IN QUIET BY THE RIVER

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21904, 3 October 1936, Page 11

IN QUIET BY THE RIVER

Fishermen Out By Night

“THE COMPLEAT ANGLER” TO-DAY

The small butt-ended punts are Out : along the lower reaches of the Selwyn. The fishing season is well begun. Everyone has heard of the man who took his full quota of 10 trout on the first night, and while some believe the tale and some are sceptical, all are out to see what the river will provide to be aided to the angler’s store of memories. When the dusk thickens round the feathery young willows, and pale light dickers across the stream, the. tackle is sorted out* It is really dark when the punts are routed from shelter. In the silence they whisper as they are slid and bumped over the tufted grass, to* be eased quietly into the river. Torches flash, here and there on a rubber thigh bool or with strange light on the muddy brink. Isaak Walton preferred his fishing ’ by , day, in drowsy sunlight, windless warmth, proper surroundings for the “contemplative man.” But that philosophic old angler of the seventeeth century would be the first to admit that here are anglers in the true spirit of “The Compleat Angler.” The fascination of fls.dng is older even than Isaak Walton. What is this fascination? The fishermen should know but they are non-committal. It is “good sport,” they say, or perhaps “A man gets to like it”—at any rate such were the answers given by the solitary fly-fish-ers encountered near the mouth of the Selwyn last evening. Inhabitants of Quietness A pitch black night. Beyond the willows by the huts the river flats seem desolate, inhabited only by sheep. A wind soft but cool, ruffling the surface of the water. A faint, echoing conversation of the river and its banks, a rippling speech only deepening the quiet. But walk a little further. Listen. A fisherman’s reel buzzes intermittently', then the line whines .s’, the cast is made. Down stream again, and the blunt nose of a punt is thrust into the bank, the occupant with his back to the lend and the east wind, watching, waiting, casting, winding. Another punt is in mid-stream, as if suspended in a dark void, floating rather on the wind and the silence than on anything so substantial as water. Late last night < they had taken few fish. But a fisherman is not to be pitied for "poor sport.” His secret is that he has no responsibility, for the time being. He is the happy fatalist, because wind and water, cloud and starlight, govern his success or failure. If there are fish about, he will take them and be thankful; if there are no fish, at least there is no one to blame. “A i /ell-groveimed Angler” “It’s not what it was in the old days,” is a common enough opinion. An experienced angler, turning for a moment to pass the time of night to a strolled, remarks: "There aren’t the fish, neither in the river nor the lake —not as we used to know them.” The thought comes that, whatever the vagaries of the fish, the fishermen ; are constant to their pastime. They are , patient, patient perhaps the whole 1 night through, waiting for the “tim’rotis : trout.” *' After the hours of fishing, whatever ' the luck, there is nothing better than to return, to what Isaak Walton called i —with the heartiness of a man who j knew what he was talking about—“a i good, honest, wholesome, hungry i breakfast.” “No life,” wrote Isaak, “no life, my ) honest scholar, is so happy and so i pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for when the lawyer is swal- ; lowed up with business, and the states* i man is preventing or contriving plots, ; then we sit on cowslip banks, hear

the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent silver streams which v/e no*? see glide so quietly by us ... . “And so, if I might be judge, ‘God never did make a more calm, quiet, Innocent recreation than angling.’” To the soundness of Isaak Walton’s judgment, nearly 3CO years ago, the silent fishermen along a stream he had not heard of ere as good a witness as could be wanted.