Salmonia; Or, Days of Fly Fishing / In a series of conversations. With some account of the habits of fishes belonging to the genus Salmo

by Sir Humphry Davy

Phys.—Where a book is rarely seen, a newspaper never.

Poiet.—Pardon me—there is not a cottage without a prayer book; and I am not sorry, that these innocent and happy men are not made active and tumultuous subjects of King Press, whom I consider as the most capricious, depraved, and unprincipled tyrant, that ever existed in England. Depraved—for it is to be bought by great wealth; capricious—because it sometimes follows, and sometimes forms, the voice of the lowest mob; and unprincipled—because, when its interests are concerned, it sets at defiance private feeling and private character, and neither regards their virtue, dignity, nor purity.

Hal.—My friends, you are growing warm. I know you differ essentially on this subject; but surely you will allow that the full liberty of the press, even though it sometimes degenerates into licentiousness, and though it may sometimes be improperly used by the influence of wealth, power, or private favour, is yet highly advantageous, and even essential to the existence of a free country; and, useful as it may be to the population, it is still more useful to the government, to whom, as expressing the voice of the people, though not always vox Dei, it may be regarded as oracular or prophetic.—But let us change our conversation, which is neither in time nor place.

Poiet.—This river must be inexhaustible for sport: I have nowhere seen so many fish.

Hal.—However full a river may be of trout and grayling, there is a certain limit to the sport of the angler, if continuous fishing be adopted in the same pools. Every fish is in its turn made acquainted by diurnal habit with the artificial fly, and either taken or rendered cautious; so that, in a river fished much by one or two good anglers, many fish cannot be caught, except under peculiar circumstances of very windy, rainy, or cloudy weather, when many flies come on; or at night, or at the time the water is slightly coloured by a flood, or when fish change their haunts in consequence of a great inundation. In the Usk, in Monmouthshire, when it was very full of fish in the best fishing time, when the spring brown and dun flies were on the water, it was not usual for some excellent anglers, who composed a party of nine, and who fished in this river for ten continuous days, to catch more than two or three fish each person. But one day, when the water was coloured by a flood, in which case the artificial fly could not be distinguished by the fish from the natural fly, I caught twelve or fourteen of the same fish, that had been in the habit of refusing my flies for many days successively. This was in the end of March, 1809, when the flies always came on the water with great regularity; the blues in dark days, the browns in bright days, between twelve and two o’clock in the middle of the day. In rivers where the artificial fly has never been used, I believe all the fish will mistake good imitations for natural flies, and in their turn, to use an angler’s phrase, “taste the steel;” but even very imperfect imitations and coarse tackle, which are only successful at night or in turbid water, are sufficient to render fish cautious. This I am convinced of, by observing the difference of the habits of fish in strictly preserved streams, and in streams where even peasants have fished with the coarsest tackle. I might quote the Traun at Ischl, where the native fisherman used three or four of the coarsest flies on the coarsest hair links made of four or five or six hairs, and the Traun at Gmunden, where they are not allowed to fish. The fish that rose took with much more certainty at Gmunden than at Ischl.

At a time when many flies are on, particularly large ones, a few days of continuous fishing, even with a single rod, will soon make the sport indifferent in the best rivers; but the larger and the deeper the river the longer it continues, because fish change their stations occasionally, and pricked fish sometimes leave their haunts, which are occupied by others; and graylings are more disposed to change their places than trouts.

As instances of the difference in this respect between large and small rivers, I may quote the Vockla and the Agger in Upper Austria. The first of these rivers, when I fished in it in 1818, was full of trout and grayling, and I believe I was the first person, for at least many years, that had ever thrown an artificial fly upon it. It is a small stream, from eight to fifteen yards wide, and can every where be commanded by the double-handed rod, and is generally shallow. The first day that I fished in this stream, which was in the beginning of August, at every throw I hooked a fish, and I took out and restored again to their element in the course of a few hours more than one hundred and fifty trout and grayling. The next day I fished in the same places, but with a very different result: I caught only half a dozen large fish: the third morning, going over the same ground, I had great difficulty even to get a brace of fish for my dinner, and those, as well as I recollect, I caught by throwing in places which had not been fished before. I ought to mention, that the space of water where this experiment was made did not exceed half a mile in length. I shall now speak of the Agger, which is a much larger and deeper river than the Vockla, and cannot be commanded in any part by a double-handed rod, being at least from forty to sixty yards across. The first time I fished this river, I had the same kind of sport as in the Vockla; the second day, under the same favourable circumstances, there were fewer rises than on the first day, but still sufficient to give good sport; and it was the fourth day before it became difficult to catch a good dish of fish, and necessary to seek new water. The greater depth of the water, and the change of place of the fish, particularly the grayling, explain this, to say nothing of the greater number of fish which the larger river contained. I am, of course, speaking of one of the best periods of fly-fishing, when many large flies, of which imitations are easily found, have been on the water. In spring (a bad season for fly-fishing in high Alpine countries) I have thrown great varieties of flies on these two highly stocked streams, and have found it difficult to get a brace of fish for the table, as the trout and grayling were all lying at the bottom, not expecting any winged food at this season.

A river that runs into a large lake affords, at its junction with the lake, by far the best place for continuous angling, particularly for trout in autumn. The fish are constantly running up the river for the purpose of spawning, and every day offers a succession of new shoals, of which many will take the fly; I say many, because at this season some of the fish, particularly the females, are capricious, and refuse a bait, of which, under other circumstances they are greedy. I may say the same with respect to the exit of a river from a lake, to which successions of fishes resort, and though trout are found abundantly in such places, yet they are often still better places for grayling when these fish exist in the lake, the tendency of grayling being rather, as I said on another occasion, to descend than to ascend waters, whilst that of the trout is the contrary. The same principles apply to salmon and sea-trout fishing, which run up rivers from basins of the sea: the best situations for continuous angling are those parts of the river where there is a succession of fishes from the tide.

Poiet.—You spoke just now of peasants fishing with the fly in Austria: I thought this art was entirely English; and though I have travelled much, I do not recollect ever to have seen fly-fishing practised by native anglers abroad.

Hal.—I assure you there are fishers with the artificial fly in different parts of Switzerland, Germany, and Illyria, though always with rude tackle, and usually upon rapid streams. Besides the Traun I can mention the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Drave, as rivers where I have seen fish caught with rude imitations of flies used by native anglers. In Italy, where trout and grayling are very rare, and only found amongst the highest mountain chains, I have never seen any fly-fishers, but near Ravenna I have sometimes seen anglers for frogs, who threw their bait exactly as we throw a fly, and caught great numbers of these animals: and the nature of their apparatus surprised me more than their method of using it. Instead of a hook and bait they employed a small dry frog, tied to a long piece of twine, the fore legs of which projected like two hooks, and this they threw at a distance, by means of a long rod. The frogs rose like fish and gorged the small dry frog, by the legs of which they were pulled out of the water. I was informed by one of these fishermen, that he sometimes took 200 frogs in this way in a morning, and that the frogs never swallowed any bait when still or apparently dead, but caught at whatever was moving or appeared alive on the surface of the water; so that this amphibia feeds like a nobler animal, the eagle, only on living prey.