Mat 6, 1893] 
THE FISHING GAZETTE 
327 
nets, but the efforts of anglers are quite fruitless. 
I am sorry to see that owing largely to the state 
of the water there is at present an abnormally 
large amount of diseased fish in the river. On 
some recent evenings considerable crowds of 
people have gathered at Banff Bridge, and looking 
into the crystal waters below have seen a large 
number of fish in various stages of degeneration. 
Despite this condition, trout fishing has been in 
some sections of the river prosecuted with 
wonderful success. Thus, for instance, on the 
Mountblairy section Mr. Harold Braithwaite in 
one week caught 421b., and on two days Mr. Morer 
had 181b.” 
The upper reaches of the Clyde and accessible 
tributary waters are being stocked with young 
trout from the Abington hatchery. A consign¬ 
ment amounting to about forty thousand, sprung 
from eggs received from Loch Leven and 
Howietoun, was this week put into the burns and 
upper waters. Till they grow enough they are to 
be under the protection of the Upper Ward Clyde 
Angling Protective Association. 
Heahly every salmon in Loch Tay is now pretty 
brown, but still sport is being got. Game fellows 
that they are, the fish will not be kept down. 
The Tweed is doing, to tell the truth, really 
nothing at all. There are smolts, yellow fins, 
kelts, and clean anes all in it, but for the present 
the various elements are too much mixed up 
together to admit of anything worth recording 
being done. The water is filthy, many of the fish 
filthy, and most of them lethargic in the extreme. 
The Helmsdale, for many years past renowned 
for its early season angling, has done by com¬ 
parison miserably poor this year. So also has 
the celebrated Loch Oich and the River Garry of 
Inverness-shire. 
Our Tay correspondent writes : “ Thing as 
dull as ditchwater here. The water we have is 
not very fine; there is also great scarcity of it, 
and until we get a proper dose of rain roun’ 
and roun’ the hills and all over the low country 
the fishing will not be worth a rap. The 
majestic Tay has felt the drought, and is now 
about dried up ; the Earn and the other tributaries 
are in no better state. The whitling are dis¬ 
appearing—retiring to the salt water to re¬ 
cuperate, and the yellow trout are seldom got on 
the lake although they are found to be in splendid 
condition. A few good baskets and same nailing 
good trout have been got on Loch Leven, but 
there’s nothing so miraculous about that as to 
cause a fuss. The river salmon netters are doing 
little or nothing, in fact, some of them have prac¬ 
tically ceased to work at their stations. Kelts, 
clearing out, are numerous down about Perth at 
present, and some of the trout fishers get good 
fun with them. I hope to goodness we get a 
heavy spate soon. I am wearying for a slash 
at the Tay trout. I am not throwing the 
hammer when I say that I am about as dab a 
hand as there is at Tay trouting. I never 
vastly overshoot the mark with the weight of 
my baskets as some hillies hereabouts do. 
I HEAR nothing about Colin Gunn of the Brora, 
and the genial Professor of the same, this week ; 
BO I conclude that the angling is chronically 
stagnant through lack of water in the Brora owing 
to the prolonged and unprecedented drought. Is 
this so, Colin ? _ 
Grilse are slow, slow, in coming on this year. 
Up to the time that I write, only three undoubted 
grilses that I have heard of are reported as got 
from all the sea and river salmon fisheries of 
Scotland this season, one in Tweed district, the 
first; one in Horth Esk district, the second, and 
one in Dee district, the third. If I remember 
rightly it is a dozen years since grilse were so 
backward in the season in putting in an appear¬ 
ance in the north. The three got this year 
already, weighed respectively, 2Ub., 2ilb., and 
2;|^lb. _ 
I HAVE not seen the renowned 51b. and 61b. 
April grilses of Loch Esk reported this year. I 
am amazed at that, because I had got to believe 
these grilses to be an institution admirably 
adapted for being trotted out to a greenhorn’s 
credit on every convenient occasion. 
An Aberdeen correspondent writes:—“ There 
was a grilse got at the pier of the Dee last night 
in the Aberdeen Harbour Commissioners’ nets. 
I saw it and another—a little beauty—but the 
latter was not the real thing—it was a hybrid. 
The scales were the scales of the trout, and the 
spots trout spots. The head, too, and the tail— 
neither was the right thing—but altogether, 
notwithstanding these points, it was a most hand¬ 
some little fish.” 
Despite the low water the salmon angling takes 
are being rattled up on the Invercauld Hotel 
Fishery at Baliater. Each of the three rods 
still manage on an average about four fish a day. 
Sir George Chetwode, Bart., and Mr. Griffiths 
lead for the month. 
THE ANGLER’S DIARY FOR 1893. 
Mr. Horace Cox, of the Field, who for nearly 
twelve months now has printed the Fishing 
Gazette for us, sends us a copy of the Twenty- 
Seventh Yearly Edition of that invaluable and 
cheap little work the Angler's Diary.* We have 
so often recommended this work of about 250 
closely printed pages, that we shall content our¬ 
selves with giving a copy of the Table of Contents. 
Of course in a work of this kind errors will creep 
in, but we believe they are very few, and the 
Editor, Mr. Irwin E. B. Cox, will always be glad 
to make a note of any corrections sent to him. 
Contents. 
Rivers, and the Nearest Railway Stations : 
England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. 
Close Seasons and Angling Licences : England 
and Wales, Ireland, Scotland. 
Fishing Stations in the United Kingdom : 
England and Wales, Ireland, Scotland, 
Fishing Stations in Africa. 
Fishing Stations in America : Canada, Central 
America, Newfoundland, United States, West 
Indies. 
Fishing Stations in Asia : Asia Minor, India, 
Japan, Mauritius. 
Fishing Stations in Europe : Austria, Belgium 
and Luxembourg, Dauubian Principalities, Den¬ 
mark, Iceland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, 
Norway and Sweden, Russia, Spain and Portugal, 
Switzerland. 
Fishing Stations in Australia. 
Addenda. 
Memoranda. 
At the end there are ruled pages for entering 
takes of fish through the season. 
ilotes anir teries 
Scotch Shootings and Fishings. —Anyone in 
want of information about salmon and trout fish¬ 
ings to let in Scotland should send to Mr. P. D. 
Malloch, 209, High-street, Perth, for his new list, 
which has just been published. 
Irish Shootings and Fishings. —We have also 
received a copy of their new list of shootings and 
fishings to let in Ireland from Messrs. Joseph 
Braddell and Son, Castle-place, Belfast. This list 
contains a splendid coloured map of Ireland, by 
John Bartholomew, on a scale of ten miles to the 
inch. Anyone interested in Ireland should 
possess this map. _ 
We are glad to see that IVIiss E. Ellis, of 13, 
Danby-terrace, Exmouth, can now supply at 
Is. 6d. a dozen the flies for Devonshire streams 
recommended in that capital work ‘‘Trout Fishing 
on Rapid Streams,” by Cutcliffe. Many a heavy 
basket on the Barle and Exe have we had years 
ago using Cutcliffe’s patterns, made not so large 
as he recommends. Miss Ellis’s May-flies at Ss. 
a dozen are also very good. 
* Price Is. Cd. Sent post free by Sampson Low, 
Marston, and Company, Ltd., St. Dunstan’s House 
Fetter-lane, London, on receipt ot stamps for Is. Cd. 
Fishing Club Liberality. — To show how 
kindly disposed are the members of the True 
Waltonian Fishing Club, whose headquarters 
are at the Railway Hotel, Batchworth, Rickmans- 
worth, Hertfordshire, to any one in the locality 
in need or distress, the case of a poor young 
man, named Walter Ralph, who, owing to a cart 
accident, had recently to undergo amputation of 
one leg. has been brought to the notice of the 
club, and one of the club gentlemen, Mr. H. W. 
Higgins, has just given orders that a cork leg. 
with all modern improvements, shall be supplied 
free to Ralph. The above is only one of the 
many acts of kindness done by this noted fishing- 
club in the district. 
Fishing for Trout with the Stone-fly 
Creeper. —The creeper is the larva of the stone- 
fly, which is the largest of the Perlida family of 
aquatic insects. It is found under the pebbles at 
the extreme edge of streamy water; in season.s 
like the present it may be found during the 
latter part of March, but it is seldom until the 
middle of April that the fish feed upon it with 
avidity. Then every trout in the river may be 
seen on the shallows, rooting about for the food 
which has so much to do with bringing them into 
good condition. Ronalds state that the stone-fly 
itself is in season from the beginning of April 
until the end of May, but if he had said from 
May 1 until the end of the first week in June he 
would have been far nearer the mark. To catch 
a good supply of creepers with your fingers 
requires an amount of dexterity not possessed by 
many average mortals, but there is a far more 
speedy method, which was first shown to me by 
that prince of all-round anglers, “ Dicky ” 
Routledge, of Carlisle. The modus operandi is 
as follows : Stand about a foot in the edge of a 
stream, and place the bow of your landing-net 
straight down in the water, facing downstream, 
then stir the gravel up with your brogues, and 
the creepers are washed by the stream into the 
net, out of the meshes of which they are easily 
picked. Place them in a tin of damp moss. 
Strap the tin round your waist, and the 
first part of the performance is complete. 
The tackle consists of three yards of drawn gut, 
tapering from lx, the thickest, down to 4x, the 
finest, or gossamer gut, as it is generally termed; 
on this wrap two No. 0 sneck-bend fly-hooks, 
about a quarter of an inch apart, and eight inches 
above that affix a very small shot. A 12-foot rod 
answers the best for this style of fishing, as the 
line can be more easily commanded. AVade very 
cautiously up-stream, and, with a long, swinging 
cast, such as you would make in up-stream worm- 
fishing, throw tl e creeper lightly into every little 
run and eddy f uch as is likely to hold a feeding 
trout. If the line stirs the fraction of an inch, 
raise your wrist gently, and if you hook your fish, 
pull him firmly into the water below you, and 
there play him out. The chief difficulty arises 
from the extreme tenderness of the bait, and a 
novice will lose creeper after creeper, whereas an 
expert seldom does so, unless he has a bite and 
misses it. I forgot to say that to bait the tackle 
the top hook is put into the head and the lower 
one into the middle of the belly, both being 
underneath. Both the creeper and the stone-fly 
are equally deadly in their seasons. Theakstone, 
in his work on British angling flies, records an 
instance of capturing a trout weighing Iflb. 
which had 100 perfect stone-flies in its inside. 
On those waters where dear-water worm fishing 
is allowed before June 1, I should advise my 
friends to give that style of fishing a trial. I am 
aware that it is rather early for it, but you can 
never tell, and I am very fond of trying experi¬ 
ments in fishing. Then, if both the creeper and 
the worm fail to tempt the wily trout, have re¬ 
course to a small minnow, fished well up-stream 
on the finest of tackle—for choice, the “Ariel” 
flight. It is all very well for a man to say, 
“Oh! but I never fish anything but fly.” My 
own opinion is, that the sport of angling means 
catching fish, but if a man finds comfort and 
satisfaction in thrashing away on a crystal river 
under a blazing sun for a brace of fish, or per¬ 
chance nothing at all, well, all I can say is, “ Lit 
him stick to it.” I prefer to wend my way 
honeAards with a heavy basket taken by means 
of the bait that the fish are feeding on.— 
“ Halcyon,” in the AYeekly Edition of the Leeds 
Mercury. 
