Salmon Fishing

By W. Earl Hodgson

Salmon is the name for several species of ray-finned fish in the family Salmonidae, which also includes trout, char, grayling and whitefish. Within this volume, the author presents a complete guide to salmon fishing, providing simple information and instructions on everything that a salmon fisher needs to know. Contents include: “Forming the Tag, Tail and Butt”, “Salmon Flies”, “Dressing the Salmon Fly”, “The Lesson”, “The Salmon Fly Rod, Reel, etc”, “Lessons in Casting”, “Fishing the salmon Fly in Low Water”, “Hooking and Playing the Fish”, “Hooks and Knots”, “Spinning for Salmon”, “Prawning and Worm Fishing”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in a modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on the history of fishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Country Books
• Release date: Mar 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528768559

Book preview

SALMON FISHING

CHAPTER I

SPIRIT OF THE CHASE

Cosmos and Man’s Mind—A Quality of Living Literature—Stag-Fright—Salmon-Fright—The Judge’s View—Experience Teaches—Off to the Fishing—A Jovial Millionaire—Wanderin’ i’ the Mind—How Fishing Differs from all Other Sports—A First Salmon—In Trouble on the Dee—The Vividness of Memory.

A POET, as the themes came in the progress of the year, wrote an ode to-Spring, an ode to Summer, an ode to Autumn, and an ode to Winter. His friend declared the cycle very fine indeed; but might he put a question? Graciously the minstrel bowed permission. Well, said the prosaist, I find that in each poem you proclaim the season you are writing about to be the best of all the year. This you do in good set terms. In Spring you flout the languors of Summer; in Summer you shudder at the crudity of Spring; in Autumn you sing of a lush ripeness, the lack of which left Summer immature; and Winter has a dignified serenity that neither Summer nor Autumn, and not the Spring, can equal. Now, that is perplexing. Surely each of the seasons cannot be the best? Besides, in your praise of each to the detriment of the others, you have denounced them all. What are we to make of that? To myself, awe-stricken witness of the colloquy, this speech seemed dangerously inconsiderate; and I expected an answer in wrath, perchance in violence. The poet’s hazel eyes flashed fire; but the emotion was not anger. It was ecstatic understanding. You mean, How do I reconcile the odes? he cried. I don’t do it at all! Not jesting, but speaking in deep seriousness, I say that I, with the seasons, am like that great man Lord L—— with the ladies. He always said he never was in love but once, and that was with the last one. So it is with myself. Each of these odes is the perfection of sincerity. Each is a faultless expression of feeling at the moment of utterance. They are all true! What matter if the truth be variable? There is no real conflict or incongruity. There is no discord. There are only those differences which constitute harmony. If my odes seem to be in conflict among themselves, that is because you hear them in a single hour. Nature herself would be a turmoil if all the seasons were simultaneous. Nature, in her orderly variableness, is latent poetry. Poetry, the articulation of Nature, is chaotic to the logician because logic is the science of the dense. Poetry has no appeal for the level-headed. To the levelheaded there is no statement, however profoundly true, that is not demonstrably absurd. That is what logic does. It applies itself to elemental things, which are never all of them present at any given moment, and becomes grotesquely arrogant in its unconscious incompetence. Truth of any value is never captured by the level-headed. That is a lesson which Poetry is constantly striving, though in vain, to teach. Take this subject of the odes. Is it the case, or is it not, that each season is the best? I say it is the case. As presented by Nature, perhaps it is, said the critic; one certainly would not have summer in December or winter in June. As presented by Nature? Of course! answered the poet. How otherwise could we deal with it? Art? the critic suggested. Ha! Your canons of Art, then, are but the limitations of the practical mind—defects of the mind in relation to reality, which is infinite? The Scot, with his logic, is as far astray as the Irishman, who has none! I cannot but observe, said the critic, that you use logic to destroy logic. Reason, not logic, said the poet,—reason to destroy logic. You split a hair? What then? It may be a very important act. The distinction may be vital. It is the small distinctions that are most easily overlooked. But what has size to do with the fundamental truth of things? Nature, the universe, the infinite, has no quality of size. Otherwise I should point out to you that the whole solar system is in the universe less than as a group of boroughs in this island. You take an untruth for granted when you speak of hair-splitting as if the phrase proved something. Nature has no relevant traffic in sizes. Size is no more than a convenient delusion of the practical human mind. It fits in usefully with the logic of those who, dealing with temporalities, such as architecture and politics, need to be empirically exact; but it has nothing to do with Nature. Reason has; but reason is not logic. Logic the most precise may be misleading; but reason, never. Reason is the sensitised imagination in conscious contact with external nature, receiving impressions and pondering them. Art is the reproduction of these impressions in symbols—colours and forms, words and sounds. Logic! Art, being a mirage of Nature, Nature reflected in the wondering human mind, has none of it. Reason? That is the beginning and the end of Art! Why? Because Nature, while never logical, is always, and supremely, rational.

There is comfort in recalling this conversation. It is good to feel assured that the spirit of the sportsman is in one respect identical with that of the supreme rationalist, the poet. The sportsman has the poet’s illogicality; he has also the poet’s vindication. Unquestionably the best of all pursuits by flood or field is that in which he chances to be engaged. But why, some one may ask, should there be any comparison at all? It would have been well to have on this point an opinion of counsel, the poet. I think I can divine what he would have said. The mind of the artist is something more than a sensitised plate. It is a plate that has been used before. It compares one set of impressions with another set or other sets. The contrast is necessary. There could be no reasoning, no art, without it. That explains and justifies certain undertakings often flouted by superior persons as ridiculous. It accounts for each and all of the many best hundred books; for the fact that our most equitable men cannot propose Science as a subject at the Universities without speaking despitefully of Greek; and for the inevitability with which the School of Humanities uphold the Classics by denouncing Science in terms that cannot be printed on a page so polite as this. Contrast is essential in all critical or artistic actions of the mind. Has some one, for example, stalked the red-deer and written a narrative of the chase? It may be that there seemed to be no conscious contrast with anything else in his enjoyment of the actual sport; but his narrative, if it be artistic, will be found to derive piquancy from a skilfully conveyed sense that the sport was a delightful interlude in humdrum occupations. Probably he will go so far as to treat his particular recreation as the best of sports. Why not? If he does, he falls in with a usage of the mind which, though it may be the source of antipathetic fallacies, has a result to be warmly welcomed. He becomes enthusiastic, as a poet is when at his best, and says what he has to say in words which, being the most cunningly arranged and the most attractive possible to him, are close to the truth as he perceives it. Literature born to immortality is in most cases, I think, of roseate hue and happy on the whole.

The immortals, as a rule, seem never to have time for field sports. The few exceptions I can think of at the moment are Walton, Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Lang, and Mr. Blackmore. A passage in Sir Walter here and there shows that the neglected vein is rich; and My Lord the Elephant, which has the atmosphere of sport, though not the motive, is the happiest of Mr. Kipling’s tales. What a book on Salmon Fishing we should have if a poet essayed the subject! Sport, like a battle, being not in rhythm, he would not write in verse; but he would bring to the task a gift in which we pedestrians of the prose plains are lacking. An ordinary vagabond, such as myself, sees all that he would see, and feels all that he would feel; but it is not easy to weave the countless incidents and circumstances, none omitted, into a life-like pattern of words. From the poet’s hands, the printed page, with all these thrown orderly upon it, would be a rousing magical lantern.

Emotions to be recollected in tranquillity are plentiful in the sport. A salmon on is a singularly agitating crisis. It is, I think, the most deliciously terrifying in the whole range of British sports. Do you know stag-fright? I may be asked. Yes; I do know stag-fright, of which I have had seven attacks. I had it, of course, when first, after nearly five miles of wary scrambling up a mountain, I found myself within range of a red-deer. Now! whispered the crouching stalker, meaning that I was to fire when he should put the stag up, and make him fair game, by whistling. He whistled. Fire? That was the one act of which I was incapable! I could not even raise the rifle. I could not think. I was vacuous. Volition was gone. It did not return until the stag was trotting over the sky-line. Stag-fright is no superstition. It is a cerebral state involving a strange and paralysing play upon the nerves. Still, I think that the equivalent excitement in salmon fishing is quite as lofty. It is not so dramatic; but that is only because in salmon fishing you are even less a voluntary agent. There is not the same long working-up to the critical moment. You know when you are at the red-deer, and then are struck as with a palsy, but you have no warning as to when the salmon will be at you, and are perforce comparatively resigned when he is. He lies unseen, and comes unexpectedly; and you are not so much as in deer-stalking dependent upon yourself. The stag cannot be shot by any action of his own; but the salmon may be hooked without deliberate effort on your part. Often he hooks himself and the issue is joined before you have time to be alarmed.

Nevertheless, there are known cases of salmon-fright. Any one who loses his first fish is liable to the infliction. On Loch Voil one of His Majesty’s Judges was catching trout. Suddenly, while he was drifting down the submerged river from Loch Doine, a strange commotion arose. His Lordship’s line cut whizzing through the water round the bow of the boat; the rod bent violently; twenty yards off, a great fish leaped into the air. When it crashed into the loch again the rod and the sportsman unbent. A salmon had come and gone. Next season, in the same month, the Judge and I were fishing on Loch Earn. That is a water in which salmon are very rare. The fish are plentiful in the Earn, almost up to its very source, which is the loch; but they are hardly ever found in the still water. Some say that this is because the loch is impregnated with minerals obnoxious to the salmon; but, as the minerals would go with the water into the river, in which the fish thrive splendidly, that cannot be the explanation. The absence of salmon in the loch is, I believe, accounted for by the excellence of the Ruchil, a stream joining the Earn a little way below the source, as a spawning ground. Instead of taking to the loch, the fish run up the Ruchil. Well, that morning we had not expected heavy baskets. Though April was well advanced, winter lingered. There was a strong wind from the east; the sky was heavy with a grey cloud; snow fell persistently. Still, as is often the case in spring, the trout were rising. We could not see any flies on the water; but our own sufficed to raise many a fish. As we were drifting along the south shore, what should I notice, opposite the ancient Keep of Edinample, about fifty yards off? A salmon! He rose out of the water. There was no mistaking. At least one salmon had strayed into Loch Earn. He was in a direct line from my companion, who was seated at the stern of the boat, while I was at the bow, nearer the shore. That is to say, if we went on as we were going the learned Judge’s flies would ere long fall over the fish. An evil thought beset me. Had his Lordship seen the rise? Perhaps not. He was not saying anything. His gaze was assiduously fixed on the water where his flies were falling. As he was so much absorbed, I might possibly, without being caught in the act, give the oars a touch and send the boat three or four yards out. Then I myself, rather than he, should have a chance of the salmon. This was a quickly fleeting rumination. That fish was clearly his Lordship’s bird. I banished the sneakish thought, and inwardly rebuked myself for having allowed it to arise. Silently on we went; silently; silently—until we were very nearly within casting distance of the fateful spot. Then, his line hanging loose in the water, his Lordship turned towards me and ordered me to pull in. Didn’t you see it? he growled, wrathfully. His tone and his countenance wore the thunderous aspect that would have been the befitting response to a practical joke. Indeed, he believed that I had such a prank in hand. He actually thought I had been wilfully leading him into the salmon’s way. Although, the wind being fresh, he was armed with his storm rod, fourteen feet of cane and lancewood, his Lordship was shirking the chance of again encountering a salmon!

Who shall blame him? When he has caught one salmon, the Judge will be as ready for the next as any seasoned sportsman; but it is not astonishing that recollection of his first battle, in which he was worsted, made him regard the prospect of another with trepidation. Any man who has fought and lost may well have salmon-fright until he has fought and won. The initial and imperfect experience makes a lasting impression on mind and nerves. Indeed, I think it is only because of knowledge that the great fish will probably be vanquished that any of us makes the venture. A fair analogy may be derived from meditation on fisticuffs. Many a one, I think, would be ill at ease if he knew he had to meet a noted bruiser to-morrow; but all is well when you are comfortably fighting. Anticipation is worse than the event. In salmon fishing the reassuring experience often comes through sheer good luck. A fish rises; he hooks himself; whether you wish it or not, you have to go on with the affair. You pull through successfully, and are a salmon fisher for ever afterwards. You will read eagerly every salmon-fishing book or article or paragraph that comes your way; often, when immersed in prosaic affairs of business or of politics or of society, your thoughts will wander to the water; and thither you will go whenever a holiday can be snatched. The prospect of sport is hardly less cheering than the sport itself. How joyful the afternoon that is spent in preparation for catching the Scotch Express! You do not travel by day. That would mean arriving at night and going to bed before going to fish, which were a procedure much too uninspiring. You are to travel by night, and to be on the water soon after the close of the journey. Tackle-shops have to be visited. Perhaps you want for nothing in the way of gear; but the zest has caught you, and the inclination to see what new flies there may be, whether any one has a new line or a new reel, how the gut crop has turned out, is not to be denied. Regularly a man of my acquaintance, when he has resolved to give himself a few days off, a week before the time of his departure takes all his rods, all his boxes of tackle, his gaff, and even his basket, to be looked to by a professional expert. Usually they are in no need of overhauling; but he cannot resist the opportunity to have grave deliberations about them. At ordinary times this man is engaged in the occupations of the working millionaire; but during the whole of that week nothing is allowed to distract attention from the great topic of the time. That pervades his thoughts and all the hours. Often I have been with him on his expeditions. Instead of retiring to rest in a Pullman car, as an ordinarily decorous Crœsus would do, he begins to unmask his batteries the moment the train is under weigh. The joints of every rod have to be examined; the flies have to be minutely discussed; the casts have to be tested. This, with the careful packing up again, keeps him going until York is reached, or Carlisle; at which place a morning journal is urgently needed. To see what Parliament has been doing? or what has chanced on the foreign Stock Exchanges? or whether some crisis in international statecraft is being composed or becoming acute? 0 no; all these have become affairs of no importance. It is the Weather Forecast that is wanted. If it is favourable in relation to needs of the time, all is well: this man, no longer a mere merchant prince, a gleeful schoolboy for the nonce, pictures to himself, and to me, the water at exactly the proper level, the wind in precisely the right direction, and the sky in ideal shades. If the forecast is unfavourable, why, all may still be well. The Meteorological Office is an absurd department. Over and over again it has gone wrong. It says, Variable light airs, or calm; a continuance of dry weather may be expected; but just look at the clouds! Isn’t that a watery moon? Without doubt there’s rain in the wind. The whole Highlands may be in a flood before we touch at Stirling. A slight tendency to doze overtakes him when we have crossed the Ochils; but it is not what it seems. High spirits are not exhausted. We do not now need to quit our seats until the journey is ended, and the butterfly sleep is only a way of saying to himself that we are practically at the riverside. At breakfast, after a bath and change of clothes, the gamekeeper, to our town-jaded eyes and ears a man of singularly brisk aspect and intelligence, sits, cap in hand, a cheerful glass before him, assuring us, in elaborate detail, that the river never was in better ply or so much astir with fresh-run fish.

All this is hardly less delightful than what we expect to follow. How is the spell of the sport to be explained?

Many would say that it springs from joy of the open air. At ordinary times they live in towns, engaged in the bustle of commerce or of social pleasure: to be amid fresh scenes, fresh sounds, fresh silences, is a relief. This one can understand; but it is scarce sufficient. Mr. H——, who resides in the Temple and is Recorder of a great town in Yorkshire, is one of those to whom fishing is pleasurable simply because it is a change of occupation. He came with the learned Judge and me to Loch Lubnaig, and one morning had been fishing by himself. I asked his gillie, who had come for some particular fly, how the Recorder was getting on. No vera weel, sir, said Angus, sighing. His e’en are no’ on the flees for mair than a second at a time. He’s aye for lookin’ at the ha’ks an’ the craws, up the hull. His Worship is an oarnithoaloger, or a penter, or somethin’ o’ that sort, maybe; but he’ll niver be a fisher. The Recoarder’s wanderin’ i’ the mind. Angus made this report with sad gravity, and, after examining the new fly, went away with no spring in his gait.

He was, I think, quite right. Some men are born to be sportsmen; others are not. To any one who has the instinct of the chase, the first salmon, probably caught at a time when his nature was most impressionable, is an undying influence. It was a unique event It was a surprise, something wholly different from any other experience. It was a successful effort of a peculiarly personal kind. His was the skill that raised the fish; his the nerve that fought and vanquished. Even the first ride to hounds, however glorious, is not equal to one’s first salmon. It is the dogs, not we ourselves, who hunt; in good truth, though it may seem otherwise amid the glee with which the merry god Pan fills his children, we are onlookers rather than actors. It is we alone who fish, however; we really, not in appearance only; and in fishing, more, perhaps, than in any other sport, we find ourselves. Sometimes, with the first salmon, the discovery is amid perceptions that in after years acquire an amusing fixity of tenure. That was my own case. In a rough part of the Fife Eden, during a Lammas flood, my phantom minnow, wielded by a trout rod, was arrested. I struck, expecting a trout, and seemed to be fast in a rock. That was only for a few seconds. Something of unusual weight and resolution moved across the pool, and then tore down-stream with a ferocity never before known. Up the high bank I scrambled while the reel whirled, and was off after the fish at a speed outpacing the wind. Across the stubble between a mill lead and the main stream, a boy, rod in hand, came flying to my assistance. On the other side of the river a white-haired gentleman in unworldly orders, out for a walk, quickened his steps towards a plank bridge a hundred yards off. When at length we were able to see the salmon, the boy, representing that the want of a gaff was a grave drawback, generously proposed to insert his tackle and grapple the fish by the tail. That would make sure, he said. The minister, beside us by this time, supported the suggestion; but my silence was not taken as consent. I felt that if the fish got off the disaster would be great; yet I was equally unwilling to have only a share in its capture. After much agitation, that salmon, not a large one, lay safely on the bank. Then the minister, who had been very pleasant in his remarks during the struggle, lifted up his voice and his silver-topped cane, and delivered an address. Upon my word, he did. I was to take a solemn lesson from what had happened. Patience and perseverance. They had overcome that salmon. They would overcome all the difficulties of life. Care, diligence, assiduity; no undue haste, which would always defeat its purpose. Even as I was to be a devoted servant of duty, so, in duty accomplished, I was always to be temperate in satisfaction. This discourse, to which I listened with downcast eyes, was strangely discomposing. It awoke, as if with a tug at the roots of thought, the analytic and critical spirit. It fanned dim dubiety into reason. The chastening could not have been more severe if I had lost the salmon. There seemed to be something wrong in the doctrine. I could not understand how any one could be reasonably held up as an example to himself. It was not, however, a sense of injustice that perturbed me most. What did that was a feeling of something weird, something neither human nor divine, in moral solicitude on an occasion such as that. Was there no happiness in this world that could do without improving? When the minister went away, the other boy laughed heartily and made grimaces, which was a natural and not unwise way of taking the incident; but I question whether he could have acted so had he been the hero and penitent of the hour. To myself, whose nerves and mind had by the struggle with the salmon been toned up into a state of acute perceptiveness, the incident was neither amusing nor evanescent. The white-haired gentleman wore a wideawake hat. Ever since then his school of thought and his type of head-dress have been depressing things, from which I have been inclined to flee.

This reminiscence is not set down