The Classic Guide to Fly Fishing by H. Cholmondeley-Pennell

Author:H. Cholmondeley-Pennell [Cholmondeley-Pennell, H.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2015-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

3

Fly Fishing for Trout and Grayling:

Or ‘Fine and Far Off’

It is a shallow as well as a dismal scheme of life which ignores or undervalues the importance of recreation. Never, I believe, was there an age in which it was more indispensable ‘For weary body and for heavy soul.’ We are living at high-pressure; business has become more engrossing and the pursuit of what is called pleasure more laborious. It is more than ever desirable to find occasional change of scene and occupation which shall be really refreshing; which shall at once recruit our bodily energies and give free play to faculties and feelings which are shelved during the daily routine of working life. Mere locomotion is not enough; our thoughts must be turned into new and pleasant channels, and we must seek places suited to new phases of agreeable activity. It is told of one of the most eminent of English conveyancers that when induced for his health’s sake to visit the seaside, he carried with him, by way of light reading, ‘Fearne on Contingent Remainders.’ Sea air may have done something for him; but where was his recreation? His mind was kept running in the old groove.

It is of course true that what is recreation to one man might be mere weariness to another of different tastes and habits, who feels the strain of over-work in different functions of body or mind. A well-earned holiday may be employed in fifty different ways, each having its own fitness. But in comparing various recreations we may fairly give the palm to that which suits the greatest number of cases; that in which the largest proportion of intelligent men can find healthful bodily exercise combined with light yet interesting occupation for the mind. And I know none which satisfies these conditions more completely than angling. In its most refined form indeed – I need hardly add that I speak of fly fishing – it rises to the dignity of an elegant and ingenious art, combining in a singular degree the active and the contemplative, the practical and the scientific element.

I have had my fair share of other more violent, perhaps more exciting field sports, and am not insensible to their attractions. Happily, Piscator in these days need not wage a wordy conflict with Venator or Auceps, for the same men often excel in several branches of sport, and the friend whose opinion on the following pages of angling notes I shall value most highly is not only well known in the hunting field but singularly successful in the practice of falconry.

Instead of apprehending any lack of sympathy with the zeal for my favourite recreation which leads me to add yet another to the many contributions recently made to its literature, I rather fear that I shall be held to have done but scant justice to its varied attractions and resources…

But I will not open my case with an apology. An angler from boyhood – a fly fisher for more than fifty

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