Chats on Angling

by H. V. Hart-Davis

I have seen stalwart soldiers, and I have one V.C. particularly before my eyes at the moment of writing, covered with perspiration and quivering in every limb after a long and successful duel with a clean-run fish. In this respect salmon fishing is ahead of trout fishing, for the contest is a more even one; though in my opinion the two, being distinct and incomparable, ought never to be put into the scales and weighed the one against the other.

Watch an old hand at the game, and observe how easily he controls the most determined and vigorous rushes of his worthy antagonist; take out your watch and see how long it will be before the 18 or 20 pounder is brought alongside for the gaff; and then watch the poor performer, hesitating and uncertain as to when pressure should be applied or licence given; see how long it takes him to land the 8 lb. or 10 lb. fish; count the number of times that he has to thank a beneficent providence that he has not lost him; and if, after so doing, you still incline to your statement that there is nothing in landing a fish, that the whole pleasurable excitement is concentrated in hooking him, then I can only reply that I don't agree. The contest between the hooked salmon and the fisherman is no uneven one—witness the number of hooked fish that escape—and it is one that is still capable of giving a thrill of real excitement to those who really love angling.

A salmon hooked from a boat in a large loch is, of course, a different matter; here the odds are so largely in favour of the rod holder as to unduly diminish the chances of escape to the fish. Such salmon fishing is outside the scope of our present argument, and falls into a totally different category. With river-bank fishing, and it is with that that we are dealing, it would be a bold fisherman indeed that would count a fish hooked as a fish landed, and a half-hearted angler that would be content to hand over to the gillie the cream of the contest between the fish and the man.

Apropos of this nervous excitement, in October, 1900, I formed one of a shooting party on Don side. The river Don ran within half a mile from the house, forming as perfect a series of natural pools as the heart of man could desire. My mouth watered when I saw it, and I longed to wet a line in it. I found, however, that my host not only loathed fishing, but was absolutely devoted to bridge. We had but short days out shooting, everyone rushing back to the lodge to get a rubber or two before dinner. Professing ignorance of bridge, I begged my host to let me try the river, as, having been lately fishing on the Dee, I had my rods and waders with me. With a pitying smile he told me that I could, of course, amuse myself as I thought best. With no loss of time I made my way down to the river side, and found it in grand ply. I was fully aware that the particular part of the Don that we were on was not popularly supposed to contain many fish at that time of the year, but it was well worth a trial, and I knew that a ship laden with lime had lately been sunk at the mouth of the Dee, and I fancied and hoped that some of the autumn fish might be finding their way into and up the Don. The pools were so perfect in shape that no gillie was needed to point me out the best rising-places; they spoke for themselves and told their own tale.

My first evening produced two clean-run fish of 16½ lb. and 8 lb., and my host, when he saw them later, began to think that, after all, there might be something in angling. The second evening the river was up and unfishable, but by the third evening it had fined down into order, and I got a beauty of 20 lb. and a small salmon of 7½ lb. The glowing accounts I gave of the play of these fish at length excited my host, and, even at the cost of his rubber of bridge, the next evening saw him by my side, carefully fishing a leg of mutton pool near the house, where I had seen and risen a fish the night before. I had to hold the rod with him and show him how to cast, but I knew pretty well where my fish lay, and that he was within easy reach. We worked down to the spot, and, sure enough, up he came with a grand head and tail rise, hooking himself handsomely. Leaving the rod in my friend's hands, I told him that he had to do the rest. The first rush nearly pulled the rod down to the water level, my friend hanging on like grim death. Fortunately, the gut was sound and stood the strain. Nearly dying with laughter at his frantic appeals for help and advice, I shouted to him to keep his rod point up, thoroughly enjoying the fact that he was having a taste of what he had characterised as a "poor and tame kind of sport."

As I particularly wanted him to catch that fish I went to his assistance. Trembling with excitement and bathed in perspiration, he was, shortly afterwards, delightedly examining his first salmon, a clean-run hen fish of 16 lb. I never shall forget his shake of the hand and his exclamation, "By Jupiter! you have taught me something, this is worth living for!" Needless to say, he is now mad keen on salmon angling, and a very capable performer to boot.

Many of us, however, not quite so young as we were, are paying the penalty of imprudent wading in the times when we scorned to put on wading trousers. The rheumatic twinges, that hesitation about deep wading in rivers with bad bottoms, all these are largely bred of our former contempt for getting wet, and our ill-founded confidence in our powers of resisting the effects of such very minor matters as wet legs and feet. We therefore find our choice of fishing water still more limited: we seek fishings where many of the pools can be commanded from the bank side, or where, if wading be unavoidable, the bottom is sound and shelving, and where there are no round slippery stones to trip us up. Enough for most of us, if we are lucky enough to get into touch with a good fish, is it that we may have a longish travel over very rough ground, up and down, before we can call him ours.

Nearing the End.

One particularly bad-bottomed pool I remember very well in the Aberdeenshire Dee, not very far below Aboyne. It was a long pool, the head of water very heavy, the wading throughout simply vile. At the bottom of the pool was a big rock, nearly in mid-stream, and by that stone there generally lay a good fish. To reach him you had to wade as deep as your waders would permit, your elbows almost in the water, leaning your body against the swirl of the stream, and taking cautious steps forward, inch by inch, to avoid being tripped up by the slippery big round stones. Then the best cast you were able to produce with your 18 ft. Castleconnel would just about reach him. I never could resist trying for him, though I knew he would go down stream if hooked, and it seemed impossible to follow him down, so I always half wished that he might not come. Wading back against that heavy stream, with a twenty or thirty pounder making tracks round the corner into the next pool, would have been no easy job; and, if you had succeeded in reaching terra firma, there were some big overhanging trees at the corner, beneath which the current had cut a deep hole. Mercifully for me, though I often tried for him, he never did take hold, though I rose him several times. It was always with a chastened spirit of thankfulness that I gave him up and went further down to try the easier waters of the Boat pool.