Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing in the River Tweed

1 ^m^^^." nP5 I w w i Bi^YS i^MB MKÎHL^S ]LM®M ]PKgIEim(^, LONDON HAMILTON ADAMS 8c C9 . GLASGOW THOMAS D MOHISON 1885. Days and Nights OF Salmon Fishing In the River Tweed. BY William Scrope, Esq. Autlior of '^ Says of Deer-StalkiTig." ILLUSTRATED BY SIR DAVID WILKIE, SIR EDWIN LANDSEER CHARLES LANDSEER WILLIAM SIMHON AND EDWARD COOKE. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & 00. GLASGOW: THOMAS D. MORISON. 1885. (J TO THE LORD POLWARTH 5t|)e foUotoing Page?! are imscnbeb IN KEMEMBKANCE OF THE HAPPY DATS SPENT IN HIS COMPANIONSHIP ON THE BANKS OF THE TWEED AND THE SOCIAL INTEECOURSB ENJOYED FOE SO MANY YEARS AT MERTOUN BY HIS SINCERE AND FAITHFUL FRIEND THE AUTHOR. ; P EE F AC E " I WILL write a sort of a Book on Fishing," said I to my friend Mr. Lobworm ; when a fresh breeze from the gentle south swept over the meadows, "stealing and giving odours," and reminded me of the many calm and pleasant hours I had spent by the margin of some crystal stream. " You really had better do no such thing," replied Lob.—He was a man of few words. "Your very polite reason, if you please?" " Why, the subject is utterly exhausted ninety-nine books have been written upon it already, and no man was ever the wiser for any one of them, although many are clever and entertaining, and moreover abound in ex- cellent instructions." " Hold ! you forget dear old Izaak," said I, " whose dainty and primitive work, the emana- tion of a beautiful mind, has made many a man both wiser and better ; for it is dictated " — PREFACE. throughout by that wisdom of which it is written, ' Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.' " Therefore it is," replied Lobworm, " that I would have you by all means to refrain : that book will always stand unrivalled and unap- proachable. Excuse me, but ' ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius." " Nay, nay, you cannot for a moment imagine that I shall attempt such a flight as that. I have read of Icarus, and also of the Ulm Tailor, who on the first trial of his patent wings fell into the Danube, instead of pitching upon the opposite bank ; so, as I cannot touch the summits, I must perforce be content to — : ' creep on level lands, ' timidus procellse mine shall be a work quite of another character." " There is not the least doubt of that, I think," said Mr. Lobworm. " Know likewise," continued he (I never knew him so loquacious or so disagreeable before),—" Know likewise to thy discomfort, nay, to thy utter confusion, that a book has lately appeared yclept ' The Rod and the Gun,' so amusingly written, and so complete in all its parts, that there is not the least occasion for you to PBEFAGE. burthen Mr. Murray's shelves with stale precepts that no one will attend to." " Pretty discouraging that, most certainly," I responded. "And then we have ' Salmonia,' which is, or ought to be, a settler too ; and also a scientific work by Mr. Colquhoun, who touches deftly on the subject. But I tell you this, Sir Oracle, that although I see a hundred good reasons why I should abandon my design, yet I am resolved to persist : it is my destiny —that is a classical reason. You know that, to the great edification of our youth, the pious ^neas gives no better reason for the hundred rascally and much admired things he was in the habit of executing in his expedition to Latium. " I only hope the public will be so good as not to be discerning ; because if they are, I shall have you, my most tender and amiable friend, eternally dinging in my ears, ' There, did not I tell you so ? But you would not be ruled by me, so you must take the con- " sequences.' At the end of this colloquy, and when left alone, I began to reflect a little ; and although at first I could not help thinking my gentleman somewhat hasty, yet I came to the conclusion ; 10 PBEFACB. that he was partly, if not entirely, in the right. So I began to listen a little to reason, and con- tracted my plan, resolving to treat on Salmon Fishing alone, as it is practised in the Tweed for although various authors have vv-ritten some pages on the sport, yet I am not aware that any one has as yet gone far into the subject, or given any precepts, or treated of the various methods available to the sportsman of killing these valuable animals in the rod-fisher's part of a river throughout the whole of the lawful season. This I have attempted to do in the following pages, having had more than twenty years' practice in that border river alone, above twelve miles of which I rented at different periods. To the Tweed I have confined myself; and I beg my readers to ôbserve, that my remarks and instructions are meant to apply to that river alone ; and consequently that I am not accountable for what salmon choose to do in other waters, and for the different means that people may employ for catching them there. Deer-stalking and salmon-fishing are at the head of field and river sports : having written what has been very generously received upon the first and best of these subjects, I have PBEFACE. 11 been encouraged to take up the other. This I have done the more readily, as I have been fortunate enough to bring to my aid the talents of artists, who are amongst the most eminent in their various departments that this country can boast of. I must not, however, impute the landscape part to them : this it was unfortu- nately necessary that some one should under- take who was acquainted with the scenery, and I must hold myself in a great measure responsible for such portion of the plates. It will be seen that in the letter-press I have attempted little more than to give a correct and faithful account of the manner and spirit in which the sport of salmon fishing is carried on in various ways where the scene is laid, and to bring before the sportsman the characters of such people as he is likely to fall in with in his excursions. Among those whom I have taken this liberty with, as the type of his class, will be found the late Tom Purdie, Sir Walter Scott'is faithful right-hand man, well-known to the readers of Mr. Lockhart's delightful Biography, and the genuine parent of the stories here attri- buted to him. Since the following pages have been printed. 12 FBEFACE. Mr. Yarrell has put into my hands "The An- nals and Magazine of Natural History for Feb. 1843," containing an account of Mr. Young's experiments on the growth of salmon I have inserted an extract in the Appendix, for the benefit of those who are interested in the subject. I hope I am correct in saying that, judging from the outline, my statements will agree with Mr. Young's experiments. This, however, will be more accurately seen when the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh are published. —— CONTENTS. CHAPTEE I. Citizen anglers—Mr. Pooley—Mr. John Poplin— Scientific angler—Self-complacent angler—Harry Otter, . Page 21 CHAPTER II. Salmonidae—The common salmon—His powers of swim- ming and leaping—Method of spawning—Habits Passage to the sea—Letter from the author to Mr. Kennedy respecting the parr—The pecuUar formation of its eyes, similar to that of a salmon—Mr. Shaw's experiments — Passage of the smolts to the sea Gilses—Destruction of salmon fry—Injurious effects of heavy spates—Tame salmon—Change of colour in fish—Dr. Stark's experiments — Proceedings at the Literary and Philosophical Society of St. Andrews Seasons of various rivers—Cairn net—The salmon trout—The grey, or bull trout—Severe contest with him—St. Kentigem, 28 CHAPTER III. Harry Otter — Childish incident — Martha's eloquence The coy Phyllis—Self-devotion of a fish—Feats of Master Harry—The pet basket—Êncounter with a duck—An idle scamp—" I saw young Harry with his beaver off," 90 — 14 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. Murderous fish—Hypocritical fish—Curious predicament —A cat fish—Facetious whale—Harry Otter pastoral Purchase of horses of dissenting opinions—The illus- trious Higginbotham—A five pounder—Trout not a fish — Dumb-foundered — Melrose — Waxing of the water—Walter the Bold—The Eildon Hills, . Page 102 CHAPTER V. Course of the Tweed—Abbotsford—A challenge—Higgin- botham broke—An ill-natured twist—A ponderous salmon—A proper mess—Cut and drowned—Agree- able wading by a corpulent gentleman — A damp gentleman, and fatal effects of wading, . 121 CHAPTER VI. Salmon lines — A lucky cast — Disordered tackle — Tri- umphant notwithstanding — New construction of a salmon reel—Salmon flies —The metropolitan fly Powdered lawyers — Description, and coloured en- graving of flies — A worthy person embarrassed — Vanishing of a line sea-ward—Mathematical angling —Raison demonstrative^Salmon taken by surprise Tom Purdie — Salmon casting his cantrips — Robin Hope—Novel method of fishing—Discoloured state of the water—A very confident friend and his mishap A gudgeon hunter—Fertile imagination of an angler —Enormous pike with S]plendid eyes—A discomfi- ture—Linn of Campsie, and voyage down the Tay in a high flood, 135 —A CONTENTS. 15 CHAPTEE VII. An angler entranced — Absence of mind — Cow versus fish—^View-taking, and landscape painting—Claude Lorraine and Salvator Kosa — Poussin — The grey scull—Eoshn— Pure genius — Twos and threes — voracious salmon — Melrose Bridge and the Cauld Pool—The coup de grace—Monstrum horrendum Duncan Grant — Bob of the Troughs clean dune out—Eob at bay—Kob breaks the bay, .

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