WE ARE BUSY PEOPLE. Population increases; competition ties us day by day more closely to the desk. It is difficult, sometimes impossible, to arrange beforehand to leave one’s business at a fixed hour and day. Most pastimes require preliminary arrangement. Not so fly-fishing. The angler needs no companion. For him “solitude is sometimes best society.” He depends on neither horse nor dog for his sport. Rod in hand and creel on back, he can start at a minute’s notice. Leaving Waterloo Station at 4.55 p.m., I have myself landed a salmon on the banks of the Test before 8 o’clock in the evening of the same day, and I have often caught trout in the Wandle within an hour and a half of leaving my office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Nor does fly-fishing need the mass of baits and tackle required for most forms of angling. In these days of eyed hooks, more flies than are likely to be wanted in a day’s fishing can be packed in a small pill-box.
The River Lea nears the Thames, by Joseph Pennell (1857-1926).
But let us pass to the alleged decrease in the area of fishable water. I fear this is true. Springs have been tapped, streams diverted, and watersheds drained to fill reservoirs of corporations and companies; and rivers once deep-flowing and fish-full, are now dry watercourses, or at best dribbling runnels. Perhaps this cannot be helped, as domestic water supply is more important than sport. Some corporations, moreover, have made amends by stocking their reservoirs with fish. But that manufacturers, to save their own pockets, and sanitary authorities, to save the pockets of the ratepayers, should be suffered to poison and pollute our streams passeth all understanding. It is well that County Councils have power to check this evil; and the fact that in some districts, where complaint has been loud, this power has already been exercised is a hopeful sign; but the fish “that knows no touch of eloquence,” cannot protest. He must suffer in silence, until some serious human epidemic indirectly brings him relief.
Now, as to the retail value of fisheries. This has no doubt increased. A salmon-fishery on the Lower Test is now let to six rods at £100 a rod. I rented half this water seven years ago at £50 a year. Trout-fishing in the best part of the Test, Itchen, and Kennet, now commands a rent of at least £100 a mile, and it is seldom to be obtained at any price. It is, no doubt, difficult at first sight to reconcile this increase in value with the statement that fish are fewer, smaller, and worse risers than of old. But it must be remembered that there are now many more anglers seeking to rent water and less water is to be had; and that any piece of water suitable to trout, although it may contain but few, can, by stocking and breeding, be made to carry as many fish as can reasonably be desired. But, first, have trout (for henceforth I shall speak of the non-migratory salmonidæ only) fallen off in numbers? The authorities in books and newspapers tell us so; and their view is strongly corroborated by the growth and development of commercial fish-culture. Abroad, the product of fish farms goes direct to the market to supply food for the people. Here is goes direct to our rivers to supply sport for the fishermen. Commercial pisciculture in Great Britain owes its origin and growth to the angler’s desire to make good the deficiency in the product of the natural spawning beds in his river. The demand for ova, fry, and yearlings has greatly increased of late.
A year’s output at the well-known hatchery at Guildford is now as follows:—
Ova and fry (trout) . . . about 3,500,000
Yearlings, ditto . . . from 60,000 to 100,000
Two- and three-year-old, ditto . 15,000 to 20,000
This shows an increase of more than 400 per cent. on the output ten years ago.
Sir James R. Gibson Maitland has published no account of his fish-cultural work at Howietoun for some years. (I notice, however, that in the year 1885-6 he sold no less than 1,382,500 eggs of Lochleven trout alone.) And I have been unable to get details of the work lately done at Mr. Armistead’s Solway Fishery, Dumfries, the oldest commercial fish-cultural establishment in the kingdom. But I have no reason to doubt that the output from these noted hatcheries has increased in much the same proportion. I have mentioned three only out of many fish farms, and I have said nothing of the hatcheries and the stews attached to the private waters; but I have said enough to indicate decline in the natural fish-production of our rivers and streams. Let us consider what can be the cause of this.
OVER-FISHING WILL BE the first suggestion. The angler who comes home grumbling, heavy at heart, and light in creel, may indignantly deny this; but although the individual take may be less, the total number of fish caught is probably greater now, owing to the increased number of rods, then it ever was. Want of judgment in weed cutting has much to answer for. Many anglers, who have more skill in covering and hooking a fish than resource in keeping it out of danger when hooked, hate weeds. This feeling makes them lend a ready ear to the suggestion of the keeper (prompted by due regard for his own convenience) that when he cuts the weeds he should make a clean sweep of them. The result is a river denuded of weeds, offering no shelter to the fish, and no obstacle to the deadly flue net of the night poacher.
Not that the presence of weeds is always a protection to the fish, sometimes it leads to their destruction. In hot sunshine, “those long mosses in the stream,” when “hither thither idly sway’d,” are apt to betray the broad tail of some lusty trout, who, in fancied security beneath their shade, is lazily digesting a mash of may-fly or a gorge of minnows. Such a trout may be tickled; but a cool hand, in every sense of the word, is wanted for this sport—for sport it undoubtedly is, whether fair or foul is a matter of opinion. During the delicate preliminary process of testing by touch the exact position of the trout, should the operator’s fingers be sensibly warmer than the water, one lash of that broad tail which first betrayed the presence of the fish ensures its safety. It is wiser, therefore, until the crucial clutch is made, to use the weed as a glove between hand and fish. If this is done, and every movement of the hand keep time with the natural rhythm of the weed as swayed to and fro by the stream, a trout seems to enjoy the handling, and will stand a great deal of it without taking alarm.
Trout-ticklers at their work.
There is much to be done before you get in touch with your trout. The deeper the water the greater the confidence of the fish, but the greater also the difficulty of wading up to it without shake, splash, or suspicious shadow. The least vibration in the water, or variation in its natural flow, the slightest crunch in the gravel beneath it, the shadow of head or arm over-lapping the green canopy, and cast on the patch of golden gravel beneath this and the next long tress of weeds—these, or anyone of these, may scare the fish. Moreover, when the precise bearings of the trout have been ascertained, and the tresses of weed discreetly parted, it needs confidence, begotten of long practice in the poacher’s art to grip the fish so that one’s thumb and second (or, better still, third) finger are at once in perfect opposition, and at the right distance behind the pectoral fins, to get a firm hold on the slippery fish. Indeed, so many are the difficulties with which the tickler is beset, that some writers dispute the fact that trout so situated can be thus caught. That they could be so caught fifty years ago I have, I regret to say, no room for doubt. But tickling trout under weeds in deep water requires daylight, if not sunshine, and cannot be practised to any great extent without attracting the keeper’s notice. There is, however, a kind of night poaching on the shallows wherein weeds turn traitor to the trout. It is called “the crate trick,” and is practised on moonlight nights or between dawn and daybreak. The poacher is provided with a large shallow oval basket, wide at the base and narrow at the top; it has no bottom, and its lid opens on hinges. With this he walks into the water, and, having driven a trout under the shelter of a trailing weed, impounds both weed and trout under his basket. He then raises the lid sufficiently to admit the passage of his arm, and gropes about in the weed until he feels the trout, which is promptly tapped on the head and consigned to his pocket.
Georgina Ballantyne's 1922 British record salmon (64 pounds) has been recently topped by Bev Street (66 pounds).
In salmon rivers, owing to flood and spate, there are, as a rule, but few weeds, and these are shunned by the fish. In the tranquil Test, however, even fresh-run salmon will, in bright low water, seek shelter in the weeds. Some ten years ago I hooked a fish near Nursling Mill. In his rush up the river he passed on the far side of a pile and broke my line. While I was repairing my tackle, the keeper called my attention to a fish which was repeatedly throwing itself out of the water forty yards above us. I looked up from my work, and in the sunshine I distinctly saw the glitter of gut hanging from its mouth. It was my lost fish, there could be no doubt of that. I ran up the bank in time to see the fish turn, first on one side, then on the other, as it rubbed its head against the gravelly bed of the river, striving, no doubt, to free itself from the hook. When we drew near it buried itself under a thick patch of weeds. The water here was about five feet in depth, and ever and anon we could see the silver sheen of the salmon as it moved uneasily beneath the weed.
At last, I could stand still no longer; I stripped, and gaff in hand, half walked, half swam, until I could feel the soft weed under my feet. I looked down but could see nothing owing to the shimmer on the surface of the water. My only chance lay in a dive. The water was cold, but I was keen, and allowing myself to drift a few yards down, so that I might not disturb the fish, I let my legs rise, pressed my chin to my chest, and dipping my head beneath the surface, swam underwater until I could touch the weed with my hand. I could see nothing of the fish, and was about to strike at hazard with the gaff, when a slight upheaval of the weed disclosed the thick end of my gut cast with a few inches of the broken reel-line attached to it. The gut cast was two yards long, the handle of my gaff was five feet long, the direction was clearly given by the floating line. I knew to an inch where to strike, and I struck, drawing the fish towards me, and placing my left hand on the point of the gaff hook to prevent the fish from wriggling off, while I struggled ashore as best I could without the aid of hands or arms, and returned home, having caught a lively “springer” and a serious cold.
