BOWNESS & BOWNESS, Fift&mg &o& STadtle MAKERS, 230, STRAND, LONDON. From BELL YARD. THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID HANDBOOK OF ANGLING. LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODB AND CO. NEW-STBEET SQUARE THE GOLDFINCH. BRITANNIA. ERIN GO BRAGH. J . A HANDBOOK ANGLING:OF TEACHING FLY-FISHING, TKOLLING, BOTTOM-FISHING, AND SALMON-FISHING. WITH THE NATURAL HISTOEY OF RIVER FISH, AND THE BEST MODES OF CATCHING THEM. EPHEMERA Of Bell's Life in London, AUTHOR OF 'THE BOOK OF THE SALMON 5 ETC. * I have been a great follower of fishing myself, and in its cheerful solitude have passed some of the happiest hours of a sufficiently happy life.' PALEY. FOURTH EDITION LONDON: LONGMANS, GKEEN, AND CO. 1865. PKEFACE THE THIRD EDITION. To the previous editions of this practical work I prefixed somewhat lengthened prefaces. They were then necessary, as a bush is to a new tavern not as yet renowned for its good wine. The words * Third Edition' in the present title-page are more significant than any preface. They prove that I am still called for in the fishing market. I obey the call, am thankful for the favour I have found, and shall say very little more. Five years have elapsed since I read this angling treatise through and through. Recently I have done so twice in preparing this third edition. The book appeared to me as if it had been written by another like a long-absent child whose features I had almost forgotten. I could judge of it then with less partiality than when it was fresh from my brain, and bore the defect-covering K3FM VI PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. charms of a newly-born. Its defects, though perpetrated by myself, I have seen as plainly as if they were done by others, and I have treated them accordingly removed them remorselessly. I have, I think, improved the general style of the volume; excised repetitions, rejected incor- rect instruction, unsound suggestion, opinion, and advice, and replaced them by accurate information and counsel. The list of trout-flies I have short- ened and simplified, and given no fancy patterns. As it now stands, the list is perfect. The natural history of salmon I have re-written. As a resum of the habits of that fish, I can recommend it for its precise truths. The list of salmon-flies for the best rivers in the British Isles I have remodelled after the best specimens in that gallery of ideal ( insect beauties which I painted for The Book of the Salmon.' At this third time of asking, gracious Public, you shall take me absolutely for better, as the 4 ' or for worse can be no longer contingent. CONTENTS CHAPTEK I. Angling defined. Divided into three branches into Fly-fish- ing, Trolling, and Bottom-fishing. Each briefly described. The superiority and merits of Fly-fishing . PAGE 1 CHAPTER II. Throwing the line and flies. Humouring them. Fishing a Stream. Striking, hooking, playing, and landing a Fish . 11 CHAPTEK III. On Artificial Flies 46 CHAPTEK IV. Fly-dressing 70 CHAPTER V. Monthly List of Artificial Flies 93 CHAPTER VI. Fishing with the Natural Fly, or Dibbing or Daping . 121 CHAPTER VII. Trolling. Rods, Lines, Tackle, and Baits, and Methods of Using them . 135 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTEK VIII. On Bottom-fishing. Eods, Hooks, Lines, and Baits . PAGE 177 CHAPTEE IX. On Piscatorial Physiology, by Erasmus Wilson, F.E.S. 217 CHAPTEE X. The Habits of the Angler's Fish, and the best ways of catching them fairly. A New Natural History of the Salmon, and a New List of Salmon and Lake Flies. How to throw and humour them in fishing for Salmon. How to hook and play that Fish its haunts, and other Baits for it besides Artificial Flies. The Trout, Grayling, Pike, and all the Carp Tribe, described. Their Habits, Haunts, and Favourite Baits pointed out 230 HANDBOOK OF ANGLING. CHAPTER I. ANGLING DEFINED DIVIDED INTO THEEE SEARCHES EACH BEIEFLY DESCKIBED THE STIPEEIOEITY AND MEEITS OF FLY-FISHING. ANGLING the art of taking fish with rod, line, and hook, or with line and hook only is one of the oldest of out-door amusements and occupa- tions in every country. At first the modes of practising it were exceedingly rude, and they still remain so amongst uncivilised nations. There are tribes in existence that now, as heretofore, fashion the human jaw-bones into fish-hooks. Even unto this day angling implements, amongst many of the politest people of Europe, their amusements, unfortunately for themselves, being chiefly in-door ones, are manufactured with im- perfect roughness. The inhabitants of the Bri- tish Isles alone, with their colonial descendants B 2 ENGLISH SPORTSMEN. cultivate all matters pertaining to rural sports, of whatsoever kind they may be, but particularly hunting, shooting, and angling, with that perse- vering ardour, comprising passionate study and active practice, which leads to perfection. In their efforts to acquire the surest, most amusing, most health-giving, and, I may say, most elegant modes of pursuing and capturing their game, be it the produce of field or flood, they call to their aid several ancillary studies, amongst which stands prominent one of the pleasantest of all, viz. that of the natural history of animals, and of other living things ranking not so high in the scale of creation. The hunter studies the habits of horse and dog, and of the ferce naturce he pursues with them, the fowler of the birds of the air, and the fisherman of the fish of the water. The general sportsman, a practical naturalist, if I may use the epithet, studies the habits of all. Hence know- and success hence the ledge, skill, ; accomplished sportsman, rarely found except amongst the best types of Englishmen, whether of high or low degree. Though angling has been jeered at more than any other sporting practice, still no other subject connected with field-sports has been more minutely and extensively written upon, No sporting writer is so generally known as Izaak Walton, and his c ' Complete Angler has earned for him an im- ANGLING SUBDIVIDED. 3 mortality which will last until the art of printing our language shall be forgotten. Angling, then, cannot be a theme of a unworthy modern pen ; but the pen perchance may be unworthy of it, and so cause me to fail in my design, which is to write upon angling in a plain, connected, business- like way, teaching its modern theory and practice, together with the useful discoveries, inventions, and improvements that have been recently made in relation to it. The art of angling is divided into three main branches, the general principles of which being understood, an acquaintance with minute detail will follow gradually as a matter of course. The first branch embraces angling at the sur- face of the water, and comprehends fly-fishing with natural or artificial insects, the latter being of more general use. The second embraces ang- ling at mid-water, or thereabouts, and includes trolling or spinning with a live, a dead, or an artificial bait with a small fish generally, or its representative. The third includes bottom-fishing, that is, angling at or near the- bottom of the water with worms, gentles, and many sorts of inanimate baits. Bottom-fishing is the most primitive, the commonest, and easiest mode of angling, the first learnt and the last is less forgot ; trolling com- mon and more difficult is ; fly-fishing the most difficult and amusing of all, and though less. B 2 4 IGNORANCE ABOUT ANGLING. commonly practised than bottom-fishing in Eng- land, is more generally so than trolling, more particularly in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Although in teaching an art it would be more regular to commence with the easiest branches of it, I begin, for several reasons, with fly-fishing, acknowledging it, however, to be that division of the art of angling which is learned the least easily. I shall only give one reason for my ir- regularity, viz. that he who has learned the prac- tice of fly-fishing will readily learn the two other branches of angling. He will learn them more if he either for readily than began with ; he who has begun with fly-fishing and succeeded must have attained quickness of eye and lightness of hand. If the reader should desire to be more methodical than I am, he has the power of being so, by reading this handbook as if it were written in Hebrew. He will then find the last first, and the first almost last. If he wishes for slow, but sure advancement, let him reverse the order of reading, moving from nearly the back rank to the centre, and so on to the front. The long-continued, unbroken chain of ignor- ance that runs, in many instances, through the world is almost incomprehensible to the active mind. It is a miracle of visible darkness amidst 4 the intelligence that surrounds us. The dic- tionary-making pensioner,' as Cobbett used to WHAT FLY-FISHING IS. call Dr. Samuel Johnson, defined angling, as a at of a silly thing, practised by a fool one end rod and line, with a worm at the other. Many stupid people still adhere to this very stupid definition. With the practice of angling they associate nothing beyond worms, punts, patience, cold and wet, a nibble and tittle-bat sport. A salmon caught by angling with a diminutive artificial fly, a thin silkworm gut line, and a rod of pieces lighter and more limber than a lady's riding wand ! No no such prodigy in their opinion ever occurred.