FISHING NOTES

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 21051, 30 December 1933, Page 3

FISHING NOTES

A NEW METHOD ;*XCL'JSIVI TO TUX PRESS.] [By BLACK GNAT.] These i'uli'i, which are written by & heiietniun of Ion;,- experience and considerable theoretical knowledge, will appear every Saturday. Letters containing news items or questions, and addiesaed "Black Gnat," car# of the Editor of "The Press," will reccivo prompt attention each week. An English publication of recent date contains the description of what the author claims is an entirely new style of dry fly fishing. It is used by the man that the author considers pre-eminently the best dry fly man in England, and is used as far as he knows by no other. The article dealing with this new method runs into two or three thousand words, and Is descriptive to the smallest detail. All this wordiness is summed up by saying that the method is so to cast your line that the end of the cast turns round rather in the shape of a question mark, and only the fly thus floats over the head of the fish aimed at. The line and some of the cast float down the current well to one side of the fish. It has frequently occurred to "Black Gnat" that it is probably a good thing that the fish in New Zealand do not need the refinement of technique evidently required for the trout in the chalk streams of England, where most of the fishing is done by ancients who know every stone, every weed, and each fish in their own particular piece of water, and the fish are so shy that the highest skill is required to coax them with any sort of lure. Fishing would become a recreation for those who could afford almost limitless time, and would be impossible for the thousands who can snatch only a week or two in every season on the banks of a stream. But there is the aspect that if angling here were as refined an art as it is in Great Britain, many of those thorns in the side of the true angler would be removed. The writer has in mind a recent evening on a good bit of water handy to Christchurch, when everything seemed to point to a food bag. It was a mild evening with plentv of beetles and moths, the river was in good condition, and was known to contain many fish. It was one of those faintly breeezy evenings when the river actually seems to smell fishy, but what would have been almost a silence was rent by the cries of a small pack of children, whose riverside gambollings had put down the fish in half a mile of water. They had with them the dog, and there is no more certain fish scarer than a dog in a happy frame of mind. The point of the story really was that dad, having decided on a camping holiday, had gone to a tackle shop, bought an outfit, received copious advice and had decided on a little practice before actually starting. He will iind fishing difficult enough as it is, but "Black Gnat" permitted himself the ungenerous wish that angling here was something like angling in England, when dad and his multitudinous prototypes would be dissuaded f rorr ] even trying to fish. The ham-fisted fisherman is the bane of the lives of those who really take a pride in then art, and it is almost impossible to get (hem to lake seriously the first of Walton's rules, and the last—"above all. study to be quiet. In common with every other form of sport, fishing has suffered over the Christmas period through the unseasonable and greatly-varied weather. Streams in good order have been made unfishable by sudden downpours, and insects have 'had only the most meagre encouragement. The result has been that bags arc scarce, and those anglers who went away for a fishing trip, have had the worst of luck to contend with. « * * At this season, witli most of the serious anglers away from the city, it is not 'often that one hears reports, and this week has been worse than ever. The smaller streams near the citv Inve been poor, generally, but a few bags have been taken. One man fishing the Cam on a good evening i his week managed to land three fair fish on a Greenwell, about size No. 12. Ho was fishing the beetle rise, but coul'l get no response till he suddenly remembered the humble Caddis. * • « A lev/ llsh have been taken in the Sclwyn on a golden Devon, but the liver is not fishing particularly well at prescn'. The lake.:-; continue to return lair to the man who is willing to work hard. Zane Grcv, in one of his excellent fi: hing books, states the axiom that you can't catch fish unless you keep your bait in the water, and this axiom is one that every angler should fake vc;y much to heart this season, when Ihe fishing has been a little discouraging.