Trout in lakes and reservoirs; a practical guide to managing, stocking, and fishing by Phillips Ernest

Author:Phillips, Ernest
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Trout fishing
Publisher: London, New York, Longmans, Green & co.
Published: 1914-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER V

MORE ABOUT FLY-FISHING

And now it is time we went out together and saw what trout-fishing on some typical reservoirs is really like. We are bound to-day for a reservoir which has been made by damming up a little moorland trout stream, by the simple process of throwing a wall of masonry across the valley. The lake covers an area of sixty or seventy acres, and the dam, forty feet high, affords a fine spectacle in winter when the overflow of the flood water rushes over it in a boiling cascade. It is set in a wild and lonely part of the moors. On one side is a plantation, and through the dark greenery we may catch a glimpse of the white gables of the keeper's cottage, and above the trees the smoke of his kitchen fire curls upward in the morning sunlight. Looking up the glen we see the shooting box of the lord of the manor. Away in the distance the view is bounded by the fells, across whose heathery slopes sunshine and shadow race alternately. We are less than ten miles from a manufacturing town, but the beauty and

70 TROUT IN LAKES AND RESERVOIRS

the solitude and the keen sharp mountain air seem to belong to the Highlands of Scotland rather than to an English industrial county.

It so happens that this is one of the reservoirs on which boating is allowed. We make our way to the landing-stage, and there the boat, big and flat bottomed, awaits us. There is no use for light and finicky craft on waters such as this, for gusts come down the glen and lash the lake into a fury, and it would be no joke to be overturned in thirty or forty feet of water. But there is no sign of any such danger this morning. The sun shines from a sky which holds nothing worse for us than light fleecy clouds, and the gentle breeze does nothing more than stir the surface into a curly ripple which promises well for sport. The wind is blowing up-stream, that is, from the dam to the head of the lake, and we decide to go to the deeper water and then fish it to the shallower end. One of us takes the oars, and the other lets out a minnow on a spinning trace, and soon it is trailing far behind. A stroke or two of the oars and we are in deep water. As a rule it is not much use fishing the fly here. Except in rare cases, which will be mentioned later, the troijt are taken best from the shallows. Folk of a scientific mind tell us there is a reason for this state of affairs. Below a certain depth,

where the light does not penetrate, there is no vegetation and no life, and in consequence it is useless to look for fish there. In proof of this theory they will quote to you the case of Loch Leven and other natural sheets of water, where the shallows always yield the best fish.

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