N.B. All rights reserved in articles published in 
A -1 1 V 7 - • paper. 
April Memories. 
Scotch Notes . 
Notes and Queries . 
Fishings and Scenery of the Highlands—The North 
Esk, West Water, and Glenosk Streams 
Trout Fishing in Michigan . 
The Book of the Eoach . 
Reminiscences of an Angler . 
Stray Casts. ' [ 
Waltoniana. 
Correspondence. 
385 
388 
387 
388 
389 
390 
391 
392 
393 
393 
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with which is incoepoeated 
ANGLING ANl) CLUB GOSSIP. 
SATURDAY, MAY 27th, 1893. 
APRIL MEMORIES. 
By H. R. FR.iNcis. 
Dear Mr Marston, —There is a familiar Latin 
adage, De non apparentibus et non existentibns 
6aoem est ratio. Id is so lon^ since I made an 
appearance in your columns that both you and 
your^ readers might fairly suppose me a “gone 
coon gone alike from the active delights 
of angling, and from the calmer enjojment of 
contributing to its many-sided literature. But 
after a long struggle with not merely one 
dangerous illness, but a succession of maladies 
such as few octogenarians are permitted to 
survive, I find, with a deep sense of thankful¬ 
ness, not unmixed with astonishment, that I have 
passed through the winter almost without having 
lelt its rigour, and am sunning myself in the 
brightness of a summerlike spring. It would be 
inost ungrateful in me not to say something of 
the favoured spots which have made such a 
winter possible. Torquay, where I spent my 
December and January with but one day of real 
cold, is pretty well known to health-seekers. But 
my medical adviser—an angler, be it observed, 
and a careful student of temperatures—cautioned 
me against lingering there through the chilly 
approaches of spring, and recommended Falmouth 
as an English substitute for the E.iviera, and 
here I have been since the middle of February, 
ble.ssing the genial climate, and marvelling that 
such a delicious sanatorium for invalids in the 
cold season should not be more generally known, 
ihe temperature is equalized by the great extent 
01 surrounding salt water. You have the sea at 
your back, and the fine estuary of the Fal 
branches out into so many land-locked bays that 
you fand yourself amphibious, continually crossing 
by steamer or ferry-boat to some new scene of 
beauty. This has been, doubtless, an exceptional 
season, but the local flora testifies that the 
climate is peculiarly mild. The palmetto 
Hourishes. the Australian cabbage-tree and the 
Bourbon fan-palm thrive in the sheltered nooks, 
while conuers from all lands grow to a stately 
he^ht. Rhododendrons were in bloom in March, 
and the beds of hyacinths were beautiful in 
r ebruary; but the charm of the scenery cannot 
be described. We are never weary of the views 
irom our window across and down the harbour, 
especially lovely when the evening sunshine comes 
slanting across from behind our terrace, and 
throws a rainbow of varied colouring over the 
unruffled expanse of water. ^ 
The place is certainly one where you may live 
cheaply and pleasantly, and I am much struck by 
the frank, hearty courtesy which astrangerreceives 
irom all ranks. But if you ask me what are an 
angjer s prospects in this otherwise charming 
region, I cannot reply very encouragingly. There 
are, it appears, several tiny brooks, which steal 
down through sheltered combes to join the 
estuary, and these brooks contain plenty of tiny 
trout, which are, alas! inaccessible to the fly, 
though ready victims to the “ wily worm.’’ 
There is also a certain reservoir, from which a 
small number of really fine trout are said to be 
yearly extsacted by determined fly-fishers. This 
much I state rnerely from report, not without a 
vague impression, due to old memories, that 
could I recover something like my old gifc of 
rambling and scrambling I could contrive to 
improve on the accepted standard of local sport. 
As it is, I have myself recently seen one distinctly 
“ troutable ” sheet of water, known as Swan Pool. 
I was driving home from Penjerrick—the most 
wonderful triumph that I have ever seen of 
landscape gardening, enriched by an acclimatised 
flora—when I came on this lakelet, parted from 
the sea by a low sandy barrier. Ic was a still 
evening, and the water lay in a silvery calm, only 
broken by the scattered rises of what were 
assuredly trout, and sundry of them not bad 
ones. I did not especially notice the extent of 
Die pool, but, guessing from memory, should put 
it not far from eight acres. There are, I am 
told, other pools of the same character along 
this part of the coast, formed, perhaps, originally 
by a tidal wave breaking over into some depres¬ 
sion of the land, and there, between evaporation 
and rainfall, gradually losing their brackish 
character. I should fully expect to find the trout 
in such a place firm and red fleshed, like those 
taken in our estuaries, which some of your corre¬ 
spondents regard (though I think on slender 
grounds) as a distinct species. But this is all 
guess work. Only, there were the trout, and 
there was I, not only without a rod ready to my 
baud, but with no tackle nearer than London ! 
Yet even thus I felt awakened and retreshed 
by the sight; capable indeed of throwing off the 
inertia bred of a year’s illness, and spending, 
if not a day, yet a few hours, in a sport 
which I have not yet made up my mind to 
abandon. April was the month of months to me 
some fifty years ago, for though I got but a few 
days for trouting, these included the “ opening” 
day on the Thames, and usually two or three on 
the upper waters of the Itchen. April 1 might 
seem rather an ill-omened day for a sport so 
uncertain as angling, and I consider myself lucky 
in never having failed in a long course of years 
to secure at least one Thames trout—frequently 
three or four—on that day, though kind friends 
often told me that I should myself become a 
poisson d’Avril. One thing strikes me as curious 
in the retrospect. I cannot give the exact years 
of my first and last spinning performances on 
April 1, but I well remember that .the first was 
on an exceptionally hot day. I had to fish in my 
shirt sleeves in a low and bright river, succeeding 
where others failed, by discarding Thames 
spinning traces, and dipping in a hole and corner 
fashion with a small bait and concealed lead. 
The last, on the contrary, some twelve years later, 
was the coldest day i have ever known at that 
season—siiow-showers alternating with what 
Cqwper (I think) calls “ skin-piercing volley,” 
driven by a fierce north-easter. I don’t know 
whether it was trust in my star or the mere 
that sent me forth under such a 
sky, but I toiled for four or five hours without 
seeing a fish, the only touch I felt being one of 
what Tennyson calls “humorous self-pity” for 
my own folly. I was on the point of withdrawing 
beaten, when my trusty boatman, Rosewell, 
persuaded me to try a last throw in a certain 
sheltered eddy, where a few bleak had shown 
themselves, and where he had seen a fish at work 
u before. I made a lucky cast, my 
hands being too numb for accurate throwing, and 
found I had that trout fast hooked, and though 
no doubt I played him awkwardly he was soon in 
the punt. He weighed barely 41b. “But oh ! the 
(hnerence to me,” as Wordsworth sings, between 
that one capture and a “toom creel.” Two 
minutes later I was on shore with him, leaving • 
my tackle behind me and making a bee-line 
homeward, hobbling at first, but at last breaking 
into a stiff trot, which slowly restored my circu¬ 
lation. Years elapsed ere I revisited the streams 
by Marlow Point, but the memory of that day 
and that fish has never left me. The Hamp¬ 
shire fishing was of a very different complexion; 
there was always a certainty of good sport 
towards the end of April. To basket a 
couple of stone, after throwing back scores of 
undersized fisb, was quite a common case with 
me ; and a dear friend who shared my spor^, used 
to speak of those two days as the pleasantest 
fly-fishing he had ever enjoyed. One day on 
those bright waters I specially remember, from 
the appearance on the scene of the Avingdon 
keeper, who feared that I might trespass on the 
preserves of the Shelleys, which adjoined the 
best of Lord Ashburton’s fishery at Ovingdon. 
I had been picking up a few brace of fish in some 
rather shy water on another branch of the 
stream, in order to leave my friend in full 
possession of his favourite shallow, old Wilkes 
attending him with net and creel. Late in the 
forenoon I moved up, and was crossing a well- 
known hatch-hole, above which I expected to get 
my best sport, when the vigilant keeper stepped 
up and very civilly said that as I was alone, he 
thought he had better come and show me how 
Ur my liberty extended. “You see,” he con¬ 
tinued, ‘ that this hatch-hole is the end of my 
loi^d s water, and then, Sir — Shelley comes 
in. “Thank you,” said I; “you are pretty 
nearly right, but the boundary is marked by a 
post in mid-stream some eighty yards lower. The 
casts are rather awkward, but if you will come 
with me, I mean to show you three fish between 
the hatch-hole and the boundary.” He followed 
me, and as good luck would have it, I named 
my three casts and hooked a goodly fish in each, 
which he landed for me secundum artem. I then 
turned up stream, to a reach which I can still 
see in my mind’s eye. A raised footpath, with¬ 
out a scrap of cover, ran along the near side, and 
though there were plenty of fish everywhere, it 
wanted a stiff breeze to make them move boldly 
in mid-stream. But the opposite bank, distant 
some twenty-five yards, was fringed with young 
willows, under whose fli. kering shade I could see 
I he trout rising freely and fearlessly. It was all 
I could do to reach them with my two-handed 
Elton-a good rod still by the way, Mmugh I 
can no longer wield it “the lang simmer’s day” 
—and this was, perhaps, lucky, as I might else 
have been fast in a twig instead of a fish. But 
the first cast, which sent a Yellow Dun fairly 
under the shadow, brought up a trout who meant 
business—as indeed they all did on that memor¬ 
able day. I looked round when about to land him, 
and found my volunteer guide still in attendance, 
and ready to do good service with the net. Another 
and another fish followed in quick succession. 
Then came doublets, and after these were basketed 
the sportsman in him got the better of the beck- 
watcher. Vowing, in rather strong language, that 
he had never seen the like, he begged to be 
allowed to carry my basket, which, to tell the 
truth, threatened to mar my casting by its grow¬ 
ing weight. I jumped at the friendly offer, and, 
resuming my long cast with arms unfettered, felt 
as if I could not go wrong. I suppose every 
sportsman with either rod or gun has occasionally 
felt the same confidence of success, which tends 
strongly to its own fulfilment. The flies would 
fall exactly where they ought to, and if the 
