III
A GREAT FISH AND A GREATER
FISHERMAN
The river Wye goes out to sea
By stealth, in silent secrecy:
Among the hills she winds and wends
And wanders by the sombre woods,
And cleaves her way in circling bends
Through mountain solitudes.[1]
Towards the end of March 1921 I received an invitation to fish the river Wye, which, as every one knows, is famous for its heavy salmon. My own rods and tackle were in the North of Scotland, and there was not sufficient time to send for them. I knew that in the spring the fishing in this particular river was almost entirely by spinning with the minnow. I arrived at my destination on Monday, March 28, and had five days fishing before me. There had been a good deal of rain before I arrived, and the river was both too high and too much color. The fishing on my host’s beat had so far been very disappointing. During the preceding six weeks the river had been fished almost every day by my host and one or other of his friends; but although hardly any fish had been lost, only five had been killed, all with the minnow, the largest being 29 lb. My kindly host, who is a past master of all things connected with salmon and trout fishing, fitted me up with first-class equipment. I had never used a Nottingham or Silex reel before, and it took me the greater part of my first day to acquire the art of throwing the minnow effectively. For the next two days I fished with the minnow from morning till night without getting a pull or seeing anything. I have been a keen fly-fisher all my life and have killed a good many salmon and many trout, and on Friday morning, as the river had fallen considerably, I told my host that if I might do so I should like to try the fly. He readily assented, and said that I should have one of his own fly rods, and before we started he kindly gave me several salmon flies, and said that his butler, C., who was an experienced hand at gaffing salmon, should come with me. Among the flies which my host had given me was a “Mar Lodge” (size 4/0), and with this I fished all the morning and up to about three o’clock in the afternoon without, however, seeing or touching anything. C. said that he was afraid the day was going to be a blank again. I said that I would like to try once more a particular spot below a rock in the upper part of a pool higher up the river, which I had fished in the morning and which I thought looked a very likely place for a salmon to lie. In order to fish this pool it was necessary to use a boat. It was a beautiful afternoon and the sun was still shining. We crossed over the river at the bottom of the pool and rowed up on the other side, keeping close to the bank so as not to disturb that part of the pool which I was going to fish. C. worked the boat with great skill, and at my first cast I managed to place my fly exactly where I wished it to go below the rock. As the fly swung round with the current I suddenly saw for a second a huge silvery fish in the clear, transparent water upon which the sun was shining. At the same moment the line tightened. “I have him,” I said, as the line went screeching off the reel. The fish ran straight up-stream for about ninety yards, and then leaped twice, high into the air. It was by far the largest salmon I had ever seen, clean-run and glittering like a silver coin fresh from the Mint. This first danger safely passed, I gradually persuaded him to come back again. C. said, “He must be well hooked, and he’s a very big fish. That fish of 29 lb. which the Major got would look quite small beside him.” For some time after this the fish moved about the pool, but made no attempt to run. He then made a violent rush of about sixty yards, and lashed about on the top of the water, once more showing himself and giving us a fair idea of his size. Again I got him well under control, and for a considerable time he adopted the same tactics as before, moving slowly and steadily backwards and forwards at varying depths. I had been thinking for some time that perhaps I had been rather too easy with him, and that I had not acted on the maxim with which, I suppose, almost every salmon fisher will agree, that one ought never to let a fish rest, and that a big fish may take hours to land if he is not worried enough. The line and cast had been thoroughly tested before we started, and I felt that I might depend upon them. C. told me that as soon as I had hooked my fish he had looked at his watch, and that I had now had him on for an hour and twenty minutes. This greatly astonished me, as I had not realised how the time had gone. But it was nevertheless the fact, and I felt that we must do something to stir the fish. We accordingly decided to move a little way up-stream. C. had hardly begun to move the boat with this object in view when the salmon suddenly moved, and moved to some purpose. Neither I nor C. had ever seen anything in the movements of any fish to compare with the strength and rapidity of that rush. The salmon went at a terrific pace, straight up the river as hard as he could go for about 110 yards, and then leaped twice, straight up into the air, about a couple of feet above the surface of the water, broadside on, showing that he was a tremendously thick fish. At the very moment he was in the air the reel fell off the rod, and at that moment I became conscious, although, of course, I had lowered the point of the rod when he leaped, that the great fish had parted company with me for ever. “He has gone,” I said, as with a sickening sense of disappointment I reeled in the slack line in the faint hope that he might still be on, having turned and come down the river again—but no, it was not to be, and the line soon came back to me, the cast having been broken about a foot from the end. C. said not a word, nor did I for a time. No mere words are appropriate on such an occasion and cannot diminish the loss of a fresh-run spring salmon, so marvellously brilliant and beautiful, and in this particular instance probably half as large again, perhaps twice as large, as the biggest fish I have ever landed during the time, now more than forty years, that I have been a salmon fisher. Within a short time I started fishing again, but the day was done and we saw nothing more. After the catastrophe I found that the reel had been loose, and that the wedges used to make it fit closely to the rod had shifted and finally fallen out in consequence of the rushes made by the fish. I also learnt later on that the rod did not belong to my host, and that by a misunderstanding this rod, which happened not to have been taken down, but was among the other rods ready for use, was given to me. Probably, had I been warned about the reel, I could have prevented it from falling off, though whether this would have made any difference it is impossible to say, as many a good fish has broken the cast by falling back on it after jumping at the end of a long rush, and the more line there is out the more danger of losing the fish when he jumps.