Chapter 13. The Midland Brook

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter thirteen of An Angler's Ours by Hugh Tempest Sheringham.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Chapter thirteen,
The Midland Brook. One knows quite well what a brook is,
but I am rather puzzled as to how to define

(00:22):
it in scientific language. I suppose it would be classed
as a feeder or a tributary. But neither of these
definitions can be regarded as satisfactory. The first is too utilitarian,
and the second is too suggestive of Caesar and other
forms of exact knowledge. Nor do we find it more

(00:46):
happily placed in the popular idiom. A brook is not
a river, nor is it a ditch. The one name
is inexact, the other insulting. A brook is. But I
am still puzzled, and must go to the task more subtly.
When you find a stream that is neither so great

(01:08):
that a reasonably active man encumbered with rod, landing net
and creole can, without rashness, attempt to jump across it
at least three times in every mile, nor so small
that it is capable of maintaining a few trout, then
you may conclude that what you have found may be

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a brook. May because there are also burns and becks,
which would fulfill the conditions laid down. As a rule,
it is easy to distinguish a burn or beck, except
perhaps for the Hampshire beck. They are practically the same
from a brook. The main point of difference is mud.

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Your right minded brook is rich in mud, while your
burn has little or none, and seeks to make up
for the deficiency by rocks and shingle. Hampshire beck, as
far as I know, it is a thing by itself,
a sort of miniature chalk stream, readily to be distinguished

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from a brook by the clearness of its water and
the consistency of its bed, which is hardly more muddy
than a northern burn. If there is mud, it is
not a beck at all, whatever the natives may call it,
but a brook. I have been at some pains to
draw these distinctions, because I do not wish it to

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be thought that I am singing the praises of the
small stream. In general, the burn has received more than
its share of adulation from angling writers, and I cannot
but think that it has deteriorated. In consequence, it has
begun to realize its own importance, and is puffed up
with pride and it now takes as good care of

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its trout as the itch in its which, when you
consider that the said trout average sum at six to
the pound, is clearly monstrous. There may perhaps be yet
a burn or two in those very remote parts of
the Kingdom to which the invention of printing has hardly penetrated,

(03:17):
which are still unspoiled by education. Mister Andrew Lang knows
one and guides us to it after this fashion, when
no stranger thou hast reached a burn, where the shepherd
asks thee for the newspaper wrapped around thy sandwiches, that
he may read the news, then erect an altar to Pyripus,

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God of fishermen, and begin to angle boldly. This does
not help us much to the discovery of the burn,
but it induces the reflection that sandwiches wrapped in newspaper
are not at all nice. And unless the angler has
reason to believe himself in the name of the precious stream,

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I think he would do well to wrap his sandwiches
and something else. But perhaps mister Lang has calculated on
his doing so, and thus renders his burn doubly secure.
For my part, I know the burn not of those
that are known to me most are under the delusion

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that they are salmon rivers at the least, and worth
about a guinea foot in good golden currency. Nor would
it now do any good if one endeavored to undeceive them.
The mischief has gone too far, and so they had
better off be left to their wrong headed pride. With

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the brook, the honest, solemn Midland brook, it is different.
No one sings its praises, few people even realize its possibilities.
It receives perhaps a certain amount of unthinking acknowledgment from
the neighborhood as presenting some difficult jumps to a young horse,

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but only to one or two. Is it given to
understand that in this sluggish obstacle to the field are
such trout as those who fish in burns can only
dream of. I grant that the appearance of the brook
is against it. The water is thick, not muddy exactly,

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but of a dark complexion which makes it impossible to
see to the bottom, where it is over eighteen inches
in depth. The bottom is principally mud or muddy clay,
and the round sullen pools are full of old stumps
and branches. The whole is lamentably suggestive of eels, And

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yet it contains trout, real trout, short thick fish, seldom
weighing less than a pound, and sometimes as much as
three pounds. Young farmer John knows all about them, and
in answer to discreet questions, admits that he generally gets

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a brace of fish, and often two brace, of which
one at least is a two pounder. Once he got
as many as five brakes in a single afternoon early
in April. But then John only goes out when there
has been a heavy storm and the water is muddy,
and he fishes always with a big worm. He does

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not seem to think much of the brook and the trout.
They are only fish to him, not the chiefest duels
in his crown, and worth more than their weight in gold.
It might be wagered that he thinks much more highly
of his rabbits. I feel that, asking his permission to
fish in the mile and a half that runs through

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his land, I am taking advantage of his ignorance of
the proper balance of things. But as usual, conscience is
grasped by the throat and squeezed into acquiescence. Why yes,
he says cheerily, fish as much as you like, but

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I'm afraid you won't catch much with the water so low.
The fact that the brook has not been found out
has its advantages. Permission to fish in a recognized trout
stream is not granted thus easily and ungrudgingly. In the

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event the stock of fish in the water is not
materially diminished. The brook is visited perhaps four times. The
first day the catch is nothing at all. The next
two days yield a brace of fish each, and the
last day there's been some rain in the interval. Under
favor of providence, results in four nice trout, But as unobserved,

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there are plenty left. And I take his word for
it willingly. Though it is only about once in a
season that you can form any sort of estimate of
how many trout a Midland brook really does hold. On
some warm July evening, perhaps they may suddenly take it
into their heads to rise all together. And then in

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pools which you have fished over and over again, and
in which you are ready to swear that there is
not a single trout, you shall see five or six
good fish feeding steadily. But on other days and evenings
you shall not see a sign of fish. The brook
seems absolutely lifeless except for the water skaters and the

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occasional bubbles caused by an eel, and you fish on
without the least encouragement until you begin to doubt whether
there is a trout in the stream at all. But
if you are lucky enough to be on hand on
the one evening and happen upon the right fly, you
may make up for a good many blank days. To

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be successful in brook fishing needs a long and patient apprenticeship.
It takes years to understand even one brook. But there
is this much of consolation in the matter, that when
you thoroughly know one, you are much better able to
cope with the others. For they all have many characteristics

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in common. They all have much the same variation of
stream and pool, of millhead and mill tail. They all
abound in old stumps and willow roots, and they all
have an occasional waterfall or weir with a floodgate in
the pool above it. So it comes about that the
best places for trout in one brook have their counterparts

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in another, and the practiced eye can detect them at once.
It does not follow, of course, that the fish are
to be caught, but it is something to know where
one has the best chance of catching them, and to
feel that one is not through ignorance fishing in spots
where no trout can possibly be. Now for brook fishing,

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a man must have an open mind. He must not
be wrapped up in theories or too submissive to public opinion.
If one method of fishing seems to him more likely
to succeed than another, he must be prepared to adopt it,
and mast to a certain extent, disregard what is considered

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dignified in a sportsman, he should be ready to. But
it occurs to me that all this preamble may have
prepared the reader for the worst. So I hasten to
say that I do not mean the setting of night
lines or the use of a net, only intended delicately
to introduce the question of the worm. The matter is

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simple enough. In reality, some parts of a brook cannot
be fished with a fly by reason of the bushes
and trees on the banks. In other parts, except on
that one evening, the angler might throw flies forever without
getting a rise. Therefore, if these parts are to be
fished at all, there is only one thing for it,

(11:24):
a worm. Even in the parts of the stream where
a fly can be used with effect. I do not
stand out for strict and invariable orthodoxy. And Alexandra, the pot
hunter's pet will sometimes kill a brook trout which would
not look at an ordinary fly, and in that case

(11:44):
I think its use perfectly legitimate. In fact, it comes
to this, brook trout are so hard to catch by
any means short of actual violence, that the angler need
have no scruples about trying anything up to the said limit.
He will have been fortunate if, at the end of

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a day's fishing, during which he has tried every known lure,
his basket contains two braces of fish, and may justly
look for applause, even though he took them all with
a worm. I'm not sure, though, that the worm is
altogether the best bait, except when the water is very thick.

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A rather large march brown has served me excellently at times,
and as a general rule, I should say that the
fly quite holds its own. Whether it should be used
wet or dry depends entirely on local conditions. As a rule,
one is only too thankful to be able to get
a fly onto the water anyhow. But here and there

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one always finds a certain amount of open water, and
if in it a fish or two may be seen rising,
a dry fly may be put over them. With advantage
dry or wet, only one fly should be used. It
should be rather larger than those employed on a river.
There is also another method, which I have not mentioned,

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well worth trying on summer evenings, and that is dibbling
with a real moth or some other large insect. I
inclined to think that the man who fishes in this
way is the truest disciple of Isaac Walton, who loved
it beyond all other kinds. But how you shall get

(13:32):
your fish out when you have hooked him is entirely
a matter for yourself to arrange with Providence. Prepared then
to fish as seemeth him best. The angler will proceed
to investigate the stream. Let us take Farmer John's water
as the scene of his operations, for it is typical

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of the brook in general. It includes two disused and
dilapidated mills about a mile apart, with their mill pounds
and mill tails, backwaters and weirs, if that name can
be given to little falls about five feet wide, as
the mills have not been working for years, there is

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only a trickle of water running under their wheels, and
the tails below are shallow and weedy are not worth fishing.
The pounds above are in consequence stagnant and also weedy
in parts, but they are fairly deep, in places, as
much as five feet, and they hold the largest trout

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in the brook. The lower one widens out to about
thirty feet close to the mill, and is some forty
yards long. The other is longer, narrower, and deeper. It
is not of much use to fish them in the daytime,
but in the evening a fish or two may be
found rising round the hatch hole above the weir, or

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at the top end, where the water is st shallow.
Then a fly at the end of a long line
may tempt a heavy fish. In the daytime, their best
places to fish will be the little weir pools and
the backwaters below them, because the main current of the
brook runs by this channel. Now that the mills are

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not working, the weirs are the choicest spots of all,
so we will make our way to the lower one first.
At first sight, it does not look promising for fishing.
From the mill pound. It is a drop of about
six feet to the pool below, and the angler finds
that the wall above is the only point from which

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you can possibly fish. For the weir pool is a
sort of arbor framed in bushes, through which no human
ingenuity could insinuate a rod unless an axe were employed.
For half an hour. First, while across the middle of
the pool, just where it is deepest, lies the trunk
of a recumbent willow with projecting branches. This leaves about

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three square yards for fishing, and that leaves no room
for sentiment. A worm is essential to the fishing of
this place, and with a worm shall it be fished.
The angle has brought a stiff little fly rod nine
feet in length, which is sturdy enough for worm fishing

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and at the same time able to throw a fly
a long distance when a heavy tapered real line is
used with it. It is just the thing for brook fishing,
in which power is required combined with shortness. He fits
it up and attaches a strong worm trace weighted with
a small bullet, to the running line. He uses a

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large hook on which he puts a small lobworm, hooking
it in the middle and once only for this gives
it more freedom to wriggle and so attract the fish.
Then he drops his baited hook into the rush of
the fall and waits. Thames trout fishes know well that

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the trout in a weir lie just where the water
seems roughest, right under the foam. The fact is that
immediately under the fall the commotion is merely superficial. Deep down,
the water is quite calm, and the fish may rest
there in comfort, and if any tempting morsel comes over

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their heads, they can seize it in an instant. The
worm has not been in the water a minute before.
There is a slight twitch at the line, and the
angler knows that he has a bite. There is no
violent rush. The fish is at home and need not
move more than an inch or two. An unpracticed hand

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would hardly realize that tremor meant anything, but the angler
understands it, and after giving the fish a few seconds
to get the worm well into its mouth, he strikes.
Then is proved the wisdom of his strong tackle. It
is no joke at any time to play a trout

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of a pound and a half in three square yards of
water with certain breakage all round. Add to this the
fact that the man with the rad is standing six
feet above the fish, and you get as delicate a
combination of difficulties as could well be imagined. He can
do nothing but hold on and trust in providence. Providence

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does not desert him, and the trout's repeated efforts to
reach the old tree and the bushes are checked by
the uncompromising policy forced upon the man, and at last
the victory is one, or rather the fish is beaten.
Then arises another problem, how is it to be laid?

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The victor casts himself on the ground and tries to
reach down over the wall with his landing net, but
finds he cannot come within six inches of the water.
He must hazard all. Still lying down, he lays the
rod on the grass and takes the line in his
left hand, and then, with his heart in his mouth,

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lifts the fish out of the water until he can
put the net under it. It is a risky maneuver,
but good tackle will always stand more strain than one expects,
and one can afford to take an occasional liberty with it.
The principal danger is that the fish, finding itself in

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the air, may begin to kick, or the hook may
lose its hold. But our angler succeeds this time and
secures his first fish, and is mightily pleased about it.
There's nothing more important to in brook fishing than to
catch one's first fish early in the day. It prevents

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the despair and incredulity which are only too likely to
fill the soul when one is angled for hours without
seeing a trace of a fish. He puts his trout
in his basket on a bed of long grass and
considers his next move. He must give the weird pool
a rest, though if he returns to it presently, it

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is quite likely that it may yield him another fish.
The little backwater, which winds for some one hundred yards
of ripple and pool before it joins the main brook,
seems to him in the most likely place, so he
determines to fish it next. It is a tiny stream,

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not more than a yard wide in parts, though the
pools of the bends are all of a fair depth.
It is overhung with trees and bushes, and is altogether
most difficult to approach. Moreover, the water is much clearer
than that of the main brook, so clear, in fact,
that it would be worse than useless to fish it

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with a worm. He must try and throw a fly
on such bits of it he can get at. Accordingly,
he takes off his worm trace and replaces it by
a short fly cast on, which is a long march brown.
Then he takes a securitous route through the meadow to
the point where the two streams meet. There is generally

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a trout here, so as he approaches the bank he
finds it expedient to go on three legs, as Charles
Kingsley phrases it, until he is within about two yards
of the water. Then, crouching as low as he can,
he endeavors to flick his fly between two willows about

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four feet apart into the pool, as happens three times
out of foreign this sort of fishing, the march brown
refuses to have anything to do with water or trout,
and cling senaciously to one of the willow twigs. The
angler jerks at it, hoping to free it without moving,

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but the wretched thing only clings the tighter. What happens
then depends on the nature of the man. He may
pull till the cast breaks, put on another fly, and
endeavor to reach the water again, or he may rise
patiently and release the willow. In the one case, the
odds are that the second fly will join its fellow

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on the twig. For in brookfishing accidents have a habit
of repeating themselves in the other. Any trout that may
be lying abroad in the pool will of course see
him and depart hurriedly. After this occurrence, he goes cautiously
along the bank, lurking behind trees, crouching behind bushes, and

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look using flies. I would draw a more cheering picture
if I could, but truth is precious, and in fact
he does lose many flies. It requires a deal of
skill and more of luck to flick a fly with
any accuracy, and flick he must, for there is not

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a spot in the whole backwater to which it is
possible to make a legitimate cast. Flicking a fly is
an indescribable process by which you make it pass round
or through a tree, under a branch, and over a bush,
until it falls safely upon a square foot of water.

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If he gets round, under and over the initial obstacles,
the chances are largely in favor of its alighting on
the bush which always waits for it on the opposite bank,
and which is generally inaccessible. Therefore, it stands to reap
that flies must be lost. Thus, for thirty yards or

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so he wrestles with circumstance, without moving or seeing a fish.
But presently he comes to a better spot, which is
clear of bushes on his own side. Though there is
a tree kneeling behind it, he can get his fly
onto the water more or less easily. He peeps round

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the trunk and finds that he overlooks a tiny rapid
above a pool, And there by all that is fortunate
is a trout lying in the channel between the weeds,
a light colored fish of about a pound. He trembles
a little as he prepares to flick for his nervous

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work fishing for a trout when you can see him,
but it does not prevent him from flicking the fly
just where it ought to go, a few inches above
the trouts. No much flicking, and little water have dried
the march brown, and it floats nicely downstream. As are

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the things being equal, it was morally certain he would.
The fish takes it in a business like way as
soon as it reaches him, and the angler strikes. For
about a quarter of a minute, there is a sharp tussle.
The trout dashes about in the shallow water, and the man,
in the foolishness of his heart, thinks he has him,

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but finding that the weeds are not strong enough to
help him, the fish soon turns and bolts downstream into
his hole, and then the fly comes away. It is disappointing,
but natural pike tackle would hardly hold a trout in
this water, where it is only a distance of a

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foot or two to the nearest route, and only by
the merest luck could a light fly cast be expected
to do so. With human inconsistency, the angler, who in
his come moments would defend the beauty of brook fishing
against all comers, mutters a wrathful wish that he had

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had the Atlantic or some other open piece of water
in which to play the fish. Rather humboldt. He then
continues his way up stream in a deep dark pool.
At a bend, he sees another fish rise, and again
he manages to flick his fly aright. The trout takes
it almost before it touches the water, and retires under

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a route with promptitude. The angler vows that this time
he will not be done out of his lawful prey.
Without pausing to doff boots or stockings. He climbs down
the bank and commits himself to the deep. He sinks
into the mud at once, sinks horribly, but nothing daunted.

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He wades out into the pool until he can reach
the root with his net. Then the fly comes away again,
and he returns to shore, wet, muddy and furious and
sad to say, sits down and abuses brooks and brook
fishing for many minutes. Eventually, however, he becomes calmer, reflects

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that after all he has one good fish in his basket,
and decides to go back to the weir pool and
try for another with a worm. This he does, but
not getting another bite, he soon leaves it and turns
to the main brook. For about a hundred yards above
the flood gate and the weir is a quite considerable stream, deep, sluggish,

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and in parts twenty feet wide. To day it wears
its most lifeless aspect. His fly falls absolutely unheeded. Presently,
he finds himself by the side of a big pool,
below a brick bridge built for farmer John's hay wagons.
There is not a sign of a moving trout, but

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he fishes over it carefully, and at last, almost under
the arch, he gets a rise and hooks his fish.
It fights gamely, but in this open pool it is
comparatively simple work to land it, and it duly goes
into his basket, a nice little trout of nearly a pound,

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And then he goes on upstream, feeling more cheerful. There is,
it must be confessed, rather a monotony about the pools
of a brook, especially if one is not sure whether
they contain trout, and one can never be sure unless
one has seen them on that July evening. They are solemn,

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I might almost say, sulky pieces of heavy water, and
it seems of little use to fish them. Our friend
catches nothing and sees nothing for the next half mile,
though he tries the worm as well as the fly.
Then at a sharp corner he finds a pretty gravel
shallow at the head of which he gets another rise.

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He misses the fish, though, and consoles himself with the
thought there was only a small one. A quarter of
a mile higher up, the brook runs under a road,
and on a shallow above the bridge, he sees another fish,
a big fellow, which unfortunately also sees him, and darks
back under the bridge. Yet another quarter of a mile

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and he comes to the second mill. The backwater here
is short and shallow, but the weir is very promising,
forming quite a large pool at the back of the mill.
It is not easy to fish, as it is surrounded
by tall o marked by kneeling on the bank and
flicking on rather a large scale, he manages to get

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enough line out. There's very little water coming over the
weir now, and the pool is clear and still. The
bottom is covered with that dark green mossy weed in
which trout love to lie. At the very first cast,
a trout rises out of the weed and is hooked,

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but it is only a little thing of an ounce
or two, and he puts it gently back. It is
not till he puts his fly right under the fall
that he gets another rise. But then it is a
good one, and a heavy fish feels the steel. It
shows fine sport, and rush is about all over the pool,

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running out his line in grand style. But there are
no dangerous places except a tree in the farthest corner,
from which he manages to turn it, and in a
few minutes he has it in his neck, a dark,
burly fish weighing two pounds, all but announce. The pool
is too much disturbed now for further fishing, so he

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leaves it, climbs up a high bank, and finds himself
on the edge of the mill pond. Farmer John's water
ends with the meadow in which the pound lies, so
he cares only about one hundred yards more water at
his disposal. The pound is narrower and deeper than the
one below, and here and there it is overgrown with bushes.

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He follows it to the end of the meadow, looking
out for a rising fish, but though it is now
six o'clock, he cannot find one. So he goes back
to the deepest part by the hatch hole, and sits
down to wait till he does see arise. Two while
away the time, he puts up his worm tackle and
throws it in on the chance of getting an eel.

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For a long time it remains untouched, but at last
the line quivers a little, and he picks up his
rod so as to be in readiness to strike, for
you must not give an eel too long, or he
will swallow the hook and cause you great tribulation. Soon
the line begins to move slowly off and he strikes.

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For nearly a minute, the eel or whatever it is,
moves slowly about in a small circle, and the angler
congratulates himself on an easy capture. Then, without the least warning,
there is a tremendous rush. Twenty yards of line are
off the reel. Before he realizes what's happening. A great

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fish leaps out of the water a long way off,
and all is silence. The angler winds in his line,
reflecting on the perversity of things. It is not often
that one can meet with one of the very big
fish that these brooks sometimes hold, and when one does,

(32:57):
it is a pity to mistake it for an eel.
That trout may have been anything over five pounds. After this,
everything else seems of small importance, And though our angler
catches another trout of about a pound in the weir pool,
he has to a great extent lost interest in his fishing,

(33:18):
And presently he takes his rod down and starts on
his four mile walk home. As things go, he has
not done all badly, and his two brace of trout
or any rate well earned. Moreover, the big one is
still there, and he can come again. End of Chapter thirteen.