Places to Fish in Britain and Ireland - Footloose With a Fishing Rod

By W. Davies

This classic text offers the reader a personal and detailed account of one man's experiences fishing in the British Isles. These entertaining stories will appeal to those with a love of fishing, and it would make for a wonderful addition to collections of allied literature. Contents Include: “Thirty Years' Wandering", "The Lake District", "In and Around Dartmoor and Cornwall", "Around Durham and Northumberland", "The Broads-Coarse Fisherman's Paradise", "Around London", "A Famous Lake is Blagdon", "Angling in Manxland", "Scotland-Land of Fish and Beauty", "The Scottish Highlands-Inverness-shire and Argyllshire", "Scotland Continued-Ross-Shire and Sutherland", "Loch Leven and Loch Lomond", etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on fishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473382640

Book preview

Erne

CHAPTER I

THIRTY YEARS’ WANDERING

YES; there can be no doubt about it. Cold weather has arrived. The bleak, blighting north-easter heralds with its blast the advent of rheumatism, dear coals and fireside felicity. Outside while I write all is wild, and wet, and windy. The skies wear the blackest crepe and are weeping over the grave of autumn. The black bare boughs of the trees shiver with cold. The faded leaves, chased by the wind, are huddling themselves together in close corners, as if to seek mutual warmth; but the Spirit of the Storm ever and anon with a shriek bids them move on. It is a withering wind, laughing derisively at the most voluminous overcoat, and mocking the warmest woollens; a vicious wind, sneering at you through the window-panes and sending a spiteful message of wet down the chimney to damp the geniality of the friendly fire.

By various influences and agents the Past is summoned before us, more vivid than a dream. The process seems as magical as those whereof we read in fairy legends, where circles are drawn, wands waved, mystic syllables pronounced. Adjured by these rites, voices speak, or forms and faces shape themselves from nothing. So, through certain influences, not magical at all, our brains are made to flash with visions of other days. Is there among us one to whom this experience is unknown? For whom no particular strain of music, or no special perfume, is linked with an inveterate association? Music and perfumes are among the most potent of these evocatory agents, but many more exist.

Dates and anniversaries also perform the same office as perfumes and music.

FADED PAGES

I have a bundle of old angling diaries on the table before me representative of over fifty years’ wandering with rods and sketchbook; I have been looking through them in search of a lost address and, although discovering the most unexpected entries cannot meet with the missing one. Only a pile of old diaries, yet what a store of mental wizardry they enshrine! Faded pages, but embalmed memories. Their talismanic power transports me to far-away scenes and to bygone days. The sight of an old name will bring back the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still and will unite friends severed by wide continents and raging seas.

A combination of fishing and travelling has the important advantage of rendering the traveller quite independent of that problem of all tourists—bad weather.

No matter how unkind the elements the angler can nearly always find a kindred spirit or two on the water or if the weather is too bad there is always someone to swop yarns with. Believe me this can be time well invested for the more local data one can obtain about baits, flies, etc., the better. On the other hand the ordinary sight-seeing tourist if unsuitable weather prevails usually becomes bored with himself and eventually bores most people he comes in contact with. The weather has prevented him from seeing this or that and the time factor will now not allow him to do what he had intended.

My life has been considerably enriched by the many kindly folk I have met, people one would never have come in contact with but for the Open Sesame of rod and tackle. Those who rush hither and thither have little time to make friends for to use an old phrase They are here today and gone tomorrow. Anglers are the same everywhere irrespective of their walk in life, never more happy than when talking about their sport to a brother angler. Nationality and politics are forgotten.

RENEWING YOUTH

As the years have caused life to become more and more perplexing, man has become more and more prone to seek escape from tribulation in places where tranquillity dwells. He turns with eager longing to alluring watercourses where each pool and riffle is a mystery, offering perhaps a thrill and a reward to him who is proficient with rod and line.

In ever-increasing numbers men and women are heeding that invitation, going with glad faces to the wilderness where the spirit of youth takes possession of the heart no matter how aged the body may be.

Hence the astonishing increase in the number of anglers in this country, who when spring arrives go out to wet a line, drown a worm, cast a fly, and get one big enough so that the story of the trip won’t be entire prevarication.

The fisherman intent on angling for angling’s sake only, can obtain excellent sport with salmon, sea trout and trout in Devon and Cornwall while the sea fishing is of the very best. No reasonable angler can wish for better. But he who, besides being a lover of the gentle art, has a soul for scenery and a relish for the vicissitudes of travel has advantages indeed. When tired of wielding his rod he turns to enjoy natural beauty under every mood, in its wildest or its most tranquil aspects. And he is ready, like De Quincey, to fraternise with and to observe every kind of man.

The kindly feeling which grows up between the wandering fisherman and those whom he meets, is one of the pleasantest features of this mode of holiday-making. In general it will be found that the best fishing, the most picturesque scenes and the most economical hotels are in by-ways away from the main travelling roads and that the best fishing is by the side of some little-frequented stream, or on the banks of some solitary lake.

There is yet another pleasing attraction for the tourist who fishes as he goes. This may be termed the natural history attraction; for not only are fresh varieties of fish made familiar to the angler to whom the salmon, trout, grayling, pike and general species of his home serve as the personification of all freshwater fish, but even new species are observed under entirely new conditions and no fisherman of any intelligence who happens to spend a few days among the lakes of Westmorland and Cumberland, will fail to make the acquaintance of that excellent fish—the char.

If interested in folk-lore as well as good fishing the visiting angler is well catered for in the castle-haunted region which marks the borderland of England and Wales, where strife was frequent and strongholds were built on every coign of vantage by either side to keep the other side in check.

In the more mountainous districts of Wales where fishing is exceedingly good and cheap, it is remarkable how many curious and characteristic legends may be found connected with different lakes and streams.

For the wandering angler who is after records Scotland or Ireland are the countries most likely to provide them for many species of fresh and saltwater.

IN RETROSPECT

But to return. My diaries also form a personal museum, for in them are kept pieces of the casts, left to me after I had been broken by an extra big one. Flies that have seen so much service as to be denuded of their former beauty, hooks that have lost their sting at the crucial moment, broken top rings and pieces of frayed lines all find a place in my diary museum.

There’s a white-and-yellow nondescript fly that accounted for a 22-lb. salmon from the Skeena (British Columbia). It was tied for me by an Indian trapper who along with other Indians was busy spearing salmon to be cured in the smoke lodges to provide winter food for their families and dogs.

Then there’s that Feathero Minnow with indentations of a pike’s teeth, reminding me of a tussle on an Irish lough. That particular artificial caught no less than thirty-one pike ranging from 25-lb. to 9-lb. before it was placed on the retired list.

Next to it is a Silver Doctor (salmon fly) which brings back memories of the many patients it lured to my gaff. A black spider trout fly, now little more than a hook, recalls the sport I had in Finland among the giant grayling of the Paatsjoki shortly before the Russians overwhelmed the Finns.

A broken agate top ring sets my mind racing back over the years to a fight with a three-pounder on Loch Leven which was only secured by the agility of the boatman. A frayed piece of line and the line guard responsible brings to mind the large salmon I lost on the River Orchy (Scotland) after an hour’s battle, and so it goes on. Thoughts and pictures conjured up by my diaries.

Like many another sportsman whose profession or business is both confining and exacting, I expect much of my annual holiday. A change of scenery and climate are not enough. I want a complete change from my usual mode of living in the city and an opportunity for relaxation that I can find nowhere but wandering along the banks of a salmon or trout stream where long, fatiguing days with the rod can be followed by refreshing rest.

However, it is not only the simple delight of catching fish but the fact that on the banks of a stream or lake one is closer to Nature than anywhere else.

THE BEAUTY OF CAMPING

I can think of few holidays more restful or more exciting than one spent camping beside a clear, pine-fringed Scottish loch. A comfortable tent, set not far from the water’s edge, some fishing tackle and camping equipment—that is enough to ensure a happy holiday.

Early in the morning, when the mists still hang close to the water; before the sun has begun to tip the trees with gold—that’s the time to be up and after ’em. This is especially if it’s trout you’re seeking.

A particularly heavy blast on the window-panes recalls me from my reverie and to a consciousness of the withering wind and cheerless rain outside. As I lift my eyes I note the several pictures on the walls of my den, the rough sketches for which were executed during those dead periods when no matter how I tried the fish remained aloof to my lures. Prints from several of these pictures illustrate this work.

In several of the countries visited I have been amazed at the extraordinary ways of fishing which are not the result of ignorance, but of that ingenuity which is always rendered fruitful by dire necessity and the instincts of self-support. However, it is not my intention to describe the methods of taking fish in foreign countries, rather it is to place on record a few of the spots in these Isles of ours where the wandering angler can be sure of enjoying himself with the minimum of cost.

There are, of course, certain limitations which are placed upon those opportunities for the most of us, but they are limits of time and purse rather than of nature. For if we have the time and cash we can find the sport at any time of the year. Fortunately, however, in our reading, time and money offer no travel barriers. We can journey anywhere we like. So it will be in this book, for if you peruse its pages carefully, you’ll be able to cover considerable territory without moving from your own easy chair.

My wife informs me that I have been an unconscionable time in finding that lost address and begins to go through my diaries herself, thinking she may be more successful in her search. While she is busily engaged let me try and entertain you. Who knows, maybe, after reading what I have to say you will be smitten with the urge to do likewise. If so my earnest wish is that you will have as much enjoyment out of your wanderings as I have had out of mine. One thing is certain, you are bound to make many friends and with their fishing knowledge added to your own you should after a few years be able to say, Well, at last I know a little about this fishing game.

You will never learn it all, no one ever has, but that deep and diversified appeal of wandering and casting out a line into the unknown