Shooting and fishing, fishing anecdotes.

Chapter XVII

Shooting and fishing - Good snipe grounds - Killarney and Powerscourt - My fishing record - Playing a rock - Salmon flies - Salmon and trout - Grattan’s favourites - Hooking a bird - Fishing anecdotes - Lord Spencer’s adventure.

Shooting and fishing have been my favourite sports. The former, in my early days, was with the old flint gun, which had been brought to great perfection. It was quite wonderful how few misfires one had. When these flint-locks had been made as perfect as possible, they were superseded by percussion guns, which in their turn gave place to breechloaders: So it is with almost everything. I have had much shooting of many sorts, but snipe shooting was my favourite; and many a good day I have had with the old flint gun. My best have been with a muzzleloader. I never was a very good shot, except at snipe and woodcock. At rabbits I was very bad, especially when they were crossing rides. I constantly shot behind them, and sympathized with the Frenchman who couldn’t hit them, “Dey are so short.” But at woodcock or snipe few men could beat me. I have shot as many as 18 snipe in as many consecutive shots, and often from 12 to 14 without a miss. Snipe shooting, alas! is not what it used to be. Drainage of marshes and fields has in some places abolished it, in others greatly injured it. There are few places now in Ireland where 13 or 14 couple would not be considered a good day, and on many lands where I have often shot from five and twenty to 30 couple a day one-third of the number could not now be found. Here are two of the best days I have ever had - I take them from my diary - *

“Dingle, 12th February, *1855. - I shot Galorrus bog; bagged 48 couple of snipe, a mallard, 2 plover, and a curlew. Ran out of shot at 3 p.m.”

*“Dingle, 13th February, *1855. - I shot part of Cohen’s bog; bagged 60 couple of snipe, a woodcock, a teal, a curlew, and a hare. I took out with me 2 lbs. of powder and 14 lbs. of shot and had very little left in the evening.”

On the same two days a cousin of mine who was with me killed 47 couple of snipe, four plover, a woodcock, and a teal.

As we sat at our dinner at the inn in Dingle, rejoicing over our good sport, we were attended by a very grumpy waiter, evidently from his rich Dublin brogue an importation from that city, sulky and dissatisfied with his lot. I happened to say to my cousin, “I think we are now nearly in the most westerly spot in Ireland.” The waiter (it was the first time he had spoken except in monosyllables) said, “Yes, gentlemen, you are in the most westerly spot; and, what is more, you are in the most damnable spot in Ireland!” He then relapsed into sullen silence.

On Lord Carlisle’s first visit to Galway, when he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a waiter - something of the same sort as our friend - was told off specially to wait on him. On handing a dish of peas to him at dinner, he said, “Pays, yer Excellency;” then *sotto voce, *“and if I was you, the divil a one iv thim I’d touch, for the’re as hard as bullets!”

These great days were on Lord Ventry’s property, and I was glad to hear from him that these best of birds are still plentiful there. His son not very long ago shot over 40 in a day.

The snipe shooting near Killarney was very good indeed, though not equal to that at Dingle. Lord Kenmare kindly gave me leave to shoot over all his property there, except the woods and coverts; so did Herbert of Muckross over all his, with the exception of one estate, which he preserved for himself and friends who might be staying with him at Muckross, though I fear it was sometimes visited by poachers from Killarney. As I was shooting on the adjoining estate, my attendant, one Callaghan McCarthy, said to me -

“Your honour might as well try that other bog beyant there.”

“Callaghan,” I said, “don’t you know I have not leave from Mr. Herbert to shoot there?”

“What matter, your honour?” said he. “Sure you might as well shoot it as any other blackguard out of Killarney.”

In the neighbourhood of Cork I have often in a day killed from 20 to 30 couple. Near Blarney, on the slope of a hill, there was a spring, surrounded by mosses and reeds, where in time of frost there were sure to be at least three or four snipe. Once before I got very near it one got up; he flew low and right away from .me. ‘Twas a long shot, too, and I missed him. I reloaded and walked on, expecting the others to get up, when lo! just by the spring were two, each with a wing broken, hopping about. I had chanced to hit them on the ground when firing at the other.

About 12 miles from Cork, in a bog near Castlemartyr (one of the best, but for its size, I ever shot), there is a similar spot. The late Cooper Penrose, to whom it belonged, told me that when he went to shoot there, before he went into the bog, he always fired at this spot, which was marked by red and yellow moss, and seldom failed to pick up from one to four snipe.

‘Twas on this bog a sparrow-hawk swooped down and carried off a snipe I had wounded.

At Hillville, some twenty miles west of Tralee, I have had some of my best days. Near there one evening, after a very hard day, during which I had bagged 29 couple of snipe and a mallard, I sank nearly to my middle in a bog. I was very tired, and but for the help of the man who was carrying my game-bag I do not think I could have pulled myself out. I was nearly in as bad a plight as the gentleman about whom a girl called out to her father, “Oh, father, father! come out quick and help Mr. Neligan; he is up to his ankles in the bog!” “Well, Mary,” said he, “what harm will that do him?” “Ah, but, father, sure his head is downwards!” said she.

For over 40 years I have seen Killarney nearly every year, but never did I see it look so beautiful as on one cloudless winter day, when we were cock shooting in the woods on Toomey’s mountain. The hills above and around us, all clad in snow, glistening in the sun; below us was the lake; every island, with its trees, reflected in the water, calm and clear as crystal; and the woods along its margin green as in summer, so full are they of arbutus and holly.

The following autumn I was shooting with my friend, the late John Pennefather, on Lord Glengal’s part of the Galtees, where grouse are not plentiful. We were restricted to seven brace in the day; but they need not have restricted us, for after a long day, in which we had worked uncommonly hard, we had only six and a half brace. We were very anxious to get our other bird, but one dog had gone lame, and the other was so tired that he began to set larks and other small birds, as tired dogs will do. At last, however, he came to a very steady set high above us on the hill.

“Come on,” said Pennefather; “he has them at last.”

“Go up yourself,” I said; “it is only a lark, or something of the sort.”

“Come on, lazy fellow, and we’ll make the seven brace. Look now how steady he is!”

So with our weary legs up the weary way we trudged. As we got up to the dog a large yellow frog jumped from before his nose; nothing else was there; and we descended sadly.

My last day’s shooting was at Powerscourt - a party of 18; we went up for a hare drive on Douce and the War Hill. I and the late Mr. Gray, the artist, were together. We climbed at such a pace that by the time we were half way up the mountain, my heart was beating in a fearful way.

“I’ll go no farther,” said I to Gray; “I’ll go back and shoot woodquests in Powerscourt.”

“Come on, man, come on,” said Gray; “you’ll be all right in a minute,”

“I can’t,” I said, “there are drums beating in my ears for the last 10 minutes.”

“Nonsense,” said he. “There are cannons going off in my ears for 20 minutes. Let us sit down for five minutes and get our breath, and we’ll be all right.”

So we did, and got on well for the rest of the day. Our bag was 505 hares, and a good many grouse; but the marching up the mountains, with young fellows, at four miles an hour was, at my age, too much for me; so I gave up shooting.

Not so with fishing, about which I am as keen as ever; and last summer, in my 77th year, I killed 54 salmon and peel; 128 sea trout, and over 400 river trout. I have sometimes thought of writing a book on trout and salmon fishing, in which my experience has been considerable, as I have fished more or less every season for five and sixty years; but so many books on the subject have of late, years appeared, I am afraid that anything I could say would add but little to what the readers of those books already know.

Of the first 20 years of my fishing I have no record, as I did not keep one till 1848. Since that year the following is a list of’ the salmon, trout, and pike, I have killed:-

Salmon and peel (or grilse) - 1,295

Sea trout - 2,636

River and lake trout - 65,436

Pike - 602

The list would be much larger had I been able to include the earlier years, or had I been able to fish as often as I pleased; but my life has been a busy one, and, until I went to the Board of Works in 1863, I took no regular holidays, and could only spare a few days occasionally from my work. Since then, however, I have had a six weeks’ holiday every year, which has been nearly always devoted to fishing. Of the trout in the above list, the great majority were the small ones of mountain streams, of which I have caught as many as 17 dozen in a day; but in the rivers flowing through the rich lands in the midland and southern counties, I have killed many a fine basket of trout up to four pounds in weight, and in lakes up to eight pounds.

In my youth I fished a good deal in the Shannon, at Castleconnell, but have no account of my fishing there, though I had many a good day. My two boatmen were Mick Considine, and Tom Enright, the former known as the “Little Boy,” and afterwards as “The Badger;” the other as “Tom Pots.” Every boatman on that part of the Shannon had a nickname. Poor old Tom Pots is now a blind ferryman at Castleconnell. I had not seen him for many years, but when crossing in his boat a few years ago, he recognized my voice. The change in Mick Considine’s name occurred in this way. A Mr. Vincent and I were fishing near O’Brien’s Bridge, and went into a farmhouse to have our dinner; a splendid salmon just caught, new potatoes, which the farmer dug for us, and newly churned butter made a meal not to be despised. After dinner Considine was standing near me; scarcely any men in those days wore beards, but he had a large one, and bushy whiskers too. “Mick,” said I, “‘Little Boy’ is no name for you; you are like a badger, not like a boy.” Then giving him a tap on the head with the handle of the gaff, “‘The Badger’ I christen you, and ‘The Badger’ you are from this day forth.” “Begorra, Mick,” said Mrs. Frewen, the farmer’s wife, “you are a badger in earnest now, for sure it’s Mr. Le Fanu that can christen you; isn’t he a dean’s son?” From that day till his death, some years ago, he went by no other name.

It was at Castleconnell that I, with the help of these two boatmen, played a trick on the well-known S. C. Hall, which did him no harm beyond the loss of a book, but gave him a fishing adventure to talk of for the rest of his life. I have since heard that a similar trick has been played on others, but to me and my boatmen it was original. Hall and Mrs. Hall were staying with us, late in the summer, at Castleconnell. Hall was, in a mild way, a devoted disciple of old Izaak, but up to this time he had never killed, or even hooked, a salmon; his fishing having been almost entirely confined to catching barbel, dace, and gudgeon, and other base fishes of the same sort, from a punt on the Thames. I once, and once only, had the privilege of enjoying that sport, it was near Teddington Lock; amongst other fish, I caught a gudgeon six inches long, or more; I think it must have been one of unusual size, as the boatman, who had disregarded the other fish, looked on it with evident admiration, laid it on his hand, apparently appraising its weight, and said, “That, sir, is an out-and-out; gudgeon, and a gudgeon is the best fish as swims.” But I must not digress.

Hall’s ambition was to catch a salmon, and this it is not easy to do when the water is low in bright, hot, autumn weather; the Shannon boatmen say, “The fish renaige the fly in August.” 1 was, however, determined that, if I could not make him kill a fish, I would, at all events, give him some sport; so into the cot we got to troll, or as they call it there “to drag,” the “Gariffs,” a broad pool, too broad for throwing. On my line was a fly, on his a spinning bait, which I had basely leaded so heavily that it must before long sink to the bottom and stick. We had not been long out when it got fast in a sunken rock. The boatmen pulled hard away from the rock. Whirr! whirr! went the reel, as I shouted -

“You’re in him, Hall! Raise your rod; don’t let him get slack line.”

“Begorra, he is in him, sure enough,” said the Badger; “a big fish he is, too.”

When about 50 yards of line were run out, back they rowed towards the rock, while we shouted to Hall, “Wheel on him! wheel quick on him or he’ll go.” As soon as his line was reeled up, and his rod well bent, off we went again whirr! whirr! whirr! goes the reel, faster and louder than before. Hall was so excited, and so fully occupied, that he never saw nor suspected the manoeuvres of the men. In this style we made him play the rock for over 20 minutes, when we finally rowed right away, till all his eighty yards of line were run out, except a few rolls on the axle of the wheel.

“What shall I do? what shall I do?” he cried. “He’ll take all my line away!”

“You must hold on to him hard,” I said, “and take your chance.”

In another moment the casting-line snapped, the line slackened, the rod straightened.

“He’s gone,” cried Hall, throwing himself down in the bottom of the cot.

“Och, murdher! murdher!” shouted Tom Pots, “the milt is broke in me. What made your honour hould him so hard? Och, but he was a terrible big fish! that fish was 50 pounds if he was an ounce.”

Hall, as many of my readers probably know, lived to a great age; but never to the day of his death did he cease to mourn the loss of that fish. How often, years after, have I, and other friends of his, heard him describe the play that fish gave and what a monster he must have been.

Of late year, except an occasional day on other rivers, my salmon fishing has been confined to the Kerry Blackwater, and to the Mulcaire, in the county of Limerick. In the former I have killed 16 salmon and peel in a day, and in the latter 13. In my earlier days I used a great variety of flies for trout. I have tied and tried nearly all the four dozen different kinds, which are so well described in “Ronald’s Fly Fisher’s Entomology,” where there is given an exact coloured likeness of each fly, and of its artificial imitation.

Age and experience has taught me the folly of all this, as of many other things which I once thought wondrous wise. I am now reduced to a few simple patterns, though not quite to Cholmondely Pennel’s three.

Of salmon flies I had at one time no end of different sorts, and loved to get a new pattern from some new book; I have seldmon used any but those of my own tying, and for years have very rarely tied andy but the following four.

1. Tag yellow; body claret or firey brown fur, with hack of the same colour, ribbed with gold; yellow or jay hackle round shouler.

2. Tag orange; body black silk and black hackle, ribbed with silver; jay hackle round the shoulder.

3. Tag yellow; body grey fur and grey hackle, ribbed with silver, yellow hackle round shoulder.

4. Grouse Lochaber; body orange or black ribbed with gold.

The tail of each, a golden pheasant crest, with a few sprigs of summer duck. The wings nearly the same for all, of mixed fibres of golden pheasant’s frills, tail and red spears, green parrot, blue and yellow macaw, Guinea hen, mallard, and summer duck, or some of these; head, black ostrich. I do not mean to say that flies of other patterns may not kill as well, but these are my favourites everywhere. Of course I tie them of various sizes, and if one of them of the proper size will not raise and kill a fish, I feel it is the fault of the fisherman, not of the fly.

Though my faith in colour has not increased with time, my faith in size has. If I raise two or three fish with hooking one, or if a fish rise twice or thrice without taking, I put up a smaller fly of the same pattern, and generally do so with success. Man men, in my opinion, fish with flies too large, especially in low water.

In the Kerry Blackwater, a rapid mountain river, which may by in high flood in the morning, and quite low in the evening, I often during the day use flies of five ro six different sizes, reducing the size as the water falls; but in the Mulcaire, which continues for a day or two, or longer, without any perceptible change in the height or colour of the water, I seldom change the fly, which, as a rule, is no bigger than a white trout fly.

Spinning and worm-fishing for salmon are so well described in the Badminton Library and other books that I can add nothing, except that men are apt to strike too soon. In fly-fishing, too, I am inclined to think that, except in lakes or very still water, the rod should not be raised until a pull is felt. It is many a year since one of the best salmon-fishers I have known, when he saw me raise my rod on seeing a rise, said to me, “You should not do that; never pull a fish till he pulls you.” In some parts of rivers you can see the fish come quietly at the fly, and how often have I seen an excited fisher pull the fly away from him before he had time to take it. I remember once, in my younger days, on my doing this my gillie said to me, “Did you see how sorrowful the salmon looked when your honour pulled the fly out of his mouth?”

Some people still find it hard to believe that the little smolts, which have lived for a year or more in the river, and have only grown six inches long, will return from the sea, after a visit of but two or three months, as grilse from four to seven pounds weight, or even more. What food they thrive on so wonderfully in the sea has not, I think, been discovered. Dr. Edward Hamilton, indeed, in his “Recollections of Fly-fishing,” a most interesting book, says, “They live chiefly upon small fish and crustacea; young herrings they delight in;” but, unfortunately, he does not give his authority for this statement. Whatever they feed on, the fact of their rapid growth is beyond dispute. It is the same with trout. Little trout, which have lived for years in a mountain stream, and have not grown to more than six or seven’ inches long, if transferred to a river flowing through rich lands, or to a newly made lake or pond, will increase in size nearly as rapidly as the smolts do on their transfer to the sea. This fact is well established; but the size they will attain in a few months is not so generally known.

My brother-in-law, Sir Croker Barrington, made a large pond, almost a little lake, of about 20 acres in extent, in his demesne at Glenstal, in the county of Limerick. The lake is fed by an overflowing spring well, and by a very small stream, in which there are no fish, as it dries up altogether in summer time. I saw the dam completed on the 1st of November, 1880; the lake then began to fill. My nephews, after that, caught in the neighbouring mountain streams a number of little trout, the largest not more than half a pound weight, and put them into the lake. I was there in the following July, and it was full of splendid fish, many three pounds and upwards. One of four and a half pounds was caught, and some larger ones were seen.

Amongst the fish put into the lake were many parr, or young salmon, five or six inches long. A fine wire grating was fixed at the exit from the lake to prevent their escape. By July they were about one and a half pound weight each, bright as silver, and very wild and plucky when hooked; excellent at table, too, the flesh pink and curdy. What became of them I do not know; they disappeared from the lake. The wire grating may have been broken or disturbed, and so they may have got away to the sea.

Though it is not known on what food salmon fatten in the sea, I have little doubt that what makes trout grow so fast in newly formed lakes and ponds is the great quantity of insect food they get from the submerged grasses and weeds. In rivers where the trout are large there is much insect food. If you pull up a bulrush or a reed you will find the part that was under water often quite covered with larvae of flies and other insects; whereas in mountain streams insect life is comparatively scarce. I have seen somewhere an account of experiments tried on trout by feeding one set exclusively on worms and small fish, and another set on flies and other insects. The latter grew and throve immensely better than the former.

It is strange that there is nothing found in the stomachs of salmon caught in rivers. I have often tried, but never could find anything. Many explanations have been offered, all, to my mind, quite unsatisfactory. In some rivers in time of flood you will catch salmon with a worm, or a bunch of two or three worms, and while the trout you then catch are full of worms, there is nothing in the salmon. One of my sons thinks the salmon may only chew and suck the worms, and then throw them out of their mouths. I can hardly believe this, but it is as likely as any other of the theories I have read of.

A remarkable property of trout and some other fish is the way in which their colour adapts itself to that of the bottom of the river on which they lie. It is this which makes it so hard to see them. This property is well known; but it is not, I think, so well known how quickly the colour changes. I have often tried a black vessel and a white one - putting three or four trout into each. In about two minutes or less those in the black vessel are so dark that you can scarcely see them, while those in the white vessel, in an equally short time, become a very pale brown or fawn-colour. If one of them is put in amongst the dark ones he looks almost white; but in a minute or two is as dark as the others, and *vice versa *a black one amongst the bright ones. I have just got a dozen tin vessels made, painted of different colours, green, red, blue, etc., and I mean to try how far trout will take the different shades. Their colour certainly does adapt itself more or less to the green weeds, the blue limestone, or the brown sandstone of the river bottom, and no doubt many a fisher has observed, what I have often seen, that a trout lying on a gravelly bottom, composed of light and dark pebbles, has his body striped, each part assuming the colour of the pebble on which it lies.

Another strange fact is that in rivers where the trout are very small, you will occasionally find a huge fellow, a Brobdignag amongst the Liliputians. I have had several examples of this. One was in the Dargle river, in which the trout are nearly all under a quarter-pound - a half-pounder is quite a rarity. I was fishing in the lower part of it one evening, and had hooked a little trout on my dropper-fly, but found that the tail-fly was held fast. I thought it had stuck in a stump or weed, until whatever it was began to move slowly across the river, with a very heavy weight upon the line. I was just thinking whether it might possibly be an otter when out of the water sprang such a trout as I never dreamt could be there. My tackle was very light, and I was without a landing-net. However, after a long and exciting fight, I tired him, and drew him gently to the edge of a low strand, and as he lay there on his side, gave him a shove with my foot that sent him high and dry on *terra firma. *He was a little over five pounds, and by no means a badly shaped fish. As I went a little lower down, a stranger who had been fishing further up the stream, but had given it up, was looking into the river over the road wall. He asked me whether I had had any sport.

“Pretty good,” said I. “I have got a few nice ones.”

“I hear,” said he, “they are very small in this river.”

“They are rather small; you don’t get many bigger than this one,” said I, taking my monster out of the basket and holding him up.

The stranger gave utterance to a profane exclamation of surprise, and departed.

Higher up this river, just below Powerscourt domesne, is Tinahinch, the house and property which was given to Grattan by the Irish nation, in remembrance of his services to his country. The place was too much wooded, and has been much improved by Grattan’s granddaughter, the present proprietor, who has cut down many of the old trees, which were far too numerous. Grattan was so fond of them that he would never allow one of them to be cut. An English friend, who had been staying with him, asked him whether he would be annoyed if he ventured to make a suggestion. “On the contrary,” said Grattan, “I shall feel greatly obliged.” “Well,” said his friend, “don’t you think that great beech tree is a little too close upon the house rather overshadows it?” “I do,” said Grattan; “and I have often thought of taking down the house.”

The peasantry in most parts of Ireland admire no woman that is not fat and plunp. The highest compliment they can pay is to tell a lady that she is growing fat. At our fishing quarters in Kerry we had a good example of this. On our arrival an old woman, Mary Sugrue by name, said to my wife, “Ah then, ma’am, you’re looking grand entirely, God bless you! and you’re fallen greatly into meat since you were here last year.”

Another time, at Glenstal my wife went to see the wife of the gamekeeper, a Mrs. Neal, who is very fat - at least three or four stone heavier than my wife. “Ah then, ma’am,” said she, “I’m proud to see you looking so well and so fat.” “Well,” said my wife, “I don’t think you have much to complain of in that respect, Mrs. Neal.” “Ah, ma’am,” said she, “how could a poor woman like me be as fat as a lady like you?”

Small or thin men are not admired either. I heard of a sturdy beggar who said to a pale, emaciated youth who would not give him anything, “Bad luck to you, you desarter from the churchyard!”

Mrs. Martin of Ross told me that some short time ago, as she was going out for a walk, a poor woman was at the hall door, with whom she had the following conversation:- *

Poor Woman. *“Ah then, ma’am, God bless you! and won’t you give your poor widdy something?”

*Mrs. Atartin. *“But you are not a widow.”

*Poor Woman. *“Begorra, I am, ma’am, and a very poor widdy, with three small childer.”

*Airs. Martin. *“But, my good woman, I know your husband perfectly well.”

*Poor Woman. *“Of conrse you do, ma’am; but sure that poor little unsignificant craythur is not worth mentioning.”

But to return to fishing. Twice in my life I have hooked two salmon together; each time I lost one and killed the other. I have, however, several times killed a salmon and a sea-trout together.

In fly-fishing I never caught a bird but once; it was a water ouzel. I also caught four bats; but they and the bird flew by chance against my line, and were hooked by the wing. I wonder a swallow never takes a fly. I saw a robin caught once. A friend of mine, when going in to luncheon, stuck his rod in the ground in front of the house, and on coming out found that a robin had taken one of the flies, a small black midge.

Like most fishers, I have hooked a good many men, myself most frequently. I never hooked a woman but once - it was my wife. I’m not making a miserable joke. I was fishing at Ballinahinch, in Connemara; she was sitting on a rock behind me, and I sent a salmon fly right into her chin as far as it could go. 1 don’t know anything more disagreeable both to hooked and hooker; and I hate pulling the hook out, but I always do so instead of cutting it out or of stripping off the fly, and driving the hook through, and so drawing it out at another place. Losing your first salmon of the season just as he is into the gaff is bad enough, and getting the water well above your wading boots on a cold, frosty morning is not pleasant; but these accidents that a fisherman is heir to are mere nothings compared with what you feel when you find your salmon fly firmly embedded in your own or in some one else’s face.

Another time, at Killarney, my attendant, Callaghan McCarthy, was behind me; I had made a cast, and heard him say, “Hold on, sir!” but, on the contrary, I gave a good chuck, thinking I had only stuck my fly in a weed or leaf behind me. He called out, “For God’s sake, hold on, sir! Begorra, I believe it’s what you want to pull the eye out of me.” Sure enough, my hook was right through his upper eyelid.

It was with this Callaghan McCarthy that I was once speaking of one of my assistants on the railway at Killarney, named Handcock, who was a very hot-tempered fellow, and rather severe with the men. “Well,” said Callaghan to me, “they may say what they plase, your honour, about Mr. Handcock, but he’s a wondherful feelin’ gintleman.” “I’m glad to hear you say so, Callaghan,” said I. “Oh then, indeed, it’s him that is the feelin’ gintleman. When I was so bad last winther, didn’t he come into the house to see me?. And as soon as he seen me, ‘McCarthy,’ says he, ‘put out your tongue.’ Well, savin’ yer honour’s presence, I put out my tongue; and when he seen it, ‘McCarthy,’ says he, ‘you’re a dead man.’ He’s a rale feelin’ gintleman, that’s what he is.”

At Glenstal I was going down, one warm evening, to fish the ponds. I had wound a cast of flies round my hat, and another round that of the under-keeper. As we went down through the wood a great many flies were buzzing about us. I mistook one of those on my hat for one of them, made a slap at it, and sent the hook right into the palm of my hand. I could see that the keeper was with difficulty suppressing a laugh; but about 10 minutes afterwards he called out, “Bedad, sir, I’ve done it myself now.” And so he had, and in exactly the same way.

A Mr. Edward Dartnell told me that as he was fishing near Limerick for pike, with a frog for his bait, he in some way managed to send the hook right through the, gristly part of his nose, between the nostrils. He had to walk a mile, the frog hanging there, but concealed beneath his pocket-handkerchief till he came to a forge, and got the hook filed across and taken out.

On a cloudless day I was fishing on the river Laune at Killarney. It was so calm, and the water so clear, that I couldn’t raise a fish, so I tried worms, and soon hooked a small salmon. While playing him I thought I saw something constantly darting at his head, and as he got tired and came near, I saw that it was a large perch, which was grabbing at the worms hanging on my hook from the salmon’s mouth. He never ceased to do so till the fish was gaffed; and so bold was he, that if my gillie had had a large landing-net instead of a gaff, I am sure he would have landed both the fish.

One day, as I was fishing the Swords river, I got into conversation with McClelland, the water bailiff. He asked me how many children I had. I told him, and he said, “That’s quare now, your honour, for that’s exactly the same number myself and my missus has. And isn’t it strange how the Lord would give you and me, that can’t afford it, such a lot? and look at Mr. Roe, and Mr. Dargan, and other rich men that hasn’t one. But I suppose,” he continued after a pause - “‘I suppose the Lord takes some other way of tormenting them.”

When fishing in Connemara, in the summer of 1869, I started one morning very early from Glendalough Hotel, our headquarters, for the Snave Beg (“The Little Swim”), so called because it is the narrowest part of Ballinahinch Lake, in fact little more than a strait joining the upper to the lower lake. My wife and two children were, after their breakfast, to meet me there. By half-past nine I had killed two salmon, and in order to cast my fly over a fish that was rising a long way out, I stepped out from stone to stone on some slippery rocks. Just as I reached the point I was making for my feet went from under me, and I fell flat on my back into the lake. All my clothes, I need not say, required drying, so, as the sun was hot, I spread them on the rocks, and ran about across the heather to warm and dry myself. While I was still in this unusual fishing costume I heard the sound of a car rapidly approaching, and saw, to my horror, that not only were my wife and children upon it, but also another lady. Fortunately there was a large rock close by; behind this I carefully concealed myself, and despatched one of my boatmen to stop the car, and to ask them to send me a rug and as many pins as they could muster. The rug was pinned round me, my arms left free, and my legs sufficiently so to allow me to walk, and thus attired I fished for three full hours, until my clothes were dry.

I have had many other duckings, both in lake and river, besides “The Suave Beg” just described, but I shall only mention one of them, as they are usual incidents in the life of every fisherman. At our fishing quarters on the Kerry Blackwater most of the fishing is on the opposite side of the river from the house. We pull ourselves across in a flat-bottomed boat attached to an endless rope, which passes through pulleys on each bank. One wet and stormy day during our stay there, in the year 1884, I was watching for a fresh in the river, and from the house I could see that the water was slowly rising; so I sallied forth with rod and gaff and my trusty attendant, Andy Hallissy. We got into the boat, and he began to pull us across, while I remained standing up, with the rod in one hand and the gaff in the other. We had got about halfway, when a sudden gust of wind drove us against the rope, which caught me across the chest, and sent me spinning over the gunwale of the boat into the water. I at once struck out to swim ashore, but found that I made no progress, the reason, which I soon discovered, being that Andy had firm hold of the tails of my coat. “Let go, Andy,” I said, “and I’ll be ashore in a minute.” “Begorra, I won’t let you go,” said Andy, “until you catch hold of the gunwale of the boat; and I’ll pull you over myself.” Within an hour I had been up to the house, had changed my clothes, and was playing a salmon.

At Killarney I heard the following story, which shows how differently an Irishman and a Scotchman will take a joke. An Englishman, who had been fishing the lower lake, said to his boatman, “An extraordinary thing happened to me some years ago. I lost a pair of scissors out of my fishing book at the edge of the lake. The next year I was fishing here again and hooked and killed a very large pike. I felt something hard inside him, so I opened him, and what do you think it was?” “Begorra, then, your honour, I’d think it moight be your scissors only for one little thing.” “What is that?” asked the other. “It’s only just this, your honour, that there never was a pike in any of the Killarney lakes since the world began.”

Afterwards he tried the same story with a gillie in Scotland. When he asked him, “What do you think was inside him?” the gillie replied, “Your scissors and nae guts; and the Duke of Argyll - and he’s a far greater man than the king would not have insulted me sae. I’ll fish nae mare wi ye;” and off he walked.

At Lareen, the fishing quarters of my brother-in-law, the late Chief Justice May, I was fishing down the Bundrowse river, accompanied by his keeper Watt. I was crossing to an island by some stepping stones, when he called out to me not to go that way as the stones were slippery; “and,” said he, “you might fall in as his lordship did the other day; but I have made a nice little bridge at the other end of the island, and he never crosses by the stones now.”

“I suppose, said I, he dreads the water as a burnt child dreads the fire.”

“That’s just it,” said Watt. ” But maybe you don’t know who “it was that invented that saying.”

“I do not know,” I said. “I don’t think it was Solomon.”

“No, it wasn’t him,” said he; “it was my grandfather.”

“Indeed,” said I. “I thought it was more ancient.”

“Well, it isn’t, though it’s wonderful how well known it is; but it was my grandfather that first said it. You see, sir, this was the way it came about. My grandfather was a smith, and he saw the minister coming down towards the forge to pay him a visit, and for a bit of a joke he threw a small bit of iron he was forging on the ground; it was nearly red hot. When the minister came in, after a little talk, my grandfather says to him, ‘Minister, might I trouble you to hand me up that bit of iron there at your feet?’ So minister picked it up; but I can tell you he dropped it quick enough, for it burnt his fingers. Just that minute my father and my uncle came into the force - they were wee chaps then - and my grandfather he says to them, ‘Boys, hand me up that bit of iron.’ Well, the little fellows they knelt down and just spit on the iron to see was it too hot; so my grandfather he began to laugh at the minister, and says to him, ‘Well now, minister, with all your book-reading and learning you see you haven’t the wit of them two small chaps.’ ‘Ah !’ says minister, ‘I suppose you played them that trick before, and they didn’t want to burn their fingers again.’ ‘That’s just it, minister,’ says my grandfather. ‘You see, a burnt child dreads the fire.’ So the minister told the story everywhere, and that’s the way the saying got spread all over the country. So, you see, my grandfather invented it.”

This Watt had been keeper to Lord Massey, from whom my brother-in-law rented the place, and the fishing and shooting; and I think it was with him that Lord Spencer many years before had rather an amusing adventure. In May, 1870, during his first viceroyalty Lord Spencer asked me to accompany him and Lady Spencer part of the way on a tour they were about to make through the north and north-west of Ireland. After having visited Lough true, Enniskillen, and Belleek, we arrived at Bundoran late in the evening, and here I was to have left them. Lord Spencer, however, pressed me to remain with them the next day in order to go with him to fish the Bundrowse river, which he said Lord Massey had invited him to try if he should ever be in the neighbourhood. I should have greatly liked to do so, as I had never seen the Bundrowse, and had heard much of it not only as a salmon river, but as famous for the curious and beautiful gillaroo trout, which abound in it and in Lough Melvin, from which it flows to the sea. Unfortunately, however, engagements in Dublin necessitated my departure, and I left them next morning before they started for Lareen, which lies about four miles to the south of Bundoran.

I did not see Lord Spencer till about 10 days afterwards, when I was dining at the Viceregal Lodge. I then asked him whether he had had good sport the day I left him.

“Didn’t you hear what happened?” he said. “We had a fanny adventure, but no fishing. We arrived,” he went on, “at the river and had just put up our rods, when a keeper appeared and inquired whether we had an order from Lord Massey. Freddy Campbell (- he was then Lord Spencer’s aide-de-camp -) explained to him who we were, and that Lord Massey had asked me to fish. The keeper replied, ‘If you haven’t a written order I won’t let you fish, not even if you were the king, let alone the lord lieutenant.’ Persuasion was useless; the keeper was inexorable, and we had to take down our rods and return sadly to Bundoran.”

“Oh, sir,” I said, “Lord Massey will be greatly annoyed and very angry about it.”

“No,” he said; “I took care about that. I wrote to him the same day to tell him that I was delighted to have found such an honest and trustworthy keeper.”

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