ANGNING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3014, 20 December 1911, Page 64

ANGNING.

By Jock Scott.

To ba a perfeet fisherman you require more excellencies than are usually to be found in such a small space as is allotted to a man's carcase.— PAIUCER GILMOUB. Eeaders are invited to x contribute items of locai fishing news for insertion in this column. For insertion in the ensuing issue they should roach Dunedin by Monday night's mail. It is probable that a competition will be hold on the Mimihau River Bome time about Christmas. Last week finished up even worse than usual, and fishing locally was out of the question. It is sjbated that once the rain that fell on Saturday had cleared off, several anglers who found their way to the ton reservoir, which .is about five miles up the Leith Valley, met with some very good sport. One angler got seven nice fish, the largest being 31b., I have previously mentioned more than once that there must be fish, and good fish, in this reservoir, unless it has been poached. Whether anglers in the country are doing anything it is impossible to say. The fishing competitions held „ some little time back under the auspices of the Otago Anglers' Association, yielded, I am told, the poorest results obtained for years. The Waipahi being in flood made fly-fishing almost impossible. The heaviest basket was secured by Mi- J. B. Hey with one fish weighing 3ilb, and the next best by Mr W. Marzahan with four fish weighing 2ilb. The only other returns sent in were by H. Jones with three fish weighing lilb, and, G. Drummond with one fish weighing The second day's competition resulted as follows:—D. Melrose, four fish, 7ilb; W. Clark, four fish, 61b 14oz; Hugh" Jones, four fish, 3|lb. - Tapanui Anglers' Competition.—The Tapanui Courier says: " There were 18 entries for the local Anglers' Association's gold medal competition on Saturday last, and 14- enthusiasts faced the wet morning, only to find a greater disappointment on reaching the river.. The reaches to be fished started on Tapanui Flat, and extended to the Burning Plains, Mr W. Wl Mackie having the greatest distance to go. All those below the mouth of the Waipahi Stream found the Pomahaka high and polluted by the flood waters from the former stream —in fact, practically unfishable. The. result was a succession of blanks. Only three weighed in, and the catches indicate the state of the river. Mr W. W. Mackie came first with four fish weighing 61b 4oz, Mr J. J. Perry second with one fish weighing 31b 6oz, and Mr E. D. Mackenzie third with three fish weighing lib 9oz. A 16 pounder from the Molyneux.—One of the Balciutha newspaper, repeating its Kaitangata correspondent, says: "Mr Joseph Holden, one of our enthusiastic anglers, got on the track of the ' big uns ' last Tuesday, and succeded in breaking the local record. Fishing in the Koau branch near Melville's he landed a big trout that turned the scales at 161 b, and also bagged three smaller fry weighing silghtly over 31b each. The large fish was a beautiful fpecimen of a trout, and gave the wily ' Joe' quite a busy time before being landed. It measured 35in in length, and had a girth measurement of 24-in." —rAnd I make no doubt but that the Molyneux contains many more such; but the difficulty is ,to hook 'em. A river like the Molyneux must contain a great number of big trout in its lower reaches-—in. fact, for a good) many miles above its mouth.l Two Summer Evenings.—The following fishing experiences are narrated by H. B. L. in the Field: "I shall never fish again. The three monsters that I have watched', carefully all the summer have been hooked and lost to-night. In the hot, still days George of the stile had disdained any and every artificial fly. Slowly had he backed down stream as the fly and rather too much gut came floating over his head. One evening he had looked at a Tup, had pretended to _ rise, and had been scratched for his pains. For days after this his expression was one' of pained regret, and he never stirred from his hold under the first bush above the stile in the hayfield, and then tonight—it happened thus. Two small fish were rising above him, but he seemed indifferent to surface food. Thinking their example might provoke him to <w*ion. I pui

a Tup over his ncso as the church clock chimed 7.30. He came at once, and seemed ' well hooked; but it was a short struggle., and just as he was being brought rather hastily and spiashily to the net, he dived into the weeds, and the fly eamo back. The fish opposite the hen coop was then visited. Instead of being in his little bay on the far side be was in a small runnel, and evidently feeding. He took the lup at onco savagely ; the rushes were disturbed, and the bed of the stream seemed to quake, but the net was ready all too soon, for the last plunge gave him hi* liberty. It was a long tramo to the grove fish, which was hovering on the tail ot a shallow, darting from side to side, and sucking in the spinners that were by now on the water. As the gleam of the sun wa,s obscured by the trees, the Tup was taken, off, and a tiny red quill was substituted for it. Another plunge, a strike with a slack line, and the red quill as an active force had ceased to exist. Can anything compensate for these three separate failures? The rod is condemned tor not giving sufficiently to a fish held on a short lino. The hook is anathematised for diiierenfc reasons in the different cases and the angler blames himself for lack of skill and want of resource. The lessons of summer days are useless if summer evenings only bring failure. The advice of the expert is wasted if the critical moment is attended bw nervaless or clumsy methods. The- lore of the ancients and the tactics of the moderns have been studied in vain. It is now that the caution of that angler, who hands his rod to his body servant when once the fish is hooked, may be appreciated at its reaK emotiona 1 value. *or him the glory is in the rise and strike alone. The perfection of Natures sunset, the peaceful charm of the river bank, the odour of the meadowsweet and the wild thyme the reflection in the stream of the yelllow iris and purple loose-strife, the masses of forget-me-not growing like watercress, have all lost their fascination. 1 eace has its failures, as well as war. And yet another day brings' with it more cheerful thoughts. At the breakfast table I gather crumbs of knowledge from my experienced host, whose discourse is of the olive, and; the proper size thereof. He holds that the trout are unlikely to take one that is tco large or too small, and are more disposed out of mere curiosity to attack some other pattern, provided it be of the right size. "Size," he affirms, is the chief thing, and then colour." His next utterance causes surprise. He never uses the olive, except sometimes the pale olive quill in a late evening rise. His final dictum aims a blow at all orthodoxy, implying that most of the captures in the small fly-fishing on the dry-fly streams today are made by fancy patterns, and not by' the exact imitation of any one natural fly. It is too much, and I run from the room to ransack a store of Wickhams and Tups and prepare for a final evening campaign. About this my host seems to hold more purist views He reels up at 9 o'clock, and considers that to fish the sedge rise is immoral. To him all sedge-fishing means a monstrosity on thick gut, that gives the fish no chance of resistance. On my way to the stream that evening I understand the meaning of his parting look. The grove fish was in much the same place, and a small ginger quill thrown with some luck caused his downfall; but the difficulty of landing him had been overlooked, and the only chance was to guide him from his shallow by a small runnel through some high-growing weeds. To hold a red up with one hand, so as to keep a strain on a weeded fish, and to take off shops and stockings with the other, may be picturesque, but it is certainly tiresome. Just as' the last stocking was removed the fish of his own accord came away from the weedsr and was" quickly netted. The hen coop fish had disappeared, but another below his home was riisng as though he had not seen food for a week. A pale olive quill accounted for him, and also for two large coasting rainbows, and then, marvellous to relate, George himself succumbed to the same fly. Firmly hooked this time, he soon came to the bank, but, alas! he failed to turn the scale at the 21b of my dream. In the 10 minutes' sedge rise two more wore caught, and the failure of yesterday now seemed ridiculous. The rise was over; the whirr of the sedges and their tiny darts from rush to rush passed unnoticed; the river was at rest. The sweet note of the lark and the hoot of the owl alone broke the silence of God's own Gloucestershire." The Tackle Shop.—The following six lines are evidently inspired by the astute business man:— ' When fishing take good care to look And see that bait is on your hook:

If not you'll never get a bite, Although you sit and fish all night. We advertiso by new designs: Employ us then to bait your " lines."