FLY-FISHING

POPE, who declared all nature art, unknown to thee,' deemed chance direction which thou can'st not see.' He must have been a fly-fisher. He could never have arrived at such a thought by playing or by watching billiards. That is a pastime in connection with which there is real need for the word 'fluke.' To be sure, any erratic shot at billiards, whether scoring or a failure, falls into the scope of his definition; but in many cases the result is so astonishingly unexpected that neither player nor onlooker is tempted to search for the unseen and involuntary direction. The incidents of golf, in a less complex way, are similar. Your opponent, howsoever sweet of temper, exclaims Fluke!' to himself, if not to you, when you take a short hole in one from the tee. He believes what he says, too. On reflection he would admit that, as you aimed at the hole, you are not without cause for pride in that the ball is in it; but he would not admit that luck made no contribution to your success. You do not suffer such obloquy in fly-fishing. If you catch many trout, you are acknowledged to be a skilled hand; if on a good day you catch none, or only a few, you are taken to be a duffer. Anyone, even if he be a mathematician, may say 'Good luck!' on seeing you set out for stream or lake; but he would not mention luck on beholding your basket well plenished in the evening. Instinctively it is assumed that what is called chance has but little to do with fly-fishing. Is that a mistake? One must perceive that in fishing there really are incidents which could hardly be estimated without reference to the notion which the word 'fluke' expresses. For example, when you raise and play and capture a particularly fine fish in a lake, it is not to be denied that luck has helped you. You did not know that the fish was just below where your cast fell, and in that respect you were undoubtedly a favourite of fortune. Similarly, you may choose the very fly for which the fish are on the outlook, and obviously you are rightly to be considered lucky if your choice has been at random. These possibilities, however, seem to cover the scope of flukes in flyfishing, and they are comparatively unimportant. Chance really does play but a small part in angling.

That, it would seem, is chief among the causes why the sport is so

engrossing. The experiences of two or three seasons are sufficient to make any observant person perceive that the relations of the trout to the flies are at all times governed by natural laws. Are the fish not rising? There is a reason. Are they rising very well? There is a In either case the reason is theoretically ascertainable. There is never any element of freakishness in the conduct of the trout.

reason.

These statements have been denied by men entitled to speak as with authority. See, for example, what is said on Angling in the current number of The Edinburgh Review. It is argued that your box or book cannot usefully hold flies of more than a few patterns. The few are The few are a variable number, ranging from half-adozen to three dozen; but even the longest list represents only a small selection of the insects on which trout feed. This is an implicit assurance that within certain limits one lure is as good as another. It means that a lure, to be successful, does not need to be particularly like the insect on which the trout are feeding. The authorities, it is true, make exception in the case of the Mayfly, which is of various hues and sizes, and is imitated with exceeding care, and in the cases of the March Brown and the Alder, which also are honoured by elaborately studious effigies; but they are not exacting as to the size or the tints of lures in the imitation of smaller insects. The notion is that the small flies are sufficiently similar to warrant the belief that each of the standard patterns will represent a good many insects effectively.

Now, it is worth noting that the lures which are made scrupulously according to the natural models are large. They represent insects which are easily seen on the water or in the air. Their shapes and colours are readily manifest to the human eye. Many of the other insects are either so small or so elusive in their colours that they are apt to escape the notice of the angler. Thus it seems possible that the general derogation of the belief that you should have lures according to many patterns is based on the assumption that what the angler can see definitely the fish see definitely, and that about what the angler cannot identify the fish are equally at a loss.

This assumption, that the eyesight of man and that of the trout are similar, is too easy-going to be accepted in confidence. It is disproved by experience such as must have fallen to the lots of all men who have fished in earnest. Who has not at least once found the trout rising so persistently at some particular lure that by and by it became tattered beyond recognition? That this does happen, and that not infrequently, is no doubt the origin of the saying, common on many streams, 'Never change a fly so long as the fish are taking it.' I myself once found a Saltoun, after the wings had been torn off and only the black body remained, enticing the trout as rapidly as it could be cast upon the water. It may be thought that, as a lure without wings is not the same thing as a lure with wings, whilst the

trout rose at it in either state with equal eagerness, this testimony proves too much. Does it? If either of the other flies on the cast at the same time had been as attractive as the Saltoun I should perceive that it did; but the other lures were of no avail at all, and one of them was a Greenwell, which has a general resemblance to a Saltoun. That day it was a Saltoun that the trout wanted; they rose at it with extraordinary avidity; and where it was within view they would take no other lure. Beyond being obliged to think that the fat black busking of the hook made the lure resemble something in nature for which the trout were foraging, it seems impossible to tell why the lure did just as well without wings as it had done with them; but who shall deny that the incident was a proof that trout discriminate among flies?

It was not an exceptional incident. There are innumerable analogies, at least one of which will be recalled to the memory of every well-seasoned angler. The discrimination of the trout is less frequently witnessed in the case of a fly that loses its wings through wear and tear than in the case of some fly that, become damaged, is discarded for another of the same pattern. Occasionally you have no sport, or only a rise now and then, for hours; and you look at the sky, and see it dismal; or at the flies, and suspect that the droppers, instead of standing well out, are in limp contact with the cast; then, without much hope, you put on another set, and from that moment you have trout after trout as quickly as you can ply! This may befall when, as far as can be seen, there is no great rise of insects. What is the cause? It is simply that you have found a lure representing an insect on which the fish are feeding or are willing to feed. The trout seem to have lost discretion. On ordinary days you approach them with much care, crouching or otherwise out of sight; but now, so eager are they to snap at what you offer, they seem not to heed your presence, and sometimes rush at the lure when it is within three yards of your feet. Now and then this happens amid conditions of weather that do not appear to be good. It is invariably, as far as I have had experience, a lure of definite pattern that brings about the wonderful sport. Trout even distinguish between the sex of the insects strewn upon or in the water, sometimes, for example, preferring the male March Brown to the female, or the female to the male; and in the colours of wings and bodies of lures, from the largest to the smallest, there are gradations which they see and act upon.

It is not implied that it is impossible to catch fish with lures which are not precisely like the insects wanted at the moment. That is possible, and often happens; but when it does happen it tempts the angler to an erroneous conclusion. It seems to bear out the notion that one lure is as good or nearly as good as another; but the seeming is illusory. If the angler had on his cast the exactly opportune fly, he would raise but few fish, if any, at either of the others. When they

cannot see a better, trout will occasionally take a fly that is not quite what they want; but when they do see a better, that is the only fly which really interests them.

Why, then, should we set a limit, voluntarily or under authority, to the number of patterns? One can imagine an answer. It is to the effect that, even if the belief in a few patterns as a sufficient basis for the hope of the best possible sport has to be abandoned, a limit is still desirable. The pleasure of angling, it will be said, lies less in catching trout than in casting at them amid beautiful scenes; more than a few patterns lead to perplexity; besides, as the stock must be preserved, it is not well to take as many trout as possible.

This is not part of an imaginary conversation. It is what certain eminent anglers sometimes say and always write. It cannot be an affectation; but it is certainly a strange doctrine. Does it not seem to argue a love of loafing rather than a love of life? Far from being an irksome trouble, the search for the right fly should surely be a pastime as interesting as the search for the right word in a difficult sentence, and the delight of finding it is great. Often, in reading books on sport in the South of England, one is almost obliged to wonder whether the right fly ever is found by the authors. One cannot reconcile the thought of their finding it with their habitual indifference to the weight of baskets. It is hardly possible to believe that any man who had even once found trout coming at the flies as they do now and then come would consider too irksome any trouble taken to bring the great rise about. The great rise is a revelation that once for all puts the mood of prose-poetry in the mind of the ordinary angler into strict subjection to the hope of sport. In connection with the angler's interests, prose-poetry, either as a mood or as a product, is not a thing to be encouraged. It blurs the intellect. It pays no respect to the interests of ordinary men. Certain eminent literary anglers may think it incredible that some others unashamedly consider the trout to be more important than the aspect of the meadowsweet or of the ambient air; yet that is the case. Indeed, there is many a fellow-creature to whom a stroll by the loveliest riverside is not a pleasure unless he has a rod in hand. We are told that a person of that kind is a poacher by nature and probably in act. Well, 'I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon than such a Roman' as the censor; rather a poacher than a prose-poet; and I will give reasons for rebellion. There is urgent need for plain-speaking on the subject.

Last season The Times, which has of late been paying much attention to field sports, published an article in praise of the Hampshire trout-streams and of the method of angling in them. Then the writer of a letter to the Editor made a strange statement. He said that in Hampshire artificially-bred and captive trout were fed on horse-flesh until they weighed two pounds; that they were turned into streams & few days before the arrival of anglers from London; and that these

tame fish were the game which the dry-fly purist, our censor, sometimes caught while admiring the wild flowers and the balmy wind. Could this be true? Was the South of England idyl rotten at the core? Other writers to The Times refused to believe the scandal, which was flouted in the journals of sport. Alas, the story, which had horrified anglers all over the land, turned out to be at least partly true. The truth was formally acknowledged. Anyone who has watched the rearing of trout in a glass tank, as in the aquarium to be seen at the Crystal Palace not long ago, will realise what the truth meant. Trout born and grown in a state of nature do not lose their instincts, some of which are self-protective; but trout brought up in captivity become tame and trusting. Throw a handful of thingsto-eat into the tank, or into the pond, and they will instantly rush at the tit-bits without the slightest fear. They would do so if each of the bits concealed a hook. Now, this acquired rashness continues for a considerable time after the fish have been put into a stream; indeed, there is reason for questioning whether the native instincts are ever recovered. What are we to think of the leisurely gentlemen who, catching fish of that kind, calmly assume and publicly declare that we rustic anglers, mainly in respect that we use more than one fly at a time and do not mind if the lures dip a little below the surface, take trout by unsportsmanlike methods?

Do not let us think anything uncharitable. There is no real reason to do so. The error is of the head rather than being of the heart. It is the result of the prose-poetry habit to which many anglers in the South have abandoned themselves. Esthetic emotions are not invariably good. Under their influence the brain may become as balmy as the breezes of an ordinary summer. Certainly it loses touch with the facts of nature. Except in respect that in the South it is generally recognised as bad form' to take trout of less than a certain size, all the notions of the Hampshire school, which is very influential among country cousins, are demonstrably absurd. Its limit to the variety of flies has been shown to be unnatural and therefore unscientific. The understanding that its method of angling, with one fly at a time and that fly oiled, is a much finer art than the method generally practised elsewhere is equally frail. The art, says one of its recent exponents reveringly, 'is to be studied almost with prayer and fasting.' Why, the trout of any Hampshire stream are at least as easily caught, either with wet fly or with dry, as those of any stream of similar size in any part of the United Kingdom! It is probable that this remark has never been published before; but it will be acknowledged true by any one whose experience enables him to judge. If The Times disclosure indicated a general practice, we cannot be astonished at that. The third notion to which we have adverted is that the dry-fly convention, by which angling is regulated in Hampshire, tends towards conservation of the stock. That is the