150 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. 20, 1898. 
English Anglers. 
While I have fished on the continent of Europe, my 
lines have never fallen in waters covered by the Union 
Jack, save in Canada, and that is too near home to 
count for much, but I have talked and corresponded 
with prominent anglers in England, and, what gives one 
a better knowledge of such things, I have for years 
read the angling journals of England. 
The English angler is more gregarious than the 
American; and here arises the necessity of defining the 
term "gregarious " as applied to anglers. The English 
angler, as a rule, belongs to a club which has a lot of 
officers, and meets at stated times to have a dinner, sing 
songs, listen to after-dinner speeches and have a good 
time. In his club he meets men whom he knows, but 
has never fished with, but he looks around the club 
room and see trophies on the walls; "head of a 261b. pike 
taken by Mr. ," etc., and mentally hopes to record 
one some day that will go Mr. a pound or two bet- 
ter; a laudable ambition which may, or may not, accord- 
ing to the individual temperament, be actuated by friend- 
ly rivalry or by the meaner spirit of jealousy. 
Taking up the English Fishing Gazette of May 14, 
1898, I find over four columns of "Reports from Clubs," 
which include fifty-four clubs. As a sample I will quote 
a few at random, but the fact that "prizes were distri- 
buted" umst be borne in mind: 
Alma Angling Society, Coach and Horses, Portsmouth-place, 
J.incoln's-mn-fields. — On May 10 the ninth annual dinner and dis- 
tribution of prizes took place. Much credit is due to Mr. Wilson 
for the splendid spread put on by him. Mr. Pailes, with his 
well-known ability, presided. After the tables were cleared several 
toasts were given: "The Queen," "Alma," "Prize Donors," etc. 
Mr. Pailes presented the prizes, to the value of £40. The chief 
recipients were Messrs. Hopping, Utting, Drew, Guittard, Dyer, 
J. Seymour, Black, Tomkinson and Hall. A good list of prizes 
was booked for the ensuing season. Harmony followed, and a 
very pleasant evening was brought to a close with "Auld Lang 
Syne." — J. Chambers. 
Blackfriars Angling Society, Rose and Crown, Commercial-road, 
Lambeth. — We take our twelfth annual supper and distribution of 
prizes on Monday, May 23, at the above address, when all are 
cordially invited. I should thank all gentlemen that have prom- 
ised prizes to send them on to me before the above date. — J. Foster. 
Eagle Angling Society, Red Lion, High-road, Tottenham. — On 
May 7 Mr. J. Collier had three fine trout, scaling 5!bs. 5oz., 31bs. 
Soz.~, and 2lbs. respectively. On 10th inst. we had our annual gen- 
eral meeting, when the officers for the ensuing season were elected: 
Mr. E. T. Elder re-elected as president. — W. L. Price. 
This shows that the English angler is more gregarious 
than his American cousin. They love to congregate 
when not fishing, have dinners at which angling songs 
are sometimes sung in the true Waltonian style. I 
doubt if any American-born angler ever heard an 
angling song, or could sing one if he had heard it. As 
in America, there are thousands of anglers in the British 
Isles who do not belong to clubs, but clubs are more 
common in England tTian here. 
The Fly-Fishers' Club. 
This London club is the only one of its kind in the 
world. There is nothing that approaches it in any way. 
It is not a fishing club, owns no waters, and does not 
meddle with laws nor the stocking of streams. Its ob- 
jects are purely social, and it is largely composed of 
"scholarly anglers."* 
The club is about fourteen years old, and has the ele- 
gant rooms at io Adelphi Terrace, Strand, which were 
formerly occupied by the Savage Club. The constitu- 
tion and purposes of the Fly-Fishers' Club may be briefly 
stated to be: 
To bring together gentlemen devoted to fly-fishing. 
To afford a ready means of communication between 
those interested in the delightful art. 
To provide in the reading room, in addition to the 
usual newspapers, periodicals, etc., catalogues and books, 
foreign as well as English, having reference to fishing, 
particularly to fly-fishing, so as to render the club a 
means of obtaining knowledge about new fishing places 
and vacancies for rods, and a medium of information on 
all points relating to the art. 
I have before me the last annual report of the com- 
mittee and of the annual dinner. Mr. William Senior, 
well known under the pen name of Red Spinner, is the 
president for 1898-9. The annual subscription for Lon- 
don members is two guineas, and for country members 
half that sum. There are 275 members, and the follow- 
ing items appear in the treasurer's account for 1897: 
Rent for one year $L375 
Printing, books, periodicals, etc 542 
Expenses of annual dinner 185 
Total expenses $2,102 
There is a balance in the bank of $1,115, which shows 
that the club is on a solid financial basis. The report of 
the dinner, at which the retiring president, Mr. R. B. 
Marston, presided, is given in full, except the menu, and 
the speeches must have kept the table in a roar. 
The last pages of the report give the tariff in the 
club room and hotel dining room, for members and 
their guests; and it is both appetizing and cheap. 
I have talked with several New York gentlemen in 
bygone years about forming such a club in New York. 
Many favored it and promised to join — if I would do all 
the work of organizing. Selah! 
Frank Buckland. 
In July, 1880, this well-known English naturalist and 
fishculturist met me on board a German ship at South- 
ampton. I was returning from the International Fish- 
eries Exposition at Berlin, too ill to go ashore, and 
Buckland came to see me. He was a very popular writer 
who put scientific facts in a way that they could be 
read, but he was superficial, tried to cover too much 
ground and never made the mark in the scientific world 
that his father, the Rev. William Buckland, did. 
Buckland had a grudge against me. Two years before 
I had taken some quinnat salmon eggs to Germany by 
order of Prof. Spencer F. Baird, the U. S. Fish Com- 
missioner, and my instructions were ro leave a package 
of 50.000 for Buckland at Southampton, if he met them at 
the ship on my cablegram, otherwise to take them to 
Germany and leave them. I obeyed orders, and as Mr. 
* I could never resist using this phrase in this connection, for, 
with several other Americans — Cheney, Harris, TIenshall, Poey 
and Wells — I am on the list of honorary members. The fly goes 
round with the wheel. 
Buckland did not appear at Southampton, the eggs 
went to Germany. He cabled me at Bremerhaven to 
return the eggs, but I had no authority to d<5 it, and 
that was the cause of the grievance. Under other cir- 
cumstances I might have liked Buckland, but on this 
occasion his tone and bearing did not strike my fancy. 
After my explanation he said: 
"I had hoped to get these eggs, and had telegraphed 
to Seth Green for them, and he answered that they were 
on the way; I don't understand it." 
"Mr. Green," I replied, "sent your request to Prof. 
Baird, and he ordered me to bring you a lot to be left 
at Southampton, provided you met them, or had an 
agent to receive them; otherwise they were to go to 
Germany." 
"Well, but, Seth Green"— 
"Has nothing to do with the case. The eggs were 
sent by Prof. Baird, and my orders came from him." 
"But," said Mr. Buckland, "as Green is at the head of 
fishcultural affairs in America, I don't understand the 
case; he told me that you would deliver the eggs to me. 
Who is this man Baird?" 
I was reclining on a lounge, but this question brought 
me up and I said: "Mr, Green is merely the superinten- 
dent of a hatching station of the State of New York; a 
man whose intense egotism has caused him to work the 
newspapers to blow him off as far as he can work them; 
Prof. Baird is the secretary of the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion and the Commissioner of Fisheries of the United 
States, and is so well known among the men of science 
of the present day that not to know him argues yourself 
unknown." 
That answer angered Mr. Buckland, and he left. 
Doubtless he looked up Prof. Baird's record after that, 
but his ignorance of American fishculture was surprising 
in a man who had dabbled in the science in England. 
Buckland was an abler man than Green, and had 
greater advantages in the matter of education, for Green, 
while he could barely read and write, possessed an 
original capacity in the matter of grammar and spelling. 
Yet Buckland and he had one thing in common, the 
inordinate desire for newspaper notoriety. 
Buckland had been a strong man physically, but did 
not appear so when I saw him; he died a few months 
later, Dec. 19, 1880. 
Thomas Satchell. 
Here was a scholarly angler of the first water. Asso- 
ciated with Westwood in the publication of that splen- 
did work, "Bibliotheca Piscatoria," which not only gives 
the title, date and place of printing of every book on fish- 
ing, angling and fishculture that they could find any 
record of had been published, in any language, with 
comments on their value, and brought up to date, the 
vade mecurn of the scholarly angler. 
A response to a letter, and the sending of some titles 
of American fishing and angling books, was the flirtation 
that led to acquaintance, and when I was sent to Ger- 
many in 1880, as recorded, he came over to see me. If 
Buckland was brusque, Satchell was his foil, for a more 
pleasant gentleman I never met; but embarrassment 
followed his assumption that I was familiar with the 
piscine lore of the Greeks, and I was forced to tell him 
that the little Latin and less Greek I had learned at 
school had passed into oblivion, except as it had been 
revived in the nomenclature of fishes, and the Ojibwa 
was more familiar, because later acquired. 
Then we came down to plain everyday angling, arid I 
opened all the cases of American exhibitors, and let him 
handle the rods, inspect the flies, lines and all that 
comprised our great exhibit. I put lines on reels and 
reels on rods, and assumed the role of "fish" while his 
severely critical eye followed the bend of the rod and 
noted the resistance of the reel. As I was not working 
for any dealer in rods, I put up trout rods of all the 
makers who had sent them in our care. Mr. Satchell 
went from one to the other, and back again, and finally 
said: "If I was on the jury, I would hesitate to decide 
which was best, but it is the best display of fine tackle 
that I ever saw." 
The Hotel Bauer, corner Friedrich Strasse and Unter 
den Linden, was my camp, and I asked Mr. Satchell to 
a fish dinner there. Of all the things which a man may 
eat in Berlin, outside of game birds, fish is the most 
expensive diet. Of course, England has all the fishes 
that Germany has, and the only novelty was in the 
cooking, and Mr. Satchell had expressed curiosity in 
that line'. The fried soles and the boiled salmon were in 
no way different from the manner in which those fishes 
are usually served, but, on the advice of the chef of 
Hotel Bauer, the piece de resistance was a 2lb. carp, boiled 
in beer and served with a thick, semi-sweet black sauce 
in which some dark beer, like Culmbacher, was said to 
give zest to an otherwise flavorless fish. I saw that my 
guest was nibbling after I had quit, and I said: "Satchell, 
you are trying to eat that mess out of compliment to 
me; you don't like it, but hesitate to say so. Drop your 
fork and we will have the next course." The kellner re- 
moved the fish almost intact. 
When the squabs and the Burgundy came on my 
friend's eyes brightened, for he knew that the worst, if 
not the zvurst. was over, and amid the coffee and cigars 
he asked: "Are you fond of carp served in that man- 
ner?" 
"Never struck it before, and am not in a hurry to 
run up against it again; the chef recommended it, and I 
Vas curious, as you were. No doubt a man can acquire 
a taste for carp in beer, as he acquires other tastes, but I 
am content with the experiment." 
"Will you believe," queried Mr. Satchell. "that after 
I had landed at Bremerhaven and walked over to Geeste- 
miinde to see the fishing boats from the North Sea come 
in, and saw fine live cod. and bought a small one, that I 
could not find a cafe in the place where they could 
broil me a cod steak?" 
"I would be surprised if they could. The Germans fry 
steaks and chops, and in the,whole land there are not a 
thousand grills, or gridirons, as we Yankees call them. 
Some time I'll tell you how Prof. Goode and T tried to 
have an American shad broiled in Berlin, but it's a long 
story." 
Mr. Satchell met me again at the ship at Southamp- 
ton, and if I would onlv stoo a fortnight, or even a week, 
he would show me : r F 'ish trout streams, and all 
the grills that I cared to have brought into our service. 
I reflected: The savage man does what he wishes to 
do, and is the only free and independent man. If I were 
a savage I would spend months on English angling 
waters, if my host would stand it, but there was a 
demand for my services some 3,000 miles across a damp 
spot called "Atlantic," and on this occasion my visit to 
Albion was limited by the .stay of the ship. 
American Anglers. 
The American angler is not gregarious, that is, not in 
his angling character. Individually he may be an en- 
thusiastic member of some secret order; or may be- 
long to the Fat Men's Club, the Hoboken Turtle Club, 
the Thirteen Club, or any other organization except a 
social club. Not that many anglers do not belong to 
clubs and pay their dues promptly, but that ends it. 
Their interest in a club is usually to get fishing in 
protected waters, and in a club of several hundred the 
angler has a few friends who arrange to fish when he 
does, and he does not know many other members. 
In order to make this statement specific, let me in- 
stance the case of a New York city man who is a mem- 
ber of the Restigouche Salmon Club, of Canada. He 
fishes every year, takes a friend or two, and with his 
Indian guides spends some time on the river, sends his 
salmon to the club to be packed for friends, and goes 
home. I have mentioned this angler's name to many 
members of the club who live in New York city, they 
"have heard the name, but do not remember meeting 
him." 
iiie American angler, if not solitary, rushes off with 
a friend, time-table in hand, and fishes with one eye on 
his rod and the other on the time-table, and gets back 
on schedule time. He may, if he is in the railroad car 
and sees an angler with rod and creel, approach him 
and enter into conversation in order to learn of new 
grounds, or what lines are successful there, but he is 
not "gregarious" in the sense that means "brotherly." 
Of course, I am speaking in a general way, for I 
know a club or two which have fishing privileges, and 
in the winter have a dinner in the city, when there is a 
genuine angler's greeting and a good time; it has been 
my good fortune to be a guest on several of these occa- 
sions, but their rarity only emphasizes the fact which 
I have stated. The exception proves the rule. After 
many attempts the officers of the defunct Rod and Reel 
Association managed to have a dinner follow the tourna- 
ment, and a jolly affair it was, but the attendance was 
small, most of the members had some reason for hurry- 
ing off at sundown, but then that association was not 
properly organized. 
America has no Fly-Fishers' Club. 
America has no such institution as the Fly-Fishers' 
Club, of London, yet it has plenty of material for it in 
several great cities. A city club where meetings would 
be held in the winter months, a great angling library, an 
annual dinner, and an occasional smoking concert. In 
such a club friendships would be cemented, new waters 
would be discussed, and summer trips planned. There 
would be no question of children and servants occupy- 
ing choice rooms at the fishing grounds, and all com- 
plaints regarding the cuisine and service would be made to 
the house committee, who would straighten out all kinks. 
Once I broached this subject to half a dozen "scholarly 
anglers" and they approved the scheme, but killed it at 
once by suggesting that I go to work and organize 
such a club. As this would have been a large contract 
for a man who had both time and money to spend on 
it, the scheme went no further. I said that if each of the 
six would get five eligible men for charter members, I 
would do the same, and we would make a modest start, 
but that was more than they were willing to do. Those 
same men would toil all day under a June sun with feet 
in cold water for what sport could be got from a score 
of trout, and were also jolly, companionable men who 
heartily approved of my scheme, but had not interest 
enough in it to get a few charter members. 
We all accept the axiom that "it is not all of fishing 
to fish," but somehow interpret that saying to mean that 
there are other pleasures on the stream, such as scenery, 
the fauna and flora, and the bull which drives the angler 
over the fence. But all these things the angler finds 
only in the few angling months. How about the wintar? 
The intelligent and "scholarly" British angler has pro- 
vided for this. He cannot angle in winter, but he does 
not forget that he is an angler. His fishing waters may 
be in any portion of the United Kingdom, and he may 
never fish with any member of "The Fly-Fishers' Club," 
but he is "a brother of the angle," and enjoys compan- 
ionship with those who have been voted to be eligible, 
and he loves to attend the meetings and take part in the 
discussions, or to withdraw into a corner and discuss the 
tying of flies with a crony or two. 
The average American angler is not convivial, and 
by this I mean that he lacks that element, so pronounced 
in the Germans, of cordial goodfellowship, and of what 
the French call cameraderie. Outside of angling the 
American has hundreds of social clubs, but in all our 
land there is no great angling club, which gathers in 
anglers because they are anglers, and does not ask them 
where they fish, nor try to influence legislation. There 
are plenty of organizations which are formed to regulate 
the laws and to fight the battles of game protection. 
Their existence is one of continual warfare, and they may 
be trusted to carry it on. I would like to see an angler's 
club organized which would accept and obey all the laws, 
absurd or wise, and when the fishing season was over re- 
sort to the library of the club, or at least attend its di li- 
ners and listen to the fishing stories, duly attested by a 
responsible notary public, without comment; a club 
largely composed of "scholarly anglers," and there are 
enough of them to form such a club. They are men 
who fish and read, but seldom write, but whose minds 
are stored with both ancient and modern piscine lore. 
If I am right in the statements herein made, and there 
are really and truly enough scholarly anglers to form 
such a club in New York, on the lines of the London 
club, then by all means let such a club be formed. 
Fifty gentlemen anglers as charter members would start 
a club that within a year would number as many as the 
London club, 275, and by carefully guarding the mem- 
