MORNING.
Hal.—Well, is your tackle all ready? It is a fine fresh and cloudy morning, with a gentle breeze—a day made for salmon fishing.
[They proceed to the river.]
Hal.—Now, my friends, I give up the two best pools to you till one o’clock; and I shall amuse myself above and below—probably with trout fishing. As there is a promise of a mixed day, with—what is rare in this country—a good deal of sunshine, I will examine your flies a little, and point out those I think likely to be useful; or rather, I will show you my flies, and, as you all have duplicates of them, you can each select the fly which I point out, and place in it a part of the book where it may easily be found. First: when the cloud is on, I advise the use of one of these three golden twisted flies, with silk bodies, orange, red and pale blue, with red, orange, and gray hackle, golden pheasant’s hackle for tail, and kingfisher’s blue and golden pheasant’s brown hackle under the wing; beginning with the brightest fly, and changing to the darker one. Should the clouds disappear, and it become bright, change your flies for darker ones, of which I will point out three:—a fly with a brown body and a red cock’s hackle, one with a dun body and black hackle and light wing, and one with a black body, a hackle of the same colour, and a brown mallard’s wing. All these flies have, you see, silver twist round their bodies, and all kingfisher’s feather under the wing, and golden pheasant’s feather for the tail. For the size of your flies, I recommend the medium size, as the water is small to-day; but trying all sizes, from the butterfly size of a hook of half an inch in width, to one of a quarter. Now, Physicus, cast your orange fly into that rapid at the top of the pool; I saw a large fish run there this moment. You fish well, were common trout your object; but, in salmon fishing, you must alter your manner of moving the fly. It must not float quietly down the water; you must allow it to sink a little, and then pull it back by a gentle jerk—not raising it out of the water,—and then let it sink again, till it has been shown in motion, a little below the surface, in every part of your cast. That is right,—he has risen.
Phys.—I hold him. He is a noble fish!
Hal.—He is a large grilse, I see by his play; or a young salmon, of the earliest born this spring. Hold him tight; he will fight hard.
Phys.—There! he springs out of the water! Once, twice, thrice, four times! He is a merry one!
Hal.—He runs against the stream, and will soon be tired,—but do not hurry him. Pull hard now, to prevent him from running round that stone. He comes in. I will gaff him for you. I have him! A goodly fish of this tide. But see, Poietes has a larger fish at the bottom of the great pool, and is carried down by him almost to the sea.
Poiet.—I cannot hold him! He has run out all my line.
Hal.—I see him: he is hooked foul, and I fear we shall never recover him, for he is going out to sea. Give me the rod,—I will try and turn him; and do you run down to the entrance of the pool, and throw stones, to make him, if possible, run back. Ay! that stone has done good service; he is now running up into the pool again. Now call the fisherman, and tell him to bring a long pole, to keep him if possible from the sea. You have a good assistant, and I will leave you, for tiring this fish will be at least a work of two hours. He is not much less than 20lbs. and is hooked under the gills, so that you cannot suffocate him by a straight line. I wish you good fortune; but should he turn sulky, you must not allow him to rest, but make the fisherman move him with the pole again; your chance of killing him depends upon his being kept incessantly in action, so that he may exhaust himself by exercise. I shall go and catch you some river trout for your dinner;—but I am glad to see, before I take my leave of you, that Ornither has likewise hold of a fish,—and, from his activity, a lusty sea trout.
[He goes, and returns in the afternoon.]
Hal.—Well, Poietes, I hope to see your fish of 20lbs.
Poiet.—Alas! he broke me,—turned sulky, and went to the bottom; and when he was roused again, my line came back without the fly; so that I conclude he had cut my links by rubbing them against some sharp stone. But I have caught two grilses and a sea trout since, and lost two others, salmons or grilses, that fairly got the hooks out of their mouths.
Hal.—And, Ornither, what have you done? Well, I see,—a salmon, a grilse, and a sea trout. And Physicus?
Phys.—I have lost three fish; one of which broke me, at the top of the pool, by running amongst the rocks; and I have only one small sea trout.
Hal.—Your fortune will come another day. Why, you have not a single crimped fish for dinner, and it is now nearly two o’clock; and you have been catching for the picklers, for those fish may all go to the boiling-house. I must again be your purveyor. Can you point out to me any part of this pool where you have not fished?
All.—No.
Hal.—Then I have little chance.
Phys.—O yes! you have a charm for catching fish.
Hal.—Let me know what flies you have tried, and I may perhaps tell you if I have a chance. With my small bright humming bird, as you call it, I will make an essay.
Poiet.—But this fishery is really very limited; and two pools for four persons a small allowance.
Hal.—If you could have seen this river twenty years ago, when the cruives were a mile higher up, then you might have enjoyed fishing. There were eight or ten pools, of the finest character possible for angling, where a fisherman of my acquaintance has hooked thirty fish in a morning. The river was then perfect, and it might easily be brought again into the same state; but even as it is now, with this single good pool and this second tolerable one, I know no place where I could, in the summer months, be so secure of sport as here—certainly no where in Great Britain.
Poiet.—I have often heard the Tay and the Tweed vaunted as salmon rivers.
Hal.—They were good salmon rivers, and are still very good, as far as the profit of the proprietor is concerned; but, for angling, they are very much deteriorated. The net fishing, which is constantly going on, except on Sundays and in close time, suffers very few fish to escape; and a Sunday’s flood offers the sole chance of a good day’s sport, and this only in particular parts of these rivers. I remember the Tweed and the Tay in a far better state. The Tweed, in the late Lord Somerville’s time, always contained taking-fish after every flood in the summer. In the Tay, only ten years ago, at Mickleure, I was myself one of two anglers who took eight fine fish,—three of them large salmon,—in a short morning’s fishing: but now, except in spring fishing, when the fish are little worth taking, there is no certainty of sport in these rivers; and one, two, or three fish (which last is of rare occurrence,) are all even an experienced angler can hope to take in a day’s skilful and constant angling.
Poiet.—You have fished in most of the salmon rivers of the north of Europe,—give us some idea of the kind of sport they afford.
Hal.—I have fished in some, but perhaps not in the best; for this it is necessary to go into barbarous countries—Lapland, or the extreme north of Norway; and I have generally loved too much the comforts of life to make any greater sacrifices than such as are made in our present expedition. I have heard the river at Drontheim boasted of as an excellent salmon river,—and I know two worthy anglers who have tried it; but I do not think they took more fish in a day than I have sometimes taken in Scotland and Ireland. All the Norwegian rivers that I tried (and they were in the south of Norway) contained salmon. I fished in the Glommen, one of the largest rivers in Europe; in the Mandals, which appeared to me the best fitted for taking salmon; the Arendal and the Torrisdale;—but, though I saw salmon rise in all these rivers, I never took a fish larger than a sea trout; of these I always caught many—and even in the fiords, or small inland salt-water bays; but I think never any one more than a pound in weight. It is true, I was in Norway in the beginning of July, in exceedingly bright weather, and when there was no night; for even at twelve o’clock the sky was so bright, that I read the smallest print in the columns of a newspaper. I was in Sweden later—in August: I fished in the magnificent Gotha, below that grand fall Trolhetta, which to see is worth a voyage from England: but I never raised there any fish worth taking: yet a gentleman from Gothenburg told me he had formerly taken large trout there. I caught, in this noble stream, a little trout about as long as my hand; and the only fish I got to eat at Trolhetta was bream. The Falkenstein, a darker water, very like a second-rate Scotch river—say the Don—abounds in salmon; and there I had a very good day’s fishing. I took six fish, which gave me great sport; they were grilses, under 6lbs; but I lost a salmon, which I think was above 10lbs. This river, I conceive, must be, generally, excellent; it is not covered with saw-mills, like most of the Norwegian rivers; its colour is good, and it is not so clear as the rivers of the south of Norway.
Phys.—Do you think the saw-mills hurt the fishing?
Hal.—I do not doubt it. The immense quantity of sawdust which floats in the water, and which forms almost hills along the banks, must be poisonous to the fish, by sometimes choking their gills, and interfering with their respiration. I have never fished for salmon in Germany. The Elbe and the Weser, when I have seen them, were too foul for fly fishing; and in the Rhine, in Switzerland, and its tributary streams, I have never seen a salmon rise. I once hooked a fish, under the fall at Schaffausen, which in my youthful ardour I thought was a salmon, but it turned out to be an immense chub—a villanous and provoking substitute. And our islands, as far as I know, may claim the superiority over all other lands for this species of amusement. In England it is, however, a little difficult to get a day’s salmon fishing. The best river I know of is the Derwent, that flows from the beautiful lake of Keswick; and I caught once, in October, a very large salmon there, and raised another; but it is only late in the autumn, that there is any chance of sport, though I have heard the spring salmon fishing boasted of. At Whitwell, in the Hodder, I have heard of salmon and sea trout being taken—but I have never fished in that river. The late Lord Bolinbroke caught many salmon at Christchurch; but a fish a week is as much as can be expected in that beautiful, but scantily stocked, river. Small salmon and sea trout, or sewens, as they are called in the country, may be caught, after the autumnal floods, I believe, in most of the considerable Welsh, Devonshire, and Cornish streams; but I have fished in many of them without success. The Conway I may except: this river, in the end of October, will sometimes, after a great flood, furnish a good day’s sport, and, if the net fishers could be set aside, several days’ sport. I have known two salmon, one above 20lbs., taken here in a day; and I have taken myself fine sea trout, or sewens,—which, in an autumnal flood in Wales, are found in most of the streams near the sea.
Poiet.—I have heard a Northumberland man boast of the rivers of that county, as affording good salmon fishing.
Hal.—I have no doubt that salmon are sometimes caught in the Tyne, the Coquet, and the Till; but, in the present state of these rivers, this is a rare occurrence. I was once, for a week, on a good run of the North Tyne; I fished sometimes, but I never saw a salmon rise; and the only place in this river, where, from my own knowledge, I can assert salmon have been caught with the artificial fly, was at Mounsey, very high up the river. There, in 1820, two grilses were caught, in the end of August. I have recorded this as a sort of historical occurrence; and I dare say most of the counties of England, in which there are salmon rivers, would, upon a minute inquiry, furnish such instances, if they contained salmon fishers. Yorkshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, with the sea on both sides, ought to furnish a greater number.
Phys.—Give us some little account of the Scotch and Irish rivers.
Hal.—I fear I shall tire you by attempting any details on this subject, for they are so many, that I ought to take a map in my hands; but I will say a few words on those in which I have had good sport. First, the Tweed:—of this, as you will understand from what I mentioned before, I fear I must now say “fuit.” Yet still, for spring salmon fishing, it must be a good river. The last great sport I had in that river was in 1817, in the beginning of April. I caught, in two or three hours, at Merton, four or five large salmon, and as many in the evening at Kelso—and one of them weighed 25lbs. But this kind of fishing cannot be compared to the summer fishing: the fish play with much less energy, and in general are in bad season; and the fly used for fishing is almost like a bird—four or five times larger than the summer fly, and the coarsest tackle may be employed. I have heard, that Lord Home has sometimes taken thirty fish in a day, in spring fishing. About, and above Melrose, I have taken, in a morning in July, two or three grilses; and in September the same number. I have known eighteen taken earlier, by an excellent salmon fisher, at Merton; and the late Lord Somerville often took six or seven fish in a day’s angling. The same “fuit” I must apply to most of the Scotch rivers. Of the Tay I have already spoken. In the Dee I have never caught salmon, though I have fished in two parts of it, but it was in bad seasons. In the Don I have seen salmon rise, and hooked one, but never killed a fish. In the Spey I enjoyed one of the best days’ sport (perhaps the very best) I ever had in my life: it was in the beginning of September, in close time; the water was low, and as net fishing had been given over for some days, the lower pools were full of fish. By a privilege, which I owed to the late Duke of Gordon, I fished at this forbidden time, and hooked twelve or thirteen fish in one day. One was above 30lbs., but it broke me by the derangement of my reel. I landed seven or eight,—one above 20lbs., which gave me great play in the rapids above the bridge. I returned to this same spot in 1813, the year after: the river was in excellent order, and it was the same time of the year, but just after a flood,—I caught nothing; the fish had all run up the river; the pools, where I had such sport the year before, were empty. I have fished there since, with a like result,—but this was before the 12th of August, the close day. In the Sutherland and Caithness rivers, many salmon, I have no doubt, may still be caught. The Brora, Sutherland, in 1813 and 1814, was an admirable river: I have often rode from the mansion of the princely and hospitable lord and lady of that county, after breakfast, and returned at two or three o’clock, having taken from three to eight salmon—several times eight. There were five pools below the wears of the Brora, which always contained fish; and at the top of one pool, which from its size was almost inexhaustible, I have taken three or four salmon the same day. Another pool, nearer the sea, was almost equal to it; and at that time I should have placed the Brora above the Ewe for certainty of sport. When I fished there last, in 1817, the case was altered, and I caught only two or three fish in the very places where I had six years before been so successful. In the Helmsdale there are some good pools, and I have caught fine fish there when the river has been high. I have fished in the river at Thurso, but without success—it was always foul when I made my attempt. I have heard of a good salmon river in Lord Reay’s county, the Laxford; its name, of Norwegian origin, would seem to be characteristic.[[6]] Along the coast of Scotland, most of the streams, if taken at the right time, afford sport. In this county the Beauly is a good river, and I have caught salmon in that very beautiful spot below the falls of Kilmarnock. The Ness, at Inverness, and the Awe and Lochy, I have fished in, but without success. I may say the same of the Ayr, and of the rivers which empty themselves into the Solway Frith. A little preserved stream, at Ardgowan, was formerly excellent, after a flood in September, for sea trout, and later for salmon: I have had good sport there, and some of my friends have had better.
In Ireland there are some excellent rivers; and, what you will hardly believe possible, comparing the characters of the two nations, some of them are taken better care of than the Scotch river; which arises a good deal from the influence of the Catholic priests, when they are concerned in the interests of the proprietors, on the Catholic peasantry. I should place the Erne, at Ballyshannon, as now the first river, for salmon fishing from the banks with a rod, in the British dominions; and the excellent proprietor of it, Dr. Shiel, is liberal and courteous to all gentlemen fly fishers. The Moy, at Ballina, is likewise an admirable salmon river; and sport, I believe, may almost always be secured there in every state of the waters; but the best fishing can only be commanded by the use of a boat. I have taken in the Erne two or three large salmon in the morning; and in the Moy, three or four grilses, or, as they are called in Ireland, grauls; and this was in a very bad season for salmon fishing. The Bann, near Coleraine, abounds in salmon: but, in this river, except in close time, when it is unlawful to fish there, there are few good casts. In the Bush, a small river about seven miles to the east of the Bann, there is admirable salmon fishing, always after great floods; but in fine and dry weather it is of little use to try. I have hooked twenty fish in a day, after the first August floods, in this river; and, should sport fail, the celebrated Giant’s Causeway is within a mile of its mouth, and furnishes to the lovers of natural beauty, or of geological research, almost inexhaustible sources of interest. The Blackwater, at Lismore, is a very good salmon river: and the Shannon, above Limerick and at Castle Connel, whenever the water is tolerably high, offers many good casts to the fly fisher; but they can only be commanded by boats. But there is no considerable river along the northern or western coast,—with the exception of the Avoca, which has been spoiled by the copper mines,—that does not afford salmon, and if taken at the proper time, offer sport to the salmon fisher.—But it is time for us to return to our inn.