FROM THE ARCHIVES:The dubious pleasures of salmon and trout fishing in February were considered in this anonymous article in 1874. –
JOE JOYCE
MOST RIVERS are now open for fishing. The variable close season, both in Ireland and Scotland, resembles somewhat the table of moveable feasts in the Roman Calendar, but well on in February there are few streams in which fish may not be caught according to law. But what about fishing in February, considered as a sport?
Angling has been generally regarded as an idyllic and pastoral pursuit. It is recommended in connection with purling brooks, with bird song, with the scent of many flowers, with the apparition of a pretty milkmaid, who will chant ballads for the passing strangers.
Even, however, with reference to the latter we expect more or less pleasant conditions of place and season. In February the enthusiasm of the salmon angler is severely tested. The mornings are raw and chill, the approaches to the river sodden and miry.
The lark reserves his music for a more promising day. The leafless bushes of the hedgerows are dripping from the mist, and a drizzle of rain comes down just as you have chosen a fly to commence operations.
There certainly is water enough in the river, and possibly that gleam of dirty whey colour in it which denotes snow in the mountains and salmon sluggish and torpid.
Still, it is your first day, and you feel a delightful thrill of anticipation as you fling out the line and work the fly actively over a hole celebrated for its successive tenants for more years than you can remember.
It cannot be said that salmon will not rise on such a morning, and so it is not out of the order of nature that you may be in luck. Salmon in this respect are indeed “kittle cattle.”
The most favourable weather which an angler could order will find them indisposed to move from the bottom of the stream, and a hailstorm another time will not deter them from rushing at the lure. Hence, catching fish in February is quite on the cards; but whether the sport is worth what you suffer for it is another, and perhaps fairly a relative, consideration.[...]
Trout fishing invariably also suggests the rural pictures to which we alluded above. You must get plenty of the sweet country or it is nothing. You think of it in an early June morning just at sunrise, when the brook is tinged with red, and the blackbird flutes from the copse, and the sky promises so bright a day that you had better make the most of these few lovely hours before breakfast, when the fish are on the feed, which they will not be again until evening.
And at sundown you have another time the song of the stream growing deeper with the fading light, and the whole air full of the odour of mint and meadow sweet, until you put up the moth fly under the round moon itself, and rest, perhaps on a bridge, pipe in mouth, listening to the “suck” of the big three-pounders who come out for a heavy supper.