Fishing with the Fly / Sketches by Lovers of the Art, with Illustrations of Standard Flies

by Unknown

THE POETRY OF FLY FISHING

By F. E. Pond.

It has been said that the angler, like the poet, is born, not made. This is a self-evident fact. Few men have risen to the dignity of anglers who did not in early youth feel the unbearable impulse to go a-fishing. There are, of course, noteworthy exceptions, but the rule holds good. It might be added, too, that the genuine angler is almost invariably a poet, although he may not be a jingler of rhymes—a ballad-monger. Though, perhaps, lacking the art of versification, his whole life is in itself a well-rounded poem, and he never misses the opportunity to “cast his lines in pleasant places.”

This is particularly true of the artistic fly-fisher, for with him each line is cast with the poetry of motion. Ned Locus, the inimitable character of J. Cypress’ “Fire Island Ana,” is made to aver that he “once threw his fly so far, so delicately, and suspendedly, that it took life and wings, and would have flown away, but that a four-pound trout, seeing it start, jumped a foot from the water and seized it, thus changing the course of the insect’s travel from the upper atmosphere to the bottom of his throat.” Being quoted from memory, these may not be the words exactly, as Toodles would say, but the sentiment is the same. There is the true poetical spirit pervading the very air, whispering from the leaves, murmuring in the brook, and thus the surroundings of the angler complete that which nature began, and make him a poet. In common with other sports of the field, though in greater degree:

“It is a mingled rapture, and we find

The bodily spirit mounting to the mind.”

Bards have sung its praises, traditions have hallowed it, and philosophers have revelled in the gentle pastime, from the days of Oppian and Homer down to Walton, Christopher North and Tennyson.

Although the art of fly-fishing was not known to the ancients, the poetry of angling has been enriched by the bards of ye-olden-time to a remarkable degree. In Pope’s translation of the Iliad, the following passage occurs:

“As from some rock that overhangs the flood,

The silent fisher casts the insidious food;

With fraudful care he waits the finny prize,

Then sudden lifts it quivering to the skies.”

One of the most familiar of Æsop’s fables, in rhyme, is that of the Fisherman and the Little Fish, while Theocritus, who flourished about the year 270 B. c., gives us a spirited idyl representing the life of a Greek fisherman. Oppian and Aristotle each prepared a classical volume on fish and fishing. Pliny in his “Historia Naturalis” treats at length of the finny tribes, and Ansonius in his poem, “Mostella,” describes the tench, salmon and other varieties of fish.

Among the early contributions to English literature on angling, the “Poeticæ,” generally attributed to a Scottish balladist known as Blind Harry, is conspicuous. Then the “Boke of St. Albans,” by Dame Juliana Berners, and quaint old Izaak Walton’s “Compleat Angler”—a brace of classic volumes dear to the heart of all who love the rod and reel.

In modern times the literature of angling has had scores of staunch and able supporters among the writers of Britain and our own land. Sir Humphry Davy’s “Salmonia”; Christopher North’s essays on angling, in “Noctes Ambrosianæ”; Stoddart’s Angling Songs; all these and a score of others are familiar to rodsters on both sides of the Atlantic. The clever poet and satirist, Tom Hood, discourses thus in praise of the gentle art:

“Of all sports ever sported, commend me to angling. It is the wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best; the safest, cheapest, and in all likelihood the oldest of pastimes. It is a one-handed game that would have suited Adam himself; and it was the only one by which Noah could have amused himself in the ark. Hunting and shooting come in second and third. The common phrase, ‘fish, flesh and fowl,’ clearly hints at this order of precedence. * * * To refer to my own experience, I certainly became acquainted with the angling rod soon after the birchen one, and long before I had any practical knowledge of ‘Nimrod’ or ‘Ramroch’ The truth is, angling comes by nature. It is in the system, as the doctors say.”

It is no exaggeration to state that the real poetry of fly-fishing, as given in the grand old book of Nature, is appreciated to the fullest by American anglers. The breezy air of the forest leaves is found in the charming works of Bethune, of Herbert, Hawes, Norris, Dawson, Hallock and many other worthies, past and present. The modern Horace—he of the traditional white hat—never wrote a better essay than that descriptive of his early fishing days. The same is true of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and Charles Dudley Warner’s most graphic pen picture is his inimitable sketch, “A Fight with a Trout.” The number of really good books on American field sports is principally made up of angling works, a fact which goes far to establish the truth of Wm. T. Porter’s assertion, namely: “No man ever truly polished a book unless he were something of an angler, or at least loved the occupation. He who steals from the haunts of men into the green solitudes of Nature, by the banks of gliding, silvery streams, under the checkering lights of sun, leaf and cloud, may always hope to cast his lines, whether of the rod or the ‘record book,’ in pleasant places.”

This may be appropriately supplemented by the opinion, poetically expressed by the same author, with reference to the art of fishing with the artificial fly, thus: “Fly-fishing has been designated the royal and aristocratic branch of the angler’s craft, and unquestionably it is the most difficult, the most elegant, and to men of taste, by myriads of degrees the most pleasant and exciting mode of angling. To land a trout of three, four or five pounds weight, and sometimes heavier, with a hook almost invisible, with a gut line almost as delicate and beautiful as a single hair from the raven tresses of a mountain sylph, and with a rod not heavier than a tandem whip, is an achievement requiring no little presence of mind, united to consummate skill. If it be not so, and if it do not give you some very pretty palpitations of the heart in the performance, may we never, wet a line in Lake George, or raise a trout in the Susquehanna.”

Thomson, the much admired author of “The Seasons,” was in his youth a zealous angler, frequently casting his fly in the rippling waters of the Tweed, a trout-stream justly famous along the Scottish border. The poet has eulogized his favorite pastime of fly-fishing in the following elegant lines:

“Now, when the first foul torrent of the brooks,

Swell’d with the vernal rains, is ebb’d away;

And, whitening, down their mossy tinctur’d stream

Descends the billowy foam, now is the time,

While yet the dark brown water aids the guile

To tempt the trout. The well-dissembled fly—

The rod, fine tapering with elastic spring,

Snatch’d from the hoary stud the floating line.

And all thy slender wat’ry stores prepare;

But let not on thy hook the tortur’d worm

Convulsive twist in agonizing folds,

Which, by rapacious hunger swallow’d deep,

Gives, as you tear it from the bleeding breast

Of the weak, helpless, uncomplaining wretch,

Harsh pain and horror to the tender hand.”

When, with his lively ray, the potent sun

Has pierc’d the streams, and rous’d the finny race,

Then, issuing cheerful to thy sport repair;

Chief should the western breezes curling play,

And light o’er ether bear the shadowy clouds,

High to their fount, this day, amid the hills

And woodlands warbling round, trace up the brooks;

The next pursue their rocky-c-hannel’d maze

Down to the river, in whose ample wave

Their little Naiads love to sport at large.

Just in the dubious point, where with the pool

Is mix’d the trembling stream, or where it boils

Around the stone, or from the hollow’d bank

Reverted plays in undulating flow,

There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly;

And, as you lead it round the artful curve,

With eye attentive mark the springing game.

Straight as above the surface of the flood

They wanton rise, or, urged by hunger, leap,

Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook;

Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank,

And to the shelving shore slow dragging some

With various hand proportion’d to their force.

If yet too young, and easily deceiv’d,

A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod.’

Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space

He has enjoy’d the vital light of heaven,

Soft disengage, and back into the stream

The speckl’d captive throw; but, should you lure

From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots

Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,

Behooves you then to ply your finest art.

Long time he, following cautious, scans the fly,

And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft

The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear.

At last, while haply o’er the shaded sun

Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death

With sullen plunge: at once he darts along,

Deep struck, and runs out all the lengthen’d line,

Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed,

The cavern’d bank, his old secure above,

And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool,

Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand,

That feels him still, yet to his furious course

Gives way, you, now retiring, following now,

Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage,

Till floating broad upon his breathless side,

And to his fate abandon’d, to the shore

You gayly drag your unresisting prize.”

Angling, like every other manly pastime, has had numerous assailants—some of them “men of mark,” as in the case of Lord Byron, whose “fine plirensy” in denouncing Walton and the gentle art failed not to draw down upon himself the laughter of a world. The plaint of Lord Byron runs thus:

“Then there were billiards; cards, too; but no dice,

Save in the clubs no man of honor plays—

Boats when’twas water, skating when’twas ice,

And the hard frost destroy’d the scenting days;

And angling, too, that solitary vice,

Whatever Izaac Walton sings or says;

The quaint old cruel coxcomb in his gullet,

Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it.”

Another famous satirist of the old school defines angling as “a stick and a string, with a fish at one end and a fool at the other,” while a third, the well-known Peter Pindar, in closing a “Ballad to a Fish in the Brook,” takes occasion to say:

“Enjoy thy stream, oh, harmless fish,

“And when an angler for his dish,

Through gluttony’s vile sin,

Attempts—a wretch—to pull thee out,

God give thee strength, oh, gentle trout,

To pull the rascal in.”

All who love to go a-fishing can well afford to smile at the malicious flings of morbid critics, and while recreating both mind and body in casting the mimic fly along the dashing mountain stream, think of the deluded satirists in pity rather than condemnation.

Let us, then, in unison with the quaint and charming poet, Gay:

“Mark well the various seasons of the year,

How the succeeding insect race appear,

In their revolving moon one color reigns,

Which in the next the fickle trout disdains;

Oft have I seen a skilful angler try

The various colors of the treach’rous fly;

When he “with fruitless pain hath skim’d the brook,

And the coy fish rejects the skipping hook.

He shakes the boughs that on the margin grow,

Which o’er the stream a weaving forest throw;

When if an insect fall (his certain guide)

He gently takes him from the whirling tide;

Examines well his form with curious eyes,

His gaudy vest, his wings, his horns, his size.

Then round his hook the chosen fur he winds,

And on the back a speckled feather binds;

So just the colors shine through every part,

That nature seems to live again in art.”

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