ANGLING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22822, 5 March 1936, Page 5

ANGLING

By Dbt Flt,

RECENT REPORTS A correspondent at Roxburgh writes as follows: —“A party of three was out at Lake Onslow for live days and secured 90 trout all told, ranging from 1 to 31b—all Loch Leven trout and all in good order. Judging by results this season, this lake is the coming place for fishermen. The fish are plentiful. Owing to the warm, dry weather, the water in the lagoons is very warm and muggy, and the fish are sluggish. Nine members of the Teviot Angling Club paid a visit .to the Pomahaka the other week-end. The best bag was one of six fish weighing 81b. This river is rather low at present and the fish generally poor.” . , An angling party has been consistently fishing the Poolburn dam recently. 27 miles from Oturehua or seven miles from Moa Creek Hotel. Worm, fly or minnow were used, flv and minnow being, most successful. The Turbot skin minnow, Alexandra Red, teal, R. T. Gow, and Kakaho Queen were found to be the best takers. The average catches have been about five fish per rod, the .smallest fish being IJlb and the largest 4lb giving a very nice average of 2|lb to 231 b. The Taieri River is very low and clear at Patearoa, and there have been some excellent catches over the last week-end or two. Two men from Palmerston caught 17 fish one day at Hall’s ford with a drv fly, ranging from 41b down to liib. Another party of well-known Pomahaka fishermen got 26 one evening last week ui) to 21b weight. ANGLERS* DINNER The annual dinner of the Fly-fishers’ Club in London is quite a notable event in the angling world, and the guests and speakers generally include leading lights in the world of medicine, law, and commerce. At the last annual dinner Hr Walshe. proposing the toast of Uur Guests.” had some witty remarks to make regarding fish and fishermen. He said (inter alia): "I am sure our guests will find it interesting to be told something about fish and fishermen, and to get it—as it were—straight from the horses mouth. If I fail to do justice tojny lofty theme I am sure my fellow members will rise and fend me. But if they bear me in silence, then our guests may take it that all I say is true—as true at least as any angler’s statement. ■ ~ "Now, fishermen are not just ordinary men with a hobby. They are a class apart. They may be—and often- are family men by chance, but by nature they are solitaries, and systematically neglect their wives and families as soon as ever the fishing season opens, returmng homc from time to time for brief detracted •intervals, as to a base from which they draw rations and munitions.— (Laughter,; Their literary gifts have been famous for nigh upon 300 years, and every good.fisherman yearns to be a Walton-as you may, learn" if you study the sad of the publisher’s remainders in any bookshop. Science, too. has its. attractions for the fishermen, and ever sincc Jonah s iamous interview with the whale he has been striving earnestly to see things from the fishes’point of view. But his science has been of a somewhat impressionist order, and even his arithmetic is notonouslj invested with romance, and is not an exact science He has In's own superstitions, too and his own particular snobberies. For example, there are the dry-Ay a ”d the wet-fly snobberies, which a generation ago Convulsed the gentle bosoms.of Victorian fishermen, and threatened at one time to split the Piscatorial fold into two bitterly hostile factions. To fish with a dry fly was like eating marmalade for breakfast, the sure sign of a gentleman, to fish with a wet fly was like eating peas with a knife—the hall-mark of an out feud was ’ composed is an cnin in itself. The occasion produced the man, and a genius appeared who, like Columbus, with the egg. found Ah evolution He took the horrid wet fly—tne lure, as its traducers called it—gaveit a haircut, and called it a nymph. The disguise was perfect.the name irresistible, and now your dry-fly fisherman may fish wet with a clear conscience, when he can t fish dry, and instead of spending hat ; his day sitting on Inc bank piping ditties of no tune' he can cast his lure over the water the live long day-. • The fisherman’s superstitions are men the reflection of hio ruling passion. There in the chalk streams of our southern coun-, ties dwells a race of large and. superficially impressive trout. The typical speci men of the breed is V and hence is often dubbed Aldermamc, a sincere but dubious compliment, lu truth, he is a palsied creature, in a creche, fed by hand, and finally. brought dishonourably to net on 4x gut—a very gossamer thread that would not lead a self-respecting sea or loch trout an inch out of hie way. Finally, when ho comes to table his flesh is the colour of rubber, and the savour of -asbestos. He is, in short, a pious humbug, the backward boy of the trout family. ' "Now.your.chalk stream fisherman has his own suspicions about all this, but he bates to entertain them, .so he proceed o to weave legends around this impostor among fishes. Indeed he has to do so else-where the lustre of catching him? So ho endows him with intellectual guts which would bring about trout distinction even on the judicial bench and with an eve for form and colour that would make the fortune of a dress designer. But what if all this be legend? Surely it reveals the incurable romanticism of the fisherman, his essential kindliness and simplicity; and in this troubled world what virtues are more needed !' EFFECT OF FLOODS Most anglers are at present wondering vhat effect the recent heavy floods will have on their favourite streams (writes "Black Gnat” in the Christchurch Press). Trout are able to survive all normal floods, and except in cases where the amount of silt carried has been abnormally great or where the fish have become stranded or suffered actual injury there is no reason to believe that the pdiilt fish population has suffered to any great extent. ' It is necessary to go to the stream beds, which hold many • types ot food organisms, to find out whether any serious damage has been done. The amount of sub-aqueous animal lire on which trout feed to a large extent is determined mainly by the stability of the stream bed. A stream which has a plentiful growth of vegetation in it and along its banks is usually comparatively stable, and possibly not affected by even wery heavy flooding, whereas a stream of the type of the Ashley, showing little or no vegetation, is decidedly unstable, and the shingle will begin to flow with a slight increase in the volume of the water. The insect life, consisting mainly of Caddis fly, May fly. and stofte fly larvae, is dependent on the stability of a stream bed for its existence. Professor Percival has shown" in his paper "On the Depreciation of Trout Fishing in the Oreti,” that the productivity of a stream can be directly related to the amount of vegetation, and also to the s ; ze of pebbles in the stream bed. Caddis larvae seem to prefer the moat stable conditions, and are the first to disappear where there is any tendency for the shingle to flow. As more unstable conditions are approached, the insects tend to thin out. until there remains only one species of May fly. Professor Percival shows, however, that the amount or life in a stream bed is not necessarily a guide to the quality of the fishing in the vicinity. WITH ONE CAST ; Mr John M. Milling, in his book, “Great Days,” has many amusing fish stories to relate. On one occasion, when fly fishing in the upper reaches of the Thames, he'saw a heavy fish rise in a particularly awkward corner and, having had a blank day, used all his ingenuity to get a fly over the fish. After a struggle with a patch of tangled vegetation, he rhanaged to place Jiis fly fairly_ on the rise, and got an immediate strike—not from the fish he was looking for, but from a lively litle half-pounder. Ho tells how the small fish snapped the fly from over the nose of the larger one. which made off at once with a tremendous bow-wave. The small fish soon dived into and became entangled in a weed bank, and refused to budge. Just as Mr Milling was thinking that he would have to lose the fish, there was a movement in the weed bank, and out came a large pike with the trout held crossways in its mouth. Pike always swallow their victims head first, and this one was no exception. It tried to turn the trout round, and in doing so the fly which held the trout detftehed itself and became firmly embedded in the pike’s jaw instead. This so surprised the pike that it let the trout go, and it lost no time in making • off little the worse for being nearly eaten. The pike was soon landed, end so-Mr Milling found that he had tried fo r one fish, hooked a different one, and landed yet another all with one cast.