CHAPTER VII

SUNDRY CONSIDERATIONS

OF THE RELATION OF PATTERN TO THE POSITION OF TROUT, AND HEREIN OF THE TAKING OFF OF WARY WILLY.

It is perhaps a small matter which is treated under this head, but anything which helps the angler to a correct selection of fly is so much to the good, and the point I want to make here is that the haunt of a fish is an item to be taken note of in deciding what items to put upon the menu to be offered for his selection. For instance, if your trout be in position in the middle of a fairly wide stream, and that be his habitual post, it is practically little good giving him an imitation of any insect which haunts the bank only, such as alder in its season, sedge, grass-moth, or willow-fly, which, on the other hand, may be tried in their season, with every prospect of success, upon fish under the banks.

Well do I remember how marked this rule was in its application on a day in September, 1903, on a German limestone river. In the middle the willow-fly, which was out in quantity that day, was no good. The trout wanted duns, and willow-flies were no use to them, or probably there, away from the banks, were practically unknown; but under the alder and willow-fringed banks on either side the trout took the spent willow-fly freely, and, of thirty-seven trout, no less than thirty-four fell that day to the willow-fly under the banks, but not one from mid-river. Many a time the trout will take a sedge or an imitation of the grass-moth under the banks when quite shy of them in midstream. In connection with this I may record an incident which is framed in my mind as the strange disappearance of Wary Willy.

Wary Willy was almost a public character. He inhabited a club water not far from Winchester, and was always at his post when duty called. But he was of an obliging turn of mind, and always ready to show sport to the new-comer who might be tempted to put a fly over him. Yet it was not for nothing that he had earned his name, for, though many had risen him, none was recorded as having hooked him. His holt was under a grassy bank (right of the river), about three yards above the spot where a willow stump extended a solitary branch at right angles to the current, a foot above and about two yards out into the stream, so that any angler who paid his respects to William had to send his invitation across the willow-bough, a state of things which led to difficulties and language for the angler, and to an amused retreat on the part of Willy. Yet a short time later he would be back at his post, adding to his collection of the Ephemeridæ with undiminished zest.

I was not a member of the club, but I paid a visit to a friend who had a rod, and he very good-naturedly insisted on my trying his nine-foot Leonard over Wary Willy, and he brought me to the place. I had no tackle with me, so I had to use my friend’s floating flies. The wind was light and in the right direction, and I got my fly over the branch nicely and covered him several times, and as I let my reel-line drop on the water below the branch the current carried my fly back successfully a number of times; but at length I was hung up, and when I tried to release myself Willy had business elsewhere.

On this water the club members and the keepers said that sedges were no use. It was a dun and spinner water only. So when in the afternoon I met the head-keeper, and saw a small Red Sedge in his cap, I made no bones of asking for it, as it was of no use. Borrowing the Leonard once more, I tied on the Red Sedge, and stole up cautiously to Willy’s abode. But just ere I got to position a fish rose to the right of his place, about three yards out from the bank. I did not wish him to scare Willy, so, to get him out of the way first, I dropped the sedge upon his nose, and he had it immediately. He was very indignant at the imposition that had been put upon him, and turned several somersaults in the air, and altogether put up quite a good fight for a fish of his ounces, which numbered twenty-five, before my friend’s landing-net received him. I had, however, steered him carefully, so that his antics should not disturb William, and I approached that worthy’s holt with a modest confidence that William stood in the way of getting a surprise. But William was not there. William never came back. He couldn’t. He was dead, and in my friend’s landing-net. But it was several days before remorse began to work in me, for it was not till a week or so later that my friend told me of the disappearance of Wary Willy. But Willy had always been fished with duns. He knew all the patterns of Holland and Chalkley and Ogden Smith, but never had he had cause to suspect the genuineness of a sedge—and so, good-bye Willy!

OF THE USE OF SPINNERS DURING THE RISE OF DUNS, AND HEREIN OF THE VAGARIES OF THE BLUE-WINGED OLIVE.

“The Red Quill,” says Mr. F. M. Halford, “is one of the sheet-anchors of the dry-fly fisherman on a strange river when in doubt.” Never was a truer word spoken. Mr. Englefield of Winchester, I believe, conducted the experiment of confining himself to the Red Quill (in a variety of sizes and shades, and with and without the addition of gold and silver tags) for a whole season, and did as well with the one fly as in other seasons with a larger selection. And it is a remarkable fact that the Red Quill, bearing more resemblance to a Red Spinner than to a dun, will frequently kill during a rise of duns as well as, or better than, quite a good imitation of the dun itself. It will also be found that during the rise of any kind of dun its spinner will often take as well as, if not better than, the subimago pattern. For instance, a Red Spinner during a rise of olives, a Claret Spinner when the iron blue dun is on, and a Sherry Spinner when the blue-winged olive is on.

All the spinners do not die and fall spent on the water over night. Some come on to the water in the cool of the early morning, and if the angler tries in the hot weather for an early morning trout, the spinner may be commended to him as giving him his best chance, so far as floating patterns are concerned. And when, before the rise comes on, an odd fish or so may be found in position putting up occasionally at something, spinners may legitimately be suspected. Therefore it may be that, when the rise comes on, the memory of a recent acquaintance with more delicious morsels than the current duns leads to a readiness on his part to absorb the floating imitation spinner.

The blue-winged olive is a large and handsome fly, and its hatch is usually an evening matter, though I have seen it at all hours of the day. But when it is on, and there are other duns at the same time, it is always possible to distinguish the trout which are taking the blue-winged olive by the curious shape of the boil they make in taking it; a kidney-shaped boil, with two distinct whorls right and left. And if the angler is provided with Orange Quills on No. 1 hooks, and will pick out these fish, he may count on sport worth remembering, though possibly not a spinner may be on the water at the time. Curiously enough, such a thing as a good imitation of the blue-winged olive in the subimago form has yet to be invented. Patterns are tied which will kill an occasional trout, but the Orange Quill, if the rise be anything like a good one, means three or four brace, and probably all big fish.

One evening, June 24 in 1908, I ran down to Winchester by the 6.50 train to see Eton v. Winchester on the next day, and I got down there about eight o’clock. I had not meant to fish overnight, but I thought there was time for a cast before the dusk drew in, and I picked up a nine-foot Leonard and a landing-net, stuck a damper with a cast in my pocket, and a small box of flies, and got down to a broad shallow. I found several fish rising, and at once diagnosed the blue-winged olive. So I tied on a large Orange Quill and cast to the nearest. Up he came, and was off with a flounder. Without losing a moment, I covered the next with the ensuing cast. The same thing occurred, and I promptly dropped my next cast a yard to the right over the third fish. He, too, came up and fastened. He went straight to weed, but, holding him quite lightly, I soon had the satisfaction of feeling him beat himself free of the weeds, and presently I netted him out. The fly was quite soaked, and I tried to change it, but it was too dark, and so I knocked off, having risen three trout to the Orange Quill in three successive casts.

Some years ago I dressed for my friend, M. Louis Bouglé, of Paris and the Fly-fishers’ Club, a winged imitation of the blue-winged olive, which is at certain seasons almost the only dun on the chalk streams of Normandy, and he can kill an occasional fish on it. Its dressing is immaterial, for I never could do any good with it myself; but one evening I was fishing the Varennes with M. Bouglé, when there came on a good fall of blue-winged olive spinner. My friend caught a trout with his pattern, and by the aid of a spoon I got from its stomach, and turned into a glass, three large greenish-amber spinners, with the distinctive three setæ; and next morning in a capital light I tied an imitation of these insects, spent-gnat-wise, with seal’s fur body of palish yellow-green olive of appropriate mixture of furs. Next evening we each got fish with these imitations, M. Bouglé more than I, and I have always been promising myself that I will put it up one blue-winged olive evening on the Hampshire rivers; but when the occasion has come, and that distinctive rise is seen, I have never been able to resist taking the Orange Quill rather than the spent olive pattern out of the box where they repose together. It is hard to resist three or four brace.

OF GENERAL FEEDERS, AND HEREIN OF THE UNDOING OF AUNT SALLY.

There are places in most rivers—generally, I think, about the spots most frequented by man—where trout establish themselves, which seem, though willing enough to take duns as they come, to be independent of them as a staple food, and to take gaily every day and all day long, and often far into the night, whatever fly-food comes along, always excepting, _bien entendu_, the angler’s flies, however delicately offered. Such trout are readily put off their feed, but not for long, and the angler, returning to the spot after a short absence, may make up his mind to find his friend back in position, pegging away as freely as ever. Everyone has a chuck at these fish—no one can resist them; but it is a rare thing for one to be caught—and the Coachman may account for a few. A strong ruffle in the water _may_ enable you to take one unaware, but, generally speaking, the ordinary tactics, whether dry-fly or wet, are thrown away on such fish, and the only chance is to fall back on something exceptional either in lure or in method of attack, or both.

Followeth the example of

_The Undoing of Aunt Sally._

She was called Aunt Sally because everyone felt bound to have a shy at her. Her coign of vantage was near the bottom of the water, where the fishery begins, and her irritating “pip, pip,” as she took fly after fly in the culvert that was her home was too much for the nerves of nine anglers out of ten, so that the absurdest efforts to circumvent her were made daily—efforts to float a dry upwinged dun down the culvert from the top: result, immediate and irremediable drag; efforts to flick a fly upstream to her in the culvert from below: result, broken rod-tops, barbless hooks, flies flicked off against the brickwork, and other disasters, leading to profanity.

The _locus in quo_ was a stream in the South of England, flowing some fifteen yards or so wide at a good even pace, with a nice purl on it, down to and past a deep hole used for bathing by the farmers’ lads. From this hole, a culvert in the left bank, a yard wide and, say, four yards long, diverts a considerable body of the stream into a new channel, to drive a mill in the town below. This was the fastness in which Aunt Sally had taken up her abode, and throughout the spring and summer had defied all efforts to dislodge her.

It was my first visit to the stream that year, and from 9 a.m. till 3 p.m. on an August day I had worked away for meagre results. There was no rise of fly after ten o’clock, and a strong rise of water-rats. Three trout had I turned over, and one of one pound two ounces reposed in my bag. I had not seen a rising fish for hours, when, weary and disappointed, I drifted down the right bank to the bottom of the fishery, and sat down to rest on the steps which are set in the hole to assist bathers in clambering out.

“Pip!” I heard coming from somewhere. I looked upstream, I looked under my own bank, but not a sign of a ring was to be seen. “Pip, pip!” again. At last, leaning low and looking through the culvert, I saw, some two yards down, what I took to be a dimple of a rising fish. Watching a few moments, I saw it repeated, and my spirits revived. My point was fine, so I took it off and knotted on a yard of sound Refina gut, and ended it with a brown beetle with peacock’s herl body and red legs. I soaked him well, so that there should be no drag on the surface, and then, getting my length for the other side, let the fly and gut drag in the stream till the moment I made my cast. Fly and gut together struck the brick face of the culvert, and fell in a heap at the mouth. Instantly the current caught the fly and gut, and extended it down the culvert. Almost at the same moment the current of the main stream, across which my reel-line lay, began to drag upon it, and completed the extension of the gut by the time the beetle had run a short two yards down the culvert. At once it began to drag back. This was too much for Aunt Sally—to have that beetle scuttling from her when it was almost in her mouth. She came at it, and in a flash secured it ere it could escape from the culvert; and before she could turn she was skull-dragged out of her fastness and turned down into the stream below. She made a determined fight for it, but she was very soundly hooked, and I gave no needless law, so that her fifteen inches were soon laid out upon the grass. Not knowing of her fame, I was quite content with her one pound eleven ounces; but an angler who told me of her reputation said she had always been put down as a much bigger fish. An hour later I looked down the culvert again, but the water had dropped some inches, and there was not enough current through the culvert to make it fishable. I had hit the happy moment for the undoing of Aunt Sally.

OF ATTENTION TO CASUAL FEEDERS.

The happening fish is a godsend to the angler whom time or trains, failure to find the taking fly, or other act of God or the King’s enemies, have prevented from making his basket during the main hatch of duns. By the “happening fish” is to be understood, not the chance riser to a chance cast, but the trout which, by reason of a larger stomach capacity, misfortune of position, shortage of fly, disinclination for the society of tailers, or the pursuit of the succulent shrimp, or neglect of his opportunities during the main rise, is left hungry, or at least hungry enough not to have left off feeding after—often long after—the main rise has faded out; and also the trout whose hearty appetite ranges him under the bank in advance of the rise, in a state of impatience for his meal, which leads him to sample such _hors d’œuvres_ as the stream may bring his way. For reasons which shall be made apparent, both of these classes of trout offer themselves an easier prey to the angler than the trout who is busy with a steady diet of hatching duns. It is doubtful whether the advice often tendered to the over-eager, to allow the rising trout to get well set at the wicket, is really sound, as, by the time he is well set, his appreciation of what is offered him has become greatly sharpened by a prolonged experience of it as it should be, and he is as likely as not to refuse anything that does not appeal to him as being identical with the natural insect he has been absorbing so much of; and I know no more likely fish to take, if you get your fly to him right, than a trout which is cruising up to his feeding-ground, picking a fly or two on the way. Freely I confess that whole rises have passed me too many a time without my having succeeded in ascertaining what the trout would take, and on such days—and again on days when trains have borne me to the water too late for the morning rise—I might frequently, but for my friend the casual feeder, have brought home a toom creel.

The places where the casual feeder is to be found at home are various; but, speaking generally, the casual feeder’s position depends on the nature of the fare which the time of day affords him, and the odds are long that from the end of May, when the first of the sedges (the so-called Welshman’s Button—the “Dun Cut” of the fathers of angling) comes upon the water, that position will be found under the banks where sedge-flies and other bank insects most do congregate, and from which they venture upon the water; at bridges where a constriction of the current concentrates the food; at bridges where spinners are apt to dance until their dancing minutes be done, and sedges often shelter in brickwork; at hatches where woodlice and other insects harbour in the wood, and are prone to drop into the current; in pockets in the weeds; and in ditches and carriers where the hatch of duns is sparse and unsatisfactory, and a trout must rely upon other resources for his daily sustenance. This may be floating or subaqueous, but is more likely in carriers and swift waters to be subaqueous, inasmuch as it is only for a brief period that a hatch takes place; but subaqueous forms of fly-life are always about (though, no doubt, sparsely at other times than that of the rise), and experience proves that when no definite rise is in progress, no trout that is on the alert finds it easy to resist a nymph who has left his shelter. Hence, given the willingness of the trout to feed, and the absence of a steady diet of dominant attractiveness, there is every inducement for him to be of an open mind as to the provender that will seduce him.

Then there is our friend the “tailer,” of whom more elsewhere.

Thus, instead of spiking his rod when the morning rise is over, and taking his Walton or his Marcus Aurelius or his Omar Khayyám from his pocket, let the wise angler concentrate on the casual feeder; and if his reward be not great, there is every chance of its being quite respectable, and he may be saved the humiliation of an empty creel.

OF THE FREQUENTATION OF DITCHES, DRAINS, AND CARRIERS.

I know of no sight more gloomy than that of a golfer painfully tramping from shot to shot. But perhaps the next gloomiest sight is the angler who, with perhaps but a single day at his disposal, lounges hour by hour by the side of the main river, waiting with such patience as he can muster for the rise which comes not. Let us suppose that he is either unable or too magnanimous to fish the wet fly, that there are no fish lying, either visibly or inferentially, in convenient places under his own bank, so that they could be fished to with a dry sedge or a Red Quill. Let him come with me, and we will pull some sport out of adverse conditions. Let us begin here, where this hatch is letting a goodly supply of water into this carrier for the watering of the meadows. Be it known unto you, O angler, that the trout of ditches and carriers are far less affected by the rise of duns, and far readier to feed at all times or any time, than those fish of the main river. Here our choice is to fish either a sunk fly, suggesting a nymph (for here an upwinged dun can hardly get through undrowned), a floating fly resembling one of the sedges which dodge about the camp-sheathing or a good-sized Wickham’s Fancy. Search all the tail of the run carefully with one or the other of these patterns, and it shall go hard with you if you do not get a chance, at any rate, from a passable fish—possibly more than one.

A little lower down the carrier runs through a culvert, and, if the hay-makers have not got him out, one is likely to find quite a respectable trout just below the arch, and he is to be had if you fish him right. Farther down there is a low wood bridge, through which the stream flows briskly, and below this there are usually two or three feeding fish. For some reason these are specially sensitive to shadow. I have had many fish from this spot from both sides, but never one from the right, or west, side after two o’clock, or from the other side before two. Having fished these fish, and caught or lost or put them down, let us move over to the next piece of water. It is slow, and has little weed. If it had been a day with a ruffle of wind, or had the drowners turned a good current through, we would have fished it up yard by yard; but to-day it is no good. But here, a bit farther on, a brisk stream runs through a little hatch, and for a hundred and fifty yards or so makes a most merry little length. Keep low in the long grass, fish it foot by foot, and, so far as you can, turn _down_ all the fish you scare. If you send one up, sit down and wait. It will not be long ere the others recover their equanimity. On a good day you should get your two brace from this length, either with No. 1 Red Sedge, No. 1 Red Quill, No. 0 Pink Wickham or No. 0 Tup’s Indispensable wet, or No. 0 Wickham’s Fancy. Now let us wind up along another brisk little piece of water, perhaps fifteen feet wide, which races in a series of runs, and stretches right across the meadows. It is known as the Highland Burn, and it is full of sporting fish, and you must take the chance of hooking a half-pounder along with your chance of a fish nearer two pounds. And do not neglect the ditch which runs in at right angles halfway up. I have seen a past-master take no less than three capital trout from those few yards in one day, turning each as hooked down into the Highland Burn, and killing him there.

OF THE NEGOTIATION OF TAILERS.

Authority hath it that “the best policy is, perhaps, to leave tailing fish alone”; but the busy man, who only gets an occasional day’s fishing, to whom that advice is too trying and disappointing (meaning me), was recommended to try an Orange Bumble or a Furnace. With an exception I shall presently refer to, it is some years since I have had any experience of tailing trout, for an alteration in a weir has made such a difference in the pace and level of a length on the chalk stream I most do fish, that whereas in the old days the tailer used to be a common sight there, nowadays it is the greatest rarity. But in those old days the tailer was my stand-by. If—as was frequently the case—I made naught of the morning rise, I would betake me to this length and sit down gaily to the siege of each tailer in succession, with the confidence that, unless I made some mistake and scared the fish—and tailers are not too easily scared—sooner or later he was my fish. It was often later, for I had to go on casting, casting, casting, in the hope that the moment might come when my fly would be passing over the trout at the moment when his head was raised, and he was taking breath before another big go at the shrimps and other food in the weed-beds. The frequent casting gave much opportunity for mistakes, and not infrequently I scared my fish, after wasting half an hour or more over him; but, on the other hand, I seldom failed to secure at least one fish, and oftener a leash. The method was simplicity itself. I sat down below my fish, and dropped a Pink Wickham a yard or so above where his tail dimpled the surface, and floated it down over him quite dry. This was repeated so long as the fish was there, but if he lifted his head in time to see the fly come over him, there seemed to be some mysterious attraction in that pattern which forbade him to refuse it. Whether this is so in other waters I know not, but I often regret the obliteration of the old race of tailers. They were a great stand-by, and always put up a big battle when hooked. The size of fly was 00 for smooth water, but in a ruffle the single cipher size proved better medicine.

The single occasion above referred to was in May, 1909, in a different part of the river. The water was running thinly over a broad shallow, very full up with weed-beds, and, instead of standing nearly perpendicularly on their heads in order to tail, large numbers of trout and grayling were grubbing at an acute angle with the bottom among the weed-beds, and with violent wriggles of head and body dislodging small insects, which they pursued with rushes plainly marked upon the surface, ending, at the moment of capture of the prey, with swirls. I did not put up a Pink Wickham, because I had another experiment to make. In the previous July I had caught three brace before eleven o’clock on a nymph imitated in olive seal’s fur from one found in the mouth of a trout on the previous day, and I wanted to give it a trial here, on the chance that it might be found that it was nymphs, and not shrimps, that the tailing fish were shaking out. So, keeping the artificial nymph soaking at the end of my line in the run at my feet, I despatched it every now and then across the course of the trout, when, desisting from their grubbing, they pursued the flying quarry. It was generally the case that, by the time the fly lit, the fish was careering off in some different direction; but several fish pursued my fly and swirled at it, and one takable trout and one short of the regulation twelve inches succeeded in taking it. It was a short and most inconclusive experiment, but, if occasion serves, it will be renewed.

OF THE FASCINATION OF BRIDGES.

Years ago, before ever I knew the Upper Itchen, there was a wooden farm bridge which crossed the main river to carry produce. Whether the bridge fell into decay through disuse and neglect consequent upon the fields on the east side being separately let to another farmer, or whether the separate letting occurred because the bridge became dangerous, and would have cost too much to repair, anyhow, when I came first to know this particular part of the river in the early eighties, there was nothing left of the bridge except a stump or two, green with slime, brown with rot, showing just above water, or intercepting weed—just that and a band of bottom a little higher than the river-bed above and below, as if the made bottom which had carried the bridge still persisted. Even the stumps are long gone the way of all stumps, and the made bed is only just traceable if you know where to find it. But for all that, after all these years, this is the place in the river where trout are to be found feeding, if they are found feeding anywhere; and they feed in much the same way, seeming secure, yet really shy, as the trout feed under or just below all the bridges on the river. All bridge trout seem to be shy. Some bridges make shyer trout than others. I knew one—a railway-bridge on that length—under which in four-and-twenty years I never got a trout, or even a rise, for all I tried persistently, wet and dry, until 1908, and then only because on that particular day a strong ruffle of wind blew up the arch and made good big waves. Then I got a brace to a floating Tup’s Indispensable, and lost another fish. Whether it is the holt into which to run at hint of danger, or the insects which haunt the woodwork, or the clear space of unweeded water in which to swim, or what not, bridges seem to have a special fascination for trout; and if the fly (preferably a small sedge) can be delicately dropped over the fish as if it fell from the woodwork, the chances of getting him are much increased.

Trout seem specially watchful at bridges, and, if the water be not too fast, will turn to take a fly which is aimed to hit them on the tail.