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Vol 10 Page Numbers in this Book Title Contents Some Trials of and Angler Rev E.I. Richardson page 1 Anglers I have Known Rev E.I. Richardson page 5 A Second Trip after Tarpon G.H. Ramsbottom page 9 Fishing on the Upland Lakes of Norway E.R. Austin page 18 Oppians Halieutics J.H. Lea page 24 Queer Fish Dr Doyle page 33 Rhyayader Revisited Dr Henry R. Hutton page 44 Salmon Scales J. Arthur Hutton page 47 Fishing H.L. Behrens page 55 Up and Downstream Fishing I. Keale and J.H. Lea page 60 Views of the river at Horton page 62 Pot Holes and Underground Streams around Horton Percy Glass page 64 Salmon Scales from a Practical Point of View J. Arthur Hutton page 70 A Speech at the opening of the new Fish ponds Mr John Baddeley J.P. page 81 Eheu! Fugaces page 83 Parts of some pages were photographed from the Manuscript Book, and others, where the handwriting was difficult to read, have been typewritten Vol 10 I must read a paper on the subject which our good Secretary has announced, though I like the one I chose better. It was simply "Some Trials of an angler." I had constructed and was about to elaborate a little joke in which the phrases "Some Trials of an Angler" and "The Trial of some Anglers" might jingle and remind us of a party of defendants whom I saw leave the "Lion" in a wagonette, grave with the knowledge that they were in conflict with the Lord Chamberlain, or some such august personage, on the subject of stage plays. The Secretary's title has spoiled both the jingle and the joke, and it now means to me that I have no chance of being let off under the "First Offenders Act". Your Worships I have been here before and so must throw myself on the mercy of the Court and proceed. We anglers have a trying time; I do not mean that we are always trying to catch fish; that is not true and it would be punning. The untruth is a popular one we have refuted it a thousand times by the riverside. We have demonstrated so frequently that we are unwilling to demonstrate further, that angling and catching fish, have nothing on earth to do with one another. As to the pun, we hold with Oliver Wendell Holmes that Homicide and Verbicide, i.e. "violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life, are alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the same as man's laughter which is the end of the other." I am here neither to tell untruths nor to make puns; I say that we are not always trying to do anything. We do what we set out to do; we are anglers and we angle; that is all. We know the pleasures of our craft; health, good fellowship, rest, excitement; of these and many other good things, we have written, spoken and sung and they are yet the subjects of but a half told tale, for we meet tonight on the threshold of the best season we ever had. It is for me to submit to you that we have our trials; that there is another side to the picture; shade in it, if you like, as well as light; trials which do not pass with the seasons, but which to the reflective angler (and by hypothesis, we are contemplative men) weigh more heavily as the years which bring the philosophic mind go by. Let us get to the heart of the matter though the consideration of those lesser trials, which, as exemplified in my own brief experience, are common to us all. 1. Vol 10 I have risen in the very small hours of the morning, have seen Hulme as Wordsworth saw London from Westminster Bridge "with all its mighty heart being still, "that I might breakfast at the "Lion" at half past eight and alas, have had to spend hours at Blackburn Station, which should have been spent at the river side, because the 5-30 a.m. from Victoria, misses the connection with a regularity little expected on the L. and Y. I have, that I may take the cream of the season's sport, gone to Horton for the first day allowed by our rules, and have been able to walk with perfect safety across the frozen waters of the tarn. I have fished with a good wind behind me and been exasperated many times in the day, by finding my tail fly fixed over the barb, in my stout fibred Harris Tweed, fixed centrally between the shoulders; I have tried to get it out with both hands, I have fastened upon myself with the "half-nelson" but I have had to wade ashore, to take off my basket and indeed only not my trousers. I have thought sadly of the littleness of manhood and a university degree as I have found a school boy with four or five brace of good fish, when I have had only one, and of such doubtful size, that I suppose I killed it only because it was so badly hooked. I have left my rod tops, my fly book, my flask behind at home; have fished in leaky waders, and when proud that they were new and watertight, have tumbled in the river. I have known the lunch of an angler left on the bank (in reliance, I suppose upon the Proverb "As safe as a bank") to be eaten to the last sandwich, by the fox terrier of another angler. I am able to recall this incidence without pain owing to the circumstances that I was the other angler. I have been sorely tried by hearing that Dr Johnson once described fishing as an occupation whose salient points were, a rod "with a worm at one end and a fool at the other." Johnson of course never said anything so silly. I have known an angler afraid to go home, because he had lost his net, he explained when we said that we thought the loss of a net an insufficient reason for staying out all night, that it had been a peace offering that morning from his wife, at the close of a war waged to find out whether it were true that he would leave her and go fishing all day and every day, if he felt so inclined. I have known my basket never grow an ounce heavier through the long day, and am conscious that over a score of seasons, I have lost all the heaviest fish I hooked. I have seen the credulous smile on the faces of my fellows, my dear friends, as I have told them of the capture of trout, trout whose rapid growth in two year old ponds, was only exceeded as they grew from 10 to 20 year olds in my powerful memory. The posthumous growth of fish is not the least of the wonders of natural history. Its study, in relation to ethics, might be the subject of a paper to be read before this unique gathering of honest Anglers. To the reader whoever, greatly daring, he may be, I venture to suggest the following ground plan; as the newly caught trout is to the satisfaction of the man who catches it; so is its increase in weight after death, to the moral decadence of the man who caught it, many years ago. This is a digression; but the fact is that the trial of being doubled is a thing of the past for Anglers. Truthfulness is after all a relative matter, and since golfers, motorists and certain half penny papers arose in the land anglers are found to be veracious. The man who says today, that the only time he ever heard an angler speak the truth, was when one called another a liar, is so far behind the times, as probably to be unaware of the death of Queen Anne. Thus far I have touched upon such trials as can be matched in the experience of you all, and have alluded to the ancient slander which in old days made "sufferance the badge of all our tribe." I come now to consider two trials which are possibly only (true) to me. The first has brought it about that I am considered a hopelessly eccentric person by a fairly large circle of acquaintances, a man who is happy when others are 2. Vol 10 wretched, and vice versa; blessing when others are cursing, but not in this case vice versa. It is the opinion of many, an opinion wide spread and deep rooted, that because I am an angler, I like no days that are not pouring wet, and that I am never really comfortable, save when I am wet through. I have provoked a discussion among my friends, similar to the Shakespearian problem of Hamlet's mental condition. Men meet me, have done so any time these last twelve months, wet, ill tempered, muddy (even though Manchester mud does not show on black clothes) and when I have said that the weather was beastly they have looked surprised a kind of, "I should never have thought that of you," look, "they thought I liked this sort of weather," and the reason, only that I was a fisherman and fishermen like rain. Now I put it to you, how has a man one who loves to be at one with his kind, felt, going about Lancashire on business during the past year, with a reputation for liking this sort of weather.