A goodly dish of trout hardly come by is a great satisfaction to a man who has to fit in his fishing days when he can, but perhaps the greatest pleasure to the true disciple of Walton is the capture, after many failures and disappointments and under difficult conditions, of some wily old trout whose education, by the constant bombardment of his stronghold, has been brought to a high degree of finish. What memories of his capture crowd the mind when some chance word stirs the chords! Perhaps he came from out a moorland stream when the snell wind flung back the spray from every sounding fall, or may be he stubbornly gave up his virile life on some sun-steeped day when first the daffodils proclaimed that laggard Spring had come to a waking country side. Whatever the memory, it is wholly delightful.
The charm of fly fishing is never ending and a great part lies in the infinite field for experiment open to him who runs. Every day some new feature is revealed; and, even in this twentieth century, he who will leave the beaten track, bent on exploration, will always discover new ground for investigation. The truth of this was brought home to one of the writers most forcibly when on a fishing expedition one July some years ago.
Rain on the previous day had left the river slightly coloured, and in magnificent condition, and as the sun was some little way above, though nearing the horizon, he, with the lightest heart and full of hope, approached a steady flowing reach where the banks were here and there fringed with clumps of willows.
A fish rose well out in the stream, then another, and another; and as the tackle had been fitted up before leaving the farm-house, even to the putting on of a cast of flies, it was not long before those fish, which were apparently seizing every fly that passed over them, were covered again and again. All to no purpose, for the trout proved very discriminating, and at last, when a fish half rose without breaking the surface of the water, a change of fly was decided on.
Hovering round the willows, dancing to and fro in the air, were hundreds of insects, which on examination proved to be Light and Dark Silverhorns. Five minutes had barely elapsed when, with a Light Silverhorns to replace his point fly and a Dark one as first dropper, the angler was again assailing his fish; but he could get no more satisfactory response than a bulge or two. Then the position of these two flies was reversed, a step which often pays, but it did not on that occasion.
The case was becoming desperate, for the rise would soon be over. So with some reluctance he left the rising fish and waded into the stream and put his flies into a likely looking eddy below an overhanging willow bush growing on the far bank. Almost immediately a fish was battling for dear life, but without avail; and soon five more, all coming from under the bank, quickly joined him in the creel.
As the last of these fish was being drawn over the net, two local anglers appeared on the scene. Neither had killed a fish, so a few precious moments were taken up in wading out and giving each one or two of the killing fly.
When the rise was over the angler counted eight brace of nice sizable fish, all but two being killed on the Silverhorns, the exceptions having fallen to the Brown Owl, which was probably taken for the Light Silverhorns. All came from under the willows and banks on a reach no more than fifty yards in length, but strange to say, the local men finished up without a fish to show between them.
Later on, when considering the events of the evening between the sheets, it occurred to the successful one, that the killing fly of the evening was a killing fly only so long as it was fished close to the banks near the willows, and in those places over which hovered the natural fly. The locals had evidently fished the fly out in mid-stream; hence their clean creels.