Angling Sketches | Page 4

had a hinge, and doubled up. I put the handle through a buttonhole of
my coat: I saw a big fish rising, I put a dry fly over him; the idiot took
it. Up stream he ran, then down stream, then he yielded to the rod and
came near me. I tried to unship my landing-net from my button-hole.
Vain labour! I twisted and turned the handle, it would not budge.
Finally, I stooped, and attempted to ladle the trout out with the short net;
but he broke the gut, and went off. A landing-net is a tedious thing to
carry, so is a creel, and a creel is, to me, a superfluity. There is never
anything to put in it. If I do catch a trout, I lay him under a big stone,
cover him with leaves, and never find him again. I often break my top
joint; so, as I never carry string, I splice it with a bit of the line, which I
bite off, for I really cannot be troubled with scissors and I always lose
my knife. When a phantom minnow sticks in my clothes, I snap the gut
off, and put on another, so that when I reach home I look as if a shoal
of fierce minnows had attacked me and hung on like leeches. When a
boy, I was--once or twice--a bait-fisher, but I never carried worms in
box or bag. I found them under big stones, or in the fields, wherever I
had the luck. I never tie nor otherwise fasten the joints of my rod; they
often slip out of the sockets and splash into the water. Mr. Hardy,
however, has invented a joint-fastening which never slips. On the other

hand, by letting the joint rust, you may find it difficult to take down
your rod. When I see a trout rising, I always cast so as to get hung up,
and I frighten him as I disengage my hook. I invariably fall in and get
half-drowned when I wade, there being an insufficiency of nails in the
soles of my brogues. My waders let in water, too, and when I go out to
fish I usually leave either my reel, or my flies, or my rod, at home.
Perhaps no other man's average of lost flies in proportion to taken trout
was ever so great as mine. I lose plenty, by striking furiously, after a
series of short rises, and breaking the gut, with which the fish swims
away. As to dressing a fly, one would sooner think of dressing a dinner.
The result of the fly-dressing would resemble a small blacking-brush,
perhaps, but nothing entomological.
Then why, a persevering reader may ask, do I fish? Well, it is stronger
than myself, the love of fishing; perhaps it is an inherited instinct,
without the inherited power. I may have had a fishing ancestor who
bequeathed to me the passion without the art. My vocation is fixed, and
I have fished to little purpose all my days. Not for salmon, an almost
fabulous and yet a stupid fish, which must be moved with a rod like a
weaver's beam. The trout is more delicate and dainty--not the sea-trout,
which any man, woman, or child can capture, but the yellow trout in
clear water.
A few rises are almost all I ask for: to catch more than half a dozen fish
does not fall to my lot twice a year. Of course, in a Sutherland loch one
man is as good as another, the expert no better than the duffer. The fish
will take, or they won't. If they won't, nobody can catch them; if they
will, nobody can miss them. It is as simple as trolling a minnow from a
boat in Loch Leven, probably the lowest possible form of angling. My
ambition is as great as my skill is feeble; to capture big trout with the
dry fly in the Test, that would content me, and nothing under that. But I
can't see the natural fly on the water; I cannot see my own fly,
Let it sink or let it swim.
I often don't see the trout rise to me, if he is such a fool as to rise; and I
can't strike in time when I do see him. Besides, I am unteachable to tie
any of the orthodox knots in the gut; it takes me half an hour to get the
gut through one of these newfangled iron eyes, and, when it is through,
I knot it any way. The "jam" knot is a name to me, and no more. That,
perhaps, is why the hooks crack off so merrily. Then, if I do spot a

rising trout, and if he does not spot me as I crawl