I COMPLETED a fourteen months' tour by another extended visit to
Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. This was the first time I had taken
in Van Dieman's Land, as Tasmania used to be known in the old days, and
the experience was novel and charming. Tasmania is a little England as the
names of the territories, or counties, into which it is divided, at once
suggest. There is a Devonshire, a Westmorland, a Dorset, a Cornwall, a
Lincoln, and—so that Wales may not be left out altogether—there is a
Montgomery and a Glamorgan! The island is rich in agriculture and sheep
pastures and in the towns like Hobart, the capital, Launceston, and Burnie
there are many thriving little industries. There is no poverty in Tasmania
and no unemployment. The country is well governed by its own legislature
and the governor is Sir James O'Grady a former Socialist Member of
Parliament at West- minster and a most popular and able man. I have never
in all my travels seen better roads than they have in Tasmania. They are
little short of magnificent. I was told that they were built by convict
labour in the days when Van Dieman's Land was a penal settlement for
British malefactors; if this is so the convicts were amongst the world's
best roadmakers and they have left behind them monuments that will last
for centuries long after their murders, arsons, burglaries, sheep
stealings, and highway robberies have been forgotten! I doff my Balmoral
to the memory of these Tasmanian convicts and assert that they must have
been splendid fellows. The population of the island is less than three
hundred souls all told and I should think there must be room for hundreds
of thousands more. But don't take this from me a8 authoritative
and start an international rush for Van Dieman's Land. They may have all
the people out there that they want! And those they do have are certainly
good! When I reached New Zealand this time I
was all on edge to get amongst the trout in the rivers of the south island
once more. For over a year I had not had a rod in my hand. All my life I
have been an enthusiastic fisherman and if I ever boast of anything it is
in my ability to coax the finny ones to my fly, minnow, or spinner. But
whether I catch them or not I yield to nobody—not even Bob Davis of New
York or Alec Mathewson of Dundee—in my passion for the past- time
immortalized by Isaac Walton. So those of my readers who are anglers can
well understand the delight with which I looked forward to some trout
fishing in New Zealand at the end of a long and arduous tour.
Give me a rod and line and a Highland burn, or a
Galloway loch, or a New Zealand river (all these, mark you, when I cannot
get to the Dee or the Don!) and I am the happiest of mortals. I must have
caught fish in more parts of the world than most men whose fishing has
been an adjunct to hard work rather than a life's pursuit. While saying
this, do not imagine you are going to hear tales from me of giant tarpon
or tuna killed off the Florida coast, of sword fish or sting rays weighing
a thousand pounds, hooked in the swarming waters down Panama Way. Some day
when I can afford the time—and the money!—I will get after these big
fellows and then I hope to write a book that will make all anglers' mouths
water. In the meantime I am more than content
to have an hour or two with rod and line whenever I can fit it in with my
work. This summer, for instance, I have been several times on Dupplin
Loch, that angler's paradise on the estate of my great friend Lord
Forteviot. It is one of the best stocked lochs in Scotland and the fish
are rare fighters of splendid size and quality. Many and many a basket
have I filled at Dupplin. Only last week I had nineteen fish, 22 1/2 lbs.,
and if there are many better averages than this from a water more or less
constantly fished I would sure like to hear of them. Lord Forteviot's
keeper, John Crannie, is the most amazing fish expert I have ever met and
the hours I have spent, either in his house or beside him in the boat,
listening to his angling lore and philosophy have been altogether
delightful to me. When I went up to Dupplin some time ago to open a new
recreation hail in the model village over which Lord Forteviot reigns so
benignly John was one of the audience and afterwards I asked him what he
thought of my performance and the evening's revels generally. He scratched
his head for a few seconds as if he were thinking out a reasoned criticism
and then observed, "Sir Harry, there's been nothing like it in the country
since Queen Victoria's funeral!"
One of the
greatest thrills in a man's lifetime comes to him when he hooks his first
salmon. I caught my first "fush" on the Dee many years ago now, and
although I have landed many hundreds since that chilly May evening I have
never again experienced the breath-catching joy which assails every sense
as you realize that your fish is "on" and the music of the reel begins to
sound in your ears. The "kill" I refer to happened on the stretch of the
Dee owned by the late Mr. Duncan Davidson of Inchmarlo, near Banchory. He
was a bonny fish of 25 lbs. and he fought me for fully twenty minutes. A
"Jock Scott" did the trick; I have been partial to the illustrious Mr.
Scott's fly from that day to this!
I have
taken salmon from the Tay, the Deveron, the Spey, and the Tweed, and I
have had splendid fishing on the Usk waters in South Wales owned by Lord
Buckland, who, as Mr. Seymour Berry before he was raised to the British
peerage, had so spectacular a career during and after the War. He is the
oldest of three brothers who have all made their mark in British industry
within a remarkably short time by the exercise of brilliant gifts as
industrialists, financiers, and newspaper proprietors. Moreover they are
thorough gentlemen and good sportsmen. Lord Buckland has a lovely home on
the banks of the Usk, one of the best fishing rivers in Wales and I am
looking forward to the time when I shall again whip a cast or two over his
fine waters. There is grand fishing in Sutherlandshire, both river and
loch, and the angler could not do better than spend a holiday on Loch
Assynt or on wandering up and down the Inver or the Kirchaig. He will be
sure to get lots of trout, as I have done on more than one occasion.
During my Indian tour the harbourmaster at Karachi gave
me a real sporting day among the snappers twenty-five miles out at sea. We
went out by tug. On the way to the fish ing grounds the harbourmaster, an
old Arbroath man, entertained me immensely by his disquisitions on fish
and fishing in these Eastern waters. We caught a lot of fish that day of
from two to twenty pounds in weight, mostly snappers. And, take my word
for it, they are well named for they snap at the bait like hungry wolves.
I ate a snapper on getting back to the hotel. It was very tasty indeed. I
have also done a lot of deep-sea fishing off the coast of New South Wales
where there seems to be a plenitude of all manner of fish. We caught so
many different varieties that I cannot remember their names. But I do
remember most distinctly the name of one big fellow I booked—shark! He was
five feet eight inches in length and weighed sixty-eight pounds. He fought
like the sea-tiger he is and gave me as much excitement as I wanted. I
landed another shark once off Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. This was a
mammal and not a fish because when we got her aboard she disgorged six
young ones from little pockets, like sausages. At Durban Harbour I have
had good sport among the flat fish which appear to be the chief
inhabitants of the seas round South Africa. They are of decent size but
not very sporting from a fisherman's point of view.
I was almost
on the point of saying that I had never had the chance of fishing while in
the United States. Usually I have been so hard-worked there by Will Morris
that I have had no time for angling and many a time I have gazed longingly
at the American streams and rivers as we have flashed past them in the
train. But I did once have an extraordinary fishing experience at Denver,
of all places. Hearing from somebody that I was very fond of fishing, an
admirer of mine in the Colorado city, Mr. Cliff Welch, invited me to have
"as much fishing as I liked" on the private lake of a friend of his. This
gentleman reared trout for sale to the hotels in Denver and did a very
fair business. The lake was an artificial affair. It was perhaps a hundred
yards long by fifty yards at its broadest point. There were reputed to be
five thousand trout in it and they were fed daily with liver and light
hash. All these facts I was unaware of before making my descent on the
"preserved waters." When I arrived I found the lake frozen over. My
disappointment was keen. But it was explained to me that this need not
stop my fishing; one of the proprietor's servants got a big pole and
smashed the ice all round the edges. So I started. My only trouble lay in
seeing that my line did not foul the jagged ice anywhere and with this in
view my "casting" was more like "poking" than the regulation action of a
respectable angler. Did I catch any fish? I didn't catch them—it was pure
murder. I had only one fly, a blue and black with a yellow body, but it
did more execution than any single fly I have ever known. No sooner did it
light on the water than a dozen trout came for it like bull-dogs. In spite
of years of hand-feeding—more probably because of it—these trout were
gluttons for the strange lure offered by my fly. I couldn't unhook them
fast enough. In less than an hour I had forty or fifty pounders and pound-and-a-halfers
lying on the icy bank of the lake. Then my conscience got the better of
me. I stopped. It wasn't playing me game and if I
hadn't been desperate to have a rod in my hand once more I could not have
continued without bursting into tears. When the owner of the lake came
along to see how I was faring among his speckled beauties, I had chucked
it. "Thank God, Sir Harry, you didn't fish any longer," he remarked, "or
you would have cleaned up the lake like a thin-mesh net!" I have never
told this story before. Any time I have felt like telling it a wave of
shame has swept over me preventing the revelation of my one ghastly crime
as a fisherman!
Next to Scotland the finest
fishing country in the world is undoubtedly New Zealand. I have fished all
the rivers and the lochs in South Island and have been rewarded with
magnificent sport and overflowing baskets. My fishing cronies down under
are Donald MacDonald of Edendale, Invercargill, and Mr. John Smith, the
proprietor of the Progressive Stores in that purely Scottish town. We have
had numerous days together on the Matura, the Minnehau, the Wyndham, and
the New Rivers—all full of lovely trout of the Loch Leven type and running
from half a pound to four and five and sometimes six pounds. The last time
I was in New Zealand I sent home some photographs of my catches spread out
in front of me, or festooned behind me—you know the usual type of
fisherman's photograph. One of these I posted to John Robertson, of
Dundee, who fishes a stretch of the Tay every year and in whose good
company I have killed many salmon, but all the acknowledgment I received
from him was a laconic post-card "Thanks for the fishing picture. I don't
believe it!"
There is a lake in the South
Island called Te Anau in which there exists a species of land-locked
salmon. Fishermen will tell you that there can be no such thing; that the
salmon must get to the sea every year if it is to live. Well, I am
convinced that the "salmon" of Lake Te Anan don't get to the sea. I have
studied the configuration of the lake and the streams that run from it so
closely that nothing will make me alter my opinion, namely, that the falls
on these streams are so tremendous that they could not be "leaped" by any
salmon that was ever spawned. Both MacDonald and Smith are always silent
when I get on to this topic of the landlocked salmon of Te Anau. They are
too orthodox fishermen to be otherwise than chary of giving a decided
opinion either way—are they salmon or are they some other kind of fish
closely resembling salmon? Here is a problem for anglers the world over to
discuss. To me they look like salmon in every detail with the exception of
girth—they don't seem to thicken. They are a beautiful silver fish with
the flesh of salmon and the taste of a salmon. Game to a degree they fight
for their lives with all the determination, the wiles, and the tenacity of
a Tay fish. Curiously enough they will "take" neither fly nor spinner,
only the minnow, and you have to be well up in the handling of this lure
before they will respond readily to it. The general weight runs from three
to eight pounds.
I trust my non-fishing
readers will forgive me these rather lengthy digressions into purely
piscatorial reminiscences but you all know how it is when fishermen start
off— there's no stopping them. As a matter of fact I have gone back over
many pages of fishing reflections and experiences and cut out a lot that I
had originally intended to put in, fearing that I might bore those of you
who are only interested in fish as a table food.
One final remark I would, however, like to make—and it
is this. Would all the experts who agree with me that the fish of Lake Te
Anau are land-locked salmon please write and say so. It would give me
great joy, when I got to New Zealand next year for a long fishing holiday,
to be armed with their opinions and pronouncements on a topic of supreme
interest to fishermen everywhere. If they don't agree with me they needn't
mind writing. And with that observation I think you have a very fair
insight into the bigoted and "thrawn" (stubborn) mind of the average
fisherman, myself included!
|