In a letter of 19 March 1854 he says:—“In my growing up we heard nothing of game preserving hereabout, and game was in abundance; and at certain seasons you could see at times all classes of people out for a day’s sport. They would kill but little; but then it was an amusement, and a day’s holyday, and apparently an unrestricted right to go where they liked unmolested: so they enjoyed a right old English liberty, and came home tired and happy, not caring whether they had game or not. But since the game is preserved, and they are restrained from killing it in the old way, they appear determined to kill it some way or another. Consequently game is not so plenty now as heretofore.”
In a letter of 7 October 1852 he notes another change here:—“The old barn-door or dung-hill cock appears to be extinct, being crossed with China, Minorca, etc. I well remember when a boy you could not go out, particularly up the vale of Lustleigh, but you heard them all crowing in all directions, each on his own dung-hill, challenging each other, and their shrill clarion-like sound echoed through the valley.... The sort they have now are so hoarse and dull in their crowing that there is nothing to attract attention, nothing agreeable in their sound, and not loud enough to be heard by one another, so there is no answering each other. In my boyhood the whole valley would ring with them.”
Again, on 6 March 1854 he writes:—“I am going up again soon, and shall take some feathers from two cocks I saw, a blue and a red, which I consider will do. The real colours are very scarce: people mix up their breeds so, that there are but few of the old sort left.” I presume that he wanted the feathers for making flies for fishing. He always made his own flies, and made them very neatly: so also did my father; but I never made a fly that could even be offered to a fish.
On 21 May 1848 he gives my father a little lecture on his fishing:—“Kneel down on one knee. I have done so many a time, when the water has been clear, and thrown my fly with the greatest precision, and almost sure of a fish, but seldom succeeding in the second throw if failing in the first. That sort of careful fishing is practised by all good fishermen, though no doubt one threshes away and often takes fish—not so with your grandfather or with myself in my early days: we were more particular, and took large catches of fish.”
He writes to him, 24 May 1842:—“I certainly have enjoyed the Teign fishing as much as anyone, for besides the fishing I always so much enjoyed the scenery—particularly on that part above and below Fingle Bridge. In my early days I seldom went on any other part, but used to begin at Whiddon, fish down, and return to Fingle; and home over the woods.” After a day’s fishing there, 12 April 1849, my father notes in his diary:—“My father walked up Fingle Hill without resting or feeling fatigued, although sixty in a few days time.” That was the age at which my father died, and the age that I have now attained; and I cannot walk up that interminable hill without an effort.
My father fished there sometimes, and sometimes in the Dart near Post Bridge, but much more often in the Bovey and the Wrey, as they were so much nearer. He also liked scenery as well as fishing; and there is as good scenery on the Bovey under Lustleigh Cleave as on the Teign at Fingle Bridge.
He also fished in many of the trout-streams in the Alps and Pyrenees and Ardennes; and in 1858 and other years he went to Muggendorf for fishing in the Wiesent, and to Lambach and Ischl for the Traun. The people used to ask for flies, but very soon found that he owed less to flies than to his way of casting them. My mother fished with him, and got many good fish; but she never thought the sport was worth the journey and the discomfort in the smaller inns. I remember my brother at one of them: he made no comment of his own, but just quoted Shakespeare:—“Now am I in Ardennes: when I was at home, I was in a better place.”
They tried the Wiesent and the Traun again in 1873, but it was no longer what it used to be—ten or a dozen trout about fifteen inches long. There was too much fishing, and few fish were left. I went to Munich, while they were at Muggendorf, but was at Ischl with them. And at Ischl it was curious to see how casually the Emperor Francis Joseph went strolling round the place in shooting-clothes, the Crown Prince Rudolph with him. At first I took them for the squire and his son.
By all accounts there have always been better fish in the Wrey than ever came out of it with rod and fly. At the present time—June 1917—there are two big otters in it close by here, and I presume they have not come for nothing. On 6 May 1844 my grandfather writes to my father:—“I conjecture the poachers have not let this fine weather pass without dipping their nets for some.” And on 10 December 1848 he writes:—“They have been very busy lately in taking all they can, but Mr ***** got foul of some last week, and took their spears from them, and told them, if again caught, he will prosecute them.”
He writes to him on 21 December 1851:—“The fish will soon be up for spawning: the water has been too low for them. I was amused for four days following to see three trout about 8 in. long so busy at work in the meadow. Direct above the bridge under the bushes there is a plain, and just by the bridge it runs out a little stickle with a rubble-stone bottom and very little water, so that when at work the water did not cover their back-fins. Not having seen them for some days, I have no doubt they deposited their spawn. I never saw such before, but the poachers tell me that is the way they do—always deposit it in the stickle and where the bottom is rubbly, and not in the sand beds as I always suspected. And then the poachers go and take them in the act of laying it; and those pieces of broken earthenware that you frequently see are thrown in near the works, so that at night if they see anything over the shord (as they call it) they strike and depend on its being a fish.”