A FISHING TRIP.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14322, 12 October 1910, Page 2

A FISHING TRIP.

THIS DELIGHTS OF ANGLING. By Stephen Givynn lI.P. It is little lake only about a mile in circuit; it Las 110 great repute among anglers, you are lucky any day that ycu get a salmon there; the trout, though plenty, are small and poorly fed; there are no reeds or water-lilies, no special feature of beauty, but a long beach of silvery sand. And yet it will shine lite a jewel in my memory, among happy fishing grounds, one of the happiest of all. For, especially as one grows older, the pleasure of fishing is not to bo measured by what you catch. A good day is the day when you get more than you expected; I have oomo back glum enough from a famous fishing in Uomiemara with ten or. a dozen pounds weight of sea trout in the basket —a catch that would have uplifted me mightily on the lake among the hills. But beyond all other charms is the charm of discovery which makes an adventure of the sport, ily little lake was so lonely and inaccessible that very few strangers had ever fished there; so remote that all .about it there lingered an old-world life full of antique quaintness and a generous courtesy seldom to be found on the b&ateu track. A PICNIC PARTY.

">Ve weut ihare first, a. picnic party, not ior serious fishing; midges beset the Lt&d, on the iake l'.saif no fish would mevo; but, for ail that, I fell in lovo with place and determined to come baclc to it with a friend nil-; was always ready to start off with the essential rods and whaoirer el-.e wat practicable strapped on to b eyci^s. So accoutred, we crossed half f. wiid county, rode up to the lake, ici't our machines at one of the two cottages which could be seen, and piiinjjed across a causeway through to the other in sea;eh oi' a boatman. Ws go-, him, not without difficult;.', for he was away up on the mountain :,i .!•? looking after his cattle; and a real mountaineer was th"s JlcHugh. tall, gaunt, shy, awkward a man who might be dangerous if you touched his precious holding, but in all the offices of life as kind and serviceable a giant as ever I met with—and as keen a fisherman. "\Ye began catching trout at once, for it was a pleasant day of light wind, warm, with sunny intervals; and after a short while a salmon rose to me. To my thinking there is nothing so delightful as that kind of fishing when you fish with trout flies and the lightest cast on which you can hope to hold a five-pounder, and you take whatever comes along. I got that fish: then after two or three hours we landed to lunch and to try down the river.

We drifted down again, and I hooked and killed another fish, besides a couple of sea trout: as for the brown fellows, they kept coming in all the time. Only that the breeze dropped, we might have got a couple more salmon; and the same trouble beset us next day, but I got a third fish and lost a fourth. Altogether, it made mighty pleasant sport, for there was none of the discomfort which often attends salmon fishing (salmon take best in a lash of wind and rain); and the constant rise of trout diversified the long hours of casting from a boat. Only one thing troubled mej and that was my friend's bad luck —specially annoying, as he had then never caught a salmon. He had his revenge later on. when we came there on a day so windy that tho_ boat could not be kept oil the water, and we began to fish off two rocks twenty yards apart where salmon were said to lie. Very soon I heard him shout, and, sure enough, he had one, and great was the excitement over the long business of getting him ashore. We fished on, and then changed our stations; fire minutes, on the same water which I had flogged till I was tired, he hooked another fish and Lad the very rare experience of killing his first two salmon within half an hour of each other. That day I went home empty-handed of fish, but for consolation I was given a hare which McHugh's coslie dog started as we were launching tho boat and coursed , down the half-mile of sandy strip, right among our very feet , and all the paraphernalia of rods and landing-nets, until at the end of the sand the hare doubled round a hummock of heather, and the smart dog nipped it at the turn. I never saw as prettv a bit of poaching. But the thing which abovo all else endeared the valley to mo was the charm of the people. I took to staying in one of the cottages; and it was delightful, while your trout- were frizzling in the pan and a new-killed chicken was being roasted, to sit and talk with the comoi;-. dignified woman of the house and her foxy-bearded husband. He described to me, in more detail than I have hoard it elsewhere, tho processes of the poteen-making. tho character of the lyhisky derived from barley and its various substitutes (" treacle-whisky," made from molasses. he spoke well of, to mv surprise). If I went back there to-morrow, or ill ten years. 1 should feel I was going to friends whose welcome would always he the same. Mcllugh woiM leave h-9 hay or au'n to row me. as T have known him do, though with real risk to the crop, sooner than disappoint, a friend who isad conic from far. Also my vanity would believe that lie did so in respect for my prowess, since, on the whole. T caught more fish there than my neighbours.and often on unlikely days. One such flay is alwavs written among my small triumphs. ' f had gone up by chance with a singer of Italian birth, whose eouioment was that picturesque thing which the Latin sportsman always turns out; and wo fished disconsolately, for it was nil but hir>?less calm and even the trout disdainml us. Other anglers had given up; still we stuck to it. and at last T saw the big. swirhng eddy and tile width of a fine ta.il as the fish went down with my fly. For half an hour we saw no more of him; but a few heavy rushes convinced me T had hold of something better than the ordimry fivo or six pound grilse that, we reckoned on there; and when at last the fi«h lumped MrHucdi declared we would never kill him on my tackle. T must sav my Italian friend behaved 'like one of the saints; never have T «een any nmrler take such pleasure and interest in another's luck; and when at. last T !£afi_»d the fish lie solemnly announced the time —twenty-fivo minutes and congratulated me on the " maestria * T had shown. By this time T sincerely hone he has convinced. himself that it was hj», sine! not another, who killed' that, nnwisorn". though copfrorv teaDaily M. t! ' C lake nmo " g t,,c ,lil,s --