The breeze blowing right across the tarn carried it struggling along for a short way; then there was a glimpse of a curved fin above the water, an extra dimple in the ripples, and the insect had been taken down by some voracious trout or perch. In a few seconds I had another clock on my line and swung it out to near where the previous one had disappeared. The hook had hardly reached the water before I felt the jerk of a ‘bite.’ There is no fine nibbling by the trout where the clock is concerned, and therefore almost anyone can strike successfully. The fish I had on was a lively customer, and more than once I feared an escape, but the hook was too deep to be wrenched out by error of judgment. When at last it came into the shallows and was netted, I had time to consider. My friend further up the tarnside was some time in achieving a capture: he was casting too short by far. In a mountain tarn such as this it is necessary that the fly or bait be cast as far out as possible. The water goes very gradually deeper for some twenty yards from the shore, then falls away to great depths almost precipitously.
Just beyond the point where the deep and shallow so nearly meet the chief shoals of fish usually lie. In flood-time, and of nights in summer, they approach the beck mouths for food, and may be here taken; but during the day the most successful angler is the one who can throw most accurately to a great distance. To-day there was little difficulty in seeing where the fish lay; constantly they dashed at the floating carcases, frequently a double rise occurring when two selected the same morsel. We angled on for a while, hardly moving from our first selected stations, and meeting with fair success, till we felt it high time for something to eat. At our al-fresco luncheon we turned out our panniers and compared their contents. Though the water is without preservation, and its outgoing rivulet impassable for trout, this tarn had for years offered to anglers a fair stock of fish, averaging three to the pound. In the twenty lying on the shingle more than half were half-pounders. No other tarn in the same basin could give a return equal to this, though many are closely watched and their stock frequently replenished. Moreover—and this peculiarity was uniform to a marked degree—every fish was covered with large crimson blotches, more than treble the normal size.
After our meal we returned to the waterside; the dimples caused by rising fish became fewer and fewer, and our sport waned. By about four p.m. the shoals within casting range were unapproachable, though now and again there would be a sharp sequence of rises further out. Had I not flogged and played myself tired by this time, I doubt not that the curious poaching instrument I had picked up from beneath a boulder would have found employment. The lath, as used on our mountain tarns, is a short board, its lower edge weighted so as to float the whole upright, to which are attached several baits on short lengths of gut. The contrivance is floated out from some point where the breeze can cause it to move, and allowed to cross the most fishy portions of the water. Of course, the operator need give it little attention in transit. He retrieves it on the further shore, and easily lands what trout there are on the hooks. The method is a most deadly one, and I am glad that there was no real temptation to resort to it.
III. At Mayfly Time
About the period when the angler in mountain tarns watches for the bracken-clock, his confrère by less elevated waters is eagerly looking for the coming of the mayfly. In pools set like diamonds in green woods, or in the still reaches of streams, night fishing is now much resorted to. The gauzy-winged mayfly flutters about as long as a glimmer of light plays on the face of the waters, while long after amber night has settled over field and wood and height the trout remain on the feed.
It is evening. A narrow road carries us rapidly towards fresher and cooler air. The luscious green of unshorn fields, decked with starlike forms of white and red and blue, is giving place to the domain of bramble and gorse and rock scarce veiled with soil. At the summit of the road the glories of sunset burst upon us. The sun is sinking between a thin cloud and a line of rugged hill-tops. Through this interval rays of silver and red and pearl are gleaming, dividing the blue west as though with ploughshares of heaven’s own fashioning. But to us chiefest interest lies in the gleaming waters in the middle distance. A fir-wood bounds their further shore; gorse and whin grows luxuriantly on the moor around. One or two small islets, hung with lichen-poisoned sallows, are in the larger section; the merelet is almost divided by two jutting tongues of scrub.
In ten minutes we are by the water’s edge. The gorgeous lights in the western sky have dulled; rose succeeds the fiery red, silver turns to yellow and to gray-blue. The air resounds to the wingings of tiny insects, yet there is a great peace underneath it all. Broken—yes, broken by the quavering wail of the plover pacing the grassy marge near its nest; by an occasional crash, as a heavy trout leaps high and falls back from its keen pursuit. But stay a moment yet, ere the rod is drawn out, to watch the ephemeræ dancing just above the surface of the water. They wheel in scores, they soar by hundreds; yet every movement seems to bring death close, for one here and one there, in a clumsy swerve, touches the water: its frail wings are damped so that it cannot rise again to the airy quadrille of its companions. But they mark not its absence. The dangerous game is not checked. The fallen insect makes one or two attempts to raise itself; in wild, erratic circles it spins round and round, is floated by the faint breeze of eventide toward the shore at our feet. Yard after yard it gradually comes nearer; then suddenly we see the triangular back-fin of a trout in close attendance. A flash—the fin has disappeared; another, and the dark body of a trout leaps half out the water, and as it supplely curves over the poor mayfly is forced into a maw already distended with like unfortunates.
Scores of fish are on the alert to-night—‘the water is fair wick wi’ ‘em,’ as our companion says—waiting for the downfall of the aerial rejoicers just out of their reach, though here and there an impatient one makes a huge leap for a bonne-bouche.
In a trice the rods are out and ready; every moment is of value, for tarn trout are capricious in their feeding periods, and may suddenly and absolutely cease to rise to their most cherished atoms. J—— takes left and I take right shore and begin. I am hampered at first by a series of tiny bogs, but in a few yards reach a gorse-covered promontory. This proves a capital station for a cast; my line swings far and true to where I last saw a struggling mayfly sucked down. My fly—why, a moment ago I picked up and impaled a mayfly, far less difficult to manage than the armour-plated bracken-clock. In less than five minutes my first trout was ashore, a monster over two pounds in weight. But this is a mere of great trout. I remember some six years ago the bed, which had been drained for some time, being reflooded, and a large number of yearling trout being turned in. For some seasons no angling was done. The stock grew great in size, though doubtless, seeing there are no redds, not even a streamlet passable for minnows, available, there was no increase in numbers. The feed is abundant, weeds and other cover plentiful, and, save for the cursory (and cursed) visits of a swan from a mill-dam some miles away, the enemies to fish-life are few.
While these observations are being passed, my rod is being plied assiduously. My fly, planted though it often is in tempting positions over lurking trout, is again and again drawn out untaken. A sharp eye has my quest. See! the wings of the fly, though as deftly placed on the water as my craft finds possible, are bedraggled with constant immersion, and is therefore considered unpalatable by the fish. It doesn’t take a moment to change it, and with the next cast—aimed at that monster in the lee of that islet, behind whose descending shoulders the parted waters have just gurgled together—comes success. The faint feel of a bite travels to my hand, and I strike. There is a sudden slack of the line; then, as the rod-point is raised to continue the strain, a dead pull; then to right the trout makes a sudden rush. I scarcely have followed it than forward my fish dives and downward, and to the resistance is added the entanglement of a bunch of water-weeds. Carefully I get my trout away from this. There is another run forward—a more disturbing one this time indeed—followed by a cl’ck backward and a salmon-like leap a yard out of the water. I am taken aback at the manœuvre, and Salmo levenensis has obtained some valuable yards of liberty, each adding to its chances of breaking away; and, sure enough, with what must have been a double back-turn by the fish, my line is hitched round a hidden snag, and, as my trout and I put on pressure from our opposite ends, parts.