A Scottish fly-fisher
j i llil!LWliMUlB i «LII| i W i U)UBW W M »il M lg W« ; WM^^ •:i 1 riii^iai«n7iii^iwuUiiK^M ' - i iLtHfc ' iJi i ijyjvrjitf?? » ^ ^ ) i n I i >mm»i)tiimmm f 4 ^ IJ ■w— >w iiaiw i «(ifiiri <i iiiiH i l..^ ummmti MUM tamta^ ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY New York State Colleges OF Agriculture and Home Economics AT Cornell University THE GIFT OF WILLARD A. KIGGINS, JR. in memory of his father Cornell University Library SH 439.L53 A Scottish fly-fisher. 3 1924 003 579 566 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924003579566 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER BY A. LEITCH WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR PAISLEY: ALEXANDER GARDNER $nl)ltsher bg JLppointmcnt to tht late tljueen Virtotia 191 I ' ) - ' 1 ^ L 3 £0373 LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LMD. fKlNTED BV AI.KXANDBK (iARDNEK, I'AISI.KY PREFACE Although its production was undertaken at the instigation of a friend, the writer himself assumes the entire responsibihty for a book he feels to be without excuse — save the irrepressible loquacity of the angler whose eagerness to share with others all he knows and much of which he knows nothing, is within the experi- ence of everyone who owns his friendship. The book contains little that is new. It supplies no felt want. Though the reader may find in it an occasional hint rot altogether valueless, its purpose is not instructive ; it merely records the impressions of a casual angler whose methods are neither artful — in any sense of the term — nor scientific, and who angles as Sarah Battle's young acquaintance took a hand at whist — with the object of unbending his mind. The writer makes no claim to the possession of originality ; he is not a person of many inventions ; his ingenuity is unequal to the feats some other fishermen perform. In difficulties he is without resource. If the trout are simple enough to accept the flies he offers them they may, haply, find 2 PREFACE their way into his creel ; if they look at his lure askance and refuse to entertain it, he leaves them for a less sophisticated prey. Of the objects supposed to be reproduced in the so-called artificial fly, he is almost entirely ignorant. Not, however, that he prides himself upon the fact or is foolishly contemptuous of 'the science of insect life ; on the contrary, he is firmly persuaded that the more extensive the angler's knowledge of things connected, even remotely, with his art, the greater the delight he discovers in its practice, but, with the example of Stewart and others before him, he is unconvinced that familiarity with the natural history of the fly is essential to the capture of the fish. He is not impressed by the parade, sometimes entirely spectacular, of entomological learning which has become so prominent a feature of the literature of the rod. There will be found in the book no list of artificial flies. The art of simulating nature in the dressing of the lure is one of which the writer has no skill, and from the perplexing diversity of perfect imitations — of the same original — devised by pundits of our art, he finds it impossible to make a choice. But the omission places the reader at no great disadvantage. What information he desires is abundantly supplied in PREFACE 3 other works on angling, and its acquisition involves no arduous research. When in quest of a particular fly, he may select the first encountered, satisfied that, however widely it may differ from others similarly named, its resemblance to the object it is meant to simulate is as accurate as need be. To the standards of the angler the trout display an inexplicable apathy. Mr. E. M. Todd informs us that he had been for years in the habit of fishing with a Red Spinner dressed with mallard wings ; with, that is, a variety of wing prescribed by Ronalds but not, apparently, in general favour with — the angler. He had been with- out suspicion of his error, and, as he was perfectly satisfied with the practical success of the lure, might have been living in' ignorance of it still, had it not been discovered for him by a friend. The trout, lacking an adviser, failed to discover it at all. CONTENTS CHAPTER I.^ — Introductory 11.^ — ^The Fly 1 1 1.^ — Stream- Fishing IV. — Loch-Fishing V. — The Weather VI. — Loose Strands PAG* 9 36 86 112 160 179 ILLUSTRATIONS Frontispiece Facing title Got Him ! - 40 Flies and Lures (Coioured Plate) 42 Loch Lomond TZ Kinloch-Rannoch 88 In Spate - 104 At the Landing Stage 121 Port Nellan 137 The Dochart 152 N earing the End - 168 An Unpromising Day — Loch Leven - 185 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY F all the means by which we seek to ease our shoulders of the weight of life, none, it is maintained, is so valuable as angling. That, surely, depends upon the seeker. To the born angler there is nothing more absorbing, but he from whom the angling instinct has been withheld finds in it only another form of tedium. He may be mildly interested while sport is good, but he is without enthusiasm, and in the absence of rising fish is unsustained by hope. 10 A SCOTTISH FLY-FlSHER Comparison of angling with other sports is futile. We are not all similarly endowed. We begin life with a diversity of gifts. This man is born with a faculty for mathematics, that with a genius for music, a third with a talent for painting. We are anglers, golfers, cricketers, footballers, as nature determines, and those whose innate bent is towards one variety of sport seem to have but little understanding for the others. Least of all, perhaps, is the angler understood by those who do not share his feeling. To sing the joys of angling to one who lacks the angling senSe is vain as talk of music to the deaf or of colour to the blind. Only to those in sympathy with him do the angler's rhapsodies appeal ; to others they are foolishness. No one is so frequently the object of cheap sarcasm as he. He is the perennial butt of the small wit, who in the things — the many things — beyond his poor capacity sees but provocatives to cack- ling laughter. The worm with which, in the popular imagination, the angler endeavours to entice the wary trout, is surely the worm that never dies. Our friends are tireless in their efforts to preserve the memory of Johnson's peevish definition of our art. But though we be, by temperament, unable to INTRODUCTORY 11 appreciate the recreations in which our fellows find relief from toil, we need not scoff To deride a pastime merely because it is one for which we have no predilection, is to betray a defective intelligence. Our particular diversion is not necessarily the only one that merits the devotion of a reasonable man. Yet the angler is convinced that, as a refuge from the cares of earth, no pastime equals his, and in his desire to convince others he appeals to the witness of his own feelings. But, though shouted with all the stormy vehemence of that wordy advocate of silence, the grim old Seer of Chelsea, convictions are valueless if unsupported by objective evidence. 1 nward assurance of the reality of an object of belief may suffice the believer, but it is a flimsy reason on which to demand the acceptance of the belief by those who have no part in it. The angler, however, is not reduced to the testimony of his emotions ; he will find abundant evidence of the justice of his claim in a comparison of the literature of angling with that of kindred sports. The latter he will search in vain for any trage of the rapturous delight with which the former overflows. Unhappily, the angler's schemes, like those of other men, "gang aft agley." His occupation does not always yield him the delight of which he dreams, and 12 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER not infrequently the only pleasure he enjoys is that of hope. The beatitude ascribed by Kingsley to the Devil is characterised by all the subtlety a knowledge of its origin would lead us to expect. The thoughtful angler restrains his fancy. He knows that the dizzier the height to which it bears him the longer and more hazardous the fall he risks ; that the greater his expec- tations the more painful his chag- rin should misfortune overtake him. In the holiday of the occasional angler who has not learned to take fate's bufifetings upstanding, angling should be but an incident. To make it the single interest of his vacation is to court an almost certain disappointment ; whatever the result, it is unlikely to prove satisfying ; the failure of his enterprise leaves him disconsolately mourning the ruin of his , hopes, while its success seldom equals that anticipated. When, filling a subordinate place in his design, the quest of the elusive trout is of relatively small importance to the angler's happiness, he not only contemplates an empty creel in undisturbed tran- quillity but finds occasion for unwonted jubilation in • INTRODUCTORY 13 a full one ; he accepts ill fortune with resignation, and rejoices in good, as in an unconjectured grace. A pleasure in prospect is a pleasure already partially discounted ; our liveliest pleasures are those that come upon us unawares. The source of my delight in the most memorable fishing I have ever had was not in the quality of the sport, for I have met with better, but in its unexpectedness. Detained, by unhappy circumstance, within the precincts of a dull, unin- teresting German Dorf, where life threatened to become as dreary as that of Mariana in her moated grange, I was, to my surprise, given abundant occupa- tion for the rod I had taken with me on the quite unlikely chance of finding an opportunity of using it. Angling had been no ' part of my plan : it was a remote contingency on which I had bestowed but little thought, and the unlooked for privilege of casting an angle in the trout and grayling haunted stream meandering through the cowslip-spangled meadow just without the village gates, afforded me a joy that was not to be expressed in terms of weight or number. There are those who assure us that in the contem- 14 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER plation of nature they find ample solace for every dis- appointment. The writer is not among them. Theirs is not the spirit in which he practises his art. ' To him,- angling is no light pastime to be followed with divided mind and easy unconcern of the result ; it is a passion to which he is in thrall ; it engages all his energies and leaves him without interest in anything beside. He, when he goes a-fishing, is dominated by a purpose from which the fairest scene is powerless to divert him. Not even when trout are dour and provokingly in- different to the fascination of the fly does his attention wander for a moment from his quest. The basket is his sole concern, and on its weight alone depends his pleasure in the day. Should fortune smile on him, his happiness is perfect ; should she frown, he discovers little comfort in the beauty that surrounds him. It is a wan, grey world that lies about him when he comes empty away from the water. Yet he is not entirely insensitive to nature's charm. Although while actively engaged in fishing he is but dimly aware of his surroundings, he does not wholly escape their magic influence. He feels that much of the delight his recreation yields him is derived from the conditions under which it is pursued ; he is con- scious of the excitation of emotions to which it makes INTRODUCTORY 15 no appeal. But the gratification of his pleasure in the beautiful he defers until the trout has ceased from rising and" he from entertaining hope. When the day- is done and he' rejoices in a well-filled creel, nature rarely calls to him in vain. Not altogether in the weight dependent from his shoulder lies the secret of the exaltation which sustains him on his homeward way and makes of no account the miles which stretch across the wide brown moorland. Long may it be, Kingsley to the contrary not- withstanding, before nature is entirely under man's dominion. " Arable land is admirable, but I like to see the brackens," as Captain Cutlass said. Agriculture is an ancient and honourable calling, and there are still a few waste places of the earth awaiting the attention of the husbandman. But nature has in her possession many nooks and corners not to be exploited for gain, and God forbid that man should ever lay his touch on one of these to "dress it and keep it." Nature's attraction is in her very wildness, in her unconvention- ality, and there are few spectacles more depressing than that she presents as she emerges from the hands of the artist. Should she ever be brought completely under subjection, sport will be deprived of its essential element — the pursuit of the wild animal in its natural environ- 16 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER ment. The prospect, however, need give us no concern, for long before her subjugation is accomplished we shall probably have lost the instincts of the chase. While these remain to us, the sportsman's most ardent desire will be to get away from the haunts of his fellows, to penetrate the wilderness, to be alone in the "forest primeval." The more remote from human intrusion, the wilder and more primitive his surround- ings, the greater his delight. There is no joy to the angler in plying his lure in an aquarium, nor to the big-game hunter in pursuing a semi-domesticated prey through the simple intricacies of an artificial jungle. That is why sport on Loch Leven is comparatively tame and uninteresting. It is tainted /with commercialism. It is sport reduced to business. It sug- gests the game of Aunt Sally at a country fair. You shy sticks, three shies a penny, at a grotesque figure set up in a corner, and accurate markmanship is re- warded with a cocoa-nut. You get, as the showman says, " Fun for your money, and the nuts for nawthin'." The angler on INTRODUCTORY 17 Loch Leven pays, at much the same rate, for the privilege of shying at the trout, and with luck and a little skill, he, too, has his reward — and a very handsome reward it sometimes is. He casts his fly — in competitions — into the glaucous-green water, and tries to persuade himself that he is occupied in sport. Somewhere behind his consciousness, how- ever, there lurks an uneasy feeling that his occupation is not genuine sport ; that it lacks the condition which gives to genuine sport its zest. The burn-fisher on a far hillside, though his prize be insignificant in com- parison, has more real pleasure in his pursuit. The quarry he seeks is in a state of nature ; it owes nothing to human care — except, perhaps, the care of the keeper who guards its safety but refrains from interfering in its domestic affairs ; it is not brought into being and watchfully nursed through the perils of infancy to make an angler's holiday. It has been for years my privilege to fish a tiny reservoir into which trout were at one time introduced. No stream enters it and, in consequence, nature is unable to maintain the stock. Though the fish it contains are lusty and strong, and fight with a vigour I have never seen surpassed, their capture yields but little satisfaction ; they are living under artificial con- 18 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER editions, and the angler knows it. The water holds no surprises. It conceals no mystery. The number of fish is known ; they can be counted. Since so many have been put in, it suffices to subtract the number taken out to arrive at that which remains — making, of course, some allowance for a few the manner of whose dis- solution has not been revealed to us. The trout are intimates, and in fraudulently compassing their end, the angler has the unpleasant feeling that, in the beautiful language of God's Own Country, he is playing it low down on them. He is taking a mean advantage of their confidence. In one of her charming letters to her daughter Madame de Grignan, Madame de Sevigne writes : " Vous passez par dessus la possession de ce qu'on desire pour y voir la separation ; " and, she continues, " Quand on a ce qu'on desire, on est plus pr^s de le perdre." Madame de Grignan was "si philosophe." On "ce qu'on desire," she bestowed a thoughtfully measured affection. That she might be spared the pain inseparable from their loss, she was careful to avoid too deep an interest in the things of time. Unhappily, we are not all possessed of her philosophy, or, as it was called by those who saw her through eyes other than a mother's, her frigid temperament. Our INTRODUCTORY 19 hearts are not so admirably disciplined. The knowledge that the present will soon be taken from us and its contents become "portions and parcels" of the past, fills us with perturbing thoughts, and it is not in resignation, but dismay, that we contemplate the part- ing with an object of our love. The angler whose opportunities are few, sometimes looks forward to his unaccustomed holiday with strangely mixed emotions. He counts, impatiently, the days that separate him from it, yet sees their passing with regret. While longingly awaiting its approach he would fain keep it in prospect. He looks beyond it, and sees in its beginning the beginning of the end. With its advent he becomes still more uncomfortably conscious of the flight of time, and since he is unable to prolong his pleasure seeks to heighten its intensity. But he is unfortunate in his methods. Patience abandons him. He pursues his sport with a feverish energy which robs him entirely of the tranquillity of mind essential to its enjoyment. In his restless eagerness to improve the fleeting hour, he is intolerant of interruption and his temper snaps at a touch. He chafes and frets at every slight mischance, while grave disaster excites him to a very hurricane of wrath. He strives to wrest by force what is conferred only by favour, and the more fiercely he struggles for 20 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER its possession the more firmly it is withheld from him. Pleasure is not to be compelled ; it flees direct pursuit. As a provision against unhappiness in age, angling rivals whist. The superannuated angler, it is true, will not find in it as in that misnamed "refuge for the intellectually destitute," active employment for the remnant of his mind, but it provides him with a fund of pleasant recollections which help to brighten his declin- ing days. Though, en- feebled by years, he can no longer wield the rod, he may wander in thought by the still loved stream, and enjoy again in all their first intensity the pleasures of the past. Emotions of pain, it has been mercifully ordained, are in their nature evanescent. We remember that we suffered ; the suffering itself can never be recalled. Time has its atmosphere as well as space. In time, as in space, distance throws a kindly veil over everything dis- pleasing : smoothing away all asperities ; concealing all offences ; substituting beauty for ugliness. Calamities which threatened to destroy his earthly peace, the aged INTRODUCTORY 21 fisherman reviews with wonder ; so faint, and far, and insignificant they seem. Griefs, once heart-breaking, are in the retrospect toned and softened to a tender regret. The dehghts of his pursuit survive alone in memory. Looking back along the years, he sees the road his feet have travelled marked, at intervals, by days that rise above the common level. Probably there is one pre-eminent above the rest. It may not have been a day of great achievement : the day distinguished by the capture of his largest trout ; the day he carried home, with pardonable pride, the fish all others had essayed in vain to circumvent ; the day capricious fate surprised him with the success of his life. It may, on the contrary, have been a day of small things : a day without a stirring incident ; a calm, placid, even day on which his thoughts pursued the tenor of their way unvexed by violent emotions either of pleasure or of pain. Just such a day is that enshrined for ever in my memory. It was spent on a Border stream ; a tiny mountain burn, across which, at its broadest, even the angler approaching middle-age might leap without fear of immersion. A prolonged shower had slightly raised the volume of the water and rendered it perceptibly opaque — with an opalescent opacity suggestive of the 22 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER presence of milk in it — but by noon the rain had ceased, and during the remainder of the day, except when some great white cloud, sweeping athwart the azure spaces of the sky, obscured his rays, the sun smiled down encouragement upon our. efforts. It was a day on which all things combined to promote the pleasure of the angler. It was delightfully warm ; the light was favourable — since I was successful ; and the wind, though too high for perfect comfort, blew straight up the rock-encumbered cleugh through which the little burn ran gaily singing on its way to union with the classic Tweed. I have had days of larger gains, of heavier fish and fish in greater numbers, but I can recall no day more bright, more full of joy than that. It held no small exasperations ; not once was I caught up or placed in a position of the slightest difficulty. I met with no disappointments ; I was aware of the utmost possi- bilities of the puny stream, and the modest hope in which I had approached it in the morning was more than fulfilled when, at the close of day, I took down my rod and reluctantly prepared to leave its banks. I fished, too, with a detachment of mind, an interest in the moment, in what I was doing rather than in what I had done or might yet do, that was quite unusual. INTRODUCTORY 23 I did not exercise man's prerogative of looking before and after. There was much deHcate pleasure in whipping out the dainty little trout, a pleasure simpler than that involved in the capture of larger fish, since it was unmixed with fear of their escape. What matter if they did occasionally shake themselves free of the hook and Jive to afford sport on other days to other anglers. I was seeking to break no records, to beat no competitors ; my pleasure was in the occupation, not in its results, and a fish more or less in the basket was neither here nor there. It was a day of unalloyed if subdued happiness, and it left no unpleasant memories behind it ; no disquieting regrets for opportunities neglected, no unavailing reflections over what might have been. The charm of angling, its uncertainty, finds expres- sion in the universal greeting of the fisherman, "What luck ? " The breezy salutation is generally acknow- ledged with cheerfulness, and answered more or less veraciously, but there are those to whom it proves an insurmountable offence. It wounds their self-love. They resent the imputation on their skill. Their success is ascribed to the favour of the gods ; they prefer to believe it the reward of merit. Luck may be 24 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER responsible for their failures ; for a full creel they are indebted to their own art. But the angler's greeting involves a misconception. To the thought it conveys there is no corresponding reality. It embodies the conviction that slight and isolated incidents, incidents occurring spasmodically and not to be foreseen, are mere casual happenings independent of causation. We conceive them as un- related to anything by which they have been preceded. We call them matters of chance, and dismiss them as incapable of explanation. In enabling us to give expression to our sense of the haphazard character of nature's methods, the words chance, foi'tune, luck, serve a necessary purpose, and may not be dispensed with — even by those who deny the existence of the thing they signify, and on whose lips they are merely an admission of impotence to trace the hidden causes of events. 'Tis not in the angler to command success. There's a Divinity that shapes his ends contrive them how he may. He is in the hands of Fate. His results are determined before he has cast a fly on the water ; were determined, indeed, at that vague period, the Beginning. His predestined victims are awaiting him ; he will find them without fail in the place and at the hour appointed. Of the disappointments in front of him, he has no INTRODUCTORY 25 prevision, but they are within the knowledge of Omni- science. In a world governed by law there is no room for the miraculous. Nature is not "all in favour of certainty in great laws and of uncertainty in small events." The most trivial incident is inevitable ; hap- pens of necessity; could not happen otherwise. It is but a link in an infinite chain of cause and effect. " With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man's knead, And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed : Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read." The Mohammedan is justified in his belief in Kismet, and the doctrine of Predestination is in harmony with scientific thought. What shall be must be. The luck of the tyro is proverbial. His friend, wearied of the fruitless application of his art, invites him to attempt a cast, and he complies. In the hands of the angler the rod is a simple implement of sport ; in his, it becomes a magic wand ; he waves it over the water, and the fish rush to his call. He throws a glamour o'er the trout, and to their enchanted eyes his flies, artlessly as he casts them, appear in the semblance of the most delectable of dainties. Fortune, too, with customary fickleness, showers her favours on the undeserving stranger. He pays 3 26 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER a flying visit to a water until then unknown to him, and leaves it with the heaviest basket of the season, or in possession of the great trout to which the habitues have been for weeks assiduously, but vainly, devoting all their energies. I have been but once afloat on the bosom of that Queen of Scottish Waters, the beautiful and famed Loch Lomond, and my stay was of short duration. We landed, my friend and I, on the pier of the little village of Luss, in the midst of a storm of wind and rain that seemed portentous of a second Deluge. But though, outside, the elements were warring loudly, within the hotel their reigned a depressing quiet. Members of the staff" moved noise- lessly about, while in the smoking-room moped a party of dejected anglers, like another party in another place, "all silent and" — apparently — "all damned"; more dismal than mutes at a funeral, for their sorrow was unfeigned. They had been given occasion for their gloom. It was Friday evening, and the week seemed likely to expire without witnessing the capture of a fish. Our prospects, painted in hope's richest hues, became INTRODUCTORY 27 at once an uninviting monochrome in grey. We assumed the prevailing tone. But though grief may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning. The following day broke bright and sunny, and its radiance was communicated to our thoughts. After an early breakfast, despatched in haste, we embarked under the care of the genial John M'Kellar, whose cheery optimism dispelled all that remained of our fears, and awoke our hopes anew. "What do you think of the day?" we asked, as our barque was launched upon the deep. "I like the look o't," was the reply, "though the win' micht be a wee thing heavier. But it'll maybe rise gin twelve o'clock, an' if it does we should get a fish ; yesterday's rain must hae brocht some up." " Where will you take us ? " we next enquired, although in our ignorance of the water his answer was unlikely to instruct us much. "I'll tak ye," said he, "to the Rhu Point ; if there's a sawmon aboot at a' it'll be there. But mind ye," he warned us, " there's twa boats aheid o' us, an' I wudna wunner but they'll hae gruppit ony^hing that's gaun." As we had only a few hours at our disposal and were anxious to multiply our chances, we each put out a trolling-rod, while with our fly-rods we cast industri- 28 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER ously to leeward as the boat was rowed leisurely along the shore. Fortune befriended us. The boatman's sanguine forecast was abundantly fulfilled, and his fear of the fishermen in front of us was proved to have been groundless. Breathlessly expectant, we were just rounding the pleonastically-named Rhu Point when my companion — who occupied the stern — casting his fly-rod hurriedly aside threw himself upon his trolling-rod and raised it high in air. While I was still speculating on the reason of his flurry, the great stone which held my line in check was jerked with a clatter to the bottom of the boat, my reel emitted the prolonged scream so dear to the ears of the angler, and my rod, becoming violently convulsed, dis-. played an alarming disposition to plunge into the loch. " It's the grun' ! " cried John in accents of dismay. " No it's not the ground ! " I shouted in reply, " but the confounded fish has fouled my minnow." Even as I spoke, however, my friend's salmon sprang from the water forty yards away. As my line maintained an almost vertical direction, and my rod INTRODUCTORY 29 continued to behave as if possessed, it was obvious that John and I were both in error. Each minnow had successfully allured a fish. In the experience of the boatman the incident was unprecedented, and it had on him a singular effect. Excitement overwhelmed him. The very boat, thrill- ing through all her timbers, seemed to share his perturbation as net in hand he sat tremblingly awaiting the event. He was, for the moment, incapable of action ; had the fish come quickly to the surface, we must have been deprived of his assistance in reducing them into possession. Even the faculty of speech forsook him ; not until the first tumultuous upheaval of surprise subsided did his whirling thoughts find utterance. " It beats a'," he falteringly exclaimed, when his tongue at length resumed its office ; " I've fi'fished-this loch-for-fi'five an' twenty year-an' I've ne'never seen-the li'like o' that before." Happily his agitation quickly passed, and by the time we were ready for his intervention his hand had quite regained its accustomed skill. But it was long before he ceased to wonder at our amazing luck. Since, when the cook exposed its internal anatomy, it was discovered that my fish was filled with ripening ova, I am disposed to question the accuracy of the 30 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER gentleman who had so confidently assured me that it was a male. It is, I think, more likely that he was not quite so well informed as he supposed than that nature had produced a miracle. The angler evokes my admiration. I contemplate his wide and varied knowledge with respectful awe, and marvel at the intelligence displayed in its collection. Nothing escapes his quick perception. Even the mind of the trout is an open book in which he reads with fluency. He apprehends the inmost thought of that surprising fish and has a ready explanation of its every action. If, at times, I find his explanation unconvincing, it is possibly because of my obtuseness. Once, em- bittered by repeated disappointment, I asked a brother angler why, since they were evidently not in quest of food, the salmon and the sea-trout were leaping in such numbers and so actively. " I thought everybody knew that ! " was his reply. " They are on their way to the redds, but as they are uncertain of the distance they have yet to travel, they are rising with the object of ascertaining their position in the stream." I was reduced to a condition of abject humility; the solution of a problem so absurdly simple should have been obvious to the meanest understanding. But this is a digression. INTRODUCTORY 31 Though the angler is convinced that his pastime is a lottery in which the chances are often in favour of the trout, he is regardless of omens. He is a firm believer in luck, but he is without the small supersti- tions by which the professional fisherman directs his conduct. In a casual meeting with the harmless, necessary cat, he perceives no presage of evil, nor does the sight of an errant hare loping aimlessly across his path fill him with disquieting forebod- ings of mishap. To him it is a matter of indifference with which foot he first touches the floor as he gets up to greet the morn. In his uncon- cern — not to mention his enthusiasm for the chase — he escapes the temptation which occasionally assails the man to whom the fish is a precarious means of liveli- hood, not a source of exquisite delight. He does not, when the wind is in the chimney and the rain is on the roof, cautiously project the limb he knows to be unlucky, and then withdrawing it, thank whatever gods he worships that since the signs are unpropitious he need not yet abandon the luxury of bed. The angler finds nothing auspicious — or otherwise — in the flight of 32 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER birds, and the only entrails which interest him are the entrails of the silk-worm. When he scans the heavens, or taps the barometer, or notes the direction of the wind, he is not in search of auguries ; his purpose is eminently reasonable. If the angler would possess his soul in the quiet befitting his pursuit and enjoy a future undistressed by rankling memories of avoidable disaster he should cultivate habits of order and precision. He should be all that, as Mr. Lang him- self admits, Mr. Andrew Lang is not. The author of Angling Sketches — and a few other things — need not be taken too seriously, but whether truth or fiction the Confessions of a Duffer conveys a useful moral. When, for the first time, I read these voluntary revelations of a hopeless inefficiency, I seemed to dream. They were strangely familiar. Staring at me from the printed page I saw an accurate reflection of my own unhappy character ; my absence of mind, my lack of foresight, my tendency to let things drift, trusting in simple — very simple — faith that a kindly Providence would intervene to save me from the consequences of my ineptitude. That INTRODUCTORY 33 Heaven helps those that help themselves I know, but I am upheld by a forlorn hope that it occasionally helps the helpless. Like Mr. Lang, I am a duffer, but unlike him I am a discontented duffer. I am not resigned ; on the contrary, I am ever striving to escape the bonds within which nature has confined me, and find it hard to accept the inevitable failure of my efforts. Mr. Lang neglects to fasten the various pieces of his rod ; so do L I resemble him, too, in the frequency with which I smash my tops. But I am capable of a feat he does not seem to have achieved ; I can lay my rod on the ground beside me and, immediately forgetting it, place a heavy foot across its middle joint. He is always being hung up ; if there be within reach anything to which my flies can form an attachment, it is discovered with fatal certainty. To the lips of a trout alone do they show a consistent aversion. Since I rarely employ the lure I never look as if a "shoal of fierce minnows had attacked me," but I invariably return from the water bristling with flies. Should I, by accident, hook a fish of size, the paralysis of terror overcomes me. With heart in mouth, and every limb a-tremble, I stand helplessly 34 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER bewildered on the bank and watch my quarry while, in his efforts to escape, he leisurely proceeds to exercise the appalling ingenuity for which he is distinguished. And his purpose is easily accomplished ; few and simple are the devices to which he finds it needful to resort. Immediate success, it is true, does not invari- ably attend him, but if, when apparently exhausted and about to yield, he suddenly renews the struggle to be free, he is sure to catch me unprepared. Taken by surprise I part with what little wit is left me,— and, flaunting a triumphant tail, he is away. Mr. Lang's waders some- times admit water. How is it discharged ? If in a mo- ment of forgetfulness or in his eagerness to reach a rising fish he has gone beyond his depth, ^/I and filled his waders to the brim, has he climbed laborious- ly up the bank and, lying on his back, raised legs into the air under the im- pression — which he quickly and unpleasantly found to be erroneous — that the water would escape as it had gone in ? INTRODUCTORY 35 No, Mr. Lang is not alone in the possession of an enthusiasm which compels him to the stream, and of an incompetence which makes him the unhappiest of men when there. CHAPTER II THE FLY ^^fc*'^^^"^'^- -' ^ ' O problem of interest to the angler has excited livelier controversy than that which concerns the dressing of the lure. The Englishman asserts that success in fly-fishing is to be attained only by the use of an accurate imitation of the fly disporting on the water ; the Scotsman is convinced that the trout is catholic in his tastes, and, when on the rise, readily and cheer- fully takes any lure that bears the semblance of an insect. Neither the quasi-scientific nor the avowedly rule-of-thumb practitioner has any difficulty in pro- ducing abundant evidence of the efficacy of his method — and the conclusive testimony with which each sup- ports his case gives countenance to the contention of the Scot, THE FLY 37 My own experience tends to confirm that of my fellow-countrymen. Like them I have found, or (since in matters of angling it is wise to speak with diffidence) fancy that I have found, that when the trout is disinclined for food the most seductive-looking lure is passed over him in vain, but that when absti- nence has given an edge to his appetite the angler may offer him anything — in reason — he pleases, satis- fied that it will not be refused. Once only have the trout seemed to me to show a decided preference for a particular fly, and on that occasion their choice was a small Red Hackle. With that lure I had, during the morning, secured a modest success, but , sport was quiet until mid-day when the trout began to rise languidly and in small num- bers to a little ephemera, a fly much too delicately beautiful for imitation. Those who plead the cause of the English School will have a sounder case when their practice and their theories conform, and they have not only ceased to employ lures dressed in the likeness of, no one knows what, but have succeeded in producing an artificial fly bearing an approximate resemblance to the thing it is meant to simulate. The artificial fly is often a marvel of art, extremely creditable to the mind which con- ceived it and the hands by which it was wrought, but I have not yet seen one that could for a moment be con- founded with its prototype except — except by the trout, I was about to say, though I am by no means sure that even when he does take it, that fish mistakes it for the original. The unprejudiced — and unimaginative — reader who compares a natural fly with the most life- THE FLY 39 like image of it designed by man, will have some dififi- culty in perceiving the resemblance between them. The points in which they are alike are few and obscure; the distinctions many and obtrusive. If the unlikeness is obvious to the eye of man it should leap to the eye of a creature so quick of sight that, as we are con- fidently assured, it unfailingly detects the most trifling departure from nature even in the dark ; so keenly observant that, though it gets but a passing glimpse of it, it rejects a fly because of some abnormality of colour so minute as to escape our dull, imperfect vision. The latest and most strenuous advocate of the imita- tion of nature theory confesses his faith in the following words : — " You may not raise fish by plying lures in imitation of insects on the water or due to be there, but if you do not you will certainly be unsuccessful with others." The truth of the statement is unassailable, but it would be quite as true were it transposed. You may fail to raise fish by employing lures not in imitation of the fly on the water or due to be there, but if you do fail, you are unlikely to succeed with those that are. The writer in question possesses strong convictions. He is satisfied that the use of a lure dressed in the like- ness of a natural fly is essential to success. A fly evolved from the inner consciousness of the angler 40 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER desirous of providing the trout with a captivating novelty may be pleasing to the eye of its creator but has no charm for the fish. Unfortunately for his- con- sistency, he publishes a list of what he believes to be exact imitations. Jt would be interesting to learn what they imitate. Some are certainly recognised efforts to reproduce, in fur and feather, the beauties of known insects ; for the majority we are indebted to the whim or to the fancy of the maker. The author, to be sure, affirms that each is representative of an object in nature, but we must be forgiven if we refuse to accept the affirmation. It does not appeal to our reason and it is contradicted by our knowledge. Many, even of those who maintain the general superiority of the English system, admit that, at times, the trout reject the most truthful simulacrum of the natural insect for a purely " fancy fly." He is an exception. He asserts that the trout are to be enticed only by means of a perfect imita- tion of something with which they are familiar, and, apparently in an effort to save the situation, he seeks to persuade us that in the ready reception occasionally given even to our most fanciful invention we have evidence of its relation to a living prototype. The angler may be all unconscious of the identity of the insect on which his lure is modelled ; may, indeed, have THE FLY 41 the best oif reasons for believing that it is modelled on none, but his ignorance is not shared by his quarry. That his artificial fly is taken by the fish proves beyond dispute that it is the counterpart of something within their knowledge. That the professed follower of nature's teaching per- mits himself the use of lures for which she affords no sanction is not, perhaps, a very serious offence ; it is but one of the little eccentricities which mark his practice and proves entirely harmless. It is, however, astound- ing to find him employing a variety of artificial flies all bearing the same name and all, no matter how dis- similar their characters, posing as the counterfeit pre- sentinents of the same original. I have before me several illustrations of the fly known as the February Red. They provide us with a valuable object lesson. They expose the hollowness of the fisherman's belief that he is necessarily fishing with a lure dressed in the likeness of nature because it bears the name of a known fly. The ground of his convic- tions does not stand investigation. His sincerity is above suspicion, but in the ease with which he permits himself to be deceived he displays a singular credulity. In simple confidence, he accepts his flies from those who, he trusts, know more of entomology than he ; 4 42 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER or he makes them for himself, and, like many another artist, is blind to the imperfections of his own art. 