In Lakeland Dells and Fells

by William T. Palmer

The favourite period for spearing the fish is, of course, during the hours of darkness. More than once I have seen men rendezvous in a lonely spot near our weir. Many a salmon getting thus far up the river at nightfall lies in the deep rock-basins till day returns, and on that his enemies reckon. In the woods fringing the rocks, a close search will at any time discover three or four leisters hidden by their most recent users. As dusk deepens into night the poachers come out; only one is armed with a spear, the other carrying a bag, and the third a dark lantern. When the water’s edge is reached, a brief ray shows where the fish are lying. The spearman, picking out his fish, plunges his weapon. If the stroke goes true, the salmon is rapidly jerked out, to be killed by the bagman. This goes on so long as a fish can be reached.

At other times, from the windows of a rural lodging, I have watched just before dawn stealthy lights flickering by the pools in another river, and two or three hours later have breakfasted off salmon showing leister-marks. Leistering being, of course, a slow process, the villagers alone are supplied, but at a rate per pound which seems to make the game very unsatisfactory from a profit point of view.

I have in my mind’s eye one particular scene. In half-flood the river is dashing beneath a hog-backed stone bridge; all around is darkness. The lower slopes of the great braes are invisible, their summits but dimly in view against the cloudy sky. Now and again a few stars rush across a rift in the upper blackness. Along the water a dim, uncertain light plays, showing sharp currents breaking and swirling over unseen reefs, or roaring in white fury against the dark, unyielding boulders here and there visible in the bed. After a few minutes’ wait, a labourer comes panting up; he is a well-known ‘small-scale’ poacher, the plague of the keepers for miles around.

‘Old Carson is out to-night,’ said the new-comer, ‘but he’s away up behind the weir.’

For a moment we didn’t gather the meaning of this, nor of the immoderate fit of laughter our acquaintance indulged in. Then it struck us that, by making a long détour, he had wiled the water-bailiff far from the series of pools we intended to ‘work.’ In a moment we were over the wall and were deep among the ash-woods fringing the water, following the poacher, who trod the narrow, stony path with the ease and silence of long accustom. In a few minutes he stopped. So intense was the shadow that we cannoned into him before we knew of his halting.

‘Mind where you are coming,’ he growled, in a whisper. As he spoke we could hear a faint dragging and a rustling of dead leaves somewhere in the darkness near his feet. Now we came into the river-bed, where it was comparatively light. The poacher, we saw, had drawn a leister, as well as a bag and a lantern, from a secret place in the river-bank. In a few seconds he prepared for action; then, handing me the lantern, he spoke in a low voice:

‘You keep close to me, and when I give the word turn the light on to the slack water. And you’—turning to my companion—‘had better pick up and bag what fish I stick [pierce].’

Now the three of us crawled stealthily along the rocks bounding the rushing stream. Slack water indeed! In that tumult of fosse and rock and rapid it did not seem likely that a yard of smooth surface would be found. But my judgment was wholly amiss. Here and there, between the eddying current and the hard shore, were quite long stretches without a single ripple, and near the head of one such the poacher stopped suddenly.

‘There’ll be something here,’ he said. At a rustle of his hand I glided forward. ‘Now show a light on the water just in under my feet.’ I did so, and there quite half a dozen silver-sided salmon lay, with their heads upstream, never thinking that that vagrant gleam meant death for one or more of their number. I saw the spear plunge into the water; the nearest fish turned, struck through the vitals, floating in the faint swirl towards the head of the pool. My companion, however, was alert, and seized the carcass before it was tumbled far away down the stream. Meanwhile the poacher prepared for another stroke; again I directed my shaft of light, and again he struck. But the shoal had floated further into the stream, and he failed to reach them from that station.

Now he stepped waist-deep into the pool, directing me to move so as to give a very brief flash across the water. I did so, and another kill was registered, after which the poacher proposed that we should try another place. Accordingly, we moved downstream, walking wherever possible in the shadow of the trees.