Chats on Angling

by H. V. Hart-Davis

There is a local story of a mighty fish, hooked in that self-same spot, which took its captor down so that he was obliged, perforce, to swim the deep water under the trees, and was afterwards taken down, as hard as he could run, through pool after pool, until at length he managed to steady it in the third pool of the next fishing water. Then, after a period of sulks, during which both regained their wind, the fish ran right away up again to his old haunts, where he succeeded in getting rid of the hook against his favourite rock. All lost fish are big, and the lapse of time has not in any way diminished his fabled weight.

Perhaps the one drawback to salmon fishing as an art is that to which I have already alluded, viz., that the friendly stream corrects of itself all, or nearly all, errors of slovenly casting, and in that respect places the duffer more on a par with the really competent. On the other hand, knowledge and experience, and perhaps more particularly local experience, will assert itself in the long run, even against the adventitious success of the novice.

The mere fact of having really fished a pool, whether success reward your efforts or no, is of itself an element of enjoyment; the feeling that you have fished, and fished with a really working fly every inch of fishable water, is per se a cause of satisfaction and pleasure. Here you are master of the situation; on you depends your chance of sport, if any is to be obtained.

In grouse driving you may draw the worst butt; or, if you have the luck to draw the best, the birds may unaccountably take an unusual line, and, though you may have drawn the "King's butt," nearly every bird may pass over the heads of your comrades to the right and left of you. You are, as it were, a mere automaton, to shoot whatever may come within range; you may be the victim of circumstances, and may get very few chances.

In hunting, unless you hunt the hounds yourself, you have little chance of seeing, and none whatever of controlling, the best part of the game, the working of the hounds. Your main object is to be with them; they and the huntsman, or master, do the work, you are merely an accessory.

In fishing, whether it be for trout or salmon, everything from start to finish rests with yourself; you have to work out your own salvation; and I venture to assert that it is in consequence of this individual responsibility that fishing, apart from its other many merits, holds so high a place in all our affections.

I doubt whether there are many men who have not become aware, in playing salmon (and perhaps more often when the fish is nearly played out), of a second fish following the hooked one in all its movements and stratagems to free itself from the unwelcome attachment of the rod and line. It has several times happened to me personally, and on two occasions that I can call to mind I was within an ace of being able to gaff the free fish when bringing the exhausted and hooked fish past me for the gaffing process. I feel confident that, had I not been too much engaged in seeing that my hooked fish did not get free through any unintentional slackening of my line at that most critical moment, I could have done so successfully, so assiduous was the (apparently) hen fish in attendance upon the fish at the end of my line. Is this a mere matter of curiosity on his or her part, or may it be attributed to a feeling of camaraderie or friendship? I think no one can seriously contend for the latter hypothesis, as instances of affection between such cold-blooded animals as fish have never to my knowledge been even suggested. We must therefore, I take it, assume that it is mere curiosity, a desire to see why the hooked fish is acting so capriciously; and, if this be so, has it not a tendency to modify somewhat our views as to the necessity of resting pools after a fish has disturbed them by his being played? The following fish will, of course, have been taken out of the place where it would probably rise at a fly, and, therefore, out of any danger for the time being; but travelling fish are not infrequently hooked and landed.

My observations of salmon, such as they have been, have rather tended to inspire me with the belief that salmon, when resting in a pool, take little or no notice of what is going on round them. They will move just so far aside as to let a rampant fish pass them, gliding back into their former position the moment he has passed. How often, when fish are really "on the job," have fishermen caught their four, five, or even more fish out of one pool of very moderate dimensions, every square yard of which must have been disturbed by the vagaries of those caught before them? It seems to me that we are all inclined to be a bit too cautious and careful in this respect. When the water is in order, then I should be inclined to say, seize the happy moment, often short-lived enough, and don't waste time in going to other pools as long as you have any reason to suppose that the fish are "up," and that there are other occupants of the pool that you are fishing that may be grassed.

Somehow or other, if a fish be lightly hooked the information is conveyed through the line, as through a telephone, to the wielder of the rod. You obtain a kind of realisation that such is the case, no matter how well you have endeavoured to drive the barb home. And his subsequent play shows you how well-founded your feeling was. You are in constant expectation of seeing your rod point come up—unwelcome sight—and if you have the luck to get the gaff home, and the hook drops out of his mouth, you are not one whit astonished, only thankful that your luck for once was in the ascendant, and that you have not one more to add to the very considerable number of fish hooked and lost.

In the same way with a fish that "jiggers," I, rightly or wrongly, always set him down as being lightly hooked, and invariably offer up a thanksgiving if he be safely brought to bank. Can anyone tell us why a fish so acts? It is undoubtedly most disconcerting to the angler, and must assuredly have a tendency to wear the hold of the hook. But if it is so effectual, why do not more fish adopt it? Is it not permissible to think that my hypothesis is right, and that a lightly-hooked fish is able to appreciate that if he can only enlarge the hold of the fly he may get free? Or, if this is too much to attribute to fish intelligence, what other suggestion can be made? Of course, all my argument is upset if my premise is unsound, that it is lightly-hooked fish that employ the manœuvre of "jiggering" to free themselves.