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    The Best Fishing Stories Ever Told
    The Best Fishing Stories Ever Told
    The Best Fishing Stories Ever Told
    Ebook899 pages13 hours

    The Best Fishing Stories Ever Told

    By Nick Lyons and David Halberstam

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    The Best Fishing Stories Ever Told celebrates the art of hunting fish at many angles. This ancient tradition is practiced all over the world. Tales of baiting, angling, and the watery outdoors are recounted by great writers such as Rudyard Kipling, Guy de Maupassant, and Lord Byron. In scenic rivers, lakes, and seas, praise the trout, snap up that salmon, angle, aim, and sing the fisherman’s song! This superbly presented collection of fishing stories will set the reader sailing on the Loch or along the Thames and tracking down sharks or carp in many exciting waterways.

    You will find memories, essays, true stories, and fishing accounts more or less exaggerated or imagined. Their authors and their editor, Nick Lyons, all share a communicable passion for a great day out fishing—a passion only surpassed by the love of telling the tale with or without the catch to show!

    With work by more than one hundred of the world’s most eminent authors and fishermen, including:
    • John McPhee
    • Howell Raines
    • Ted Leeson
    • Jimmy Carter
    • Lefty Kreh
    • Dave Barry
    • Norman Maclean
    • Rudyard Kipling
    • And many more!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSkyhorse
    Release dateSep 8, 2010
    ISBN9781628731101
    The Best Fishing Stories Ever Told
    Author

    David Halberstam

    David Halberstam was one of America's most distinguished journalists and historians, a man whose newspaper reporting and books have helped define the era we live in. He graduated from Harvard in 1955, took his first job on the smallest daily in Mississippi, and then covered the early civil rights struggle for the Nashville Tennessean. He joined The New York Times in 1960, went overseas almost immediately, first to the Congo and then to Vietnam. His early pessimistic dispatches from Vietnam won him the Pulitzer in 1964 at the age of thirty. His last twelve books, starting with The Best and the Brightest and including The Powers That Be, The Reckoning, and The Fifties, have all been national bestsellers. Thirty-eight years after Mr. Halberstam won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Vietnam, War in a Time of Peace was the runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. He died in April 2007.

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      The Best Fishing Stories Ever Told - Nick Lyons

      INTRODUCTION

      What a lot of fun I’ve had collecting the stories, memoirs, articles, and poems in this book. It is probably the largest, fullest, and most diverse collection of this sort ever compiled. And its very diversity and fullness are what excite me most—and what I predict will appeal to the vast number of people who share a love of fishing.

      Surely there is a bond—too little acknowledged, I fear—between the catfish angler and the fly fisher. Both pursue a creature from that mysterious element, water, with some sort of bait, lure, or feathered thing. People have been fishing for a long time and parts of the practice have changed radically. Still, the early fish-hook (about which you can read an excellent essay in this book) persists, albeit in subtle new variations. The fishing done by a boy sometimes remains the same or sometimes evolves into one of many new forms. In this anthology, you will find both tradition and change—and some wonderful surprises, too.

      There are selections from and about the earliest days of angling. There is a long section on warm-water fishing that includes some of James Henshall’s classic writing about the small and largemouth basses and has John McPhee on shad, the founding fish; Ted Leeson on bluegill; James Prosek on eels; and John James Audubon on fishing for catfish in the Ohio River. Muskies, pike, bow-fin, pickerel, and carp are not wanting here, either.

      A special section on salt-water angling includes writing about fishing for bonefish, sharks, tuna, weakfish, and the great tarpon. A longer section covers the trout and the variety of ways we fish for it (a good deal of the time with flies). Paul O’Neil’s brilliant, often overlooked, essay In Praise of Trout—And Also Me, caps this section. It was originally published in Life Magazine and is surely one of the best modern pieces of its kind; I’m proud to include it.

      Howell Raines contributes a wonderful adventure narrative from his new book, The One That Got Away, and John Bryan’s The Miramichi it ain’t—which takes place much closer to home, in New York’s Hudson River—is a wonderful example of how exciting and adventuresome fishing nearby can be. You don’t have to go to the Himalayas for mahseer for real adventure—though that’s here too.

      There is much here about the variety of folks who fish—the famous (like Zane Grey, various presidents, and the great Norman Maclean) and the not-sofamous (but perhaps more addicted) people who bottom fish, fish with worms or fish with flies—and their passions, foibles and ways of doing this thing so many of us love.

      And at the end I’ve included over twenty of my favorite stories, by de Maupassant, Kipling, John Taintor Foote, G. E. M. Skues and others. Forgive me if I’ve slipped in one I wrote, which rarely gets republished.

      I hope you have as much fun reading this collection as I had bringing its pieces together from the vast world of writing about fishing. I hope you will be inspired to find more writings by the authors you most enjoy here, a good number of whom you’ll probably be reading for the first time.

      We spend more time off the water than on it. I hope you’ll find those days at home a bit more enjoyable in the company of these memorable authors, anglers all.

      Nick Lyons

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      PART I

      EARLY DAYS—OF IT AND US

      e9781616080563_i0004.jpg

      THE PRIMITIVE FISH-HOOK

      BARNET PHILLIPS

      I have before me an illustrated catalogue of modern fish-hooks and angling implements, and in looking over its pages I find an embarrass de choix. I have no need for rods, for mine, like well-kept violins, have rather improved by age. A lashing may be frayed, or a ferrule loose, but fifteen minutes’ pleasant work will make my rods all right again. Lines are sound, for I have carefully stretched them after use. But my hooks! They are certainly the worse for wear. I began my season’s fishing with a meager stock. Friends borrowed from me, and in replenishing my fly-book in an out-of-the-way place, the purchase was unsatisfactory. As I lost more than one fish from badly tempered or worse fashioned hooks, I recalled a delightful paper by Mr. Froude. Rod in hand, he was whipping some pleasant trout stream, near an historic site, the home of the Russells, and, breaking his hooks, commenced from that very moment to indulge in the gloomiest forebodings as to the future of England.

      Fairly familiar with the general character of fishing-gear, either for business or amusement, I see in my book, Kirby, Limerick, Dublin, O’Shaughnessy, Kinsey, Carlisle, Harrison, Central Draught, as somewhat distant families of hooks, used for sea or river fishing, and from these main stocks there grow many varieties, with all conceivable twists, quirls, and crookednesses. I discard all trap-hooks, infernal machines working with springs, as only adapted for the capture of land animals. Somehow I remember an aggressive book, given to me at an early age, which, containing more than one depressing passage, had one of extraordinary malevolence. This was couched nearly as follows: Suppose you were translated only some seven hundred years back, then, pray, what would you be good for? Could you make gunpowder? You have, perhaps, a vague idea that sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal are the component parts, but do you know where or how they are procured? I forget whether this dispiriting author was not equally harrowing in regard to the youthful reader’s turning off a spectroscope at a minute’s notice, or wound up with the modest request that you should try your hand among the Crusaders with an aneroid barometer of your own special manufacture.

      Still this question arises: Suppose you were famishing, though fish were plenty in a stream, and you had neither line nor hook, What would you do? Now, has a condition of this kind ever occurred? Yes, it has, and certainly thousands of times. Not so many years ago, the early surveyors of the Panama route suffered terrible privations from the want of fishing implements. The rains had rendered their powder worthless; they could not use their guns. Had they only been provided with hooks and lines, they could have subsisted on fish. Then there are circumstances under which it would be really necessary for a man to be somewhat of a Jack-of-all-trades, and to be able to fashion the implements he might require, and so this crabbed old book might, after all, act in the guise of a useful reminder. There was certainly a period, when every man was in a condition of comparative helplessness, when his existence depended on his proficiency in making such implements as would catch fish or kill animals. He must fashion hooks or something else to take fish with, or die.

      Probably man, in the first stage of his existence, took much of his food from the water, although whether he did or not might depend upon locality. If on certain portions of the earth’s surface there were stretches of land intersected by rivers, dotted by lakes, or bordering on the seas, the presence of shell-fish, the invertebrates or the vertebrates, cetaceans and fish, to the exclusion of land animals, might have rendered primitive man icthyophagous, or dependent for subsistence upon the art of fishing. But herein we grapple at once with that most abstruse of all problems, the procession of life. Still, it is natural to suppose, so far as the study of man goes, when considered in relation to his pursuits, that in the early dawn of humanity, mammals, birds, and fish must have been synchronous.

      After brute instinct, which is imitativeness, then came shiftiness and adaptiveness. The rapid stride of civilization, considered in its material sense, is due solely to the use of such implements as are specially adapted for a particular kind of work. With primitive man, this could never have been the case. Tools of the Paleolithic or Neolithic age (which terms indicate stages of civilization, but are not chronological), whether they were axes, hammers, or arrows, must have served river-drift or cave-men for more than a single purpose. People with few tools do manage by skill alone to adapt these to a variety of ends. The Fijian and the Russian peasant, one with a stone adze, the other with a hatchet, bring to their trades the minimum of tools. The Kafir, with his assegai, fights his battles, kills cattle, carves his spoons, and shaves himself. It was only as man advanced that he devised special tools for different purposes.

      According to our present acquaintance with primitive habits, if man existed in the later Miocene age, and used a lance or spear for the killing of land animals, he probably employed the same weapons for the destruction of the creatures—possibly of gigantic form—inhabiting the seas, lakes, and rivers. The presence of harpoons made of bone, found in so many localities, belonging to a later period, may not in all cases point to the existence of animals, but to the presence of large fish.

      Following, then, closely the advance of man, when his fishing implements are particularly considered, we are inclined to believe that he first used the spear for taking fish; next, the hook and line; and, lastly, the net. There might have been an intermediate stage between the spear and the hook, when the bow and arrow were used.

      Interesting as is the whole subject of primitive fishing, we are, however, to occupy ourselves principally with the form of the primitive fish-hook. To-day, there are some careful archaeologists who are not willing to accept that particular form which is presented below. I believe, from the many reasons which can be advanced, that this simple form was the first device used by man in taking fish with a line. The argument I shall use is in some respects a novel one.

      e9781616080563_i0005.jpg

      These illustrations, exactly copied to size, represent a small piece of dark, polished stone. It was found in the valley of the Somme, in France, and was dug out of a peat-bed twenty-two feet below the surface. The age of this peat-bed has been variously estimated. M. Boucher de Perthes thought that thirty thousand years must have elapsed since the lowest layer of peat was formed. The late Sir Charles Lyell and Sir John Lubbock, without too strict an adherence to date, believed that this peat-bed represented in its formation that vast lapse of time which began with the commencement of the Neolithic period. Later authorities deem it not older than seven thousand years B. C.

      Wonderful changes have come to pass since this bit of polished stone was lost in what must have been a lake. Examining this piece of worked stone, which once belonged to a prehistoric man living in that valley, we find it fairly well polished, though the action of countless years has slightly weathered or disintegrated its once smooth surface. In the center, a groove has been cut, and the ends of the stone rise slightly from the middle. It is rather crescent-shaped. It must have been tied to a line, and this stone gorge was covered with a bait; the fish swallowed it, and, the gorge coming crosswise with the gullet, the fish was captured.

      The evolution of any present form of implement from an older one is often more cleverly specious than logically conclusive; nevertheless, I believe that, in this case, starting with the crude fish-gorge, I can show, step by step, the complete sequence of the fish-hook, until it ends with the perfected hook of to-day. It can be insisted upon even that there is persistence of form in the descendants of this fish-gorge, for, as Professor Mitchell writes in his Past in the Present, an old art may long refuse to disappear wholly, even in the midst of conditions which seem to be necessarily fatal to its continued existence.

      In the Swiss lakes are found the remains of the Lacustrine dwellers. Among the many implements discovered are fish-gorges made of bronze wire. When these forms are studied, the fact must be recognized at once that they follow, in shape and principle of construction, the stone gorges of the Neolithic period. Now, it is perfectly well known that the early bronze-worker invariably followed the stone patterns. The Lacustrine gorges have had the name of bricole given them. This is a faithful copy of a bronze bricole found in the Lake of Neufchatel. It is made of bronze wire, and is bent in the simplest way, with an open curve allowing the line to be fastened to it. The ends of the gorge are very slightly bent, but they were probably sharpened when first made.

      e9781616080563_i0006.jpge9781616080563_i0007.jpg

      This bricole varies from the rather straight one found in the Lake of Neufchatel, and belongs to a later period. It is possible to imagine that the lakedweller, according to his pleasure, made one or the other of these two forms of fishing implements. As the double hook required more bronze, and bronze at first was very precious, he might not have had material enough in the early period to make it. This device is, however, a clever one, for a fisherman of to-day who had lost his hook might imitate it with a bit of wire. Had any member of the hungry Isthmus party before mentioned known this form of Lacustrine hook, he might have twisted some part of a suspender buckle, providing there were no thorny plants at hand, and have caught fish.

      e9781616080563_i0008.jpg

      When we compare the four forms, showing only their outlines, the evolution of the fish-hook can be better appreciated. Returning to the stone fish-gorge, the work of the Neolithic period, it is evident that the man of that time followed the shape handed down to him by his ancestors; and as this fashioned stone from the valley of the Somme is of a most remote period, how much older must have been the Paleolithic fish-gorge of rough stone. It might have been with a splinter of flint attached to some tendril, in lieu of a line, that the first fish was taken.

      e9781616080563_i0009.jpg

      It is very curious to learn that in France a modification of this gorge-hook is in use to-day for catching eels. A needle is sharpened at its eye-end, a slight groove is made in the middle of it, and around this some shreds of flax are attached. A worm is spitted, a little of the line being covered with the bait.

      e9781616080563_i0010.jpg

      Not eels alone are taken with this needle, for M. de la Blanchere informs us that many kinds of fish are caught with it in France.

      Any doubts as to the use of the Neolithic form of fish-gorge must be removed when it can be insisted upon that precisely this form of implement was in use by our Indians not more than forty years ago. In 1878, when studying this question of the primitive hook, I was fortunate enough to receive direct testimony on the subject. My informant, who in his younger days had lived among the Indians at the head-waters of Lake Superior, said that in 1846 the Indians used a gorge made of bone to catch their fish. My authority, who had never seen a prehistoric fish-gorge, save the drawing of one, said that the Indian form was precisely like the early shape, and that the Chippewas fished some with the hook of civilization, others with bone gorges of a primitive period.

      In tracing the history of the fish-hook, it should be borne in mind that an overlapping of periods must have taken place. By this is meant, that at one and the same time an individual employed tools or weapons of various periods. To-day, the Western hunter lights his fire with a match. This splinter of wood, tipped with phosphorus, the chlorates, sulfur, or paraffin, represents the progress made in chemistry from the time of the alchemists. But this trapper is sure to have stowed away in his pouch, ready for an emergency, his flint and steel. The Esquimau, the Alaskan, shoots his seal with an American repeating rifle, and, in lieu of a knife, flays the creature with a flint splinter. The net of the Norseman is to-day sunk with stones or buoyed with wood,—certainly the same devices as were used by the early Scandinavian,—while the net, so far as the making of the thread goes, is due to the best modern mechanical appliances. Survival of forms requires some consideration apart from that of material, the first having the much stronger reasons for persistence. It is, then, very curious to note that hooks not made of iron and steel, but of bronze, or alloys of copper, are still in use on the coast of Finland, as I have quite recently obtained brass hooks from Northern Europe such as are commonly in use by fishermen there.

      e9781616080563_i0011.jpg

      The origin of the double hook having been, I believe, satisfactorily explained, to make the barb on it was readily suggested to primitive man, as he had used the same device on fish-spears and harpoons.

      This double-barbed hook from the Swiss lakes is quite common. Then, from the double to the single hook the transition was rapid. Single bronze hooks of the Lacustrine period sometimes have no barb. Such differences as exist are due to the various methods of attaching the line.

      e9781616080563_i0012.jpg

      In Professor A. M. Mayer’s collection there is a Lacustrine bronze hook, the shank of which is bent over parallel with the stem of the hook. This hook is a large one, and must have been used for big fish—probably the trout of the Swiss lakes.

      Hooks made of stone are exceedingly rare, and though it is barely possible that they might have been used for fish, I think this has not been conclusively shown. Wilson gives, in his work, drawings of two stone hooks which were found in Scandinavia. Though the theory that these stone objects were fashioned for fishing is supported by so good an authority as Mr. Charles Rau, the archaeologist of the United States National Museum at Washington, it does not seem to me possible that these hooks could have been made for fishing. Such forms, from the nature of the material, would have been exceedingly difficult to fashion, and, even if made, would have presented few advantages over the primitive gorge.

      e9781616080563_i0013.jpg

      This, however, must be borne in mind: in catching fish, primitive man could have had no inkling of the present curved form of fish-hook, which, with its barb, secures the fish by penetration. A large proportion of sea-fish, and many river-fish, swallow the hook, and are caught, not by the hook entering the jaws of the fish, but because it is fastened in their stomachs. In the Gloucester fisherman’s language of to-day, a fish so captured is called poke-hooked; and accordingly, when the representative of the Neolithic period fished in that lake in the valley of the Somme, all the fish he took must have been poke-hooked. A bone hook, excellent in form, has been found near the remains of a huge species of pike (Esox). Hooks made of the tusks of the wild boar have also been discovered with Lacustrine remains.

      e9781616080563_i0014.jpg

      In commenting on the large size of the bone hook figured in Wilson’s work, its proximity to the remains of large fish was noticed. When the endless varieties of hooks belonging to savage races are subjects of discussion, the kind of fish they serve for catching should always be cited. In the examples of hooks which illustrate works of travel, a good many errors arise from the simple fact that the writers are not fishermen. Although the outline of a hook be accurately given, the method of securing it to the line is often incorrectly drawn.

      e9781616080563_i0015.jpg

      In the engraving on this page, an Alaskan halibut-hook is represented. The form is a common one, and is used by all the savage races of the Pacific; but the main interest lay in the manner of tying the line to this hook. Since the fish to be caught was the halibut, the form was the best adapted to the taking of the Hippoglossus Americanus; but had the line been attached in any other way than exactly as represented, this big fish could hardly have been caught with such a hook.

      e9781616080563_i0016.jpg

      In the drawing, the halibut-hook hangs but slightly inclining toward the sea-bottom, the weight of the bait having a tendency to lower it. In this position it can be readily taken by the fish; but should it be suspended in a different way, it must be at once seen how difficult it would be for the fish to swallow it. In this Alaskan hook must be recognized the very first idea of what we call to-day the center-draught hook. A drawing is also given of a steel hook of a peculiar form coming from Northern Russia. The resemblance between the Alaskan and this Russian hook is at first apparently slight, but they both are, nevertheless, constructed on the same principle. When this Russian hook is seized by the fish, and force is applied to the line by the fisherman, the point of the barb and the line are almost in one and the same direction. Almost the same may be said of the Alaskan hook. Desirous of testing the capabilities of this hook, I had a gross made after the Russian model, and sent them to Captain J. W. Collins, of the United States Fish Commission, stationed at Gloucester, requesting him to distribute them among the fishermen. While writing this article, I am in receipt of a letter from Captain Collins, informing me that these hooks are excellent, the captains of fishingsmacks reporting that a great many deepsea fish were taken with them.

      e9781616080563_i0017.jpge9781616080563_i0018.jpg

      A study of these hooks—the Alaskan and the Russian—with reference to the method of attaching the line, explains, I think, the peculiarity of certain shell-hooks of great antiquity found in California which have puzzled archaeologists. These hooks, the originals of which are to be found in the National Museum at Washington, are shown in the following engravings. The notch cut in one of the hooks seems to show that the line was attached at that place. Hang the hooks in any other position and they would catch no fish, for one could hardly suppose that the blunt barb could penetrate the mouth of the fish.

      e9781616080563_i0019.jpg

      If there be some doubt entertained by American archaeologists as to the use of these shell-hooks, there can be none in regard to their having barbs. The barbs turn outward, in which respect they differ from all the primitive European hooks I have seen. In confirmation of the idea advanced as to the proper place of attaching the line, Professors C. C. Abbott and F. W. Putnam, in a chapter entitled Implements and Weapons made of Bone and Wood, in the United States Geographical Survey, west of the hundredth meridian, write, referring to these hooks: These hooks are flattened and are longer than wide . . . The barbs in these specimens are judged by fishermen of to-day to be on the wrong side of a good fish-hook, and the point is too near the shank. By having the line so fastened that the point of tension is at the notch at the base of the shank, instead of at the extreme end of the stem, the defect of the design of the hook would be somewhat remedied, as the barb would be forced down, so that it might possibly catch itself in the lower jaw of the fish that had taken the hook. The summing up of this is, I think, that in an imperfect way the maker of this Santa Barbara hook had some idea of the efficiency of a center-draught hook. As the first step in manufacturing this hook, a hole was drilled in the shell, and the hook finished up afterward by rounding the outside. Dr. West, of Brooklyn, has a series of such primitive work in his collection.

      To advance the idea that in all cases hooks have been improved by slightly increased culture among semi-civilized races would be a source of error. It is quite possible that in many instances there has been retrogression from the better forms of fishing implements once in use. This relapse might have been brought about, not so much by a decrease of intelligence, as changes due to fortuitous causes. A fishing race might have been driven away from a shore or a river-bank and replaced by an inland people.

      Some primitive races still use a hook made from a thorn, and in this practice we find to-day a most wonderful survival. On the coast of France, hooks made of thorns are still used to catch fish, the fishermen representing that they possess the great advantage of costing nothing and of not fouling on the sea-bottom. The Piutes take the spine of a cactus, bending it to suit their purpose, and very simple barbless hooks of this kind may be seen in the collections of the National Museum at Washington.

      e9781616080563_i0020.jpg

      Undoubtedly, in primitive times, hooks of a compound character were used. Just as men tipped a deer’s antler with a flint, they combined more than one material in the making of their hooks, lashing together a shank of bone or wood with a bronze barb. It would be almost impossible in a single article to follow all the varieties of hooks used and the ingenuity displayed in their manufacture. Occasionally, a savage will construct a lure for fish which rivals the daintiest fly ever made by the most fastidious of anglers. In Professor Mayer’s collection there is an exceedingly clever hook, coming from the North-western coast, which shows very fine lapidary work. A small red quartoze pebble of great hardness has been rounded, polished, and joined to a piece of bone. The piece is small, not more than an inch and three-quarters in length, and might weigh an ounce and a half. In the shank of bone a small hook is hidden. It somewhat imitates a shrimp. The parts are joined together by lashings of tendon, and these are laid in grooves cut into the stone. It must have taken much toil to perfect this clever artificial bait, and, as it is to-day, it might be used with success by a clever stripedbass fisherman at Newport.

      In this necessarily brief study of primitive fishing, I have endeavored to show the genesis of the fish-hook, from the stone gorge to the more perfected implement of to-day. Simple as it may seem, it is a subject on which a good deal of research is still requisite. It is not an acquaintance with a single series of things which can throw light on any subject, but a thorough comparison of the whole of them. If in the Swiss lakes there are found bronze hooks of a very large size, out of proportion to the fish which swim there to-day, it is but just to suppose that, many thousands of years ago, long before history had its dawn, the aquatic fauna were then of greater bulk than in 1883. Considerations of the primitive form of the fish-hook must even comprehend examination of prior geological conditions, differences of land and water, or such geographical changes as may have taken place. Then ichthyology becomes an important factor, for by the character of the hook, the kind of fish taken, in some instances, may be understood. We are fast coming to this conclusion: that, putting aside what can only be the merest speculations as to the condition of man when he is said to have first diverged from the brute, he was soon endowed with a wonderful degree of intelligence. And, if I am not mistaken, primitive man did not confine himself in his fishing to the rivers and lakes alone, but went out boldly to sea after the cod.

      e9781616080563_i0021.jpg

      ÆLIAN—THE MACEDONIAN INVENTION, OR THE FIRST MENTION OF AN ARTIFICIAL FLY

      WILLIAM RADCLIFFE

      "They knew’e stole; ’e knew they knowed;

      They did not tell, or make a fuss,

      But winked at Ælian down the road,

      And ’e winked back—the same as us!"¹

      Ælian (170-230 A. D.), who, though born in Italy and brought up in the Latin tongue, acquired so complete a command of Greek that he could speak it as well as an Athenian gentleman (hence his sobriquet με′ιγλωττος), composed his works in Greek.

      His Natural History² soon became a standard work on Zoology, although in arrangement it is very defective: for instance, he skips from elephants (XI. 15) to dragons in the very next chapter, and from the livers of mice in II. 56 to the uses of oxen in II. 57. This treatment of things, ποικ′ιλα ποɩκ’ɩλως, is asserted by the author to be intentional, so as to avoid boring the reader. For his part he avows that he prefers observing the habits of animals and fish, listening to the nightingale, or studying the migration of cranes, to heaping up riches!³

      Whether as a naturalist Ælian possesses any value, whether his work is scrappy and gossiping, and largely collected from older and more logical writers,⁴ or from the industry displayed, despite deficiency in arrangement, a valuable collection in Natural History, to us fishermen matters little, for unto him has been ascribed the great glory of being the first author of all ages and of all countries specially to mention and roughly describe an Artificial Fly.

      And not only is he the first, but also (with possibly one exception) the only author during fourteen hundred years, who makes any reference to any such fly.⁵ From Ælian until the Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle we find no mention of, or allusion to, the Artifical Fly, but that it was well known as a method of angling is easily deduced from the authoress’s abrupt introduction of the subject, These ben the xij flies or dubbes with which ye shall angle.⁶

      The usually accurate Bibliotheca Piscatoria of Westwood and Satchell states under heading of ‘Ælian,’ that Stephen Oliver (Mr. Chatto), in his Scenes and Recollections of Fly Fishing, first pointed out this remarkable passage. Now the first edition of Oliver’s book is dated 1834; so, if the Bibliotheca Piscatoria be correct, Ælian’s statement apparently remained unknown to Anglers for nearly eighteen centuries.

      I purposely set out a translation of the whole passage in Ælian, XV. 1, because short extracts are usually given, and because these vary greatly on a very important point. I adopt with some alterations the translation by Mr. O. Lambert in his Angling Literature in England (1881).

      "I have heard of a Macedonian way of catching fish, and it is this: between Beroea and Thessalonica runs a river called the Astraeus, and in it there are fish with speckled skins; what the natives of the country call them you had better ask the Macedonians. These fish feed on a fly peculiar to the country, which hovers on the river. It is not like flies found elsewhere, nor does it resemble a wasp in appearance, nor in shape would one justly describe it as a midge or a bee, yet it has something of each of these. In boldness it is like a fly, in size you might call it a midge, it imitates the color of a wasp, and it hums like a bee. The natives generally call it the Hipporous.

      "These flies seek their food over the river, but do not escape the observation of the fish swimming below. When then the fish observes a fly on the surface, it swims quietly up, afraid to stir the water above, lest it should scare away its prey; then coming up by its shadow, it opens its mouth gently and gulps down the fly, like a wolf carrying off a sheep from the fold or an eagle a goose from the farmyard; having done this it goes below the rippling water.

      "Now though the fishermen know of this, they do not use these flies at all for bait for fish; for if a man’s hand touch them, they lose their natural color, their wings wither, and they become unfit food for the fish. For this reason they have nothing to do with them, hating them for their bad character; but they have planned a snare for the fish, and get the better of them by their fisherman’s craft.

      They fasten red (crimson red) wool round a hook, and fix on to the wool two feathers which grow under a cock’s wattles, and which in color are like wax. Their rod is six feet long, and their line is the same length. Then they throw their snare, and the fish, attracted and maddened by the color, comes straight at it, thinking from the pretty sight to get a dainty mouthful; when, however, it opens its jaws, it is caught by the hook and enjoys a bitter repast, a captive.

      The lines which describe the making up of the fly—τ′ω αγκ′ιστρω περιβ′αλλουσιν ′εριον ϕοινικο′υν, ′ηρμοστα′ι τε τ′ω ερ′ιω δ′υο πτερ′α ′αλεκτρυ′ονος ′υπ′οτο ′ιςκαλλα ′ισιςπεϕυκ ′οτακα′ι κηρ′ ωτ′ην χρ′υανπροσει κασμ′ε να ⁷ are translated in Westwood and Satchell’s Bibl. Pisc., and by Mr. Lambert quite differently.

      In the Bibl. Pisc.:

      Round the hook they twist scarlet wool, and two wings are secured on this wool from the feathers which grow under the wattles of a cock, brought up to the proper color with wax.

      In Lambert:

      They fasten red wool round a hook and fit on the wool two feathers which grow under a cock’s wattles, and which in color are like wax.

      It is asserted in the Bibl. Pisc. that the whole passage is therein for the first time, accurately, translated, but this proud boast must take a back seat, for Mr. Lambert translates with far nearer accuracy. One grave error springs from mistranslation in the former of προσεικασμ′ενα as brought up to, instead of like, a meaning very common in Greek writers in the second and third century.

      But, apart from the question which of the two be better rendering, no doubt whatever can exist which of the flies described would be found the better, if not the only, killer. Application of wax to the hackles of a cock would certainly cause the fiber to stick together, entirely destroy their free play in the water, and render them useless as wings.

      This passage, ever since its rediscovery by Oliver in 1834, has been acclaimed by most writers on Fishing as (A) being the first instance in literature, or for that matter in art, of the Artificial Fly, and as (B) ascribing to the Macedonians the credit of a new invention in Angling.

      It is undoubtedly the first and only express mention of a specially madeup Artificial Fly down to 500 A.D., and probably even down to Dame Juliana’s Book (c. 1500). But I suggest and believe that this passage is intended, not as a description of a new invention, or of a striking departure from old methods of Angling. It merely instances the Macedonian’s adaptability to his environment, and his imitative skill in dressing from his wools and feathers a fly to resemble as closely as possible the natural fly on which the fish were feeding, a practice very common among anglers of the present day.

      So far from the Artificial Fly being a new invention, it seems to me to have been for a long time in more or less regular use. The materials necessary or employed for dressing flies are set forth in two other places by Ælian in this same work. The Macedonian fly is described at length and in special detail, probably because it marked an advance in making up a fly.

      I have not been able so far to find the passages in Bk. III. 43, and Bk. XV. 10, mentioned (except in Blümner’s general list of fishing weapons under "Fischfang"⁸) or alluded to in connection with fly-making, much less brought into the prominence which their special pertinence of a surety deserves and demands.

      This omission may be due to previous writers being content with the authority and researches of Oliver and of Westwood and Satchell, and on the line of least exertion not pursuing the subject any further even in the pages of Ælian himself. If they had so pursued, they would have discovered in the first passage in Bk. XII. 43, which is separated by only three books, and in the second passage in Bk. XV. 10, which is separated by only nine chapters from the locus classicus in Bk. XV. I, strong inventions for qualifying their statement as to the Macedonian invention.

      In Bk. XII. 43, Fishing is divided into four kinds—by Nets, Spears, Weels, and Hooks; that by hooks (αγκιστρε′ια) is adjudged the most skilful, and most becoming for free men, that by Weels (κυρτε′ια) the least so. In each class Ælian carefully enumerates the articles necessary or generally used.

      The list of those necessary for fishing with hooks, or Angling, recounts natural horsehair, white, and black, and flame-colored, and half-grey; but of the dyed hair, they select only those that are grey, or of true sea-purple, for the rest, they say, are pretty poor. They use, too, the straight bristles of swine, and thread, and much copper and lead, and cords. Now follow the important words—and feathers, chiefly white or black, or various. They use two wools, red and blue.⁹

      Further requirements are corks, and wood, and iron, and of things they need, are reeds well-grown, and nets, and soaked rushes, a shaved wand, and a dog-wood Rod, and the horns and hide of a she-goat. The equipment is as ample as amazing. What use, in the name of every fishing Deity, unless the author is referring to Oppian’s method, did the Angler make of the horns and hide of a she-goat?

      Ælian concludes with αλλος δ′ε′αλλω το′υτων ιχθ′υς αιρε′ι ται, which antedates the tale of the millionaire, who, reproached with having brought a thousand times too many flies, ejaculated, With some of these, if I can’t get a salmon, maybe I’ll strike a sucker!

      In XV. 10, which deals with the capture of pelamyde or young tunny fish, one of the crew sitting at the stern lets down on either side of the ship lines with hooks. On each hook he ties a bait (perhaps not a bait in our modern technical sense, but rather a lure) wrapped in wool of Laconian red, and to each hook attaches the feather of a seamew.¹⁰

      Let us set aside, because of Ælian’s haphazard method of arrangement, any argument which might otherwise fairly be adduced from the following facts. (A) He expressly sets forth in XII. 43 (three books before he mentions the Macedonian device) red and other wools and feathers as part of the ordinary tackle of an Angler—most probably in river or lake, for here, unlike XV. 10, where the prey is a sea-fish, we have no mention of a ship, oars, etc. (B) When he does mention the Macedonian device, he does not announce it in any way as a new invention or a striking departure from the old methods of fishing, but quite simply, in the words: I have heard of the Macedonian way of fishing, and it is this.

      Setting aside, I repeat, any arguments thus to be deduced, we are face to face with the hard and curious fact, that in all three passages the materials, out of which the lures are constructed, are the same; they are wools of various colors, and feathers taken from birds, in XV. I, from a cock, in XV. 10, from a seamew.

      Any assertion or suggestion that these wools and feathers were used, and are specially stated to have been used for tying only the Macedonian fly, and that this special statement of such uses is meant expressly to differentiate the Macedonian from all other ways of fishing, and thus constitutes the first mention of an Artificial Fly, I counter by a couple of queries.

      Why in XII. 43, and XV. 10, are these self-same wools and feathers set out among the necessary ordinary requisite tackle of a fisherman, if they were not used for dressing a fly, perhaps more primitive but still Artificial? And, if they were not so used, to what other fishing purpose can they be fairly applied?

      Again, let us for a moment grant that the Macedonian device was the absolutely new invention or the striking departure from all preceding angling methods, which, had artificial flies not previously been well known, it most certainly would have been. In this case, surely Ælian, meticulous in his examination and classification of the tackle, etc., needed for each of the four stated kinds of fishing, would have employed, when about to tell of this invention, words calling more instant attention to and far worthier of this great revolution than the simple, I have heard of the Macedonian way of fishing, and it is this!

      As supporting my contention, a further point must be noted. In the list of tackle in XII. 43, wools and feathers are mentioned in a general manner, but in XV. 1, their use is particularized and elaborated. Similarly in the first passage the making and material of Rods are given, but in the second (and here only) the particular length of rod is stated.

      It is on these passages (XII. 43, and XV. 10) and on their natural implication, that I chiefly found my conclusion that (A) the practice of making up and fishing with some kind of artificial fly had been in more or less general use for a long time previous to the Macedonian device, and (B) that the device is quoted merely as an instance of a special, local, and improved adaptation of such usage—in a word as le dernier cri in flies!¹¹

      If in Martial (Ep., V. 18. 8) musco, not musca, should be read, then to Ælian would belong the credit of being the first to mention not only the use of the artificial fly, but also the use of the natural fly.

      In XIV. 22, we read of the Thymalus (a kind of grayling), which alone of all fishes gives out after capture no fishy smell, but rather so fragrant an odor that one would almost swear that in his hand he held a freshly gathered bunch of thyme (that herb so beloved by bees), instead of a fish. Ælian then lays down that, while it is easy to catch this fish in nets, it is impossible to do so with a hook baited with anything except the κ′ωνωψ, i.e. the gnat, or more probably from the vivid description by one who has evidently suffered, the mosquito, that horrid insect, a foe to man, both day and night, alike with his bite and his buzz.¹²

      Here then, in XIV. 22, we get, if the conjecture musco should be held to deprive Martial of his priority, the first mention of angling with a natural fly.

      The difficulty, obvious at once to the practical angler, of how the ancients (or even the moderns with all the elaborate perfections of Redditch) could manufacture a hook little enough to impale a mosquito did not escape Aldrovandi.¹³ But the κ′ωνωψ, said to spring from the σκ′ωληκες, i.e., larvæ found in the sediment of vinegar, was apparently even smaller than his brother mosquito, the εμπ’ɩς.¹⁴

      As not only with great care, and even then only on very fine wire, can the smallest modern hook, No. 000, be coaxed to impale a big gnat, the problem before the Ancients of impaling with a hook one, and this not even the largest, of the mosquito tribe seems insoluble. But perhaps Ælian’s κ′ωνωψ (as probably also his ιππουρος) was far larger than its descendant of the present day, or perhaps our author has substituted by mistake the mosquito for some larger but similar gnat.

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      THE COMPLEAT ANGLER (SELECTIONS)

      IZAAK WALTON AND CHARLES COTTON

      Now for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how to make a man that was none to be an angler by a book, he that undertakes it shall undertake a harder task than Mr. Hales, a most valiant and excellent fencer, who, in a printed book called A Private School of Defence undertook by it to teach that art or science, and was laughed at for his labor. Not but many useful things might be learnt by that book, but he was laughed at because that art was not to be taught by words, but practice: and so must angling. And in this discourse I do not undertake to say all that is known or may be said of it, but I undertake to acquaint the reader with many things that are not usually known to every angler; and I shall leave gleanings and observations enough to be made out of the experience of all that love and practice this recreation, to which I shall encourage them. For angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt; at least not so fully, but that there will still be more new experiments left for the trial of other men that succeed us.

      But I think all that love this game may here learn something that may be worth their money, if they be not poor and needy men: and in case they be, I then wish them to forbear to buy it; for I write not to get money, but for pleasure, and this discourse boasts of no more; for I hate to promise much, and deceive the reader.

      And however it proves to him, yet I am sure I have found a high content in the search and conference of what is here offered to the reader’s view and censure. I wish him as much in the perusal of it. And so I might here take my leave, but will stay a little and tell him that whereas it is said by many that in fly-fishing for a trout, the angler must observe his twelve several flies for the twelve months of the year; I say he that follows that rule shall be sure to catch fish and be as wise as he that makes hay by the fair days in an almanac, and no surer; for those very flies that used to appear about and on the water in one month of the year may the following year come almost a month sooner or later, as the same year proves colder or hotter; and yet in the following discourse I have set down the twelve flies that are in reputation with many anglers, and they may serve to give him some light concerning them. And he may note that there are in Wales and other countries peculiar flies, proper to the particular place or country; and doubtless, unless a man makes a fly to counterfeit that very fly in that place, he is like to lose his labor, or much of it; but for the generality, three or four flies neat and rightly made, and not too big, serve for a trout in most rivers all the summer. And for winter fly-fishing it is as useful as an almanac out of date. And of these (because as no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler) I thought fit to give thee this notice.

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      And for you that have heard many grave, serious men pity anglers; let me tell you, Sir, there be many men that are by others taken to be serious and grave men which we condemn and pity. Men that are taken to be grave, because nature hath made them of a sour complexion, money-getting men, men that spend all their time first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it, men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busy or discontented. For these poor-rich-men, we anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow their thoughts to think ourselves happy. No, no, Sir, we enjoy a contentedness above the reach of such dispositions, and as the learned and ingenuous Montaigne says, like himself freely, When my cat and I entertain each other with mutual apish tricks, as playing with a garter, who knows but that I make my cat more sport than she makes me? Shall I conclude her to be simple, that has her time to begin or refuse sportiveness as freely as I myself have? Nay, who knows but that it is a defect of my not understanding her language (for doubtless cats talk and reason with one another) that we agree no better? and who knows but that she pities me for being no wiser, and laughs and censures my folly for making sport for her when we two play together?

      Thus freely speaks Montaigne concerning cats, and I hope I may take as great a liberty to blame any man, and laugh at him too, let him be never so serious, that hath not heard what anglers can say in the justification of their art and recreation. Which I may again tell you is so full of pleasure that we need not borrow their thoughts, to think ourselves happy.

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      PISCATOR. O, sir, doubt not but that angling is an art! Is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout! that is more sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold! And yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two tomorrow, for a friend’s breakfast. Doubt not, therefore, Sir, but that angling is an art and an art worth your learning. The question is rather whether you be capable of learning it! for angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so. I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by practice and experience; but he that hopes to be a good angler must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practiced it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.

      VENATOR. Sir, I am now become so full of expectation, that I long much to have you proceed and in the order that you propose.

      PISCATOR. Then first, for the antiquity of angling, of which I shall not say much but only this: some say it is as ancient as Deucalion’s Flood; others, that Belus, who was the first inventor of godly and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor of angling; and some others say, for former times have had their disquisitions about the antiquity of it, that Seth, one of the sons of Adam, taught it to his sons, and that by them it was derived to posterity; others say that he left it engraven on those pillars which he erected and trusted to preserve the knowledge of mathematics, music, and the rest of that precious knowledge and those useful arts, which by God’s appointment or allowance and his noble industry were thereby preserved from perishing in Noah’s Flood.

      These, sir, have been the opinions of several men, that have possibly endeavored to make angling more ancient than is needful or may well be warranted; but for my part, I shall content myself in telling you, that angling is much more ancient than the incarnation of our Savior; for in the Prophet Amos mention is made of fish-hooks; and in the Book of Job—which was long before the days of Amos, for that book is said to have been writ by Moses—mention is made also of fish-hooks, which must imply anglers in those times.

      But, my worthy friend, as I would rather prove myself a gentleman, by being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and communicable, than by any fond ostentation of riches, or, wanting those virtues myself, boast that these were in my ancestors—and yet I grant that where a noble and ancient descent and such merit meet in any man it is a double dignification of that person—so if this antiquity of angling—which for my part I have not forced—shall, like an ancient family, be either an honor or an ornament to this virtuous art which I profess to love and practice, I shall be the gladder that I made an accidental mention of the antiquity of it; of which I shall say no more, but proceed to that just commendation which I think it deserves.

      And for that I shall tell you that in ancient times a debate hath risen, and it remains yet unresolved—whether the happiness of man in this world doth consist more in contemplation or action.

      Concerning which some have endeavored to maintain their opinion of the first, by saying, that the nearer we mortals come to God by way of imitation the more happy we are. And they say, that God enjoys himself only by a contemplation of his own infiniteness, eternity, power, and goodness, and the like. And upon this ground many cloisteral men of great learning and devotion prefer contemplation before action. And many of the fathers seem to approve this opinion, as may appear in their commentaries upon the words of our Savior to Martha, Luke 10:41, 42.

      And on the contrary there want not men of equal authority and credit that prefer action to be the more excellent, as namely experiments in physic and the application of it, both for the ease and prolongation of man’s life; by which each man is enabled to act and do good to others, either to serve his country or do good to particular persons; and they say also that action is doctrinal and teaches both art and virtue and is a maintainer of human society; and for these and other like reasons to be preferred before contemplation.

      Concerning which two opinions I shall forbear to add a third by declaring my own, and rest myself contented in telling you, my very worthy friend, that both these meet together, and do most properly belong to the most honest, ingenuous, quiet, and harmless art of angling.

      And first, I shall tell you what some have observed, and I have found to be a real truth, that the very sitting by the river’s side, is not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation but will invite an angler to it. And this seems to be maintained by the learned Pet. du Moulin, who, in his discourse of the Fulfilling of Prophecies, observes that when God intended to reveal any future event or high notions to his prophets, he then carried them either to the deserts or the sea-shore, that having so separated them from amidst the press of people and business and the cares of the world he might settle their mind in a quiet repose, and make them fit for revelation.

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      And for the lawfulness of fishing, it may very well be maintained by our Savior’s bidding St. Peter cast his hook into the water and catch a fish for money to pay tribute to Caesar. And let me tell you that angling is of high esteem and of much use in other nations. He that reads the voyages of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto shall find that there he declares to have found a king and several priests a-fishing.

      And he that reads Plutarch shall find that angling was not contemptible in the days of Marc Antony and Cleopatra and that they in the midst of their wonderful glory used angling as a principal recreation. And let me tell you that in the Scripture angling is always taken in the best sense and that though hunting may be sometimes so taken, yet it is but seldom to be so understood. And let me add this more. He that views the ancient ecclesiastical canons shall find hunting to be forbidden to churchmen, as being a toilsome, perplexing recreation; and shall find angling allowed to clergymen, as being a harmless recreation, a recreation that invites them to contemplation and quietness.

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      My next and last example shall be that undervaluer of money, the late Provost of Eton College, Sir Henry Wotton, a man with whom I have often fished and conversed, a man whose foreign employments in the service of this nation and whose experience, learning, wit, and cheerfulness made his company to be esteemed one of the delights of mankind. This man, whose very approbation of angling were sufficient to convince any modest censurer of it, this man was also a most dear lover and a frequent practice of the art of angling; of which he would say, ’Twas an employment for his idle time, which was not then idly spent; for angling was, after tedious study, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness; and that it begot habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practiced it. Indeed, my friend, you will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of other blessings attending upon it.

      Sir, this was the saying of that learned man, and I do easily believe, that peace and patience and a calm content did cohabit in the cheerful heart of Sir Henry Wotton, because I know that when he was beyond seventy years of age, he made this description of a part of the present pleasure that possessed him, as he sat quietly in a summer’s evening on a bank a-fishing. It is a description of the spring, which, because it glides as soft and sweetly

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