On her first and second days she drew a blank, but on the third day killed three fish weighing 20 lb., 19 lb., and 15 lb., all on the same fly, a silver doctor. Who says there is nothing in luck? The day I killed my big fish was the third day in the third week of the third month of the fishing season; he was the third fish killed on that day, and I hooked him at my third cast. My daughter killed her three fish on the third day she was fishing. Well might Falstaff (Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V., Sc. 1) say: “This is the third time—I hope luck lies in odd numbers.” My daughter’s performance was far more satisfactory in every way than mine, for fishing with the fly is, of course, incomparably superior to fishing with the minnow—at least, nearly every angler I have met says so. I venture to think, however, that my friend, Arthur Chaytor, K.C., one of the most accomplished and skilful of salmon fishers, in his delightful book, Letters to a Salmon-Fisher’s Sons, is altogether too severe in his castigation of minnow-fishing. “Avoid minnow-fishing for salmon,” he says (page 89), “as a canker that will eat into some of the very best days of your fly-fishing.” But need it do so? “It is a dangerous thing for you to begin its use.”
Then in a most entertaining passage he describes how “the river has cleared and has become perfect for the fly. It ought to be a tip-top day, but you are tempted of the devil to try just for an hour the phantom minnow ... and then you go on with the minnow all the day long ... dragging out the fish ... and at the end of the day feeling that you have been rather a butcher than a fisherman and that you might almost as well have used a net.” This means, of course, that success in minnow-fishing is simply a matter of luck, and does not depend on the fisherman’s skill. In a later passage he describes in most forcible and amusing language “the relapse to minnow, when after a good day minnowing you find next morning that the water is right for the fly and you resolve to make it a day of fly only. You put on your best fly and you begin, full of hope. For an hour or two you cover much water without a single rise, and you begin to doubt whether the fish mean to take at all to-day. Soon, just to see whether they will move at all, you put up the spinning-rod just merely to have one try down the pool. A fish takes the accursed thing and you are lost. Abandoning all sense of decency, you pursue the horrible craft, and at dusk you stagger back to the fishing-hut with half a dozen great fish upon your back and with your conscience hanging about the neck of your heart, which keeps on protesting in vain that this was really no day for the fly.”
Even Chaytor, however, admits that “in a cold, wet season, when the river is in flood for weeks together, with only odd days when fishing is possible, the minnow can be really and legitimately useful.” On the other hand, in contrast to the above warnings and diatribes, Mr. J. Arthur Hutton, who is so well known, particularly in connection with the Wye, and is, of course, a most experienced and successful salmon fisher, as well as one of the most learned in the life-history of the salmon, describes spinning for salmon as “a form of fishing requiring a very large amount of skill and experience which may provide one with sport on those many occasions when the fly is useless ... a fine art which requires much practice and long experience, far more so than fly-fishing.” “For every good hand with the spinning-rod,” he says, “you may find twenty who are excellent fly-fishermen.”
I remember a friend of mine in the north, whose old keeper had been with the family for many years and known him since his boyhood, telling me that he knew so well the old man’s contempt for and abhorrence of minnow-fishing that he did not dare to use the minnow when the old man was out with him, and never allowed him to know that he did use it. This old keeper would have applied Chaytor’s epithets to minnow-fishing on every occasion, but would never have agreed with him for a moment that even on rare occasions it can be legitimately used.
Those like the old keeper—and I doubt if in these days there are many such—might, to use Mr. Hutton’s words, “seriously consider whether they might not add largely to their sport and also to their opportunities of fishing by learning to spin for salmon. The river is not always in fly order; there are many occasions on which the water is too high or too much coloured for the fly when salmon might be caught with a minnow or other bait. In the same way, in deep sluggish pools, when it is almost impossible to work a fly effectively, a bait properly used may effect wonders.”
What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? It is this, paraphrasing the words of the famous authority on all things piscatorial, Mr. H. T. Sheringham: “It is certain that good luck is the most vital part of the equipment of him who would seek to slay the big (salmon). For some men I admit the usefulness of skill and pertinacity; for myself I take my stand entirely on luck.”
SLIGACHAN, ISLE OF SKYE.
By Finlay Mackinnon.