V. About the Fish-spear
Every hour of the short period the salmon spends in fresh water his life is threatened. The sportsman’s method is by rod and line, but the poacher kind incline to the net and the fish-spear. The use of the former has been frequently and fully described; but the spear, not being favoured by the wholesale plunderers of our streams, has been less to the fore. The fish-spear, gaff, or leister (practically, if not quite, identical weapons), is used by the occasional poacher mostly, by the labourer who cannot resist the temptation to take one or two of the great salmon occupying the rock-pools in his immediate vicinity.
There was at one time a practice, in the Derwent and other salmon streams of our Lake Country, of spearing the fish from horseback. The horse was driven into mid-stream at some shallow where the uprunning fish were bound to show themselves, and the rider, armed with a long lance, struck at such fish as he could reach. Apparently some of our forefathers were very keen on this sport, for over a hundred years ago a certain gentleman offered a public wager to kill more salmon from horseback in a stated stream than any comer. So far as records show, the challenge was never taken up. Clarke, the pioneer of Lake Country angling literature, states that in his day (circa 1760) many gentlemen came regularly to Patterdale in autumn to join in the sport of spearing the great lake trout which had run up the Goldrill from Ullswater.
Dalesmen carried torches at night to the great pools to show the sportsmen where the shoals of spawning fish lay. The result of this wholesale destruction was that the monster in question—its weight is variously estimated from sixteen to sixty pounds and over—gradually dwindled in numbers, and is now almost, if not quite, extinct in the great lakes.
My earliest recollection of the leister is also my earliest of anything pertaining to angling. Below our two-arch stone bridge is a pool, perhaps twenty yards long and fifteen wide. During great floods in autumn, salmon very occasionally pass the weirs as far as this, beyond which they are never seen. There was some little excitement, therefore, when the blacksmith showed a salmon resting in the bridge-dub, and at once attempts were made to capture it. But the fish frequented the rushing waters just behind the cut-water of the bridge, and no one could get at it. A neighbouring farmer brought his gun, and fired three shots without effect. I fancy, as I recall the creamy turmoil at that point, his mark would be a difficult one. Finally the blacksmith forged a fearful weapon—a hand garden-fork fixed on to a shaft. Armed thus, he clambered down the cut-water as near as possible to his quarry, and made several lunges. I remember well, for I was not far away, leaning over the ledge of the bridge, seeing the square tail of the fish show through the froth of the ‘rush’ as it turned downstream. But though this attempt was a failure, the smith and the cobbler and the villagers assembled noted that, when disturbed from its favourite haunt, the giant retired to the shade of a big tree just below. With this extra information, the smith climbed down next day to where the fish was lying, and, carefully poising his weapon, I watched him plunge it again and again at an invisible body in the water. Then up he scrambled at great pace, crossed the bridge out of my sight, and disappeared down the stile at the other end. I heard a crackling of boughs, and a few moments later Dove returned carrying the big fish—I remember that its tail was flapping convulsively—in his leathern apron. Of course, the whole affair was kept as quiet as possible, lest the water-bailiff, hearing, should bring the law down on the offenders. Being a very small child, my presence was unheeded; but, try as they would, the cobbler and the smith could not persuade me that the heavy burden in the leathern apron was simply a black river-cobble. I insisted it was the fish. Years later I was told that my recollection of the whole affair was quite correct.
The favourite period for spearing the fish is, of course, during the hours of darkness. More than once I have seen men rendezvous in a lonely spot near our weir. Many a salmon getting thus far up the river at nightfall lies in the deep rock-basins till day returns, and on that his enemies reckon. In the woods fringing the rocks, a close search will at any time discover three or four leisters hidden by their most recent users. As dusk deepens into night the poachers come out; only one is armed with a spear, the other carrying a bag, and the third a dark lantern. When the water’s edge is reached, a brief ray shows where the fish are lying. The spearman, picking out his fish, plunges his weapon. If the stroke goes true, the salmon is rapidly jerked out, to be killed by the bagman. This goes on so long as a fish can be reached.
At other times, from the windows of a rural lodging, I have watched just before dawn stealthy lights flickering by the pools in another river, and two or three hours later have breakfasted off salmon showing leister-marks. Leistering being, of course, a slow process, the villagers alone are supplied, but at a rate per pound which seems to make the game very unsatisfactory from a profit point of view.
I have in my mind’s eye one particular scene. In half-flood the river is dashing beneath a hog-backed stone bridge; all around is darkness. The lower slopes of the great braes are invisible, their summits but dimly in view against the cloudy sky. Now and again a few stars rush across a rift in the upper blackness. Along the water a dim, uncertain light plays, showing sharp currents breaking and swirling over unseen reefs, or roaring in white fury against the dark, unyielding boulders here and there visible in the bed. After a few minutes’ wait, a labourer comes panting up; he is a well-known ‘small-scale’ poacher, the plague of the keepers for miles around.
‘Old Carson is out to-night,’ said the new-comer, ‘but he’s away up behind the weir.’
For a moment we didn’t gather the meaning of this, nor of the immoderate fit of laughter our acquaintance indulged in. Then it struck us that, by making a long détour, he had wiled the water-bailiff far from the series of pools we intended to ‘work.’ In a moment we were over the wall and were deep among the ash-woods fringing the water, following the poacher, who trod the narrow, stony path with the ease and silence of long accustom. In a few minutes he stopped. So intense was the shadow that we cannoned into him before we knew of his halting.
‘Mind where you are coming,’ he growled, in a whisper. As he spoke we could hear a faint dragging and a rustling of dead leaves somewhere in the darkness near his feet. Now we came into the river-bed, where it was comparatively light. The poacher, we saw, had drawn a leister, as well as a bag and a lantern, from a secret place in the river-bank. In a few seconds he prepared for action; then, handing me the lantern, he spoke in a low voice:
‘You keep close to me, and when I give the word turn the light on to the slack water. And you’—turning to my companion—‘had better pick up and bag what fish I stick [pierce].’
Now the three of us crawled stealthily along the rocks bounding the rushing stream. Slack water indeed! In that tumult of fosse and rock and rapid it did not seem likely that a yard of smooth surface would be found. But my judgment was wholly amiss. Here and there, between the eddying current and the hard shore, were quite long stretches without a single ripple, and near the head of one such the poacher stopped suddenly.
‘There’ll be something here,’ he said. At a rustle of his hand I glided forward. ‘Now show a light on the water just in under my feet.’ I did so, and there quite half a dozen silver-sided salmon lay, with their heads upstream, never thinking that that vagrant gleam meant death for one or more of their number. I saw the spear plunge into the water; the nearest fish turned, struck through the vitals, floating in the faint swirl towards the head of the pool. My companion, however, was alert, and seized the carcass before it was tumbled far away down the stream. Meanwhile the poacher prepared for another stroke; again I directed my shaft of light, and again he struck. But the shoal had floated further into the stream, and he failed to reach them from that station.
Now he stepped waist-deep into the pool, directing me to move so as to give a very brief flash across the water. I did so, and another kill was registered, after which the poacher proposed that we should try another place. Accordingly, we moved downstream, walking wherever possible in the shadow of the trees.
A great trough between high banks was our next halting-place. Looking carefully through a screen of bushes, we saw dim figures moving about the lower end of the level water.
‘Some poachers from the town, I reckon,’ whispered our spearman. ‘They’re fools to try netting here, where there’s hundreds of rocks on the bottom to tear their net to ribbons.’ Half an hour or more we stood there watching with all our eyes. But little did we gather, save that the poachers were not averse to plunging into the ice-cold stream to release their net whenever fouled by a boulder or a piece of sunken brushwood. Then, ‘Lie down, quick,’ whispered frantically the poacher; and though we were standing on a bed of soaking, half-rotten leaves, down we went. On the moment, up into the sky from a point just beyond the far end of the pool, soared a rocket. My eyes watched its flight anxiously, watched it burst into a shower of stars which, slowly floating down, illuminated wood and water and rock clearly. The keepers evidently had knowledge of some trespassers. Was it of us or of the netmen, who at the first roar of the rocket dispersed into the woods, abandoning their net in the river? The poacher’s sharp eyes had seen the first spark struck by the keepers, and he had warned us as far as possible.
We were clearly in a predicament. Run for it! No; long ago every avenue from the woods would be guarded. With the wet soaking through our clothes, we lay in the thicket. One of the netmen rushed past, crashing through the dead branches within a yard of us. Half a minute later there was a shout and the sounds of a scuffle from the direction he had taken. Another minute, and, horridly suggestive of personal probabilities, two keepers walked their prisoner past us in the darkness. Not twenty yards away one set up a shout, inquiring the success of the carefully-laid trap.
‘We’ve got the lot!’ sounded from across the water—a reply which relieved us in so far as we now thought no especial watch was being kept for us. It was a long, weary time before the poacher signified that it was safe to proceed.
Down the slimy rocks we descended as silently as possible, drawing towards the head of the long trough. You may be sure that we kept a very sharp lookout as we moved into the half-light of the river-bed, but neither sight nor sound of lurking danger was there. At a sign I turned my shaft of light on the clear waters; the poacher, selecting his salmon, struck unerringly, and the fish was bagged. Again I showed the light, but, though the leister poised, the stroke was never made, for up to the gloomy sky another signal tore. This was for us in very deed.
‘Into t’ water,’ cried the poacher, ‘or we’re caught!’
There was no time for contemplating the darkling stream, or for shivering on the brink—the terror of the police-court is mightily great. In the three of us stepped; knee-deep the cold was horrible, wrist-deep the feeling was worse, but before bottom was touched the water was neck-high, and the chill seemed to freeze our very marrow. The poacher we still had confidence in, for he had been in scores of similar tight corners; with arms outstretched he pressed us close to the rocky bank, which for six feet almost overhung. When the rocket stars had faded away, I noticed a light travelling along the water and the further bank upstream; the keepers apparently knew we had not resorted to the woods, and were examining the rocky brink. I heard them moving high above our heads, and saw the gleam of lanterns light up the running waters almost within arm’s length, then pass on without a pause. The chill of the water was forgotten in that breathless five minutes, but it was again racking us when the poacher said:
‘Now we’re safe for a bit. Sink that salmon bag with a couple of stones, and we’ll make downstream.’
The three of us were fair swimmers, so made little of the distance to the foot of the trough, where, emerging, we crawled cautiously up the bank, and by devious ways passed through the wood. Though chilled through and through, we still had escaped capture, for which we were thankful.
The fish! Oh, our poacher must have found his way again to the pool ere daybreak and rescued the sunken bag, for our landlady came to us at breakfast—a fine piece of salmon was on the table—bustling with information.
‘Do you see that salmon? Well, what do you think? I found a whole big fish hanging up in the cart-house, with all the cats on the farm watching it, first thing this morning. The keepers must have run some poacher very hard before he left his fish like that.’
Needless to say, the good lady was unaware that we had spent our night otherwise than in sleep, and that two wet suits of clothes were being surreptitiously dried behind a pile of sacks in the boiler-house.