er THE SPORTING GALLERY' AND BOOKSHOP, INC. No. 38, East Knd St.. New York " - d- RIVER ANGLING. J. lt Ktosk. Kioto. Keko. Enf a ijW Banks Sc Published Ij J.& J. H.RuilierfoTd.. Kels< A manly heart lost this our Border land, When thine, O Younger, to the grave was borne ; And friends, even some who never clasped thy hand, In every valley thy departure mourn ; For generous hearts are few upon the earth And genial natures, such as guided thee : Grave thoughts and sad swept o'er thee, but thy mirth Out-rode them all a life-boat on the sea : And 'mong thy friends how many felt the charm Of thy keen intellect and racy tongue ! Thy tide of thoughts, thy feelings ever warm, Portrayed a nature deep, and fresh, and young Even in thine age ; and long thy name will stand Respected, honoured, loved, on thine own Border land. RIVER ANGLING SALMON AND TROUT. BY JOHN YOUNGER. I) WITH A MEMOIR, AND LIST OF THE TWEED SALMON CASTS. There are who think these pastimes scarce humane. Yet in my mind (and not relentless I) His life is pure that wears no fouler stains. Armstrong. KELSO : J. & J. H. EUTHEEFUED. EDINBURGH : WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS. MDCCCLXIV. PRINTED BY ,T. AND J. H. RUTHERFURD, KELSO. Y4 ADVERTISEMENT. WHEN the last Edition of EIVER ANGLING was partly printed (1860), the death of the Author caused it to appear in a less complete state as to arrangement of matter than it would otherwise have done. In the present Edition this has been care- fully attended to by the Editor, an experienced Angler; and from this, and the supplementary chapters by him on Creeper Fishing, etc., the Pub- lishers confidently issue the present Volume as a complete work on River Angling for Salmon and Trout. KELSO, February 1864. M844814 CONTENTS. SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE . . . .1 REMARKS PRELIMINARY . . 36 SALMON FLIES . . .42 Unknown natural causes prevent Salmon taking, 43 Nature not imitated in Flies, 43 Note, 43 Flies reduced to six distinct kinds, 44 First Fly, 45 Second Fly, 47 Third Fly, 48 Fourth Fly, 48 Fifth Fly, 49 Sixth, or Maule Fly, 51 Mr. Maule, 53. MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS ON SALMON FLIES . . 54 To vary the three first flies, 54 Tinsel, 55 Pig's Wool for Tufts, 55 Colours, 55 Flies by which Salmon are " raised" 56 Colours to be proportioned, 57 Fowls for dressing feathers, 58 Preserving feathers, 59 Size of flies of more importance than colour, 59 Angling, point most essen- tial, 61 Size of flies to vary according to depth of water, 61 Experienced angler knows where to fish, 61 Irish and Tweed Flies suit according to state of river, 62 " The Erne, its Legends and Fly Fishing," 63 [NOTE In the three places in the text where " Earn" occurs, read Erne} Shrimp considered natural prototype of Salmon Fly, 64 Fly taken most readily when well sunk, 64 Note bear- ing out same, 65 Twice exceptions to this noted, 66 Author's impression that all Flies are taken for Shrimps, 67 Note as to colour of Shrimps, 67. TROUT FLIES, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL . . .71 Natural Flies, how bred, 71 Note on ditto, 71 Another X CONTENTS. PAGE note on ditto, 72 Trout Angling different from Salmon Angling, 74 Flies should be sliapen after living model, 75 To make Flies, 76 1st March Brown, 2nd Pale Yellow Dun, 77 Material of which to make the latter, 78 Note on Buntings, 78 Fly for May, 80. CURIOUS PHENOMENA RELATIVE TO THE "TAKING" OF SALMON AND TROUT . . . . .81 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS ON TROUTING, TROUT FLIES, TACKLE, AND RODS . . . .87 Fishing up Stream, 87 The " old system " discarded, 89 Voracity of the Trout, 89 Trout not capricious, 90 When Trout not "taking," mutilate wings of Fly, and sink Fly well in the water, 91 In July and August continue the earlier Flies, 92 Size of Fly larger than the natural Fly for certain states of water, 93 Note 011 ditto, 93 Mistake of Authors, 94 Fine Gut to be used, 95 Rods, 96 (see also p. 105 for Rods). ON THE DRESSING OF FLIES . . . . .99 Salmon Flies, 99 Trout Flies, 100 Note, 101 Dressing on loops, 103. CASTING OR WHEEL LINES . . . . .103 Note on ditto, 104. FISHING RODS . . . . . .105 Notes on Fishing Rods, 105 and 107. SALMON ANGLING . . . . .108 Throwing the Line, 108 Striking, 112 Working the Line, 113 Not to become flustered in a run, 115. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON SALMON ANGLING . .118 Perfection of Fly Fishing, 118 Dislike of Dyed Gut, 118 Note on Gut, 118 Sunk Fly successful, 119 Sea-trout Hook in Northern Rivers, 120 Difference of Flies used in Northern Rivers, 121 John Haliburton and Tweed Hooks, 122 Note, 122 " General leading principal " for size and colour of Flies, 124. TROUT ANGLING ...... 125 Where and how to cast, 126 The angler not to strike, 126 Editor's note in favour of striking, 126 Whipping the CONTENTS. XI PAGE water, 128 "Job's patience," 129 Atmospherical influ- ence, 129" Greener years ! " 130 Poetry and trout-slay- ing, 131. ANGLING WITH WORM FOR SALMON . . . 133 Feat of Jolm Haliburton, 133 Worm used, 133 Note against the use of brick dust for worms, 134 Size of hooks used, 134 How to bait, 135 How to angle, 136 Another feat of John Haliburton, 138. ANGLING WITH WORM FOR TROUT . . . 138 The worm preferred and how to keep fresh, 139 Note on preserving worms, 139 The time for worm fishing, 139 How to bait, 140 Where to angle, 141 An old game- keeper's feats, 142 Rivers in which the brandling worm is successfully used, 14S Note on the brandling, and a very large take made by it, 143. ANGLING WITH MINNOW ..... 144 The state of water most suitable, 144 How to angle (trout and salmon), 145 Sprats a good bait for salmon, 146 [Minnow for bait, see text and note at page 149]. ANGLING WITH PAR-TAIL . . . . .147 ANGLING WITH ROE ..... 149 CREEPER FISHING, BY THE EDITOR . . . 152 When it begins and ends, 153 Up in the morning early, 154 State of water for, 154 How and where to angle, 155 Fine gut to be used, 157 Hooks, and how to bait, 159 Striking and sinkers, 160 Creepers, where to find and how to keep alive, 161 Rivers best adapted for creeper fishing, 162 Size of trouts taken by this bait, 163. [NOTE Page 153, line 5, for "either," read Cotton.] STONE-FLY FISHING, BY THE EDITOR . . .164 When it comes in, and where to find flies, 164 State of water preferable, 165 The preferable fly, 165 How to angle, 166 Waltonian hymn, 167. WORMS AND WORM ANGLING, BY THE EDITOR . .168 The best season for worm-angling, 168 The "time of day" to angle, 169 Up-stream fishing necessary, rod, a long line to be used, and striking, 171 The places to fish, 172 Xll CONTENTS. PAGE Hooks, 172 Worms: black -headed worm, marsh worm, 173 Brandling, 174 How do trout so greedily devour worms, land animals? 174 Worms live in the rivers, 175 Mistakes as to this of anglers and authors, 176 Reason why trout are fondest of worms in midsummer, 177. SCRAP, BY THE EDITOR . . . . .179 Notes on Water Insects ..... 179 Biographical, etc. . . . . . 182 Jock Smail, 182 James Baillie, 184 Homeward Route, 186. DESCRIPTIVE List of the Salmon Kod Casts in the Tweed, including the names of Proprietors . . . 1 88 DESCRIPTIVE List of the Tributaries of the Tweed for Trout Anglers, by the Editor . ... 214 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. If he should not have been successful in any of his intentions, yet there remains this consolation behind that these, his pursuits, by keeping the body and mind employed, have under Providence, contributed to much health and cheerfulness of spirits even to old age. Gilbert White. WHILE the work now presented to river anglers was passing through the press, a painful incident, and one deeply connected with its matured com- pletion, occurred in the death of the author. A pang of sorrow, such as only the loss of many endearing qualities could occasion, shot through many a heart within miles of his residence, as it was spread from lip to lip that John Younger was dead. On a long summer day, the 19th of June, when the pleasant sights and objects of his " dear native valleys" wore their freshest aspect, John Younger died. For some time previous, his hardy compact frame, that had stood the buffets of a life longer than the common span, shewed signs of decay. There is little doubt that poverty, with its saddening distractions, weighed upon the elasticity of his nature. Physical ailments, 1 2 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. of the class that would have been greatly modified by easier circumstances, had begun to drag him back from various literary enterprises, which his attempts at public lectures had marked out. The lithe motion of body and of limb became touched with the proofs of declining strength; yet, his many personal friends never doubted on counting on his familiar presence for years to come. Death, however, came quickly and sternly, and after a brief struggle with a paralytic seizure, John Younger succumbed. In his views of life, and its allotments of trial, he had ever cherished a wish that his end might come under circumstances in which he wouldleave the world without being a tax or trouble to any. The wish was gratified; and the week that saw him look- ing from the river head-lands of his beautiful Les- sudden, saw him also lying in St Boswells' church- yard. It is trite enough to remark, that John Younger was no common man. His equal has seldom been seen in the class to which he belonged. When it is borne in mind that his education was exceedingly meagre, costing from first to last not more than is now expended on a middle class child in one quarter that he plodded along in the same groove of occu- pation and habit all his life long and had few SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 3 opportunities of being abroad, and obtaining for his natural acuteness of observation the extended range of objects that is essential to enlarged mental culture, the conviction is forced upon the observer who offers an estimate of him, that, falling in at his proper place he was one of these men of mother wit, original ideas, and marked capacity, who, in Scotland, are represented by Robert Burns, and Hugh Miller, John Leyden, and The Ettrick Shepherd. As a follower of the somewhat lightly esteemed, but essential avocation of shoemaker, he belongs to the illustrious craft from among whose awls and lasts have come, according to Coleridge (in defiance of the stale Latinism), some patriots of large soul, theologians with pale faces, and hair crisp with study, missionaries of world-embracing Christian zeal, critics, and their victims the builders of the lofty rhyme. As we find from the autobiography, which during a course of many years he had prepared, " he was the child of honest parents, the youngest of a family of six, was born at Langnewton, in the parish of Ancrum, on the 5th of July, 1785." Langnewton standing on the high banks of the Ale, at that time had pretentious to rank as a Scottish village, from which, by the rural changes, it has passed into a seldom seen, tin visited hamlet. It had the usual 4 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR S LIFE. village characteristics, and Younger commenced the school of observation on what he saw and heard in it. There was the now obsolete weaver of " customer wark," the never to be obsolete blacksmith, with his nightly band of quidnuncs, such as Burns saw when a boy the ploughman, the day labourer, the poacher, the hand-spinning matron, the dominie, and the way-faring "Daft Jock." Towards it, as the place of his nativity, and of the earliest and most varied recollections of his life, his heart always yearned. In the Ale he caught his first trout, and under an ash tree, in a corner of the churchyard of the village, was his mother's grave. Sixty years ago Scotland was a poor country. She had been fighting during all her history out of a cold soil, a wet climate, and a certain sourness or grim earnestness of character, acquired by long con- tact with hard times social, civil, religious and agrarian when the black famine years, that saw out the old century and ushered the new one in, made clean teeth throughout the land. It may well be imagined what were the sharp household straits that children with empty stomachs had to struggle through. The quarter loaf rose to close on two shil- lings. Wheat stood at one hundred and twenty-five shillings a quarter. Parliament, by statute, enforced SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR S LIFE. O economy in the use of bread, prohibiting its consump- tion until it had been baked for twenty-four hours. The slip of an urchin did not even enjoy the licence of cow-herding. To make ends meet in his father's struggles, he was early encased in a sheep-skin apron, and made to jerk out his elbows in drawing rosined thread. A conscript seized upon the village green, he possessed native instincts that soon sharpened into faculties, and he sought companion- ship with members of animated nature. The boy be- came an adept in the knowledge of birds and beasts ; and hawks, blear-eyed owls, and flippant jack daws, squatted around him. Bird cages blocked up the light of day, and the shoemaker's shop, the lounge of village gossipers, was vocal with the contending songs of whole coveys of linnets and canaries. John often wondered how his honest father tolerated such an uproar. Out of doors he early picked up a know- ledge of the habits and kinds of birds. The slightest twit in a hedge or wood, would tell its name ; and he did not require the old poacher, who sat smoking on the settle of the yellow-ochred cottage door, to tell him the destination, on the minnowy stream, of the great flaunting heron which sailed high over the village chimney tops. The best angler to this day is he who knows most about the habitat of the finny 6 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. tribe ; and the shoemaker lad, with his quick per- ceptions, learnt how to catch trout almost at his will. He would cut his hazel* wand from the young wood, and though the trouts might be shy to the nicest turn out of rod and tackle, he would come home with the bunching strap of silvery spoils, till all the village lads looked amazed. This was the fashion in which the author of the present work furnished the proof of his early attainments in the gentle art. There needed to be no readier sign of the natural cleverness of the prentice shoemaker than his water- side craft. In his own words, " he flew to the Ale water and fished for trout as much for his dinner as for amusement." In the dear years a dinner pur- veyed with so little labour was not to be despised, for these were dreadful times. They have served all the men who fasted in the pinches of the hungry epoch with a tale of such distress as has not died out till this day. How often have readers of this notice heard old men narrate the dismal story of meal at seven shillings the stone ! Flodden itself has hardly sent down to after times so sad a sough as Hazel seems to be a kind of wood that anglers instinctively draw to ; anglers at least who cannot pay for shop-made rods. In Walton's time it was the favourite wood, and- James Baillie, accounted by several authors and many anglers the best fly-fisher of the present day, angles daily with a two-piece hazel rod cut from the wood-bank, and angled with as cut. [EDR.] SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR S LIFE. 7 have those dear years ! We find few written records of them too. They were too early for our best working-class autobiographers, Hugh Miller and Soinerville. When John Younger' s autobiography is given to the world we will have the right idea how the poorer families fared. His share in it was not small, for he had nearly perished from the long want of sufficient sustenance. He has described himself as the member of the family, who, with his natural shiftiness, was selected to seek credit at the corn mills in the neighbourhood where meal was sold. When he had procured a supply he set off at full speed (for he knew the household was at the starving point), running over the dreary fields with the pock under his arm. Temptation would assail him, and he would untwist the neck of the bag, and gulp down with hungry hurry the dry meal, and then, lest he should be tempted again, he would twirl up the neck beyond ready reach, and run with additional speed. What a picture of the times is here presented ! The Scottish people may well cherish the memory of the period with pride, for they endured the trial nobly. The sensitiveness as to accepting parochial relief even survived the crisis. John Younger' s account may enable even statesmen to compare the different ways in which the Scotch and the SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. Irish have "borne up against the calamities of fa- mine. John Younger was a manly-hearted boy, and strove to utter no murmur in his hard pressed father's hearing. He bore up against despondency, and like Bunyan, he even owned to a bit of monologue ; for one day, while staring into a pool of water, he fancied his shadow accosted him by saying, "keep up yer heart Jock Younger, keep up yer heart ma man Jock." Jock took the hint, and heaven sent brighter days. John's first contact with literature deserves to be noted. He had read Jack the Giant Killer, and scarcly dreamed of anything higher than the great nursery epic. A blacksmith in advance of his time repeated a portion of "Doctor Hornbook," mention- ing the name of Burns, who was then only a few years dead. The slenderly versed shoemaker asked " whae was Burns?" il Burns, man (was the rejoinder), have ye never heard of Burns the poet, who beats Allan Ramsay, and the whole lot of Scotch poets to sticks !" John heard the bookish Burnewin with melancholy curiosity, and sighed at the idea of exclusion from such poetic wealth. But St Boswells' fair came, and he sallied up the thronged alleys between the krames with sixpence in his pocket, and grasped the SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR S LIFE. prize of his heart, a sewed copy of the said " Burns' Poems." Home he went, for the fair had no further charms for him. Into the heart of a blackberry bush, that flourished with a kind of arbour shape in his father's garden, he tumbled, and, with a bright dis- dain, left the showman-spoutings, the busy hum, the gaudy, touting, holiday enticements, to those who cared for them. The village of Bowden was not far off. A line from Clapperton, an old Scotch poet, " at Bowden, on black Monanday," shews that the village had re- ceived poetic mention. In addition to being the birth place of Thomas Aird, the imperfect fulfiller of great poetic promise, it takes credit for fostering the nativity of Andrew Scott, the author of the quaint but classic piece of dialogue rhythm " Symon and Janet," beginning, Surroundit wi' bent, an' wi' heather, Where muircocks an' plivers are rife, For mony lang towmond thegether, There lived an auld man an' his wife. To Andrew, John made up and was received with kindliness. In return, John rendered homage as to genius, and a friendship was formed, lasting till the old barnman flung down the flail never to uplift it. 10 SKETCH OF THE AUTHORS LIFE. The era of the false alarm, originating in the juncture of Buonaparte's threatened invasion, was a period of vivid sensations to the subject of our notice, as it was to most at that time. He was strutting on the top of his teens, and shouldered a firelock as a member of the Militia Corps. This he did with a perfect consciousness expressed all through life, that fighting was the most abject of all human occu- pations. The trade of soldiering was abhorrent to his moral sense and the habits of his mind ; and no member of the peace society could have more scrupulously examined the motives under which he appeared as a defender of his country. In one of his opinions on the subject, afterwards recorded, he says, " it is very distressing for the human mind to contemplate the dire movement of congregated masses of flesh and blood, dragged out in the train of hellish ambition for the most horrible purposes, following individuals who shew themselves so utterly unworthy of even personal existence." On the night on which the beacons were lighted, the 31st January, 1804, when the heart of the nation heaved in one fiery swell of patriotic feeling, John marched to the place of rendezvous, ten miles distant, and tore his trousers in scaling the palisades of Kelso bridge toll- house. The grotesque features of his night's adven- SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 1 1 tures, full many a time and oft he was wont to bring ' up at the annual convivial meeting, held at St Bos- wells to this day, to commemorate the historic event, and the story never grew tiresome in the telling. At twenty-five, John had settled in life, had a wife, Agnes Riddle by name, and a house of his own, shoemaking his trade, and St Boswells or Lessudden his residence for life. In a notice of a man who, spent his days in following one of the most plebeian of occupations, it is difficult to find individual inci- dents to make out the track of his existence. His original thinking powers soon marked him off as one who could not be invisible in the dead inertness of rural life. On the north side of the village was a picture of silvan and river scenery, in the winding of the peerless Tweed, such as might have haunted any man possessing less idealism than John, with the pleasure which nature in her diviner glimpses yields. There was Dry burgh, rearing its time- stricken gables among the trees; but strange to say such an object excited no pleasure in John. These haunts of monks and their worn out super- stitions he despised, as having formed part of the imposture which had retarded freedom of ideas and common sense among men. He had more true delight in watching the motions of the water ousel 12 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. skipping and coquetting on the river shallows, or in listening to the snatch of the red-breast's pleasant or plaintive carol on the apple tree, than in the survey of all the abbeys of Domesday book. " The monks (with him) were dead and buried, and let them lie, without bringing them on the stage of life, where they had done so little to deserve man- kind's respect." Carious to say he did not care at all for the writings of Sir Walter Scott. With some who knew him little, this may be set down to an absence of true imaginative culture, but the fact was, it arose out of a quaint peculiarity of mind. He looked on the Waverley literature as " old piper stories," " dwarf and witch tales," and monstrous caricatures, of Scottish mariners. He never threw himself in Scott's way, though living in the same locality. When he sauntered to the top of the village cliff to look riverward, and sniff the western breeze, the object in the landscape which the resting place of the minstrel formed, would catch his eye and yet excite no passing sigh. The following work will have suggested that fish- ing was one of his greatest sources of recreation. In the course of years it passed from recreation almost to regular occupation. The Tweed, the stately stream, in its scenic associations and bright remem- SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 13 brances of sport, and friends, and merry hours, be- came the silver bond that knitted all his sympathies to the locality of St Boswells. The kind of Aus- trian rigour with which angling privilege on the river is now protected had then no existence. There is not a shadow of a doubt that the Tweed was then far more the poor man's river than it is now. Things stood on an easier footing between laird and commoner. John Haliburton, on his perch of Craig- o'er, rented the Merton water at fifteen pounds a-year, with a cow's grass, and often as he passed his friend, the shoemaker's door, he called out a kindly invitation for him to come down and get a cast. Younger's great natural powers of observation, conjoined with a wary watchfulness of fish, and steady practice at the rod, united in making him a profi- cient in the art. His reputation increased as his friendships extended, and from far and near, his fishing knowledge and company were courted. Apart altogether from his literary turn and tend- ency to blacken paper, he was marked off as a man of note, and hailed as a " Tweedside Gnostic." The shoemaker's shop was a house of call for all the Waltonian brotherhood : dukes, lords, Galashiels weavers, escaped Parliament men, squires, cotton lords, and the whole medley whose boot heels ever 14 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. crunched the pebbly shore of the glorious river or its tributaries, came at times to hear John Younger discourse on the theme, which, ahead of rivals, he had so well mastered. And what a crack was his ! And how meagre and few the souls for whom it possessed no relish. He could tell the waggle of the wand that could most deftly throw the line, and the bits of wood that, pieced together, made up the best style of rod. Kods he could manufacture on the shrewdest principle of effect. Fishing tackle and hooks he knew by intuition ; for how a salmon viewed things as he lay in his watery haunt was part of the fishing art. The occupation of shoemaker made fishing boots ready to his hand, and he came to be noted for his skill in the fabrication of these gentlemanly appurtenances of the pursuit : but it is unnecessary to dwell with any minuteness on this branch of his many acquirements, as the following essay discloses all the proofs of a most ex- tensive knowledge of the subject. Out of all the wide variety of friendly contacts, it may be assumed that John Younger had many opportunities of increasing his knowledge of the ideas current in the world beyond the sphere in which he had to make his bread. The late Sir Robert Peel, in one of his speeches, said he had SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 15 studied the wants of the nation by contact with the highest personages of the realm, and had conversed with the Highland shepherd on the hills, and heard him tell his artless views of human life ; and many a member of the governing class, or of the " upper ten thousand," would discuss public affairs in perfect equality with the obscure shoemaker, and perhaps gather conviction on some point which he had failed to elicit amid the contentions of party and the perplexities of unconscious prejudice. On one occasion when the Hon. J. E. Elliot was visit- ing his constituency, being Member for Koxburgh- shire, he happened to call in a friendly way upon his friend the shoemaker, who, talking of political affairs, remarked, that he never had enjoyed an opportunity of seeing Lord John Russell ; and that with his recollections of public men it would be a pleasure to him just to shake hands with a politician whose personal integrity men of all shades of opinion respect. No sooner said than done. The worthy member got John Younger crushed into the carriage beside him, and whirled him off to Minto House, where Lord John Eussell happened to be on a visit ; and there and then he left the two to a conversation, such as produced a lively impression of pleasure upon both parties. 16 SKETCH OF THE AUTHORS LIFE. We are aware that John Younger came to be viewed with some jealousy, as a man who held ex- treme political opinions. With his outspoken dis- position, and forcible powers of expression, he could hardly escape such an imputation. In this respect we think he was misjudged. He was a poor man, and naturally took the side that poor men take when questions affecting popular privileges are under discussion ; but he was remarkably free from all political crotchets. When the chartist movement was at its formidable stage he was invited to take part in it, but declined, seeing no good results to follow, and imputing to it not a few bad ones at the period. He has recorded the following remark on political discussion : " The man who will tell me that because I am a poor man, I have no business with the government of my country, I must despise as something worse than a simple idiot.'' He has the following just remarks on public affairs, and the principle by which they should be conducted. " A continual stirring, in what are called state conten- tions, is kept up by parties for public offices, in idea of honour or profit, or both ; but these are compara- tively like winds and storms to the balance of the general atmosphere, partial and trivial in their effects, compared with the spirit of the exclusive principle, SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 17 which is ever generative of those heartburnings which excite to political volcanoes, eruptions, and earthquakes." The Reform Bill he hailed as a great and just measure, constituting " an inestimable general privilege," which " would exercise a whole- some influence over the tergiversations, and abuses of public trust by the governing few/' On the corn laws, the repeal of which has done more to sweeten the breathes Dr Chalmers phrased it, of British society than any measure in living memory, John Younger vented his hottest ire ; their evils he summed in few words they hood-winked the far- mer, and raised to the poor man the price of bread. He heaped on these laws his bitterest scorn, and threw off various Corn Law Rhymes to fan the flame which their prolongation was exciting. Some of these found their way to Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer of Sheffield, who, in a letter of acknowledgment, asked why their author wasted his strength in verse when he possessed so much natural energy as a prose writer. Elliott's letter was ac- companied by a gift of a complete edition of his works, of which John was exceedingly proud. Twelve years, however, before the corn laws closed their account of social and civil mischief, John Younger had .registered himself an author. In 1 834 2 18 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. he gave to the world a small publication, entitled " Thoughts as they Rise/' a poem in Byronic mea- sure. It was an attempt at a poem, constructed " without an imaginary hero, romanting through its cantos." Whether owing to the plot wanting thus confessedly the part of Hamlet, or to the disrelish on the part of the public, for moralizations by a shoemaker on human affairs, the work fell still-born from the press, and further ' cantos, which were threatened, John kept to himself. The poem is, however, a remarkable production for a working man, if we consider the command over the English language, the easiness of versification, the occasional force and beauty of the sentiments which it betrays. At random we make an extract : " And so I envy none their lands and dower, Nor all that they can claim below the skies, Yet can't resist the wish I had the power, To wipe the tear from modest mourning eyes. How blest to deck the lowly humble bower With winter fire, and summer sunshine joys, Change many a sigh of want into a song, And cause the stream of life flow clear along:. * * * * Or this picture of rural zest : " 0, how I love the moorland scene of spring Beneath the smile of morning's ruddy glow, The whirr of heath-cock, and the curving swing Of snipe high booming o'er the marshy flow The fond solicitude of flapping wing, SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 19 To lead the wanderer from the nest below ; I love the sivuff of every out-field feather By wood or stream, or 'mid the purple heather." With the balk of men engaged in manual occu- pations, writing is irksome and slow work ; the fingers are stiff, and the connexion between brain and pen- holding is an awkward task. John Younger was an exception to all this. He would beat his lapstone and draw his thread all day, and betake himself for relief to letter writing. His invariable plan was to make his knees his writing desk, and in this uninviting attitude the great bulk of his MS. was produced ; not scrawled and blotched, but presented in a small clear elegant penmanship, which in the case of a self-taught workman is rarely met with. With friends at a distance, men who had left St Boswells for the broader field of adventure and pursuit which it could not supply, or friends of a chance intimacy, he maintained an extensive correspondence, making his epistles so much the record of his careful thinking that he took copies of them. In this way an im- mense quantity of manuscript accumulated in the course of years, significant of the ceaseless mental activity which characterised him. At his death there were more than seven hundred copies of letters which he had addressed to friends. Many of these had been written to men of literary eminence or 20 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. public distinction, giving his views of the opinions associated with their names. This collection he cherished as the treasure of his mental history. Sometimes when leaving home he used to warn his family that if the house took fire in his absence, next to saving themselves they should save these writings. Composition coming so readily to him, and friends often hinting the propriety of the step, he betook himself, after the period of middle life, to prepare an autobiography, a species of personsal narrative always interesting, no matter what may have been the limited sphere of existence of the writer. The work in his hands grew from less to great, so that some years before his death it amounted to the contents of two goodly volumes. It contains much racy description of local occur- rences and manifestations of village character, be- ginning with life at Langnewton, and following on in narration of the fate, fortunes, and families of his acquaintance. The publication of the work will, we trust, be not long deferred ; . and we venture to de- scribe it such as will form a genuine accession to autobiographic literature. Shoemaking was but a poor trade to a man strug- gling with a family, and pulled at by needy friends ; and it was to be regretted that so much literary SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 21 industry, as he displayed, brought such slight re- wards. On several occasions he received an acknow- ledgment for articles connected with angling or natural history. In 1840 he appeared as the author of the Essay on angling, of which the present work is a re-written edition. He often lamented that he could not bring the knowledge he possessed on many subjects to more account. The year 1 847 brought an opportunity by which he could measure his capacity and literary grasp with the men of his class. John Henderson, Esq. of Park, a gentleman distin- guished for his zeal in every good cause, by way of directing public opinion to the better observance of the Sabbath, proposed three prizes for the best Essays on the " Temporal advantages of the Sabbath to the labouring classes." John Younger's eye fastened on the public announcement. " The hour and the man" had come together, and he resolved to try his hand in the competition. More than a year passed away, when the intimation was exultingly speeded over the south of Scotland that John Younger had obtained the second prize. A thrill of pleasure cheered Tweedside as the good news was repeated from mouth to mouth, and John became the theme of applauding tongues in every circle. To London he must go to receive the prize of 15 from the Earl 22 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. of Shaftesbury in Exeter Hall. He was whirled out of Lessudden one afternoon, and the following day saw him in London lionized amid the plaudits of multitudes. It was the triumph which ambition could have envied, to have seen the north country shoemaker, with the guileless unpretending presence standing up to receive the well-won reward. This was the greatest event in John Younger's life, and he ever afterwards referred to it as something, in its public and exciting accompaniments, far beyond the possibilities that fate had allotted to his career. To mark the gratification which was experienced in the district, by this recognition of his abilities, he was entertained at a public dinner, in St Boswells Inn, by a highly respectable gathering, and presented with a purse of sovereigns. Upon the solid merits of the " Light of the Week," the title of the essay, we need riot occupy much space in remarking. We question if the author ever held the pen with a freer or more vigorous style. The composition is admirable throughout, distin- guished by sententious force, picturesque illustrations, and a vivid logical treatment of the subject, such as the pulpit or divinity of a heavier texture might envy. Shortly after the event, a vacancy having occurred SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 23 in the village post office, the appointment was, on the recommendation of the Hon. J. E. Elliot, at that time member for the county, conferred upon John, in the belief that his advancing years would find an easier living than in toiling at his old trade. The result, however, proved different from what was expected. The rigid exactitude of rule, the per- plexing net work of forms and business routine, were more than one accustomed to the simple machinery of making shoes could overtake, and when the life was nearly vexed out of him, in January 1856 John threw up the appointment in disgust. To the pre- sent writer and a friend, who called shortly after, he said he felt himself, when postmaster, like a caged squirrel running over its never-ending wheel, but that when he was free he felt himself just like the squirrel on the top of a tree, " ready to jump wherever he liked/' The celebration of the Burns' centenary, in 1859, stimulated John to bring out a lecture on the genius and character of the national bard. He had a fancy that he could treat the subject in a way of his own believing that many traits and perplexing points in Burns' history had been misunderstood, and that purely literary men had not been grounded as he had been in the experience of a social condition, 24 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. similar to that from which Burns started, to take the natural and plain, common-sense view of the poet's case. At the very period that old William Burnes* was breaking his heart, and working the flesh off his bones with vexation on the " seven poor acres of nursery ground," near to Alloway Kirk, John Younger's father was making a hard fight to get ends to meet by cobbling shoes and renting a four- teen acre farm on the Langnewton barony. Old Younger had " to thole a factor's snash," like him of Doonside, and the son remembered that the crisis of the household arrived when the cow was distrained for rent. Like Burns, John Younger, from infancy, had cherished a deep and earnest sympathy with nature. He had all his days loved the country, and never had been a denizen of city or town. The woods, the green fields, the dingles and dells, and shady coverts of the river side, the red-breast perking among the berry bushes of the cottager's garden on a grave autumn day, the blackbird or throstle piping in the budding beech, the great crow armies blackening the fields, or drifting up into mid air with many-throated clangour, and scattering themselves away in the endless fields of sky, the fresh, newly furrowed land, * Robert Burns spelled his name differently from his father. [EDR. J SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR S LIFE. 20 with the white pick-maw sailing about the sober ploughman's team-gang, the sights and sounds that had their being ere man betook himself to build cities and live in masses, were the educating in- fluences that had made John Younger what he came to be, and which inspired him with an ambition to interpret in plain story the life of Robert Burns. And common consent, though candid enough to admit that some of his conclusions might be open to objection, confessed that John Younger was in a large degree successful in what he had undertaken. His critical estimate of Burns had a rough matter-of- fact quality about it. He did not sail in the clouds in flights of eloquence, or discourse in grand allegori- cal tropes like Carlyle. With a pooh, pooh, and a humph of contempt, he ridiculed the so-called ro- mance, " The glory and the joy," with which imaginative writers had surrounded the bard's exis- tence. Very much romance indeed, he thought, there was about the greatest man in a nation lying in a stable loft, and spending his pain-racked mid- nights ainid the perfumes of such an abode, listen- ing to the nags below stirring, stamping, or riving at thefusionless bog hay ! He considered that Burns was too much the companion of every day suffering to sustain any such picture as Wordsworth had 26 SKETCH OF THE AUTHORS LIFE. drawn, and thought that he drove his plough to an- other tune, that of dour, determined, conquering toil, tugging at his awkward nags amid the birns and bumping boulders of a farm which never could yield meat or clothes, or household peace to the poor tenant. He thought if ever Burns played a servile part it was in dedicating his poems to the Caledonian Hunt. What did such a pack care about poems ! They were a bye word in Scotland at the very time, for a story had gone abroad that they had hunted a bitch fox over several miles of country, and at the death found the poor animal had carried one of its pups all the way in its mouth. It was a treat to see the un- affected bonhomie of the "old man eloquent," elevated on the lecture bench, to talk of Burns. He had the key of a sympathetic fellow-feeling to all the phases of Burns' life. No one who listened, but admitted that a shrewder, more instinctive apprehension of that life, had seldom been produced. When he came to offer selections of the favourite poems, his warm loving admiration of the verses knew no bounds. " Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie," he de- signated the tenderest and most beautiful love song which ever came from the lips of man ; and as his voice repeated several of the stanzas, the tributary tears of emotion coursed down his cheeks. The lee- SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 27 ture was delivered in most of the towns and villages in the Border district, and the proceeds were suffici- ently respectable to promise, by his extending his tour, what would be a nest egg for the wants of his advancing years. A number of his Border friends resident in Glasgow invited him to the western metropolis to deliver the lecture there. He was able to accomplish the visit, but with unfavourable results to himself. Exposure to extremely severe weather during his movements, brought on an attack of rheumatism, which prostrated and confined him to his lodgings for several weeks. The attendant expense of this misfortune melted away most of his gains, and he reached Lessudden as poor as ever. During the long and severe winter of 1859-60 he was seldom seen abroad, and did not regain much strength. Generally cheerful and unrepining, he began to confess himself as growing old, and less able for active work at his ordinary trade. In conversation on some of his favourite topics, he regretted he had accomplished so small a portion of what he felt was within his reach. He had a fancy he could prepare several papers on some of the social changes which had come under his observation furnishing sketches of the rural improvements and altering condition of the population, and cognate subjects. Work of this 28 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. description he was well able to perform, and he was urged by his friends to over-take it. Daily bread, however, was still with him to be reached by working with the leather apron about him, and he continued to make or cobble shoes, to the extent which his health permitted. For several months he had been less before the public eye, and when the stroke which separated him from all earthly friendships occurred, a painful surprise was created. As we have stated in the opening of this notice, his end came quickly. He had been apparently in nearly his usual health and spirits, and had been persuing his favourite story from the German, " The Journal of a Poor Vicar" a narrative which he almost knew by heart when illness, disclosing a hopeless paralytic seizure ensued, and before another day was gone John Younger was dead. That John Younger was a recognized celebrity was seen in the many genial tributes to his charac- ter and attainments which instantly appeared in the Edinburgh and local press several of them elo- quent and lengthy. In the Scotsman's article he was designated as " one of the most remarkable men of the population of the south of Scotland ; whether as a genial writer of prose or verse, or a man of high conversational powers, and clear common sense, the SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 29 shoemaker of St Boswells had few or no rivals in the south in his death leaving behind him no enemies, and the memory of a guileless, unblameable, honest life." The Caledonian Mercury had a similar kindly notice. Younger' s friend for many years, eminent as a scholar and linguist, "William Brockie of the Sunder- land Times, gave a sketch of his character, summing the leading features of his career, thus " Of poor, but honest and respectable parentage, he continued poor, but honest and respectable ; his whole life a hard struggle against poverty, owing in a great measure to unfortunate family and business connec- tions. Happy in wedded life, he was for many years a widower his children grown up and settled. Nature made him a poet, a philosopher, and a nobleman ; society made him a cobbler of shoes (a good one), a postmaster (indifferent), and a mort- gaged feuar of Lessudden." In the village in which he had spent the greater portion of his more than three score years and ten, the death of its most notable man was felt with the pang which friendship feels when its circle is sud- denly narrowed. John Younger dead ! he who gave a character to the little town, and who brought many a visitor to it ; who always evoked the play of 30 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. human nature's kindlier moods. John was not adjudged as without faults. In some of the pursuits of life he was riot a successful man, and perhaps in a world in which the material measure is apt to be applied, a short-coming of success is not viewed as without blame. He was deficient in practical talent. Industrious and second to none as a maker of shoes, he never acquired the art which could carry him beyond the rank of a small country tradesman. At times in his career he had his foot beyond the threshold of difficulties, when some business or domestic con- tingency would drag him back, and he was the same poor man. It spoke much to the general tone of his character that even those who might have occa- sion, by business transactions, to sit in judgment on him, always stopped short of a harsh conclusion, and finished with an expression of sympathy or kind regard. The warm and respectful feeling shewn towards him by every one, avouched his possession of qualities of head and heart honourably combined. In the village all felt his departure. The boys and girls who would not disturb the bird's nest in his garden, nor furtively abstract the flushing fruit of his plum tree, will cherish his memory. The old inhabitant who had plodded on life's journey, and had often stepped in to compare notes on public and SKETCH OF THE AUTHORS LIFE. 31 local matters, missed the social crack and sneeshin mull. The fascination that was wont to draw delighted listeners, and which stirred so many a bright conversation, and shook out so many a bright idea, which grappled with the dialectics of ever so varied subjects of human enquiry, had dis- appeared. The end of the pleasant village, with its garden intersections and quaint bye lanes, its crumb- ling bluff of river wall, and commanding outlook on the umbrageous pomp of wood and stream, had " lost its wierdest and its wariest eye." One morn we missed him on the accustomed hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree, Another came, nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he. In personal appearance John Younger had always a hale hardy look. Possessing a frame compactly knit, of moderate height, of an erect open bearing, he wore into years without shewing many traces of age. When a young man he was distinguished by his agility and skill in athletic and manly sport, and he excelled as a pedestrian. The faithful etching prefixed to the volume gives the man in his facial expression as he is remembered by all his friends. There was a guileless, frank kindliness of manner about him, which carried in it the freemasonry of 32 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. warm fellow-feeling, and placed him at his ease with all with whom he came in contact. We have in the preceding pages attempted to in- troduce the reader to a familiar conception of the man as he appeared in his own walk of life, from an impression that the naked publication of the work on angling would have been meagre without some light being thrown upon the character and occupa- tions of its author. We might have enumerated some of the subjects which he illustrated by his de- scriptive pen ; many of them were fugitive sketches, but in good hands, they would bear a reappear- ance in a volume of selections. His poetical effu- sions, always marked by merit, were more a proof of his varied ability than of any strong natural bias to the cultivation of the muse. In summing a notice of his life, it may not be out of place to present a specimen of his success in this department of literary craft. The first piece was written in 1837, and abounds in the home feeling which marked his domestic history. The second breathes a spirit of the tenderest conjugal love, and as a memorial of their married life, is as creditable as it is delicately expressed. John was in the fullest sense a domestic man, a kind and indulgent father, and a faithful husband. For the partner of his life he cherished SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 33 the affection of his youth. When prostrate with illness during his Glasgow visit, he wrote to his friends at Lessudden, that if he died they were to bring his body to St Boswells churchyard, and lay it beside his Nannie. The sad duty alluded to in the closing stanza fell to be performed by John, his wife's death having preceded his own by several years. There may be sweeter spots afar That I have never seen, And lofty towers and rivers clear With flowery vales between : And fairer faces too may grace The garden and the hall : But there's a place, and there's a face That's dearest of them all. And O ! our cradle spot of earth Where light first took our e'e, And mother's love our infant heart Where'er that spot may be : Tho' it were even slavery's soil And we got free to rove, Yet wander how or where we will, 'Twill claim our latest love. The swallow dreams on Afric's shore of Scotia's summer pride ; And plumes her wing, and knows her hour To hasten to Tweedside. The cliff or skaur she kens afar, And towering ruins grey, Where she was nursed in Dryburgh's bower, The lap of flowery May. 34 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. The salmon gray of Tweed or Spey, Returning from the sea, Seeks to its native river stream, Whichever stream it be. Even spirits 'mong celestial orbs, In glory roaming free, May own to earth, their first abode, A soul-felt sympathy. And there is yet anither bield That ne'er can be forgot Tho' in his age from thence expelled My Nannie's father's cot. In memory's light, like glow-worm gleams, My fancy yet recalls Love's youngest hopes, and downy dreams Still nestling round its walls. MY NANNIE. Its now full twa an' forty year, Since nestling in wi' Nannie ; As weel my part, I held her dear, Sae faithfu', young, an' bonnie. Her tocher was a trifle sma,' A hard-earned weel-saved pennie ; But o' tocher could I think ava, When in my arms my Nannie. Nae artfu' wiles, plied e'er sae fain, Could move the mind o' Nannie ; Hal courtiers wooed 'twould been in vain, Her heart was held by Johnnie. Of cares we've had our world's share, Through stormy days and sunny ; My part has been the less to bear, I've had sic help o' Nannie. SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 35 A welding heat o' strong young love Will last through winters many ; The frosts of years but tend to prove The links that bind to Nannie. Though teeth are fled, and locks grown gray, She's yet sae kind and cannie Love that outlasts young life's hey-day Is the love I bear my Nannie. 'Mid a' the thoughts that trouble me, The saddest thought of ony Is wha may close the other's e'e May it be me or Nannie ? The ane that's left may sairly feel, Amid a world uncanny ; I'd rather brave auld age myseP Than lanely leave my Nannie. REMARKS PRELIMINARY. It seems to have been an early practice with anglers, which is yet much followed in books written on the Art of Angling, to face up the subject with pretensions of its being an amusement above all others conducive to religious contemplation. This is silly, either as a notion or a pretence ; and on the other hand it is equally pitiful to read the frivolous sarcasms by which this pursuit is in turn assailed. Dr Johnson and Lord Byron, these famed fond- lings of their age, have said some smart things to render angling ridiculous as a pastime. Having acquired no taste for it themselves, they wished to make believe that they stigmatized it from a moral sentiment ; and this, not so much perhaps from an inclination to " Compound for sins they were inclined to By damning those they had no mind to," as from an opposition to the whimsicalities of early writers on the subject ; such as old Isaac Walton, REMARKS PRELIMINARY. 37 and the religious sportswoman of 1496, Dame Juliana Barnes, who mixed up their descantations with pretences of its being favourable to holy medi- tations, from the rural quietude of the pursuit. This must have been alleged by these early anglers and writers through a sort of mental defence against a superstitious suspicion, that it was not perhaps the most Christian way of spending the sweet sum- mer days of a brief probationary term of an eternal existence. Hence the struggle to the present hour of a hundred-and-nine scribblers on the subject to maintain a point, of the propriety of which they are by no means thoroughly convinced : only, find- ing the pastime a kind of exercise agreeable to their propensities like that of cats to hunt mice, and lords foxes they make a specious pretence of considering its gratification, not only as no sin, but rather in the light of a duty. Now the truth lies in this as in many disputed points, midway between the two extremes. No one who inclines to go a-fishing can reasonably suppose the pursuit any way very parti- cular in point of morality let him allege what he may, we believe that the angler foregoes such con- siderations. We view the matter simply in this way, that every man is so much of a boy (which may often be the best part of his character) that he goes 38 REMARKS PRELIMINARY. out a- fishing because he had got into an early habit of so going, and finds amusement in it preferable to walking, or even to riding, should he be mas- ter of a horse ; or else he pursues it, fain to find recreation in that in which he perceives his neigh- bour so well pleased, just as he would go a-quoit- ing, a-cricketing, or a-curling. To talk of following it on a principle of love or admiration of field scenery, the wood-skirted grandeur of cliff or stream, is surely either a pretence or an illusion of his own mind ; because every staunch angler may be said to leave his admiration of the picturesque, the beautiful, and romantic in nature, as something to be particularly kept in mind, re- turned to and enjoyed " at a more convenient season'' as governor Felix, did his taste for the most sublime doctrines of Christianity. I have felt that I could admire the beautiful in landscape as much as my neighbours, perhaps any of them, yet never could find either taste or time for the disposition of sentiment while sallying out on a fishing excursion ; and however romantically beautiful the branch over- hung its shadow in the water, I no sooner hanked my hooks on it than, if within reach, crash down it came, whilst a wish hurried over my mind that all river- skirt ing trees were removed. I would hardly REMARKS PRELIMINARY. 39 except the bordering willows of Dryburgh, or those skirting the rivers of Babylon, where the Israelites hung their harps in the days of their captivity. By no poetical feeling whatever should the free swing of line be ever interrupted. Let sketchers put imaginary trees in their landscapes as they please, yet such are ever the true angler's real feelings, dis- guise them as he may : KEEP TREE, ROCK, AND IVY FULL LINE-SWING FROM THE MARGIN OF LAKE AND STREAM. One truth is worth fifty of these fishing authors' sickly preachments. If our tractates on the subject should never sell, let us not heap disgrace on our own poor head by feigning sanctity we never feel. Such would be worse than prevalent supersti- tion or common hypocrisy. I can see no more sentimentality in angling for fish than in the rural sports of Fox or Otter hunting.* The excitement is kept up by the solicitude of success, and this the same in fishing for reputation in the sport, as in fishing for a dinner ; the true angler being always intent in the pursuit, however passive he may appear. The fertility of Isaac's imagination, and the in- genuity of his mind, would have made him to excel * There is at least a charm, a romance, felt in the prospect or the remembrance of angling which almost every one feels, and which John himself must have felt hundreds of times. [EDE.j 40 REMARKS^PRELIMINARY. in whatever his hand might have found to do. A mind too versatile to have been confined within the critical rules of any age or art had excited him to write out his mixed thoughts, feelings, conceits, songs, and sermons, on all favourite subjects, just as they occurred to his fancy hence all are found pouched up together like his fish baits. Had he not fallen madly fond of angling pursuits, I have no doubt but he might have been one of the greatest devotees of his superstitious age. Or had he turned to " the breeding of the fighting-cock," like several of his angling predecessors, he would likely have crossed on till he had produced midden fowls to have beaked it with eagles; but luckily he had not the cock-fighting propensity. And what, after all, was fishing in the Dove and Stowr, with paddock baits, for geds and gudgeons, to the run of a salmon in the silver Tweed 1 I wonder how he would have looked if he had been brought here by rail, and set down below our Hare Crag with a twenty feet rod in hand, and seen and felt a twenty pound salmon snap down his fly to the bottom, and there hold it as firmly as if it had been fixed to the rock in the deep, with only a little tremulous indication of life at both ends : and then, again, when the sudden bolt up the strong current took place, with the dash out REMARKS PRELIMINARY. 41 at the top, showing the broad, silvery, and glancing side to the light of day ! To imagine the odds between old Isaac and iJr Johnson, brought perforce into that particular position is ludicrous enough, and can only be exceeded by the next supposed image of seeing both snug at supper in their Inn, with the same salmon presented in his next glorious altitude, well- dressed, and set round with sprigs of parsley and piggins of sauce. Who of the two would have said the grace 1 I think that duty would have devolved on old Isaac of necessity, as the doctor's mouth- watering would have prevented articulation. The doctor, on returning thanks, would assuredly have acknowledged the blessing as sent by God's merciful providence to his maw, by whatever method of stick and string it had been captured. ****** Since publishing the first edition of this disserta- tion on River Angling in 1840, I have written out some recent observations and corrections, which will be found under their proper headings in the present edition ; as this will likely be the last opportunity I can have of doing so, or of noting further experi- ence. My remarks will be found truly practical a description of my own successful practice and per- sonal observation, regardless of other eyes and au- 42 REMARKS PRELIMINARY. thors. Indeed, I hardly quote another author, as the late ones possess nothing new to me, and the old are hardly at all applicable to our Scotch rivers. I conceive it better to make particular mention only of the best standard flies, with the manner of dressing and using them, than to give a detailed description of infinite and inferior varieties. I will, therefore, give only useful directions, divested of all the unnecessary discussions and superfluity of fri- volous anecdotes, which have hitherto tended to swell the bulk of treatises on this subject. Thus will also be avoided all insignificant and endless enumeration and invention of names to flies, which rather tend to bewilder the reader's imagination than prove instructive to the individual desirous of practical information. Should the style of language be considered not sufficiently perspicuous, the reader will be lenient when assured that he has got the very best style the writer can possibly afford from thirty shillings' worth of scholastic education. SALMON FLIES. Salmon will occasionally take any fly of a hun- dred shades of variety ; and often, in the most pro- mising hour of weather and water, will, without any understood cause, disregard all kinds whatever. They are therefore accounted more capricious crea- tures than we might consider them, were we better acquainted with their appetites and habits, their incitements, and likely other sensibilities dependent upon certain unknown combinations of atmospheric influence, by which we ourselves feel often affected, yet cannot, with all our boasted philosophy, define how or why. No one can say that he has ever seen any insect or fly frequenting the surface of our waters which in any respect nearly resembles those with which we angle most successfully for salmon.* Therefore, an * One insect that occasionally frequents river margins occurs to us as resembling some salmon flies the dragonfly ; only it does aiot appear till about mid- summer, a season when almost no salmon are in the fly-casts. Dragonflies show all the colours of the rainbow, and the largest are as long as a medium sized salmon hook. We do not mean to say, however, that salmon ever take the artificial fly thinking it the dragonfly ; but the insect decidedly resembles some of the lighter dressed salmon hooks. [EDR.] 44 SALMON" FLIES. imitation of nature is not in this, as in general cases, the ground on which the salmon-fly angler can pos- sibly proceed ; since, in this pursuit, he is left in a great measure to his own fancy; until from long experience he has discovered the combinations of fur and feather with which he finds himself, or perceives others, most generally successful. From experience in dressing flies for other people, and frequent angling for my own recreation, I have long ago decided on the flies which the salmon seems generally to prefer. These I have reduced into six distinct kinds ; and on investigating why these should generally be more successful, they will be found to embrace all the clearly marked distinctions of the leading character of the flies in common use. For instance, suppose you were to collect all the flies generally used on the Tweed, they would, at first sight, present the appearance of an endless confusion of variety; yet I am convinced you could not classify them into above six, or at most seven distinct kinds, in which the decided principle of all the vague variety of colour in fur, wool, and feather, would be found to concentrate, Consequently, the best known mat- erials, wrought into the best practical combinations for proper effect, will be found to constitute the half dozen flies I shall here endeavour to describe ; and SALMON FLIES. 45 this upon the same principle as the infinite variety of lines diffused throughout the floral creation may "be referable into the pristine colours of the rainbow. FIRST FLY. FIRST FLY. A black body of fine soft cow-hair, or other fur (in consistence like that from the flank of a cow or kyloe), with a tuft of yellow floss, silk, or fine worsted wool, for tail, and a little red, green, or deep orange twisted close round the root of the tail-tuft. Then roll gold twist thread round the body, about an eighth part of an inch distance between the folds, and prick the hair out with a pin, and shade it as equally over the gold thread as pos- sible, giving it a fine soft hackle appearance ; and give a turn or two of dark orange, or rather red, round the shoulder, close below the root of the wings. A grey or bright mottled turkey feather use for wings, either from the tail or from behind the quill feathers in the wing of the fowl, according to size and cir- cumstance, and have the mottle or speckle equally bright on both sides of the feather. If a smaller sized hook : where the pile of the feather is sufficiently long to extend the length of the fly's body, take one of four feathers from each side of the back of the drake immediately above the wing. 46 SALMON FLIES. Some prefer the mallard, insisting that its feathers are softer. I prefer the tame drake, as its feathers are soft enough, far more distinctly mottled, and more varied in light and dark shades of colour, to be used according to the state of water and other circum- stances. The grey feather of the argus, or that of the silver pheasant, with its fine white bars across, is perhaps as good as either turkey or drake. A small feather lies below the wing of the snipe, about an inch and a half long, of a beautiful light grey, very well adapted for a large-sized fly, by tying the two corresponding feathers on entire for the pair of wings, adjusting the length by the body of the fly. The wings should never be so long as to project over the tail-tuft, and they may be put on unbroken, with the upper sides of the feather kept outermost, and lying along not too widely expanded from the body of the fly. Slight variations may occasionally be used with effect. As, for instance, dark blue wool for body, or water-rat fur, over which roll a cock hackle, preferring the kind which are black half way along from the root and red towards the top, the col- our as bright on both sides as can possibly be got. In low water and bright weather, the light grey wings should be supplanted by others of a bright brown hackle, even as deep as the colour of the woodcock- SALMON FLIES. 47 wing. The bittern's is an excellent wing of this kind, and large enough for any size of summer fly. SECOND FLY. The second fly has in all respects the very same body as the first, the only variation being in the wings, which have what we technically term a ivhite- top. This is a black or dark brown feather, with a little white on the top, from the tail of the turkey for the largest size of fly, or from the rump above the tail for the smaller sizes ; the feathers being smaller every row as they ascend upwards from the tail to the back of the fowl. Of this last rump feather, which is alike in length of pile on both sides of the stem, you have the advantage of forming the pair of wings with the greatest facility, by cutting with the point of a pen-knife the stem of the feather at the exact breadth of the wings intended for your fly, which are thus more easily tied on unbroken, as most wings had best be. Those white-topped feathers, the lower part of which are of a glossy black, are preferable ; and the white top had best not exceed three eighths of an inch, and even three sixteenths make a fine fly of a small size ; and if the hook is a large size, I would not disapprove of three colours in the wing say a dun white below (as they often are 48 SALMON" FLIES. found), black in the middle, and the white-top nodd- ing over above. THIRD FLY. The third fly has the same body and tail as the former, with white wings ; but prefer those of a pale or French white, that is of a light buff or yellowish tinge. This feather is got also from the white or cream coloured turkey's tail or rump. But the wings of such a fly should by no means be broad or full, only a few piles of feather in each wing being re- quisite. This fly is preferable in cold spring fishing, par- ticularly in heavy water. It is likely that this wing catches the salmon's eye more readily in deep or sullied water, as he will come up to it boldly when he will rise to no other. If the wings of this fly are too broad and flashy, you may readily raise a fish ; but on a closer sight he will reject it and pass it un- touched. Therefore give only as much wing as will render the fly perceptible to the fish from the bottom of the deep water ; anything more will give it an unnatural appearance to him on a nearer inspection. FOURTH FLY. The fourth fly, in many cases the best, is altogether of a dun colour, body and wings. Although fox SALMON FLIES. 49 and other furs and mohairs, may be used for the body of this fly, with a hackle rolled over it, still I prefer fine woolly cow hair from the flank of a dun- coloured cow or outfield kyloe. This, with a little gold twist rolled round the body, to give it an insect appearance, and the hair picked out to fall softly in a half shading over it, is, when well done, on all colours of fly, better than cock hackles. The proper dun colour is not easily described. It seems to par- take of brown and white, a shade of red and yellow, with the slightest tinge of silvery grey, and a yellow tail tufted up with a speck of red. The wings are best when of the same colour, or at least as nearly so as possible, but prefer such as have a tendency to whiteness on the top. These may best be had from the tail or rump of a dun turkey, a fowl precious to a Tweed salmon fisher. FIFTH FLY. The body of the fifth fly is made of the dark grey fur of the hare's lug, mixed with the least quantity of bright red or deep orange mohair, or rather fine pig's wool (if fine pig's wool can be got with a tuft of yellow), over which, at the insertion of such tail or tuft, give a turn or two round of red worsted, mohair, or pig's wool. No hook requires the dresser to be more painstaking in dubbing the body. The 4 50 SALMON FLIES. fur used is the fine dark grey on the front of the hare's lug, where the fur is below a quarter of an inch long. This fur requires to be pirled* with the thumb and fore finger, along with the waxed thread. This gives it a sort of felting-on with the thread when you are rolling it round the shank of the hook. Still continue the motion of twisting while rolling it round. As you cannot come over the hook again with a second coat, it requires the necessary thick- ness to be done up at once over, and afterwards adjusted with pickings and trimmings, which can be better done with a small awl, having a handle, than a pin. If the hook is of a large size, I approve of a fine gold twist rolled around it, and a short bristled hackle laid in the lee of the tinsel. But as this is a fly more adapted to summer waters, and therefore seldom requires to be dressed on the largest size of hook, a hackle may be dispensed with. I have had best success without a hackle, when the short fur was neatly picked up to shade a little over the tinsel, the tinsel only a one-third ply of the gold twist. For the largest size of this fly, the ears of the roe-deer are, by my friend elsewhere alluded to, preferred to the hare's lug, as being a beautiful grey, and making a lovely body, either with or without a hackle. Of * Anglice Tyvlsted. SALMON FLIES. 51 course these furs, like all others, ought to be gathered while the animal has its winter coat on. The long tuft feathers on the head of the lapwing make a first-rate hackle for this, or for any low-water fly, as the feather is long enough to lap often round, and very fine and short in the bristle. A wing from the bright mottled feathers of the drake is the best adapted for this body, taking those of the lighter shade for the heavier water, and darker struck ones as the water Mis into clearness, until on the smallest summer fly you may prefer a clear brown woodcock wing, which, from an old bird, is decidedly preferable to that from a younger one. But, as the woodcock wing will answer only a very small salmon fly, apply to the bittern, or to a beautiful, dark, drake back-feather for wing. I recommend here nothing but what I have per- sonally proven to my full satisfaction. SIXTH FLY, OR THE MAULE FLY. My sixth fly I will distinguish by calling it the Maule fly, which, though not much different from my first fly, yet is in some points peculiar \ and principally in this, that Mr Maule hardly ever used any but this one kind, only varying the size of it 52 SALMON FLIES. from the largest size of hook (generally used on heavy water) down to the very smallest, little above the size of a large trout fly, say No. 9 or 10 of Adlington's. From the least to the largest size this fly was made up of a medium colour of sky-blue fine wool, with small pallid tinsel, or no tinsel, and a very peculiar cock hackle : to wit, black from the root up along the middle stem to fully half the length, then running into red out to the top and a yellow or light orange tuft for tail the wings of a soft mottled turkey tail feather, dark grey. A wing feather, however favourably mottled, he considered too stiff and unpliable. Mr Maule in dressing this fly differed from my mode of dressing. Instead of cutting off the pair of wings from the feather, and putting them on unbroken in the web, he tore them from the stem, then equalising their points, pirled them between his thumb and finger till well mixed ; then tied them on with their tops laid back, adjust- ing the roots with knife or scissors. He then folded them forward and divided them equally ; and next, by several crossings of the fine thread, tied them solidly in position, and trimmed off the fly. This fly he sunk by means of a blue silk casting line, which he had pointed off with five or six lengths of gut. In throwing this line he beat everybody ; and SALMON" FLIES 53 from his art in sinking it, he brought it to near the fish on his lair at the bottom ; and by these means he was more successful generally than any other fisher. I had long heard of Mr Maule and his suc- cess, and always with the warmest admiration, as a first-rate fisher, and a first-rate man ; but I never met him till some years after my publication on angling had appeared then I found him the man in every true sense of the name, and the gentleman in its every legitimate sense. We have lost him now, several years since. Why should the true lovers of angling and worth not have him monumented at Boldside Boathouse, where he often lodged with the fisherman 1 I dare say the laird of Gala would not refuse the stance, were the idea respectfully represented. Were the rocks yonder mine, I would invite the monument ; because we have had no fisher since the time of old Walton and Cotton characteristically comparable to the late Mr Maule. MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS ON SALMON FLIES. For occasional variation of the three first flies, the body may be made of peacock's herl, using as many piles rolled round together as will produce the proper thickness of body. In this case a fine dark hackle is necessary to give it the proper appearance. Such hackle laid round close in behind the gold twist, produces a neat effect, besides being thus saved by the gold thread from the teeth of the fish, which are apt to cut the hackle unless so protected. I prefer all hackles rather short in the bristle than long. Those fine half-black, half-red hackles, so common with us forty years ago, seem now to be out of fashion among our barn-door fowls ; few of the present colours are bright throughout ; the inside is generally of a dirty pale yellow. Also, the real black are now changed to white near the root ; still, with some trouble proper ones may be here and there found. Cocks of the game breed produce the best hackles for fly dressing, generally being longer in the feather, MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 55 and shorter in the bristle, than those of the common fowl. I am not fond of broad shining tinsel in any case, except occasionally in deep, dark, cold, winter water, and then I prefer gold to silver twist, as it is not so showy ; and, except on a large hook in dark water, a silk thread, or a piece of gut rolled round the body, to give the fly a maggot appearance, is perhaps preferable to any twist or tinsel. In very clear water, and fine weather, I consider all sorts of tinsel unnecessary. Pig's wool when it can be got well dyed and of various colours is preferable for tails and tufts to mohair and worsted, being of a brighter dye and more determined colour in the water. Much has been said of late of Irish flies, made (like butterflies) of parrot, golden-pheasant, and other bright fancy feathers ; and even broad clear tinsel, with rough, red, blue, and white hackles, has been occasionally used on the Tweed with success. Hence, inexperienced fishers are very unwilling to believe in the general propriety of sober coloured flies. Yet, if the matter be observed and considered, it will be found resolvable into the principle of light colours for deep dark waters. Partial success in high or agitated waters is an exception to the general rule, 56 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS and does not constitute a gaudy fly a standard one for ordinary pool and stream fishing. Besides, people often decide hastily in approbation of those flies with which they raise salmon, whether the fish touch their hook or not, thinking he has missed his bite. I think very differently in such a case. The fish lies quite at ease in the water, even in the gully- rush of a cauld dyke-slap, and on a glance of a fly moving over him, will sweep up in soft easy motion, and follow it round the curve it describes with a dis- cerning eye ; and on resolving to seize it, he will not miss his bite once in twenty cases ; but when not pleased with the fly, he will shy off, at which instant you may often perceive a back-fin, or half the web of his tail flap above the surface, or he will throw him- self indignantly out of the water, and sinking back with easy motion, return again to his old lair, his chosen spot on the rock at the bottom of the river. By overlooking an angler from an eminence, we may see many fish rise coolly and examine his fly, of which he himself has no perception, not being in a position to perceive any that do not touch his fly or come up above the surface. In regard to flies generally, either for salmon or trout, I have in practice found it beneficial to attend principally to a natural proportion of parts, which it ON SALMON FLIES. 57 is not easy to give or to receive a very proper idea of by mere description, and of which an individual can only acquire a correct notion from personal ex- perience and attention to those in general practice. For instance, instead of a full dress, starched-looking fly, give it rather upon the whole as much of a modest, maggot appearance as possible. The wings should lie at seeming ease, less than half extended from the sides of its body, which body is the better of looking somewhat caterpillar-like. I do not allege that the materials of fur and feather here specified, are the very best of any to be found in the range of nature for the effects I intend to be produced : they are only the best I have found con- venient, being our own local product. What I advise relates more properly to the general com- binations of the colours, shape, and size of the fly, as suitable to the high or low state of the water, than to the particular materials by w T hich such a com- bination may be best effected. For instance, several foreign birds and fowls such as the Bengal and other kinds of bustard, the pencilled and silver pheasants produce beautiful feathers, particularly of the black-and-white, barred, and mottled kinds. There are many English fowls, the plumage of some hundreds of which I have seen (preserved by a gentle- 58 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS man in Warwickshire), and several of which I noted as being of a superior kind for wings to my favourite flies. The drake of the pocheral, or great red-headed widgeon, I would prefer as wings for my first fly. The gadwall or greywill the saddle feathers of hia back, and those over his groin, are also excellent for the same purpose. The web or sheet part of the wing of the great grey gull, as well as his tail, is splendid for the wings of very light salmon flies, grey in place of pure white this for my third fly. The greater gull and com- mon sea-maw have beautiful feathers of an azure white still rather superior for the same fly. Then the cock shoveller has feathers on the saddle and over his loins charming for a fine dun fly, and his tail is valuable for beautiful light speckled wings. The buzzard and kite are alike excellent for light dun wings for a large fly ; and for a duller shade there is a speckled feather in the spread of the pea-fowl's wing finely adapted for a hook of large or middle size, and easily tied on without separating the pile ; but with a little trouble in the selection, the turkey produces nearly all the varieties of mixture and shades really necessary. In collecting and preserving feathers, I would recommend to select merely the feather, or that part ON SALMON FLIES. 59 of it that is of positive use, stripping off the refuse which tends to foster moths, by which three fourths of all the best collected feathers are generally soon destroyed. In a box two inches deep, and eighteen long, by twelve broad, I can preserve all the feathers useful to dress, say ten thousand flies. To preserve them clean and right, tumble them all out fre- quently, say every three months, on a newspaper, brush out the box, and then lift every feather singly, clean it by stripping it between your thumb and finger, and replace it in the box. This will prevent moth-bites, and keep all tight and clean. I consider it unnecessary to vary these flies in hope of success ; only, be particular in adapting the size of the hook to the state of the water, as from the time the water has fallen in from a flooded state to a fishing size, and thence down to the lowest size of pure summer clearness, it requires not the colours or the form of the flies to be varied, so much as the size, which gradually diminish from the largest salmon hook down to the smallest, even to the size of a trout bait-hook, No. 10 of Adlington's; and, when trouting in low clear water, a salmon will often take your large trout fly, such as a March brown after all forms of salmon flies have floated over him in vain. With my spring trout fly, No. 7 of 60 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS Adlington's, I have killed a fish fifteen pounds weight. They feed in the low water exactly as the trout does, and with caution and patience these flies often yield amazing sport. But the point most essentially necessary to be clearly understood in angling, and which, however sim- ple, seems generally to be overlooked even by writers on the subject, although the most easily perceived in the practice, as well as on the slightest glance at the philosophy of the case, is this : The salmon lies the whole day stationary on his chosen spot on the rock, at the bottom of the water, four, six, or eight feet deep, from which situation he must perceive the fly on the surface before he ascends to seize it ; therefore, it must be of size and colour to catch his eye through that medium of water less or more agitated, as well as discoloured by earthy particles. Hence the main difficulty of ascertaining the exact size of fly, wing and body, first to catch his observation, and excite him to rise, and yet not to exceed the appearance of nature on his nearer approach. I have often known a fish in deep water rise three times successively at a fly of a very full white wing without effect, and when I diminished the breadth of each wing by half, he seized it greedily on the fourth rise. On this principle is grounded the main reason why every ON SALMON FLIES. 61 fisher succeeds better on his own water than a stranger, from his local knowledge of the depth and eddy, rock and gravel, of every cast, pool and stream. He knows from daily experience the size and colour of the fly requisite for each, according to the state of water, whether or not he is at all able to explain the matter. Deep water, either in pool or rapid, generally requires a fly of a larger size than more shallow pools and streams, even on the same day ; and that without change of sky, wind, weather, or water. In heavy water, or in fishing over a deep cast, I prefer going over it first with the largest or brightest fly I suppose at all likely, say a large size of my third fly ; this may catch his eye and engage his attention. Should this not raise him, or should he rise and pass the fly, then try him with one a size or two smaller, or a little more sober in colour, which he will likely then take. On the contrary, in low pure water, when beginning to go over a cast, use your smallest or sober coloured fly first, and if he do not rise to it, then go over the cast again with one a size larger, or a shade brighter. An experienced, good fisher, even on a strange river, may conceive pretty nearly the spot where a fish will lie, according to circumstances the state 62 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS of the water, or the curve of the surface, in pool, rapid, or eddy ; but no description is of avail in giving an idea of this, as the skill can only be ac- quired by experience. Since Irish flies were first tried in the Tweed, that is within thirty years back,* they have been, if not gaining in favour, at least keeping a distinguished place on " the face of the waters,'' and have got a standing amongst the fly fashions of the age. This certainly shows that they are somehow cognate to our old legitimate Tweed flies. Yet that the success has been greater with them upon the whole, than in a corresponding length of time previously with the old flies alone, may be disputed. That more fish were caught in the thirty years before they were introduced is no argument against them, all other casualties duly considered. We are, therefore, obliged to hesitate in a decision for or against preference of either. On a broad view, my own conception of the matter is this, that Irish flies may be found prefer- able in muddy, dark waters, being constructed of bright colours golden pheasant, yellows, oranges, &c. and that newly come fish see them more quickly, while the water is yet a little discoloured from the soil in a flooded river, and from this cause take them Now fifty years. [Er>R.] ON SALMON FLIES. 63 more briskly than flies of darker hues. New run grilse certainly prefer them, as I have found those always fonder of a bright fly (with glittering tinsel and showy colours, even white hackles) than heavy old-run salmon are. Heavy fish keep more in the deep water, and never take the fly well till the river has fallen low and clear, and then sober coloured flies please them best, as likely agreeing better with the low clear state of the water. Clear or coloured water will account for one half of the whole pheno- mena. In discoloured water bright feathers appear as dim as sober colours appear in the clear. It is long since we were satisfied that the living type of what we call our salmon flies is not found in fresh waters or produced there, either on the land or in the river. For what, then, the salmon take our flies has been the continued unanswered question. From a late brown study on this subject (perhaps the fiftieth I have caught myself in in as many years), I have been pleasurably aroused by the present of a valuable book, from a kind gentleman, entitled "The Earn, its Legends and Fly Fishing," by the Rev. Henry Newland, rector and vicar of Westbourn. In this book, among a variety of pleasing observations and well told anecdotes, the author, supposes the shrimp to be the natural prototype to which our 64 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS artificial salmon flies form an accidental resemblance, in the structure as well as in their jerking motions, caused by their attachment to the line in the current of water. Having never then seen a shrimp, dead or alive, I could not blame myself in not having detected it as decidedly the true prototype which I had so long been in imaginary search of, being always convinced that it must be a marine production, and very common on feeding shoals in the sea Had I ever seen a shrimp, I think I might have caught up the idea at once ; and now what a variety of proofs come in on the mind in support of the opinion, which is no longer an opinion with me but a decided fact, as all past observation, from experience and analogy, rushes in, confirmatory of the truth of the parson's observation. One point which goes far in proof of this opinion, is this, that every good fisher must have observed that his fish bites surest at the fly when well sunk in the water, say to mid-depth or so ; and it is also a sure sign of a fisher knowing his business from experience when we see him endeavouring to sink his fly well, in place of making a novice-like effort to keep it on the sur- face. In fact, I think I may be correct in advising to even add a little weight occasionally in a deep and strong current, say a grain or two of shot, a gut ON SALMON FLIES. 65 length or so from the fly, the same as is used in min- now and worm fishing.* This is one of those con- ceptions of which we feel certain without having put it to clear proof. Whoever will try it I am con- vinced will succeed. Large old salmon do not readily take the fly in heavy or soiled water ; the main rea- son is likely this, that they keep low in the water, resting frequently, like other heavy old creatures. This rest they take on the bottom rock or gravel, and do not prowl in mid-depth as the grilse, being young, sportively do. Hence, the grilse meeting with your bright fly, see and seize it, while it is not seen by the salmon below. By the time the water has again fallen in to the low fishing size, the dull flies, what we call the legitimate Tweed flies, are again found bright enough, and mainly in request. I have only twice in fifty-seven years seen something * We may mention a case favouring Younger's idea on this point. Some years ago in the Tweed, a few miles from Kelso, an old and ex- perienced salmon angler found in the early spring that the fish would not rise, though he tried them with all sorts and sizes of flies ; and it occurred to him that perhaps the salmon in dull and rough waters might not be able to see his flies, or that they would not move or rise from the coldness of the atmosphere. He therefore got the fisherman to dress him a large fly, on the shank of which he had strapped small beads, with hackles between. The weight of beads made the hook sink deeply in the water, and the result was that the gentleman for a week or so had first-rate sport, although anglers on other neigh- bouring waters wero doing almost nothing. In summer waters, however, this gentleman, like other anglers, sinks his fly by its own weight and the manner in which he works his rod. [EDB.] 5 66 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS apparently the reverse of this, which might at first sight have posed a fishing philosopher to account for. In a heavy late autumn flood, in the second week of October, a run of large grey sckule fish came up, literally stocking the river, while yet running black and full. For three or four days they seemed all keeping near to the surface, tumbling up everywhere incessantly, to near the very bordering grass, and seizing at sight any large fly you might throw in ; but yet [being] on the run upward, they would not settle till the water should fall low. This does not fully ac- count for the whole phenomenon, as more were still moving on from the sea, till in a few days they became sobered down and would not rise to a fly ; but when the water had fallen to a mean fishing size, they fell to be fished for in the ordinary way. We may ob- serve that if our parson's bright yellow fly which he names from his own profession, The Parson is his studied imitation of a shrimp, copied from the type (and we say the salmon take it for a shrimp), then what do the salmon take other flies for ? certainly, as well all for shrimps black, blue, brown, and dun as well as yellow. This holds at all points to our purpose, in proof that it is the shrimp that salmon flies of all colours are taken for. The bright golden flies of the Earn, and the darker flies of the Tweed, Off SALMON FLIES. 67 must all be imitations of shrimps, though unwit- tingly so designed. The living parson has copied a fly from one bright yellow shrimp, found it a killer, and named it after himself; but from a handful or two of shrimps I shall pick out a dozen, in which his six pictured fa- vourite Earn flies and my half-dozen of Tweed ones, will be found a resemblance as near as if imitated intentionally ; and these may be even more like when moving in the water. And shrimps are as varied in their colours as are a flock of fancy pigeons,* and of all sizes too, the same as we make salmon flies. It would appear then, that all along in making up our salmon flies, we have, by a repetition of experi- mental trials, been arriving at effect, without advert- ing to the proper type as the cause. Who of those who in primitive ages " cast angle in the brooks" would first conceive the notion of what we call the salmon fly (like no living fly that has been seen), or what might suggest such idea to their imagination, must remain, as it has hitherto been, undeclared, and unremarked, even in tradition. It would be a curi- * We doubt if John is entirely correct as to the colour of shrimps. We have many a time caught them, both on dull and sunny days, and their colour always seemed the same or nearly so. When the sun shone we occasionally noticed a light or faint shade of steel blue upon some of them, but so faint that the natural colour was still the predomi- nating one, namely, that of sea sand. {EDE. J 68 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS ous experiment for some one how amused he would feel at his first success. Whether an ancient philoso- pher, or a neat herd boy, is of little consequence. And now when we do believe the shrimp is the small marine creature to be imitated (instead of some un- known fly of the air), and in consequence, in making up our deceptions, strive to copy that little fish more closely, yet in this we may not succeed better than by holding to our old experience. From examination of the shrimp dry in our hand, along with the best imitation we may be able to make of it, we might be misled in our judgment on the matter, from the want of being able to examine it with the eye of a salmon through a salt water medium, where the effect of colour, shape, and motion, may give a very different appearance ; and hence, after having acknowledged our conviction of the exactitude of our similitude, may yet be led to prefer our old fashion from the mere accidence of eventual success. This is to say that our chance imitation, formed upon the principle of success in repeated trials, may be as true a resemblance as a more closely designed imitation might ensure. Yet still it is a curious consideration that, in this case, so much imagination has been let loose in conjecturing what living type these flies might be the imitation of, ON SALMON FLIES. 69 and no one till now should have stumbled upon this salt sea shrimp. We are now making- as renowned a fish of him as if he were actually the great " salt- sea shark." He is a most active little fellow, with his score of limbs, arms, oars, feelers, and feathered tail, all spread in action. On minute observation our salmon flies resemble this shrimp more than any other creature we wot of, either on land or in water : their various size, indicating youth or age, the form of body with its appendages, and the different colours they assume, agreeably to the reflection in light or shade, like the pheasant's or pigeon's neck. Then, observe this creature in its own element moving through the variety of its exercitations, its limbs thrown abroad like a bird's wings in air, and feet moving as swimming in mid-depth of water, its contractions and expansions, as it draws in the hinder part of its body, and strikes back with its horizontally spread tail in acceleration of progression. Then see the salmon at ease below, his ever-awake eye alert on the watch for prey, as well as against surprise. Now he shoots forward like a feathered dart, or, nosing out on the prowl, snaps up the shrimp as the swallow takes flies in the upper element. What a picture does nature everywhere present, 70 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. if we had eyes calculated to see through her grand media and take in the minutiae as well as the ex- panse of her canvas. These shrimps are everywhere acknowledged a very nutritious, as well as a savoury dish at table. No wonder then, that the salmon which leave our rivers in the spring in a poor meagre state should so soon again get into grand condition ; and that the slabby white muscle of his body grows red, rich, and incomparable, as the digested substance of five hundred shrimps a day may make it in a month. Be this as it may, we are certain that salmon take our fly for something that must nearly imitate what they know to be their food. Or suppose them to have been confined to a situation where they have never seen such species, they would yet seize our fly on sight, as a cat would a mouse, from an in- tuitive impression that it is their natural prey. We may rest assured, however, that it is not a fly of the air, nor a fresh water production that the salmon take it for, as such have never been observed by the fishers of late generations, nor recorded by any of the former ; yet, we may not even now alter its name, but call it still the salmon fly. TROUT FLIES, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL. Before proceeding to give my selection of trout flies, I would wish to observe how these flies are bred, and the successive appearances they present in their change from one state to another, which will assist you to account upon philosophical prin- ciples for various phenomena occurrent in angling, which tend to confuse the ideas of superficial ob- servers. If in the middle of winter you lift a stone from the bottom of the river, you may perceive on the under side of it numbers of small cases, formed of mud-particles, cemented by a glutinous substance into a consistency like brown paper; by pressing this case you will see that it contains a dark green mag- got, or chrysalis of the future water-fly.* These are * We have lifted hundreds of stones both in winter and early spring for the pnrpose of examining the water flies in their maggot Btate, and even to very small pebbles they are often sticking numerously. The family is greatly varied, both in size and shape, and each kind has its own peculiar covering or outer skin. One or two of the kinds have a somewhat uncanny look, and few but Waltonians would care about handling them. 72 TROUT FLIES. in myriads, and constitute a portion of the food of trouts throughout the winter, as they do in their more fully developed state when winged in the summer. On 23d November, ] 837, from the stomach of a trout about half-a-pound weight, I counted out three hun- dred of these maggots all in the skins, many of them still retaining the appearance of life. The genial fine weather in early spring brings forth a portion of these maggots every fresh sunny hour, just as they come into a state of forwardness toward the maturity of their existence. Having left their habitation on the stone, they float for some time enclosed in a second tough film, within which their wings lie in one single fold, and from which they creep out by degrees, leaving this last vestment a floating wreck. So soon as extricated, their wings spring erect, shewing them off the finished, lovely, gentle denizens of air.* Not a more delectable half-hour's amusement have * A friend who has been a keen angler for fifty years, gave us the following information : An old man of his acquaintance (but not an angler) came to him one day and said he had something to tell him that he thought very curious. He had been sitting in the sun- shine close by the river, when he saw what he thought a small bit of brown moss rise from the bottom of the water to the surface. He kept looking at it fora few seconds, when he thought it began to move. Presently a small fly stood erect upon it, then spread out its wings and flew off ; and one fly after another continued to do the same until the brown speck disappeared, it having been a cluster of water-flies. [EDB.J TROUT FLIES. 73 I ever had in my life long (except in sweethearting when young), than in lifting one of those aurelia from the stream, and sitting down with it on the palm of my hand in the sun, till it put out its feelers, and drew itself by degrees from its envelop- ment. Then its wings sprang erect, shewing it off as tenderly-pure as a vision of thought ; and when dried, it mounted in its new element, to delight its hour or its day in the pleasures of a new state of joyous existence. Though some species of the water fly have been considered ephemeral, I do not think any of them are exactly so ; as they continue to flutter about the bushes, where you may beat them out in thousands in a cold morning, and when brought home to the windows they will live for several days. After they have risen from their maggot state at the bottom of the water, to the most perfect winged portion of their existence, they swim and flutter on the surface till they have gone through all the operations necessary to the continuance of their species, dropping their eggs on the surface, which, being of more specific gravity than water, sink gradually : and wherever the current of water may leave them at the bottom, which is most generally on a ford, they settle and adhere by an emitted gluey substance to the under 74 TROUT FLIES. edges of the stones, where they are carried in by the current ; and where, from the sediment of the river, they attach the material particles proper to form the case in which we find them there contained, and which, by some operation of the insect, is formed into a proper fitting sheath for its body. Here it lies snug, with its black head and fore feet, or feelers, peeping out on the sweet light of life,* dining like a young emperor on the rich, delicate, minute animal- cule of which the water is pregnant. Trout angling is very different from salmon angling ; because, the trout when feeding on flies swims about in middle-water, or rather nearer to the surface, picking and choosing the fly most agreeable to his taste. For instance, in a summer flood, when the river begins to subside, you may perceive on the yet brown muddy water a variety of flies, of many kinds and colours, floating down the current, and the trout rejecting all the gay profusion as they pass, and selecting one kind (probably a dark coloured midge fly), no doubt just as carefully as he does in the clearest water when circling round his pool with an easy motion, you may* observe him darting forward to scan the coming fly, which he * The cradle-skin of a large number of these maggots is quite close, and these can, of course, neither put out head nor feet. [Ecu.] TROUT FLIES. 75 likely may reject, springing aside to seize another of a kind which he approves. As the trout are feeding on these insects in all states ; both at the bottom and as they ascend to the surface, no wonder that people sometimes catch a few trouts with very ill-formed flies, even without wings altogether. Yet this is not a sufficient reason why you should not have a fly formed to give as much as possible the shape, colour, and appearance of the natural fly in its state of fullest perfection ; and, for this purpose, I will here briefly give you my selection of trout flies, imitated so as best to promote general success throughout the season. I shall reduce them to only a few in my description, as I have found only a very few really necessary in my general practice. But first allow me to observe, that if you go out a-trouting about nine or ten o'clock on a mild March or April day, you may thrash away perhaps an hour or two without seeing a natural fly, or a trout rise. At last, unexpectedly, you will hook a trout with your flies carelessly half-sunk in the water ; and before you have landed it, you will perceive the trouts all in a plunge nothing but heads and tails flapping amidst myriads of pretty large flies, which, according as the light strikes them, may cause the 76 TKOUT FLIES. surface of the middle current to assume a reddish- brown appearance when seen in the distance. On a nearer inspection, you may conceive that they might be best imitated by the dark grey of a hare's lug for body, and brown speckled woodcock wings which most fishers positively decide on using in preference to other material, never considering that hare's-ear fur is darker coloured when wet ; and of which, there- fore, from experience, I disapprove, preferring the body rather of the shortest, or belly part, of water- mouse fur, teased up together with an equal pro- portion of yellow fine wool or mohair. This mix- ture shows of a tarnished green colour, and when in your band looks too light for the body of the natural fly, but when wet, must to the trout have the nearest resemblance, as with it you will have most success throughout the spring months. First take of Adlington's hooks (round bend), No. 7, to form your pair of flies (or whatever maker's hooks you may approve, but let them be of that size) ; make the wings of the one fly of the lighter coloured part of the woodcock wing feather, or rather prefer the softer and lighter coloured feathers from the middle of the web of the partridge wing. Make the other fly, the blae one of your pair, with either a starling wing, a bunting, or TEOUT FLIES. 77 mistletoe thrush. I cannot decide as to which of all these is the best. Let the body of both flies be made of the shortest of the water-rat fur, that which grows nearest the belly, and has a yellowish grey lustre on the surface ; this mix up with an equal proportion of yellow worsted wool, or mohair (dyed pig's wool is preferable, when it can be got fine enough) well teased together. With this make your fly, body and wings, fully as large, upon the whole, as the fly you imitate (in earliest spring I sometimes use No. 8), and fish on with this pair, using no variation whatever, from early spring down to the setting in of fine weather, about the end of April. Then the fly of which this is the imitation is suc- ceeded by one of a size smaller, or rather more slender, and the least shade lighter in colour of body and transparency of wing. In England the first of these flies is called the March Brown, the second the Pale Yellow Dun. In ordinary seasons, this last fly comes up about the end of April, or beginning of May, and con- tinues for a month or more in main request, making still a secondary fly all down the summer ; and when it comes first on it is the chief object of trout, in preference to the former fly, of which a few are still seen straggling on the surface. My usual irnita- 78 TROUT FLIES. tion of this fly is with the same mixture of blue water-rat fur and pale yellow, inclining to white for body ; and for wing, the most transparent feather to be got from the wing of the bunting* or the mistletoe thrush. As these flies are tender, you may perceive them in breezy weather all dishevelled by being blown in from the ruffled surface to the sheltered eddies their wings being dashed asunder, and spread on the water like shivered oars. In this state the trouts devour them ; and from this circumstance, as well as another which I shall presently describe, a hun- dred vile imitations of this fly meet with partial success ; while those who use such, often ignorantly aver that it is of little consequence to be nice about flies. The next best imitation of this fly (or it may be even a preferable imitation to mine, as I never used it) has the body the same as described, but small and gentle, and the wings of a small body * Buntings are a numerous family ; but from the fly he speaks of, he must mean the yellow bunting, the yorlin. To an angler with " music in his soul," the black-headed bunting is a river-side pest. In the early morning it follows him from bank to bank, with its whit-o, whit-o, whit-o, bringing him in mind of saw-sharpening. We once saw a brother piscator lay down his rod and commence stone-throw- ing with great vigour, into a bank of trees. On coming up and enquiring what he aimed at, he said he was trying to drive off a sick- ening bird that had " wkeetled-icheetled there for the last half hour." This was the black-headed bunting. Strange, we have more than once seen this bird classed as a British song bird. [EDK.] TROUT FLIES. 79 feather from various birds (say the body feather of the grouse, of a lightish fine freckle, stripped off the right side), and rolled round the head, or rather neck of your fly, in the manner of a hackle. This imi- tates the dishevelled wings of the natural fly, and is technically called a spider fly, and some aver that with it they have great success, of which I have no doubt, as I have long known it much in vogue. I discovered my imitation of the Pale Yellow Dun to be a killer thirty years before I really ascer- tained its proper archetype or its name. At that time, fishing along with a dear companion, now long in his grave, on opposite sides of the Tweed, a little above the Doup Roads, on the head of Mertoun water, we, to prevent entanglement, took cast about, our flies (though contrariwise) both alike sweeping the same centre spot of heavy water ; and, in a circle of within twenty yards diameter, he caught three trouts, while, with one of the flies of my pair, I caught fifty-four, which weighed twenty-four pounds. We then examined that individual fly, which, in the dressing up, I had accidentally varied from the rest of our early spring flies, and we afterwards adopted it as a first favourite a successful one. It was nearly thirty years afterwards ere I learned that this fly (accidentally on my part) proved to be the " Pale Yellow Dun" of English anglers. 80 TROUT FLIES. About the middle or end of May, sooner or later, according to state of weather, a small dark blae fly appears, which may be best imitated on a small hook, No. 1 of Adlington's, or others of a similar size, the body made of the belly fur of the water-mouse where the far is shortest, blae-coloured, and tipped with dun and tied with fine silk as near the same colour as possible. The wings should be made from the tip of the back feathers of the starling wing, or from any other bird's wing of a fine texture and blae colour, though I have often used those of a sparrow wing, and with success. This small fly appears on the water before the former (the second spring fly) is retired. I have preferred using one of each to form the pair, making the small blae fly the trail or end one, and the former, larger, light-coloured one the bob or dropper, upon the consideration that the smallest fly of a pair should always be the out-end one, giving it the open chance. For days or weeks after you will take trouts alternately with each ; and observe, that though trouts may occasionally be taken at this period with flies of other descrip- tions than these, yet no trout that would take any other would reject these if gracefully offered. I have always hated the confusion of fishing with more than a pair of flies, and would rather nip off CURIOUS PHENOMENA. 81 the dropper and fish with only one than fish with three, and be sure of more success too, as through a day or night you have no hankings or hindrance. CUEIOUS PHENOMENA. Some curious phenomena occur in angling which may come well enough in place to relate here. In fishing either for salmon or trout, more I think depends upon the state of the atmosphere for suc- cess or non-success, than on any other single cir- cumstance, or on all other causes taken together. In the salmon department, we may passively observe, that often when all seems fine, and you know that salmon are in the pool or stream, and might suppose that they would just be lying ready watching for a fly ; you may cast over it with all the blandishments of your art, try all known means of temptation, and even supposed new means as well try to raise the rock he lies on ! Say that this occur twice in the day, morning and middle ; yet go back about sunset, when you may likely have him up at first sight, fit to tear the rod from your hands. Now, whether he had been asleep, or had 82 CURIOUS PHENOMENA. not got digested his nightly or early meals, or had merely felt lazy from some oppressive feeling, allied to an indigestive state, such as is frequent with our- selves, is not understood ; but I rather suspect that the real cause is from the electric state of the atmos- phere, disinclining him to motion, as well as pro- moting a dulness of appetite. Again, in the case of the trout. "We have a fine middle April day, we go out say at ten o'clock, the glass at 50, a medium state, having been pretty steadily so for days past. Everything looks favour- able the river just beautiful, not too much cleared- down from the browning of a recent flood the atmosphere neither spiringiy dry, nor drowsily heavy. Fit up, lay on your flies, be ready for the first move- ment (and be alert while the movement continues), for they cannot choose, but he all in a stir in a little. Well, you go on, throwing out softly and dexterously, till you have gone over a hundred, or may be three hundred yards, up or down, of the finest water you ever cast line on, yet not a bell or small circle ever forms on the beautiful surface, except what the soft falling of your own flies and line occasion. You look up and see the light clouds hardly moving on sunwards, and scarcely even whitened on the sunny side, the least indicative sign of frost every- CURIOUS PHENOMENA. 83 thing in perfect consonance with our notions of a good day our own blood in free circulation to and from the heart, bearing elasticity and comfort to the nerves, and inducing even generous sympathies the lark overhead sailing beside the light cloud, the thrush and blackbird on bus.h and tree, and the titmouse in the hedge below, swelling their little throats in the joy of love : why are there no flies come to the surface they are half an hour later than I expected 1 While you turn and move and stand in suspense, down floats a shower of flies literally thatching the middle current, multitudes of them whirling into creeks arid eddies (say beautiful March Browns, bred up from the grub state on the bottom stones of the ford above the stream), and not a trout seen to flap a tail amongst them ! Why are all in motion but the fish 1 No answer to this our ques- tion of thought, no solution found, the pride of our philosophy humbled. Even old father Walton and Sir Humphry Davy were aback as far as I find myself, having no reason to render for such a pheno- menon. But we feel, we fret to stand inert, so keep casting on, regardless of breaking the wings of fifty living flies at every fall of our lumpish line and sham flies, on the surface, though supposed by us com- paratively fine ; and having come to fish, fish we will. 84 CURIOUS PHENOMENA. I who write have gone on in this style for hours, and till nearly at the sinking in disgust of all idle earthly pursuits ; and the water-carpeting of flies having imperceptibly vanished off, I could take no account of the least perceptible change of atmos- pheric influence, when at last a good trout would startle me with a tug at my line, half sunk from inattention. Ere I got that drawn ashore others would be plopping up here and there all around. Then I became alert and diligent, and just as I had got one carefully taken off the hook, another would have nipt down a natural fly ; my flies are over the spot in a moment, up, down, or across but a yard above his nose and he is got fast and flouncing. No stop now takes place till my basket is full with nineteen pounds weight, just what the lid would tie down upon, and a dozen more half and whole pounders hurriedly thrown on the grass, or stuffed in my pockets with their tails flapping over. Likely then, they begin to rise more transiently when I begin to relax in persistence, getting even sick of the water side, fresh, fish smell ; and, bundling up, I turn for home to see and get something of a salted taste to satisfy a well-earned appetite. This is the description of one effect : I should like to meet with him who could give me a satisfy- CURIOUS PHENOMENA. 85 ing natural cause. In the meantime, I conceive the cause as somehow allied to electricity in some state of its negative, positive, or veering motions, but how balanced so as to produce the particular phenomenon of the flies covering the surface, and the trouts not owning them, I know no more than a philosopher. Another morning at ten o'clock will look much the same as last in all respects, only that the first rise of flies to the surface will stir all the trout into motion ; a complete flapping of heads and tails and yellow bellies tumbling up, cuffs the flies to confusion. In this case we may get a few, and only a few, for, though in feeding mood, they have such a choice before them, that our best imitations are overlooked or rejected on sight. In half an hour the hurry is over and all stilled again into a dull calm surface, till another rise of flies from the bottom, when a similar scene takes place for another half hour or so ; and so on alternately down through the middle part of the day. The best thing to be re- commended to an angler in such a case, is to take his place on a proper station, where he previously knows the trouts will be principally congregated ; to be ready and active in picking out half a dozen or so whenever these bestirs are going on, and they 86 CURIOUS PHENOMENA. are common on every fishing day in April, for half- hours alternately, from nine or ten till two or three afternoon. If it continue fresh and fine, though even sunny, they will rise and take singly on till four, when you may pack up and toddle homeward, with hope of sound sleep and a still better day to- morrow. MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS ON TROUTING, TROUT FLIES, TACKLE, AND RODS. When in bright weather and clear unruffled water you cannot succeed in throwing your flies across, or rather at a considerable angle upwards, and letting them swim down of their own accord, with no visible pull upon them, then turn your face up the water, and whether in stream or smooth pool, there throw straight up, or at such slight angle from straight up as circumstances of depth or other impediment may permit. In this way, your fly falling lightly above the feeding trout, he is apt to snap it the instant it alights ; your quick acknowledgment of feeling him being down against his mouth and body, he can hardly miss being hooked ; then lead him gently down towards you, which action alarms none above. Then proceed a step^upwards, and in the next throw, breaking new water, you have a new chance. It is easy to conceive how readily a trout is hooked in this way ; for when the fine gut is wet and pliant, the moment the fly is dropped on the 88 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS surface the action of the water folds it inwards, bringing it to the trout's mouth like a natural fly afloat, and not seemingly held as hanging against the current. It is thus slack when he sucks it in, and you have only to give the slightest pull, which, being against him, gives advantage to get such a hold as settles his concern with existence. In the common way, fishing from above, the thing appears to the trout out of course, and this he perceives, from an instinct, more quickly than Sir Humphry Davy could have reasoned it from his best philosophy and knowledge of angling. Indeed, in fishing downwards in thin clear water with flies hanging against the stream, it is a wonder one should get a rise of a trout at all ; and if you should, you are more likely to scart the mouths of nine, than to get hold of the * tongue or lip of the tenth, which would be a chance next to a miracle. Without the method here re- commended, in thin clear water, where trouts, if unalarmed, are sure to be feeding, you cannot have success at least coming splashing down upon them in the coarse common way of proceeding in heavy water. In the fine light they fly from your line or the shadow of yourself, shy off and disown your acquaintance, and you come home like an idler, if not like an idiot, with not a trout to grace ON TROUTING, TROUT FLIES, ETC. 89 the meal for which you are hungry after such exercise. The method above recommended of throwing aslant, or even due upwards, may to some old ang- lers appear sheer innovation upon old standard habits, as much so as railway trains are to their old notions of wains and carts, stage-coaches, &c. But those fishers who still adhere to the old system of fishing down or across the water, let them match themselves for a day with fishers who fish up the water, and on comparing baskets, the follower of " old saws" will gape with due wonder and dumb astonishment when he finds how much he is outstripped by the followers of " modern instances." On the falling in of a flood the trout soon perceives, and sets out on his foray, first on the easy eddies, and sucks in the small flies in thousands, filling his stomach on dainties to repletion. Cut up a trout of a pound weight in such a time, and see in his throat and stomach ten thousand blae midge flies going into a mash amongst six or eight pars and minnows, and find that he has also been so greedy as to take your fly or minnow over all ; and then don't be sorry for having nabbed him, and saved a million more of flies and small fish, each life as precious as his. From the stomach of a trout, of about the above weight 90 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS I have cut out six small trouts, pars, or smolts, averag- ing five inches long : the one first swallowed digested nearly to the bones, the last, whole and entire, still stuck in the gullet for lack of capacity in the stomach equal to the voracity of its nature. This trout took my imitation fly, over and above this gorged bellyful, by which it was caught. The trout is not the capricious creature he has so often been represented to be ; every motion and appetite of his being as exact to taste as that of any creature, bird or beast, that we wot of. There is not a mistake in the constitution of his nature and habits; all things seemingly so arise from our own miscon- ceptions, through ignorance of his true characteris- tics ; and be it also particularly remarked, that water- flies arise from their grub state on the bottom not at all according to months and terms, but agreeably with the state of weather. Any, and all of these kinds of flies, the spring and early summer kinds particularly, may be three weeks, or even six, later in one season than another ; and the trouts are not waiting for these flies coming to the surface, as they are always, summer and winter, helping themselves to them in the grub state, and to any particular kind of them, agreeably to their seasonable tastes, and following them to the surface as they arise, ON TROUTLKG, TROUT FLIES, ETC. 91 feeding upon them there also. When the flies come up thickly to the surface, as formerly described of the March Browns, and no trout takes them ; for a trial of skill mutilate the wings of your flies by picking them off about half-middle (not cutting them) ; or rather by tying down the top of the wings to near the tail of the fly, which makes its appearance something like the maggot released from its first case on the bottom stone, and on its ascent to the surface. Then, as much as you can, let them sink low in the water, altogether below those flies on the surface, and you will most likely succeed in getting a few trouts, as then they take them for the grub newly come out of its case on the ground stone, and not yet quit of the silk-like film in which it is bound up with its wings laid up in one fold, like a man with his wrists tied to his arms below his oxter, with the arm-pit joints having free motion. These pellicles, or second skins, which the flies cast off, you may see lying like chaff, covering the water edge, as drifted into coves and eddies, about the end of April and beginning of May. When you find the trouts decidedly preferring the small fly of your pair, it being newly come on while the former is fading off, then discontinue the large 606 one, and constitute your pair both of the small 92 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS one on very fine gat. Whatever other flies appear on the river throughout the succeeding months of July and August (nature in these months sporting her summer hues in all shapes of tinted variety, befooling our imbecile attempts at description or imitation) still continue, all along down through these months, with the same small dark flies as herein stated, with only the following occasional variation : Let the body of one of your pair be made of a pile or herl of the peacock tail-feather, rolled round very closely to form the body in place of the blae fur, and with these you may succeed, less or more, every breezy summer day. Although in salmon fishing we recommend a large fly for rather a heavy or dark water, that the salmon may see it from the bottom where he lies, and be tempted, to rise to it, the case is completely reversed in trouting, as trout do not lie on the bottom like the salmon, but when fly-feeding, in muddy water, swim so near the surface that a quick eye may often detect their back-fins kithing above water. This they do as much for respiration above the floating mud as for seeking food. The smallest fly they take in its season is sought by them on the surface of tbe most flooded water ; and as to the fly itself, it ascends to the surface in its proper time, day and ON TROTJTIKG, TEOUT PLIES, ETC. 93 hour, whatever state the water may be in. Nature does not work in the vulgar manner of making larger flies for flooded waters, and finer and lesser ones for the low and clear. With regard to certain states of water (dark or clear), and the colour of the fly showing more soher or bright, as the shades of light may strike and tinge it for the time being, we should not stand too stiffly upon a crotchet of opinion. We may find success though we cannot well account for it, and therefore our imitations should perhaps not be held too strictly opinionative, either in point of size or colour. We therefore may not err in sometimes holding our fly a size larger,* or a shade lighter * This must, we think, have been an idea, not an experience of Younger's, otherwise he would likely have written more decidedly. He also elsewhere recommends a spring fly to be dressed larger than the fly imitated ; but the summer months are not, in our opinion, favourable for angling with flies so made. The rivers are larger in March and April than in summer, and the feeding trouts also lie in deeper water, and are ever hungry and extraordinarily fond of flies in early spring ; and the large fly may, trom these circumstances, be more easily seen, and readily taken. But unless in early spring, or in water still very dark or muddy from a recent flood, we never knew an angler who preferred fishing with flies made larger than the natural insect. If different at all, and for clear-water fishing, most anglers like the dressed fly a trifle smaller than the living one ; and we, ourselves, have many a time found a fly made up on this prin- ciple a good killer. In the streaming rippling waters, generally fished with fly in summer, the small hook cannot so readily show the cheat. The males of some of the kinds of water-flies are smaller than the females, and the difference is nowhere more noticeable than 94 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS coloured, as comparing it with the living fly when both seen together dry on our hand. In such case it may be advisable to yield to what we may find conducive to our success for the time being, rather than to stand starchly to a general principle, how- ever supported by our ordinary philosophy. The grand mistake of all the authors I have seen on fly fishing, is their supposition that the flies are alighting on the water from above, whereas, could they catch up the idea, or be persuaded when told, that the flies arise to the surface from the bottom where they are bred, sheets of useless speculation might be saved ; such as about making your cast of flies alight softly on the surface, like living flies alighting from the air above, &c. Water flies -do arise from the surface occasionally (as well as for sexual contact, like midges, bees, and birds such as snipes and swallows,) and sometimes alight on it after. One of a thousand may do this, and on alighting be met by a ready trout ; but tins is rather an accidental alighting than a general case, as the trouts are really rather feeding 011 those arising from in the March Browns ; and from this circumstance a person dressing 1 from a male pattern of this insect might make the artificial fly a good deal larger, and find it a killing one, but the same result, we are certain, would not follow with other flies, and in clear summer waters. [EDR.] ON TROUTING, TKOUT FLIES, ETC. 95 the bottom upwards, while those ascending into the air are done with the water, not requiring to return. Flies on which trout principally feed are such as are bred in water, and these having passed their ten or twelve months, in the grub state, and arisen into the full flush of their aerial term, very quickly per- form the functions necessary to the continuance of their species, and leave the water as a band of newly fledged locusts leave the desert sands, flying off as may be seen, particularly in the months of April, May, and June, in myriads. I often see them on all the breezes, arise from the water and take to flight over the Tweed's banks of seventy feet high of course unreturning. The millions of trout devour millions of flies each, still myriads are left, these flying out to the bushes and broad open downs to disport their hour, day, or term in other situations. It must be understood that all this time, under my above receipt, you are using very fine tackle, a well balanced rod, with line to match, of a rightly calculated weight for the throw as too light a cast- ing line is a more grievous mistake than even too heavy and fine gut of a water or window glass colour. The rod should be about thirteen feet throwing out a line under easy command, say of from twenty to thirty feet, as found necessary. With 96 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS this fine light hand-piece you will nip up eight of every ten trouts that take a pook at your fly thus offered. Touching rods we may here further observe, that in regard to length and weight of rod and line, the grand point is to find balance, by having one thing adjusted to suit another, and all combined so as to answer the use and habit of the individual. A person may fish a lifetime with a short rod like a coachman's whip, and shorter still, in such small streams as the Ale and Kale, the Gala and Leader; and by perseverance, and lurking about bushes and going on his knees to hide himself and shadow, he may be pretty successful ; but still this is like shoot- ing partridges with a pistol in place of with a fine fowling piece. With a rod of about fourteen feet, large enough for having command of water, even when fishing in the Tweed, you will also have most success in these small streams ; as with a rod well balanced, of equal spring from hand to top, and a casting line of suitable weight, you will throw to the point you wish with ease and softness and walking upright, like the "Lord of the Isles," disdain to crouch or hide. Thus, too, by throwing out only half the length of line you could do if necessary, you will in small streams Off TROUTING, TROUT FLIES, ETC. 97 nip the trout up as he rises, and be more successful by open means than by hidlins ; and why bind to fish with one hand only* ? If you have two hands left from the Crimean or Indian wars, use both, ex- cept when you require to scratch your lug. Thus make your angling easy, pleasurable, and man-like. The balance of rod should be thus when you hold it by the butt, in* a horizontal position, it should not droop in the top, though on the point of doing so ; and it is an observable fact, that a well-balanced rod, always feels one half lighter in the hand than an ill- balanced one, although both of the same weight, upon the whole, if weighed in scales. This occurs from being top-heavy, or too yielding in the middle, where it should stand stiffest, yielding rather more both below and above the centre. I approve also of the extreme top for two, or not exceeding three, inches being very pliant, such as whalebone rendered finely small will make it ; as in fishing on the stream-water, say on a summer evening, when good sized trouts are feeding on small flies, a stiff top will strike the grip from their mouth as fast as you hook them ; than * We have always found a one-hand rod the pleasantest to angle with, because it fatigues less than a two-hand one. A light one-hand fly-rod brings more trouts to the creel too, because the angler can. cast oftener with it than a two-hander, and the oftener the nies fall on the water the more chance for trouts, of course. [EDR. J 7 98 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS which nothing in all my experience in angling has been more provoking, and which this thin, pliant, two or three inches at the top will thoroughly prevent, without making any observable difference in the general spring of the rod. It is also serviceable in making a large trout, when hooked, keep down in the water, and not spang and spatter on the surface, beating the hook from his mouth ;* and this (over and above your necessary means in lowering the fore part of your rod to near the surface) at a slanting angle to right or left as may be, to keep him down in the water till" he get accustomed to be led tamely, like a horse in breaking tackle, after which he will keep sleekly below, and come ashore resignedly. This, recommended from our own practice, is upon the whole more pleasant fishing than wading five or seven hours even in boots, not to say in stockings, and sometimes to middle waist in cold spring days, or early summer weather, as I have often done, labouring with a longer rod than here recommended, to throw far out to where the trouts were resorting, endeavouring to fill a basket with twenty-four pound weight. This you pursue with your limbs benumb- ed, till coming home, you require to be rubbed down like a hunting horse an hour in your stall, or rather before a fire, till you find the circulation beginning ON TROUTING-, TROUT FLIES, ETC. 99 to prinkle over your benumbed joints, when you again venture to conceive yourself safe from the seizure of rheumatism for a month or more to come. I have luckily escaped rheumatics to a long age, which to myself is a wonder, and matter of particular thank- fulness, for what I have described is not rational treatment of our corpus. ON THE DKESSING OF FLIES. Despairing to give any practical idea by mere description of the manner of dressing flies, it might perhaps be as well to refrain from attempting it, as the methods of holding the flies while dressing, and the opinions as to where you should begin and finish are so various, agreeably with taste and habit, even amongst the best practitioners. For instance, my son and I laugh at each other's method of holding the salmon hook while dressing it, whilst we contend for the best finish he holding it loosely in his hand, while I keep it linked to a hold-fast. Briefly then : tie on the gut, beginning at the head end of the hook, lapping it firmly along till nearly opposite the point of the hook, where tie down the end of the tinsel, and if a hackle is intended, there also tie the point of the hackle ; then dub the fur for the body 100 DRESSING OF FLIES. on the waxed thread, and lap it solidly in a regular progression upwards to nearly the head end of the fly, and there fasten the thread till the tinsel is rolled forward, and the hackle beside it ; which of these is the first rolled on is of no consequence, providing the hackle is laid close in to the wake of the tinsel, to be as it were guarded by it from the teeth of the fish. When all is brought forward, and* neatly fastened down by the tying thread, rather less than a quarter of an inch from the end of the shank, then add whatever bright tuft of colour you choose to put below the wing ; again fasten the thread, and pick all the body of the fly with a small awl or pin, and adjust it. Lastly, lay on and tie down the wings unbroken, crossing them with the tying thread as often as may be seen necessary to adjust and hold them fast, and then fasten your thread by a few knottings around the head of the fly. Trout flies I dress the reverse way, beginning at the tail end of the fly to tie on the gut, lapping it up to within a little of the head, and putting the wings on first. When these are properly set and adjusted by the crossings of the thread, I choose my fur, and dub it on the thread, rolling it round for body, and fastening the thread. The fly is thus produced in a twinkling. DKESSING OF FLIES, 101 To dress trout flies in a superior style : When the hook is tied to the gut and ready for the wings, cut with a pen-knife two wings close from the rib of the feather, lay the one piece upon your left fore finger, and the other exactly upon it, with the two insides together, then close your thumb upon them, and place the hook below, pressing it up close to the wings ; and while held in this position, lay the tying thread round over it> press the point of your finger closely on the tying thread, and while in the act of drawing tight, also cause it to draw the wings straight down together on the hook so as to prevent its ruffling or twisting them to one side ; then lap the thread once or twice more round on the same place to secure the wings, and letting the wings escape from your fingers, divide them asunder, and cross them round between with the tying thread, and they will stand up unruffled in the texture, a beautiful model of the living water fly.* One may even go the length of cutting the two wings from the two corresponding feathers of the pair of wings from the same bird, but this is extreme * John says truly, that to give any practical idea by mere description of the manner of dressing flies, is a difficult matter ; and though his description to a dresser may be pleasant and intelligible, to a novice it cannot be so. An angler will learn more in the art of dressing by a half hour's lesson from a regular hand than a half day's reading of clear English on the subject. (Eon.] 102 DRESSING OF FLIES. nicety, which may only be resorted to as a trial of skill. I may observe, however, that not above one of fifty to whom I have shewn this method of putting on the wings has ever succeeded in doing it well, but this I consider proceeds only from want of practice. I have often thought that in the trade of fly dress- ing there is too much of show and variety, and tinsel-glitter, even for any river. Such flies I depre- cate, and I suspect those who make them do so merely to increase their sale, as inexperienced anglers are apt to conceive that they ought to provide themselves with every variety of hook exhibited to them in a tackle shop. As to the question of dressing salmon flies on whole length threads of gut, or on loops, I consider it merely a matter of taste or convenience, as they may be neatly and effectually done either way. Looped hooks are perhaps more convenient to pack and carry, and also require a less stock of gut on hand, either for the dresser or the purchaser. If looped, I would recommend the loop on small flies to be rather of three-ply twist of small fine gut than of one stout thread, as the three-ply is tougher, and it should be kept so short that the double eye may barely admit the single stout gut to which it becomes CASTING!- OR WHEEL LINES. 103 attached, after being opened by inserting the point of a pin, so that the last fastening running knot may form what may be considered a small head to the fly. For regular fishermen on the water, who generally dress or repair a fly or two every morning as their principal dependence for the day, perhaps the plain gut without a loop may be as well ; it is as neat and efficient, and quite as convenient. ON THE CASTING OH WHEEL LINES. In either salmon or trout angling I do not like too light a casting line, as it does not throw so well, particularly in any breeze of wind. I prefer a cast- ing line of three or four lengths of good horse hair, firmly twisted with the fingers (not plait), and not looped to take off and on the wheel line, but neatly lapped to it, so as to remain and be rolled up along with it. The first length of twisted hair should be nearly as thick as the wheel-line, suppose eight, ten, twelve, or fifteen horse hairs ; the second length some two or three hairs smaller, and so on downwards, until about the fourth or fifth (according to the length of the hair), forming between five and six feet in all. Let the last be six, eight, ten, or twelve hairs thick, according to the strength of the hair, or the weight 104 CASTING OR WHEEL LINES. of the line wished, for salmon, trout, or both occa- sionally, as I generally have used them.* Then begin with three equal hairs of hand-twisted gut, choosing the hairs finer as you come downwards the four or five lengths, till, if for spring salmon fishing, the last is small enough to be next the hook- gut, to which it should be attached by a neat loop. In clearer, summer weather, when single gut becomes necessary, have three or four additional lengths of good gut along with you, ready knotted and looped, to link on in addition to the former, which can be added or removed agreeably with circumstance or fancy. Let all the knots be well tied, both of hair and gut, and the ends neatly lapped down with waxed thread, so that you can roll all up through your rings without rag or hinderance ; and when done with fishing, unlink the hook, and roll in all at once. Wlieel lines last best that are made entirely of * We venture to state that very few anglers indeed would use the same wheel line for salmon and trout fishing, because to most anglers it would prove either too light for salmon or too heavy for trout. We do not know of anything more fatal to fine casting when trouting than a heavy bagging wheel line. It is as bad as a too stiff rod. The late James Baillie, the fly fisher, was very par- ticular in this respect ; and he could throw, with a rod cut from a hazel bush, the longest and finest line we ever saw fall on the water. The wheel line should be tapered as well as the hair and gut casting lines. [EDR.] FISHING HODS. 105 horse hair, as silk, or a mixture of it, rots readily when wet. Even hair lines are not long in rotting if care- lessly left wet on the wheel. If drawn off and hung up whenever they are wet, until dry, they will last very long, except the short piece of the end used in cast- ing, which should be renewed frequently. I had a good wheel line, of my own making, that lasted me twenty -five years, fishing occasionally, both for sal- mon and trout, besides lending it often ; but I never suffered it to lie wet on the wheel. A salmon wheel line for the Tweed here, at St Boswells, should not be shorter than at least seventy-two yards ; and all below Mertoun water about a hundred. ON FISHING KODS. [Very few anglers now-a-days think of making their fishing rods, and very few of those who do make them can produce rods to fish so well as those produced by regular makers. A good maker can adjust the spring and balance of rods to suit any angler. The woods now used by the best makers are : ash, sapling, or hickory for butt, and greenheart for middle and top, with sometimes a few inches of whale- bone at the point. The best point we ever used was made of a bit of old brier, twelve inches in length, whittled into a taper and adjusted by James Baillie." EDB,.] To produce the best fishing-rod for use and dura- bility, take a billet of good hard red hickory, well seasoned (as it generally is before it reaches us here), of about three or four feet long, and have it ripped 106 FISHITO RODS. down into slips of various thickness, proper to form the whole rod, butt and top. Joint up as many pieces as will produce the length you wish, say eighteen or twenty feet long for a salmon rod, and from fourteen to sixteen for a good trout one. Make these into splice-joints of sufficient length, the splice being seven inches at least for the butt-joints, and tie them up well glued, leaving them so until the glue is dry ; then lay the rod upon a straight plank, and have it planed up all in a piece to a proper thickness a person of skill standing beside the joiner, trying and adjusting its elasticity to the proper spring, till he find it please, recollecting to allow something for the weight of the tyings of joints and rings. If the planing could be so managed, the perfection of the rod would consist in having it to taper properly the whole length, from butt to top, and the wood being of the same piece and growth, the spring must be equal and correct throughout. After it is properly planed and smoothly polished with sand paper, cut it across into two, three, or four pieces, as you please. Have your brass ferrules straight, not tapering, but alike wide at both ends and sunk just a little in the wood at the under ends, and left full and flush over the wood at the upper ends, and either with or without screws, according to pleasure. FISHING KODS. 107 These all adjusted, then roll up your wood-glued joints with good silk, or, what is preferable, very fine lint thread, using varnish on the thread rather than wax. Begin at the top to tie on the rings, which have large enough. Make them six inches apart at the top, and lengthen the distance between them as you come down towards the butt. Then have the whole slightly varnished. If a rod is made up of various kinds of wood, or even of different trees of the same kind, you can never have the same equal degree of fine elasticity ; whereas, by making the whole rod out of the same short piece, you not only improve the proper spring, but also find the best precaution against its twist- ing to prevent which professional rod-makers often render the wood short and fragile by the application of heat, and other methods calculated to damage it in this most material respect. I prefer hickory, as it combines all the essential qualities, without the inconvenient weight of lancewood : only, great atten- tion is necessary in selecting the hickory, as very much of it is unfit for rods. To those who reside near the water, I would re- commend a rod all of glued and tied joints,* as best * Rods of this kind are in general use about Galashiels ; and many anglers thereabouts uphold that these rods cast better than those made with ferrules. We used one of them for a season, a short one for fly fishing, and liked it. [Ecu.] 108 SALMON ANGLING. in point of real use, and not so liable to "break in the moment of action : or, indeed, even for travelling, I would prefer tied joints, as, wherever a person has time to stop and fish, though only for a day or two, he has at least five minutes to spare for tying up his rod in a sufficient manner. Rods are often breaking at brass joints, and those who use them, instead of bringing in a back-load of fish, are often arriving home from the water telling you, " I've broke my rod !" Such sickening news may generally be prevented by tied joints. A one-hand trout rod, between thirteen and four- teen feet long, is very convenient and pleasant to use, even when wading deep in the Tweed. But in mode- rate wading, we cannot command much water with a rod of less than fifteen or sixteen feet. I would recommend that a rod be made soft and pliable for about three inches on the top, much more so than is generally done, as a hard springy maintop readily twitches the hook from the trout's mouth. ON SALMON ANGLING. The greatest requisite in an angler is the art of throwing his line properly. Though some attain this more easily and with less effort than others, yet it SALMON ANGLING. 109 is a point which can only be gained by practice, even with the best rod ; but when once learned, it is done with little comparative exertion. And besides that, in casting a good deal depends on a finely balanced rod, yet as much depends on being accustomed to the use of any particular one. I have seen a fisherman in daily use of a rod so heavy and unyielding, that any person else could hardly suppose it intended for the purpose, and yet I have stood amazed at the length of the line the owner would throw with it, from the mere force of habit, whilst he in derision would pronounce a fine soft springy rod " a mere ^wattle." A stiff rod requires great force and quick motion in bringing it back to give the requisite impetus to the forward throw, while one of an opposite description of make, from its tendency to yield, requires a very slow motion to bring the long line fairly round with it and communicate just the necessary quantum of force to impel it again outward. Of course a medium is best ; and if we cannot possibly have a perfectly equalized spring from hand to top (which, like per- petual motion, it may be impossible to produce), then let the stiffest part of the rod be about its middle, the rest of it softening below and above to the extreme top. Practice with such a rod will make the best throw- 110 SALMON ANGLING. ing, and such a rod is also best for holding up the fish in the run, without any tendency to jerk the hook from his mouth on any sudden fling. Indeed, the art of casting seems to depend on a free motion of the body, and there seems to be a kind of innate feeling, a delicacy of touch necessary to throw a good line, which some may never be able to acquire even by practice. And though we have known instances of gentlemen having killed salmon on their first start out, when they could not throw a good line, it has generally been under proper guid- ance and direction on a favourable day, or on pro- tected water, where fish were numerous and undis- turbed, and "with all appliances and means to boot.'' Such instances are, of course, no way indicative of superior skill in the individual. When the river is low and clear, then is the time to prove the abilities of the angler. Then a long line is required ; and great skill is shewn in making the fly light like thistle-down within an inch of the spot intended, say twenty-five or thirty yards from the hand, and three or four at the least above and beyond the spot where, from previous knowledge of the spot or general skill, he knows for certain the fish must lie. I recommend a beginner to practice throwing the SALMON ANGLING. Ill line on a broad smooth pool, where he can see that it is delivered out properly, and falls lightly without splashing. In such case the practitioner will perceive something which he cannot easily account for : and that is, that after he has even attained a great degree of perfection in the art, he will not be able to dis- tinguish how it happens, that in one throw his long line will proceed tightly out, his fly alighting first on the water, and in another throw the middle of his line will fall first, while the farther part, still obedi- ent to the general impulse, will proceed out the full length, the fly falling the last on the surface. This last throw is not so good as the former, for the reason, that the main current having caught the middle of the line first, it carries it too quickly down, leaving the fly lagging and forming an awkward curve ; for, before it comes over above the fish, the fly should lie on the water, so as to have the appearance of plying at an angle against the current. And the angler should so manage his rod that, while he lets his line float round at its full length, his fly should come as slowly as possible over the main spot. In this case the salmon will sometimes rise at once, rather before you expect him, but more generally will follow the fly to the eddy, or edge of the deep, where, if on examination he feel disposed to seize the hook. 112 SALMON ANGLINGS he has it before yon perceive a head, fin, or tail above the surface. Indeed, before you perceive the web of his tail he generally has the hook in his jaw a foot below water, as in descending he goes, like other divers, head foremost. The angler's next motion is generally termed striking, which, to my taste, is a wrong word to ex- press that particular action by which a true angler retains his already hooked fish. This motion is rather a retentive hold than a start, or a strike. Your tyro, keen and vigorous, is for ever striking , as the weakest part of his tackle, or a shred torn from the mouth of the fish will often abundantly testify ; while the true angler will go through the whole pro- cess with perfect ease, or rather, in what an inex- perienced onlooker would account a careless or slovenly manner ; in short, as seemingly easy and unrestrained as the step and manner of the savage in his native forest, so nearly do the accustomed habits of art approach the perfect ease of nature. But I believe that in fishing, as in other things, example is more instructive than precept, and there- fore a beginner would do well to set himself to observe with attention an experienced fisher begin and go over a stream or cast : his easy positions of body, method of casting, and manner of leading his SALMON ANGLING. 113 line ; and above all, should he hook a fish, the way he manages him, until he is laid " broad upon his breathless side," a rich and beauteous prize. For instance, he will not drag his fly across the stream, neither putt it against the current, which is a common error with beginners, and quite absurd. But in salmon fishing, he will, in throwing his line, direct it so as to make the fly alight on the spot desired not straight across the current, but slanting a little downwards, so that it may form as gentle a curve as possible ; he will move it as slowly as the current will permit, over the spot where he expects the fish to be lying ; he will make no perceptible motion to keep his fly on the surface, except on a sluggish pool, but will let it sink a little, depending on feeling rather than on sight : and though apparently keep- ing no pull on his line, yet all the while he will be able to detect the touch of even a minnow. On a boil, or other appearance of a fish, he pulls up his line, not twitchingly, but actively, steps a yard or two back, rests a minute, to let the fish resume his lair and attention, and perhaps feels inclined to alter his fly to a shade darker, or a size smaller, before he annoy and disgust, or alarm his fish, when he will probably come up and seize it in earnest. Should he not rise again, or rise and pass it thrice, 114 SALMON ANGLING. leave him quietly alone for the present, and return to try him some time afterwards. On taking the fly, the fish means to return with it to his precise select spot of lair, on rock, stone, or gravel, at the bottom ; and the fine angler, holding him gently, often in the first instance allows him to do so ; but soon the fish, too surely feeling his awkward predica- ment, bolts off, " indignant of the guile." Then is the time when the fisher is attentive. With the butt end of his rod resting on his thigh or groin, he keeps the top nearly erect, never allowing it to fall below the proper angle of forty-five degrees, as rela- tive to the situation of the fish ; and in this position the elasticity of the rod never allows the line to slacken in the least degree for a single instant, how- ever the fish may shake, flounce, jerk, or plunge. With two or three fingers and the thumb of his left hand the angler holds his rod, while the wheel-line runs out, regulated by the first, or first and second fingers, relieved or assisted, as occasion may suggest, by the right hand, when it can be spared from its necessary occupation of rolling up the wheel-line, as the fish settles a little or returns inwards. In this manner the fish is allowed to run up, down, or across, as he may choose. But if, when the fish makes an outright dash of thirty or fifty yards aslant, ending SALMON ANGLIN G-. 115 in a fling above water, the inexperienced angler should feel flustered (which he is very likely to do) and by some involuntary twitch of the running line let the top of his rod be pulled down to a level with his own head, then the tug of the last plunge will assuredly break his hook or line, or tear the hook from the mouth of the fish : or what is as bad, a sudden jerk or turn of the fish will give the line a momentary slackening, when the hold being already so strained as to have widened, the hook will fall out, and your fish is gone for ever. More hooked fish are lost in these two ways than from all other causes put together ; and this can be easily prevented by a little self-possession, simply by keeping up the top of your rod and letting the line run with ease, regulated as above described by the feeling of your fore finger. But if the matter is pro- perly managed the fierceness of the fish is the angler's main sport. The faster he dashes on, the sooner ia he exhausted. Sometimes you may see him on the opposite side of the river, with the web of his tail above the water, and his nose struck into the gravel, in an endeavour to dislodge the vile little instrument of his ruin. The fish will then again allow himself to be led at ease to the angler's side of the river, like a bridegroom to the altar, when, on finding the 116 SALMON ANGLING. water shallowing, he will again make another des- perate effort, probably a new dash into the middle current ; but, too much exhausted to resist the still continued pull upon him, he will soon again fall into the shallow, where, on a sight of his enemy, he is again alarmed into a new effort, and again exhausted by turning his outward-bound head down into the water again and again, and again, until his own last efforts to keep swimming are made subser- vient to the cautious angler, who moves him by degrees into the shallow, where, half dry, he must at last yield to his fate, and fall panting on his side. The angler should by this time have his line rolled up to within rod length, and the rod should be held with its top landwards, without slackening. The fish should then be seized with the fore finger and thumb of the right hand, across by the root of the tail (which is by far the surest method of seizure), lifted, or rather slid out head- foremost, over gravel and grass, and in mercy felled with a blow on the back of the neck.* After going through this process with a twenty- two pounder (and the process would be the same * The natives of Australia are said to drown the fish they catch by seizing them with the grip above mentioned, and holding them with the head below water. The gills then open, and let in the water, which drowns them in a minute. Younger. SALMON ANGLING. 117 with a forty-four), the writer can aver, that he does not conceive that from the moment he has hooked . such until he was laid on the grass, he ever, for an instant, had three ounces of more or less pull on the fish ; for in all circumstances of run, regularity of pull is the sure test of true skill, and it leads to final success. Indeed, I have seen many a fine fish laid on the dry gravel, when the hold of the hook in the lip of his mouth was so slight as to be smaller than the steel of the hook : so much for equal pull and cau- tious management in the run. In short, a man is never a master angler so long as a desire to have his hooked fish to land excites in his feelings the least agitation, as the matter should be managed with that cool philosophical ease of mind, which is alike above the paltry calculations of loss and gain, and the common ridicule which often tends to stir up a degree of childish fretfulness. This perfect ease is absolutely necessary to first-rate excellence and ulti- mate success. 118 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS SALMON ANGLING. The very perfection of the fly fishing art is to feel enabled to say, that you will take a salmon with fly, when, from the low clear state of the summer river, the regular fishermen, as well as the amateurs, have all given up the case as hopeless. To effect this you should take the smallest salmon fly, neatly dressed on a fine round thread of blue- clear, not white, gut. I dislike dyed gut ; its natural colour, which I call blue-clear, is the colour of water, as may be seen by putting it into a white basin of water. The dark or blue colour of a river is the reflection of the sky, as seen on the surface from above. Such gut gives the same reflection when in the river. And what is still a better argu- ment, the fish seem of my opinion, as they always take best with it.* * When stating that gut in its natural colour is the colour of water, John was safe to add " as may be seen by putting it into a white basin of water." If the white back-ground of John's basin could conveniently be held between the fish and the firmament, the gu t SALMON" ANGLTN&. 119 As already said, for a low clear river take the smallest salmon fly ; and choose also the cloudiest or dullest hour of daylight, and cast in the manner formerly described over the deepest part of the stream or pool, where fish then lie, allowing your line and fly to sink deep in the water ; for though at this time the fish will not rise to a fly skimming on the surface, he will yet venture on a bite as it quietly passes near him below. In this way I have often succeeded to the admiration of even the fisher who rented the water; and of late I have been delighted to hear a friend mention it as a point of his own discovery, and assure me he has often killed fish in the northern rivers, as well as in the Tweed, by following this plan, when not one old under such a canopy would of course have little chance of being seen by the finny tribes. We have tried a number of experiments to find out how best to render gut invisible in the water, and we now de- cidedly prefer having it dyed (with logwood and copperas) of a blae or faint sky colour. Here are our reasons for preferring it : first, we have more difficulty ourselves in seeing it in the river than we have in seeing gut in its natural colour, and as fronts, at least, must often have it between them and the same back-ground the river bottom and overhanging banks we conclude that they will resemble ourselves in this respect. Next : the gut is generally between the fish and the sky when in the water, and being of a blue tinge, and seen against a blue sky, it must necessarily be more difficult of detection. Though dyed too, it remains trans- parent, as may be seen by holding it against the light. Gut in its natural colour may be almost invisible to the denizens of the deep on cloudy days ; but for successful and pleasant trout angling give us the "glad sunshine and the laughing sky." [EDR.J 120 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS hand, who knew every pool and stream, could stir a fin, or be persuaded to attempt a trial. My friend writes thus : " In these small waters, or tributary streams which run into the large rivers, you may fish with great success with what is com- monly called a sea-trout hook. In several small salmon waters in Argyleshire, and other island streams in the west, I have fished successfully with hooks of the above size, when I could not stir a fin with a common sized salmon hook. And it may not be generally known, that in these smaller waters, salmon, grilse, and sea trout, will take the fly greedily when the water is in such a state of foulness, that those who have only been accustomed to the Tweed, Tay, &c., would suppose it the next thing to mad- ness to attempt trying a fly of any kind.' 5 I may remark here, that if my friend had thought of ob- serving carefully, he must have found this would not happen in the swell, but in the fall of such flooded streams, when these fish, like natives in an inundated district, were thrown out of their usual spots of habitation, and were still moving about in an unsettled and shifting manner. In this way, salmon occasionally take the fly in large, though more particularly in smaller streams ; as the sand and mud are gradually subsiding, the fish driven into ON SALMON ANGLING. 121 the shallows ascend to the surface, the water being purer there, and thus take the fly on the same prin- ciple that trouts feed generally. But trouts will not take the natural flies in the rising swell of a river. When it has begun to fall they attack them greedily even in the white muddy water.* In regard to the different kinds of salmon flies applicable to the different rivers, he further states a curious fact : " In no two rivers that I know of," says he, " do they angle with flies which at all re- semble each other in point of shape and character. In the Spey, Findhorn, and Ness, rivers not above thirty miles apart from each other, the style of their hooks is nearly as opposite as possible. In the Spey, common drake, or mallard wing, with yellow or orange body, and black hackle from the breast tuft of the heron, is one of their principal hooks ; and another, a hook dressed altogether from the heron namely, a blue or slate-coloured wing with hackle to match. In the Findhorn, again, nothing but Irish flies, or imitations of them, seem to suc- ceed. And in the Ness, the flies used are of a much more quiet and modest kind, somewhat resembling * This remark as to trouts not taking natural flies when the river is rising, we can testify in favour of, having on many occasions put it to the proof, both by throwing the flies into the water and watching them, and by angling with them. {JEDK.J 122 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS those used in the Tweed in point of materials, but not generally so large in size, and the form is shorter and thicker. In both the Spey and Findhorn the hooks are much larger than for the Ness. " I am not able to say how far one might be suc- cessful in any river with a common Tweed fly, only varying its size and colour to the state of the river at the time ; I think the chances are that one might kill fish in any river with them, just on the same principle that in the Tweed many are successful with the bright gaudy Irish flies, which are so op- posite to the legitimate Tweed hooks. But I do not think this has ever been properly and fairly tried, for one is apt to adopt the hook commonly used on the river he goes to, without giving himself the trouble to inquire into the cause for such a form or style being adopted. For myself, I have hooked and landed good fish both in the Tay and Findhorn with the common Tweed fly,* and I am sure they would do also in the Spey ; although I allow that I would not have the same confidence in fishing with any other than the common and well known hooks for each respective river." An old friend of mine, John Haliburton, formerly * Tweed flies are not nearly so much used now for fishing the Tweed as Irish flies. [EDR.] ON SALMON ANGLING. 123 fisher on Dryburgh water here, and afterwards at Craigo'er on Mertoun water, who removed to a farm near Hamilton about fifteen years ago, once accom- panied three or four gentlemen on a day's stroll to the Clyde, where, with his old Tweed JwoJcs (exactly such as I hav described) he saved the credit of the party by personally killing the only five salmon seen that day. But then I have never seen any man who could excel Haliburton in laying a fly to the eye of a salmon ; and yet his is the only instance I have known of an angler becoming excellent who was not bred to it from boyhood ;* for John had never once thrown a rod at the time he took a lease of Dryburgh water, being then a labouring man, a husband, and a father. But then he was one of the few amongst the sons of men who could calculate on the nature of things as they are, without regard to fashion or general opinion. While in Craigo'er, in the year 1816, I knew him, in five days of one spring week, kill with y, with his own hand, ninety-nine salmon (mostly foulfis h and kelts of course), and on one of the days he caught twenty-four, many of them about and above twenty pounds weight. But, except John * With due deference to John we may state that we know a number of very good anglers who never caught either a trout or salmon in boyhood. Perseverance and observation might, in our opinion, make ten men out of twenty fair anglers. [Eon.] 124 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS, ETC. Thomson, once in Newstead, or the Kersses, the Purdies, and Johnstones, who, on the Tweed, could ever throw a line with Haliburton ? But not to multiply instances bearing on the point, I find, from my own experience, and that of others in whose skill and judgment I place full confidence, that the matter is resolvable into this general leading principle that large or showy flies suit best in deep, dark, or drumly waters, and the finer modest shades of variation, such as I have here endeavoured to de- scribe, are necessary to entice in the settled calm of summer pool and stream. But it is seldom difficult to find arguments in support of exceptions to any general rule, and I am aware that in no instance could it ever be more easy than in the very limited selection of flies I have described ; because almost every fisher prefers a particular style of hook, and I am quite aware an angler might fish successfully for a life-time, and yet never use a fly that could be proven to be an exact type of any one here described. At the same time, I am certain that unless some of my principle can be detected in his hook, his general success will be far from coming up to his wishes and expectations. 125 ON TROUT ANGLING. In Trout Angling, the whole process, like the cast- ing, is of a lighter character, in proportion to the lighter implements used, and varies considerably from the salmon principally in this respect, that, as the trouts lie or swim about in more varied situations, according to the state of water, sometimes in the main streams, sometimes in the eddies, and in still heavier waters on shallow gravel beds, the angler will perceive that on spots where he might be successful yesterday, not a trout will be found to-day ; for in heavy flooded waters they fall into easier situations, and as the water clears and lightens, again seek the deep for food, pleasure, or security. On the subsiding of a flood, great takes are often made in eddies, where all the finny breed are driven in shoals to quiet nooks, creeks, and cairns ; and where the frothy scum of the agitated surface is seen collected and wheeling in circling motion, great slaughter may often be made by any one who can simply throw a fly ten yards out before him. This happens after the fine fresh spring, and early summer floodings, in March, April, and May, and sometimes 126 TROUT ANGLING. later, according to the wetness of a season ; but, of course, only on the first day of the ebbing flood. Hence, throwing the line for trout does not re- quire the same regularity of plan and manner as the casting for salmon, since it is often more necessary to throw aslant, upwards, or straight across, than downwards. And, indeed, in trout angling gene- rally, it is very improper to hang the fly on the stream, far more so to pull against it, as the natural fly never floats in that direction. In fishing either stream or pool regularly over, cast the fly across, or slant it considerably upwards, and let it float down the current of its own accord till it come gradually full round, managing your rod so as all the while to keep the line and flies under such command, that should a trout touch the hook unseen below the water, you can detect him on the instant. This action is simply a tightening feel, as the trout is generally previously hooked, from the natural resistance of the floating line. If he is not felt to be hooked, then it is necessary to pull full up and make another throw ; but never let the first pull in feeling for a trout be so decidedly forcible as to be called a strike* for it ought not to be done with * Younger is against striking, yet the force he would allow to be used, above and elsewhere, appears quite strong enough for good and secure striking ; but anglers know that every one has faith in his TROUT ANGLING. 127 a third part of the force requisite to lift the line clear off the surface, as is necessary when making another throw. Indeed, in casting generally for either sal- mon or trout, the angler should never snatch his line quickly from the water, but give it first a gentle pull, and let the lifting it be a second and brisker action ; as a large trout, or sometimes a salmon, may be fol- lowing the fly, and may readily, at that particular instant, be just seizing it ; and if you lift it with foolish force, the fish is struck off from the gut in his own method, if by it he can generally angle successfully. There are many points that successful anglers differ keenly upon, which, in our opinion, but simply and reasonably proves that there are more ways than one of capturing salmon or trout. To strike, as most anglers know, is to make a quick turn of the wrist a sort of slight twitch very like the movement made by the wrist when a person opens or shuts a lock quickly with a key. This movement causes the hook to give a slight but sudden jerk, which secures the fish. If pro- perly managed the fish will not be struck off, because the wet line yields as well as the top of the rod to any gentle movement of this kind. The mode of striking we here describe must be under- stood to refer to trout angling. As regards striking, in salmon angling, many first-rate anglers do not strike when they feel the fish, but merely make a sudden steady hold ; while other equally good anglers strike, some of them firmly, the moment they feel the fish take. When learning salmon angling we had a "blowing up" more than once for not striking when a salmon happened to touch our hook and get off unscathed, and we have also repeatedly brought censure upon our unfortunate head for striking when a salmon rose and touched the fly, and disappeared as we struck. These unplea- sant lectures (for it is something dreadful and a little odd, perhaps to lose a fish and " catch it" at the same time) we received from old experienced anglers, who simply differed in their mode of hooking a fish. Most anglers strike, we believe, when fishing with a very large hook. [EDR. ] 128 TROUT ANGLING. month. In low waters, I have in such a way caught many salmon with the trout fly, on which, at such times, they occasionally feed ; and therefore, in Tweed trouting, I have always used a wheel line long enough to secure any salmon accidentally so hooked. The manner, too, of angling for trout, as a driver lashes stage-coach horses is ridiculous, as if a large trout were foolish enough to take a fly so offered. The angler is still more foolish to strike the fly from off the gut in a fish's mouth, and come home with a tale of sad mishap that a^great salmon had broken his tackle. An amateur angler here last season came from the water with a sad complaint against a monstrous salmon that had robbed him of his bait hook and gut line; and what a weight he was to be sure! My son, who had happened to tie on the angler's hook in the morning, trouting a little next day with the same roe bait at the spot, caught a trout not half a pound weight with the identical hook stuck in its stomach, and the thread of gut hanging nine inches from its mouth. But constant and successful trout angling in the Tweed, or other pretty large rivers, requires the fisher to trash himself rather unmercifully, as to secure general success, it is absolutely necessary often to wade deep and long to get to where the trouts may TROUT ANGLING. 129 be lying ; for to stand on shore and see them tumb- ling up in the man current of broad pool or stream, or on he opposite eddy, is of no avail t<> fill a large basket; besides, he must wait with Job's patience, and shift about, often for hours, till the time when they are pleased to feed, which is various and uncer- tain ; and more particularly so in the Tweed than in the smaller streams, according to the circumstances already described. When a lad, I have often fished patiently for three hours without the appearance of a fin ; and in the two or three succeeding hours have filled my basket, which held nineteen pounds' weight. This happens often under circumstances to us unaccountable, but frequently on a fine forenoon, when the natural flies are floating down, and not a trout stirring; and after a break of thunder, or a slight shower, sometimes of hail, or even a fine breeze of wind, they will get all into motion at once, and feed voraciously. Much depends on the state of the atmosphere, of the in- fluence of which we are yet ignorant. But the perseverance neces ary to gener 1 pn c3ss requires the angler to strive and labour diligently, to wade in awkward situations in a kind of half- floating way, to creep on the narrow ledge of a shelving rocic, under pendent tree and brbr, and perhaps over 130 TROUT ANGLING. hanging dripping precipices, jutting and shivery such as the Dun-Hare-Crag, Hawkslee Scaur, the whirlpooling Fatterdon-Pot, or the black drowning Gibson' s-hole below ; to fish sometimes on his knees, pulling in the hooked trout by the line in hand, as in such unfrequented situations the large one- pounders are not yet acquainted with the hook, and are therefore keen a T id ready. But these were the sports of greener years ! The slippery foot on the loosening stone, or the tremulous grasp, with the deep below, is not the task for lusty manhood, or the stiffening bones of age. If ever now, once in a season, I do try the trouting, I must get on more in the way the old trout feeds, rather lazily and shyly. It has a sobering effect, to feel the play of youthful muscle torpescent ! Yet', though, like a well-hooked fish, we must succumb at last, there is still a certain pleasure in the reminiscences of some of our early starts in such pursuits. It is now forty years since I, then a boy, so poor as not to be master of a hook or a ha'penny, sallied out to the small burn (which, at that time, yet unrestrained, like myself, chose its own vagrant way from Elliestown House to the Tweed, circling through the low rushy le.is, forming dimple, pool, TROUT ANGLING. 131 and ripple), and (jumped* out half a stone of speckled t routs, where my neighbours never suspected such a thing existed. The poet is in error when he says The trout within yon wimplin' burn Glides swift, a silver dart; And safe beneath the shady thorn, Defies the angler's art. This the trout cannot do, for his clammy nose is ever protruded, and clear round eye ever on the alert for a fly or a worm, and well the angler knows where and how to drop the line into the pool before him. \Yhcn a whale is not safe in the Polar Ocean, talk, forsooth, of a trout in a burn ! dear shade of Burns, the poetical portion of your earthly feelings might have been too fine for an angler, as well as that of your grand successor Byron, or perhaps it might not, for all the fascination of song. I grant you, however, that even I, when a hungry laddie have often enough got into these fits of extreme sen- sibility, returning the small trout to the stream As piteous of his 3 r outh, and the short space He had enjoy'd the vital light of heaven. And, indeed, I have often felt the full force of Byron's 'Tofiump to capture tvouts with the h;nids, beneath the kinks and stones generally done in burns ,\nd small waters. [Knu.j 132 TROUT ANGLING. v satirical remark on anglers long before he wrote it ; ay, and occasionally got into such qualms of reluc- tance, that I would suspend my angling pursuits, and admire the trouts tumbling up in the steams, sup- pressing the desire to cast a hook amongst the free- hooters. And the same sympathies have at times unfitted me for some necessary employments of life, yes, even to the length of requiring an effort of my strongest philosophy to bring me to prune a rose or pluck a flower ! This was nursing the poetical tem- perament to an unnecessary tenderness. " No angler can be a good man," says Byron ; yet, I believe these sensitive gentlemen, the poets, could all eat lamb, veal, and oysters, as heartily as trouts can snap up lovely innocent flies, or gobble the small fry of their own species with all the mischievous appetite of cannibals. And, alas ! the sensibilities of genius give no sufficient guarantee for that consistency of character which would justify us in bestowing the designation of a good man, on any human being. ANGLING WITH WORM FOR SALMON. 133 ANGLING WITH WORM FOR SALMON. Angling with worm for salmon is practicable only when the river is very low and clear, and in all dry and frosty weather. In January 1814, when the Tweed was frozen on both sides, leaving only about a fourth of its entire breadth still open in the middle, John Hali- burton fished with the worm, walking on the ice (a lad attending him with a long gaff), when he made great slaughter, until the ice closed over. His great- est difficulty was to keep the freezing line running. Worm angling, however, can only be practised most successfully in the very lowest state of the river, after the fish have set up, as the fishers term it, and will not take a fly. In the summer season, the best fishing hours are very early in the morning, from daylight till the sun has become too bright, or in a day grey throughout. The worm used in this angling is called the large dew worm, from its being found in the spring and summer nights among the dewy grass. They may be seen in a morning lying linked in couples all 134 ANGLING WITH WORM FOR SALMON. along the pathway sides, or on old leas, where. on the least disturbance or tread of foot, they sink into their respective holes in an instant. Fishers generally gather them in candle light, stealing softly along, and seizing them before they can escape. When required in cold seasons of the year, they are dug from the earth in certain places where found in greatest plenty. They are kept in moss for some days previous to being used ; and if long kept require to be fed with a little cream or sweet milk, and red earth or brick dust.* Anglers differ in their choice regarding the size of the two hooks proper to be used for this sort of bait, but those most generally preferred on the Tweed are large sizes, Nos. 18, 19, or 20 of Adlington's the other Nos. 15 or 16. As they require to be shorter in the shank for this purpose than for the fly, it is requisite to break a piece from the shank of each. The larger one is tied to the end of the gut, the other as much farther up on the gut as to allow its point to be turned round to the shank of the first hook, * The brick dust for worms, we should think, must now be an ex- ploded notion. It has no effect whatever on the colour of the worms. It is too dry to be swallowed by them, and this is the only method by which the clav could redden them ; and we know to our cost that it destroys them if kept anything long amongst it. The dust being too dry for the worms, is the means of taking the sliminess too quickly off, thereby causing, first numbness and then death.- [Ecu.] ANGLING WITH WORM FOR SALMON. 135 and a little of the shank of each should be left untied for the purpose of catching into the worms, and pre- venting them from slipping down from their proper positions. The first worm is then put on by inserting the hook at its head, and running it up over that hook altogether, then turning the uppermost hook round, and inserting it also at the same incision ; then run the worm up over this hook also till the tail of it is fairly above the bend of the hook, and the upper part on the line above. A second worm is taken, and the hook entered about its middle, run- ning it up also to the second hook, which is entered at the same incision, and run round in the loose end of the worm, which covers it over the bend and point. The remainder of that worm is pressed up till it appear contracted and thickened on the short piece of gut intermediate between the two hooks ; then a third worm is taken and run on the first hook head foremost, leaving its tail to cover and project over the point. This is called a full and proper salmon bait. Some use only two large worms in the manner of the first and third, with half a worm, or a small whole one put on the second hook to cover its head and point. A few large grains of shot, ready nicked half through, are kept by the fisherman very conveniently 136 ANGLING WITH WORM FOR SALMON. in a quill for the purpose of adding an additional sinker to his line, as the strength of a stream may require, and from three or four to ten of them may be uped as considered necessary. They are easily closed on the gut line by a little pressure of the teeth, and may be opened with a knife, and taken off at pleasure, according as the angler requires it to sink, or move on in the various strength of still or rapid water. These are put two or three together, or some inches apart at pleasure, none within a foot, nor ex- ceeding thirty inches from the hooks.* Thus equipped the angler will commence at the head of a stream or cast, and proceed downwards in the very same manner as if fishing with the fly, taking a full step between each throw. He will throw well over the fish-lair, and let his line and bait travel gradually round, just making as much motion as to prevent it sinking and hanking at the bottom, and always lifting it gently for the next throw, in case the fish should seize it on the instant. But generally the fish will follow it, and commence nibbling at the bait, quitting and seizing it alternately. Sometimes he will run off with it a few yards, then quit it, return, and seize it again, all which time the angler * Drilled shot, which some consider preferable, caii be had of most tackle makers for this purpose. [EDR.] ANGLING WITH WORM FOR SALMON. 137 will cautiously give way to his motions, which appear very capricious, allowing the line to follow him freely , yet never permitting him to be altogether unfelt, Sometimes these motions will be continued for a considerable time, five or even ten minutes, when he will quit and leave it altogether. But more likely he will attempt to swallow the whole bait, which he generally at last succeeds in doing; and this motion is understood by the angler from the particular twitching the fish makes in gobbling it. The angler at last feels that he has it pretty fast, and by a sud- den resistence fixes him, when he is then run and landed in the same manner as if hooked with fly. Salmon are very voracious in regard to the worm bait. 1 -have known two fishers, each of whom has, at periods more than twenty years apart, met with the self same occurrence in the very same place the Bayhill Cast, at Dryburgh Chain Bridge. The fish took the bait, and was run sometime from near the head to the foot of the stream, when by some accident the line was broken, or cut on a rock, within a foot or two of his mouth, when the fisher coolly put on a new tackle and bait, went up and began again at the head of the cast, and exactly on the same spot, hooked him again with much less ceremony than at the first, as the fish seized it this last time with 138 ANGLING WITH WORM FOIl TROUT. great eagerness, and was run and landed with the first bait, hooks, gut, worms and all, hanging in his throat. When the water has fallen very low, in drought, the first trial of this worm bait is a searching thing for the river. I have asked Haliburton, " John, are there many fish yet left in the water ?" "I can- not just say," he would reply, "as the water has fallen so low they have been set up to the fly for some time past ; but I will inform you to-morrow night how many are in the Caul-pool, the Broom-ends, . and Back-brae, as I mean to be on them very early in the morning with the worm, and every one you know must have a passing pook at the first bait." I went down to the Caul-pool once about five or six in the morning, after a conversation of this kind, and found that John had already eight lying on the gravel. ANGLING WITH WORM FOR TROUT. The worm preferred for trout bait in the Tweed is what is commonly called the black-headed small tailed worm. In manured and fat clay soils, this worm is found of gross habit and dark colour ; and ANGLING WITH WORM FOR TROUT. 139 where the soil is light and sandy, is of a bright colour. On digging any earth in dry weather, it is found rolled together resembling a mulberry or a cherry. When got in this state, they may be fished with as soon as gathered ; yet, in general, to have them in proper order, they ought to be kept some time before being used, a few days at least, amongst rnoss, and the moss occasionally changed. If kept over three weeks or a month, they require to be fed with a little cream or sweet milk, and brick dust or red clay,* but always replaced into moss a day or twobsfore being used, which renders themclean and tough. Although trout may be taken with worm in any state of water, yet the most proper time is in the very lowest and clearest state of the river, from the end of May to the end of July ; and the best hours * We have no faith in either sweet milk, brick dust, or red clay, as food or colouring matter for worms. Abundance of fresh moss (Scottice fog) will keep them fresh and clear for months ; but a few drops of water should now and then be sprinkled over it, and it should be frequently changed. The worms are always ready for angling with when kept in this way, and their natural colour, when scoured of the clay within them, is reddish. They should be kept in some very cool place, and the dead and sickly worms removed daily. We are in the habit of keeping them in a wooden box sunk in our gar- den, the box of course rainproof; and we have on many occasions astonished our friends with a sight of many hundreds of worms all fresh and clean in the scorching July. Tackle-makers in large towns supply worms at reasonable rates, and the worms thus sold are gen- erally in prime condition for angling with. [ErB.J 140 ANGLING WITH WORM FOR TKOUT. of the twenty-four are from the first break of day- light to six or eight in the morning. If the day is what fishers term "a grey day," dull, with the sun shaded, or a little breeze, they will continue to take the whole day. And although considerable success may sometimes be had under the bright sun, which often indicates a degree of frost in the atmosphere, yet a day of alternate cloud and sunshine is con- sidered the very worst that can occur. The rod proper for worm requires to be a little stiffer than that used for fly, and the casting line within five or six feet of the hook should be of very tight round gut, with the knots well lapped* down to prevent catching the stones. One grain of lead shot, No. 3, should be fixed on the gut above the first knot, or about eight inches from the hook. No. 11 of Adlington's is often used, but No. 12, or even 13, are better sizes. Anglers differ in opinion about putting the worm on the hook, but the best practice is to enter the hook at the head of the worm, and run it down till the worm is brought up all over it, and leaving the tail of the worm to curl over the point, which should always be kept covered, as the trout is so extremely * For angling in clear water, no first-rate anglers of the present day lap the line-knottings, either for worm or fly-fishing. [EDR.] ANGLING WITH WORM FOR TROUT. 141 suspicious that he will hardly take a worm where the hook's point is seen. Thus equipped for a start in low pure water, the angler lets out a line only about the length of his rod, and entering at the foot of a stream, continues to wade upwards, throwing his line nearly straight up before him, or occasionally only a little to the side, as the run of water in regard to his position may re- quire, or where from habit he believes that a trout may likely be lying on the watch for a floating worm. As his worm and line travel down towards him, he keeps a continued check upon it by a perfect man- agement in raising the point of his rod, and on feel- ing the least stop, he can generally determine whether it is a small or a large trout, the small one continuing to follow and nibble, while on the seizure of a large one the worm is stopped at once, when the angler gives a gentle pull, which. being downward, against the trout, generally gets a secure hold of him. In this way great slaughter is made of the very best trout; and this by a dexterous hand is accounted the most masterly mode of all trout fishing. As it is necessary in very clear water to keep out of view of the fish, coming from below and fishing upwards in this mariner gives the angler decided advantage. 142 ANG-LIKG WITH WORM FOR TROUT. By a skilful and diligent fisher, in our smaller rivers, trout may be taken with worm all the autumn in almost any state of the river ; and as in the colder part of the season trout generally leave the streams, seeking the more easy current of the pools, they will there also take a worm dropt near them ; in which case it is necessary to give the worm as much of a nice motion by the management of the rod, as to prevent it sinking and settling at the bottom. One man I see daily (an old gamekeeper, in present lack of other occupation, and who "maun do something for his bread") is so excellent at this method, that he kills on an average about half a stone every day, in the Ale water; and to-day (September 16, 1839), after yesterday's very high flood, while Ale water is yet white and muddy, he has come in with nine pound weight of beautiful trout, taken there with the worm. For harvest wages half-a-crown-a-day and victuals I dare say he could teach any active man to do the same in the course of a fortnight's diligent appren- ticeship. So far as regards fishing with worm in drumly or flooded waters, except by a knowing and dexterous angler, as above alluded to, I consider it merely a l>:.>y's amusement, generally done without art, and it is not worth further description?. AXOLING WITH WORM FOR TROUT. 143 In the Teviot, and all the streams between that and the Cheviot range of hills, particularly in the pastoral districts, where the Oxnam, the Kale, and Coquet waters glide through amongst sheep farms, great execution is done with a red and bright yellow freckled worm, called the Brandling, or Bramble Worm.* This worm is found in very old dung heaps find when taken out emits a strong smell, felt at a considerable distance. I have heard it affirmed that my grandfather, in the olden time, killed thirty-six dozen of trout in one day, in the Kale water, with that worm. I believe this the more readily, as I know that a nephew of mine killed half that number in one day with the fly, in that small stream. And a Jedburgh amateur angler assured me to-day, that * The Brandling is still held in great repute, but not so much by clear-water anglers, as by those who angle when the water is subsid- ing after a flood. In pools the trout seem to gather about the sides wherein this worm is being angled with in the manner they do when roe is used. We met an angler of cur acquaintance some years ago with a large number of trouts taken with the Brandling, all from one large pool, which was slightly muddy. On a bit of string he had twelve trouts that weighed 12 Ibs. On another string he had nearly as much weight, though the trouts were rather smaller, arid he had also a small gamebag full of the smallest he had taken, probably in weight about 8 Ibs. The Jed was the river in which the lake was made, and the angler's remark to us was that he believed he hadn't left a decent sized trout in the pool. His rod and tackle were of the coarsest description. He at one time fished so much with this bait, that he kept his supply of seasoning worms in a pretty large barrel. When a boy we on one or two occasions had a peep at the ' *