Dr. E. Hamilton’s Recollections of Fly-fishing for Salmon Trout and Grayling and his Riverside Naturalist are typical examples. In the first he sets himself the task of imparting to his brother anglers the results of much reading, and a long and varied experience with the rod in many lands and many waters. But, alas! science is too strong for him. After forty-six charming pages of selections from early records of salmon capture, with shrewd notes thereon, glimpses of autobiography, and personal recollections, he plunges into the natural history of salmo salar to the extent of thirty-nine more pages; and thenceforth his work becomes a sandwich—by no means unpalatable, but none the less a sandwich. His next literary effort The Riverside Naturalist, is a light farrago of science, seasoned with a delicate flavour of fishing. It is hard to digest at one meal, but once tasted, it is sure to be tasted again.
Passing over the few—happily very few—books that are little more than minute records of slaughter, with full particulars of time and place, we now come to the technical books of the craft—books treating of the make, choice, and use of flies and tackle; and here we find the most marked advance during the last few years, both in number and character.
Vanity Fair's caricature of Alfred E.T. Watson of the Duke of Beaufort's Badminton Library. The second volume discusses angling for salmon and trout.
I shall have space to notice a few only of these, and my notice must be brief. I will begin with the volume of the “Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes” devoted to fishing for salmon and trout; partly because the Badminton Library is the most complete collective work on sports and pastimes ever published, and partly because this individual volume forms a collective link between works falling under some of the heads I have already mentioned, and purely technical text-books intended to meet the requirements of the practical angler, which I have yet to describe. The volume consists of contributions by various hands, compiled and edited by Mr. H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, who leads off in person with a chapter “On Tackle and Fishing Gear.”
Now Mr. Cholmondeley-Pennell is a man of many gifts and many methods. He is, as we know, an elegant writer, and no stranger to the Muses. In company with his Puck on Pegasus he has ventured short flights in the fairyland of fancy. But once at work on fishing-tackle, he ties himself down (as with his most favourite “jam knot”) in his choice of words to those that most exactly and adequately explain the dry mechanical and technical details with which he has to deal. He has stopped his ears with “cobbler’s wax,” and is deaf to the charm of grace and euphony. His style, here, is that of the patent agent, not of the poet. But no sooner has he escaped from the hooks than he plunges into a stream of humorous personal anecdote that loses nothing in brightness and ease from its juxtaposition with purely descriptive and didactic passages. His next contribution is an essay on the “Natural History of British Salmonidæ.” This, as might be expected in a work by the author of the Angler Naturalist, is so set forth to be easily “understanded of the people.” Major Trahern follows with a masterly treatise on “Salmon-fishing with the Fly,” too full of matter for abridgement.
Other contributions of merit complete the volume. Omitting, as outside my present purpose, those which treat of spinning and bait-fishing, and, for the moment, passing over a short account of salmon and trout culture by Mr. T. Andrews, of Guildford—a subject on which I shall say a few words hereafter—I find but one that calls for notice. It is entitled, “Fly-fishing for Trout and Grayling,” or, “Fine and Far Off.” It is written by Mr. H. R. Francis, a veteran fisher whose store of knowledge has been garnered here and at the Antipodes. It is noteworthy, not for what is new, but for what is old, in its precepts. Many an ancient adage, overlooked by recent writers, or purposefully passed over by them as matters of common knowledge too obvious to be stated, is here examined, tested by practical experience, and, when necessary, qualified or limited in its application. Take, for example, “the admirable rule of Charles Cotton,” expressed in the maxim, “Fine and far off.” Mr. Francis wisely points out that this rule might not be blindly followed; that “far off” means “out of sight”; and that, when the angler can hide behind a bush or other shelter, it is worse than useless to cast a longer line than is necessary to cover the fish. Had he but added that “fine” was a relative term, to be construed with due regard to the size of the fish in each particular stream, he would have spared many a trout a sore mouth, and many a fly-fisher a sore trial of temper!
His essay abounds with shrewd observation and useful hints, and is written with ease and polished grace. He has the art (rare since Hazlitt’s time) of using apt quotations, not as added ornament, but as a rich thread woven in the fabric of his text. He may be studied by the fly-fisher with profit, and read by all with pleasure.
Halford's Floating Flies…
And now I come to the books which are nothing if not practical. Of these, Mr. F. M. Halford’s Floating Flies and How to Dress Them, and his Dry Fly-fishing, in Theory and Practice, command the first place, as being, within certain limits, the best books on fishing with the artificial fly ever written. The limits are these. His books apply to the capture of brown trout and grayling only; salmon and sea trout being outside their purview. They apply to only one method of using the artificial fly, namely, the method of using it dry, so that it may float on the surface of the water. This needs explanation. In the happy days of old, when fish were foolish, and fishermen were few, one, two, three, or more flies were fastened at intervals on a line; a cast was made across the stream, the rod-point was depressed, and the flies allowed to sink as they drifted down the current. When the line became fully extended, the flies began to rise to the surface, and to sweep round in a curve towards the bank on which the angler stood, the fly nearest him, called the “bob-fly,” tripping and dancing as it skimmed the water. By an inward inclination of the rod-point, the angler then brought his flies close under the bank, and, unless they were seized by some hungry trout, in mistake for larvæ rising to the surface to cast their skins, stretch their wings, and soar in the air, he would take a step or two downstream, and cast again; thus searching the whole water for fish. This method of proceeding is still adopted with success in rapid, rocky, and turbid streams, but in our tranquil and transparent rivers of the south, the trout see, and have learned to fear, the angler and his wiles.
