Echoes of Sport (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 Excerpt: ... Certainly there it is quantity more than quality that counts, as a burn trout of a fifth of a pound is a whale. There is a certain amount of dexterity required if the burn be narrow and the water clear. For any chance of success you must keep well out of sight, swinging your line gently upstream, pop into the pool; if thrown too hard it flips off half the worm. Nice pink little worms must be used, well cleaned and scoured, for such the greedy burn trout love, and will be tempted by even the remnant of a tail. If the burn be a wider one, and not cut up into stepping-stone pools, it is very good fun to fish with tiny fly. One such burn I know, with too historic and literary a fame to name, the owners of which amuse themselves on summer days, when no lordlier sport is to hand, in seeing who can make the biggest basket in an afternoon. Competition waxes keen; the Laird himself has been seen crawling on hands and knees behind the alder bushes, flipping out small trout (so-called) by the dozen. Woe betide the luckless fisher who mindful of his country's laws, dares to throw back the veriest minnow. Here indeed, it is only quantity that matters. A hundred and five I believe is the record basket for an afternoon's fishing in this burn. Perhaps the less said of the species of fish caught the better, nor would it be wise to hint at the locality of a famous river to which this burn pays tribute. If any amateur fisher like myself wishes to study some very useful lessons of fishing lore, both with fly and worm, they cannot do better than read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest a small book called the Practical Angler, by W. C. Stewart. He lived before the days of dry fly fishing, but he practised its chief principle, namely casting upstream, and says it has so many adva...