Chats on Angling

by H. V. Hart-Davis

As an example of how a difficulty may be overcome it was not without its value. The moral is that a fish, when first hooked and before he has realised what is happening, can be readily persuaded to act according to your will, as he will never consent to do later on. Just as a heavy trout lying amongst a bank of weeds can, if you can get his head up, be led holus-bolus over and across the weeds into reasonable water directly you have hooked him, so, in a similar manner, a salmon will often allow you a latitude in dealing with him at first that he won't give you a second time. Frequently the heaviest fish take some time after being hooked before they are roused to a sense of their position, and exert themselves to the full to get rid of the annoying restraint. The strong upward pull of a salmon rod, tending to pull him out of his natural element, is what a fish girds against, naturally enough, and I have frequently found it of advantage to take the strain entirely off a fish that is making too determined an effort to leave a pool. Give him his head and he will often stop his run and save you from the risk of being cut or broken. There is necessarily a considerable element of risk in so doing, but desperate cases often require desperate remedies. As with trout, so with salmon, hand lining can frequently be resorted to advantageously, and it is wonderful how easily salmon can be led by that means out of dangerous places, and even brought to the gaff; the strain being removed, they do not seem to resist an insidious and horizontal pull.

In the pool below the Pulpit I had my first experience in learning how to deal with a clean-run fish, hooked fairly and firmly in the thick part of the tail. I had, of course, had to play foul-hooked fish, but I had never hooked one in that part before. I was casting a longish line, and rose a fish at the tail of the pool. On my offering him the fly a second time he made a big splashy rise; I struck, and was in him. Down he went into the next pool like a mad thing. The travelling, for me, was bad, and the gillie had to steady me by holding on to the band of my Norfolk jacket. I held the fish as hard as I dared, but he was bent on running, out of one pool into and through the next; race as I would over the wet and slippery rocks, I never could get on terms with him, and he led me by some forty or fifty yards of line. As he had never shown so far and was playing so hard, both my gillie and I thought we were into a real big one. We were now nearing the falls above the sea pool; I was pretty near pumped out, so some resolute measures had to be taken. I accordingly, whilst holding on for all I was worth, sent the gillie ahead to stone him up. No sooner was he turned than he was done, and the gaff in him, and then only did we find out how he was hooked. He weighed no more than 14 lb., and had we known where the hook was, and had we not put him down as a real big fish, he would have never have been permitted to play such pranks and lead us such a dance. Had I held him really hard, his down-stream rush would soon have finished him, as the water running through his gills would have choked him.

One day we decided to try the Crolly, wishing to sample some of those beautiful fish, and, as it meant a seven-mile walk over the hills, we left our salmon rods at home, taking instead only double-handed trout rods. On arriving, we found the wind very foul, blowing partly across and partly up the river, so that it was no easy matter to command the pools at all properly with our small rods. One fish in particular annoyed us by showing constantly in a part of the water we could barely reach and could not command, so we instituted a kind of angling tournament, each of us in turn trying to get over him properly. Our gillies were watching intently and open-mouthed. One of them, Pat by name, had a peculiarly ugly mouth, with heavy, protruding lips; and whilst he was watching thus intently, the unkind wind brought my friend's fly, a big Jock Scott, right into his mouth, fixed it firmly into his lower lip, the forward cast sending it well home, and nearly dragging poor Pat into the river. We none of us felt equal to attacking the fly in its weird position, so we sent Pat down to the village, a mile or more away, to get the local doctor to extract it. Down he went, only to return an hour later with the fly still sticking in its former position, and having received a severe drubbing with shillelahs from the locals for having presumed to gillie for us. Pretty well black and blue all over, his lower lip enormously swollen, he looked indeed a sorry sight. Something had now to be done, so it then occurred to one of us to strip the fly, which fortunately was not an eyed one, and take it out the reverse way. This was done accordingly without delay, a plug of tobacco was stuffed into the gaping hole, a good jorum of "the craytur" was speedily administered, and Pat soon forgot all about his thrashing and his sore lip in his keenness to gaff the fish we managed to catch.

Owing to our being so severely boycotted, we had to manage for food at the hotel as best we could, and the monotonous diet of salmon in every form or shape, varied with a ham or piece of bacon, disagreed thoroughly with me, and somewhat marred the perfect enjoyment of my trip.

On Sundays we used to drive to the Protestant church in a big brake, so as to take the servants with us and protect them from possible violence; and one sermon we heard there amused us mightily. We were sitting in the big square pew just under the pulpit. The parson preached us an impassioned sermon on intolerance, and I must candidly admit that I have seldom listened to a more intolerant one. He launched forth into a tirade of abuse of most things, of absenteeism in particular, bewailing the sorrows of his poor, distressful country, and attributing the large majority of her troubles to a non-resident gentry. "They come here," said he, "not to do their duty or to help us, but merely to gratify their miserable sporting instincts" (and here we began to feel very small); "but," he added, leaning over the side of the pulpit in our direction, "not, gintlemen, that I allude to angling, for that is a grand sport. One of the greatest of the apostles, Saint Peter, was an ardent angler, and I am an angler myself." Mentally bowing our acknowledgments, we left the church, grateful that so eloquent a divine should be appreciative of our favourite sport.

One more anecdote and I have done. We were going back to England on the morrow, and were settling up generally, when my gillie Pat said to me, "Your honour, would ye buy me a pig?" "And why should I do that, Pat? Are you not content with your tip?" "Well, your honour, I don't want ye to pay altogither for it, but only to buy it for me." After some further conversation I consented to go up to the shanty on the hill where his old mother lived. There I found her haggling over the price of a sow; she averred that £3 was more than the sow was worth, the man was holding out for £3 10s. Eventually I became the purchaser at £3, and, paying the money, told Pat that as he had been a good gillie to me he could have the pig for his own. All the blessings of heaven were showered on my head by Pat and his mother; but no sooner had the dealer departed than Pat, producing an old stocking, extracted three sovereigns therefrom and solemnly handed them to me. Asked what all this comedy meant, Pat at once replied, "Ach, sorr, would ye have me let the praste know I'd got three sovereigns in my pocket?"

Were the nets at the mouth of the Clady and the Crolly kept within reasonable limits, few better rivers for summer angling could be found. Having seen their capabilities when the nets were perforce removed altogether, I gained an idea of what the sport might be in our sea-girt island, with its innumerable rivers, were the angling not throttled by the vast array of legalised nets that threaten to destroy, or at any rate reduce very heavily, the sport and profit of riparian owners.

That much has been done and that more is being done in this respect cannot be gainsaid. The allowance of longer slaps, the purchase outright of netting rights in individual cases, are undoubted steps in the right direction. But until the process is more universally applied its effect cannot be considerable. Salmon coast along such an extent of our shores before reaching their destination that bag and coast nets miles away may take heavy toll of the fish that are seeking your estuary, even though they would have a free run up your river if once they could attain it.

Is it too much to hope that some day a wise Government may take the matter in hand, not by piecemeal legislation, but with the determination of so apportioning and circumscribing the respective rights of all concerned and interested, that the price of salmon as an article of food may not be increased, and the true rights of both net fisherman and angler may be secured?