Of Fishing Books
Patrick Chalmers
Of Fishing Books
Patrick Chalmers on the real point of an angling book
In the following introduction to his classic book ‘At the Tail of the Weir’, Patrick Chalmers gives a vivid description of how he set out to write a fishing book and then found it had all been done before. But what he achieved was exactly what he intended - a book that’s an enjoyable and useful companion to the fisherman, a book that not only talks of fish and fishing but also of ‘the poetry of green places, old elms and Elizabethan manors’. Let Chalmers explain:
Books are like people and no man introduces another man to a friend unless the introducer first knows the introduced. In the same way you cannot introduce a book to a public unless you yourself know the book as a preliminary. And you cannot know a book until that book is written and read. Therefore before you introduce a book you must read it, and before you can read it you (or preferably someone else) must write it . . .
To begin with, what is a fishing book for? Well, its uses are two. It may teach, or aim to teach, how fish may be caught and where. Or it may be a sort of Song of Solomon in praise of the angle and one’s own prowess therein - My Fish and how I have Caught Them is a usual title for the latter type of book. And of these two kinds the last is the better fun to write and, infinitely, the better fun to read. For of the catching of fish there is no new thing to be said. The Badminton Library, The Lonsdale Library, Mr Sheringham’s Elements of Angling furnish all that any fisherman needs to ask.
Many wise men write fishing books and many wise men read them. But there is, and I regret it, among the cognoscenti, a leaning towards the making of a pastime a science of the schools. With deference I say to my masters, ‘simplify, simplify.’
For fish do not alter. They do not as a race learn by adversity, nor do they become educated of fishermen by the years. Naturally the old fishes in much fished waters become gut shy and more careful than they were at the beginning of the season, but they do not transmit their experience to their spawn and a feeding fish can usually be caught by anybody who will take a little trouble to do so and to keep, at the same time, out of sight. And he can be caught in exactly the same methods as employed by Walton our founder and enjoyed by Cotton his friend and ours. There is nothing new in the angle. The pursuit of fishing has been made, perhaps, by lighter rods and finer tackle an even more delectable pursuit than it used to be. Yet of that I am not quite sure. We with our featherweight ideas would no doubt grumble if we must go to Tweedside with the ponderous eighteen-footers that served Harry Otter and our own fathers. But did these latter enjoy themselves less than we of to-day do? And do we catch more fish than they did for all our finnicky new fashions and finesse? No, in both cases.
And why would it be otherwise? Our fathers fished the same waters as we do. Thames does not alter nor Tweed. And it is the same fool salmon who passes under Berwick Bridge as passed under it a hundred years ago. And it is the same roach at Remenham who remains to be gulled by the same gentle that did business with him when Farmer George reigned at Windsor . . .
Books are like people and no man introduces another man to a friend unless the introducer first knows the introduced. In the same way you cannot introduce a book to a public unless you yourself know the book as a preliminary. And you cannot know a book until that book is written and read. Therefore before you introduce a book you must read it, and before you can read it you (or preferably someone else) must write it . . .
To begin with, what is a fishing book for? Well, its uses are two. It may teach, or aim to teach, how fish may be caught and where. Or it may be a sort of Song of Solomon in praise of the angle and one’s own prowess therein - My Fish and how I have Caught Them is a usual title for the latter type of book. And of these two kinds the last is the better fun to write and, infinitely, the better fun to read. For of the catching of fish there is no new thing to be said. The Badminton Library, The Lonsdale Library, Mr Sheringham’s Elements of Angling furnish all that any fisherman needs to ask.
Many wise men write fishing books and many wise men read them. But there is, and I regret it, among the cognoscenti, a leaning towards the making of a pastime a science of the schools. With deference I say to my masters, ‘simplify, simplify.’
For fish do not alter. They do not as a race learn by adversity, nor do they become educated of fishermen by the years. Naturally the old fishes in much fished waters become gut shy and more careful than they were at the beginning of the season, but they do not transmit their experience to their spawn and a feeding fish can usually be caught by anybody who will take a little trouble to do so and to keep, at the same time, out of sight. And he can be caught in exactly the same methods as employed by Walton our founder and enjoyed by Cotton his friend and ours. There is nothing new in the angle. The pursuit of fishing has been made, perhaps, by lighter rods and finer tackle an even more delectable pursuit than it used to be. Yet of that I am not quite sure. We with our featherweight ideas would no doubt grumble if we must go to Tweedside with the ponderous eighteen-footers that served Harry Otter and our own fathers. But did these latter enjoy themselves less than we of to-day do? And do we catch more fish than they did for all our finnicky new fashions and finesse? No, in both cases.
And why would it be otherwise? Our fathers fished the same waters as we do. Thames does not alter nor Tweed. And it is the same fool salmon who passes under Berwick Bridge as passed under it a hundred years ago. And it is the same roach at Remenham who remains to be gulled by the same gentle that did business with him when Farmer George reigned at Windsor . . .
Now that I read over what I have written I am not sure, though fish and fishing predominate, that this is a fishing book within the popular meaning. It is however the book of a Thames fisherman about a river to whom he owes a content that he has never found elsewhere.
In fact the book that I have in mind would have no fishing within it. It would be a book of the poetry of green places and old elms and Elizabethan manors. It would have the clonk-clonk of down sheepbells to hear and the songs of the larks at Moulsford. It would have the drip and the dip of the paddles of mills which have turned, slowly splashing, since the days of Doomsday Book. It would have the songs of the broken water under the weir’s sill and the voices of rooks high up in a spangled December twilight. Age would be in it and Youth and the pretty girl with the rose in her bonnet from Twickenham Ferry. No one man could write it and no one man would want to. But all men, for it would be a little book, would carry it in their pockets when they went riverwards with a rod.
And, within the book, a singer would sing, ‘Sweet Themmes! runne softly till I end my song’, and softly may he run, say I, until the songs of all men are ended.
And that is where Chalmers ended his introduction. He would, no doubt, be interested to hear how his beloved Thames has fared since 1932 when the book was first published. Things have changed but the Thames is still a lovely river for fishing, despite his well-founded concerns about pollution and the loss of native species like crayfish and lampreys. He would, I’m sure, have applauded the conservation and restoration work that has been done over recent years and, despite its murky brown appearance, the Thames is once again home to seals and seahorses . . .
In fact the book that I have in mind would have no fishing within it. It would be a book of the poetry of green places and old elms and Elizabethan manors. It would have the clonk-clonk of down sheepbells to hear and the songs of the larks at Moulsford. It would have the drip and the dip of the paddles of mills which have turned, slowly splashing, since the days of Doomsday Book. It would have the songs of the broken water under the weir’s sill and the voices of rooks high up in a spangled December twilight. Age would be in it and Youth and the pretty girl with the rose in her bonnet from Twickenham Ferry. No one man could write it and no one man would want to. But all men, for it would be a little book, would carry it in their pockets when they went riverwards with a rod.
And, within the book, a singer would sing, ‘Sweet Themmes! runne softly till I end my song’, and softly may he run, say I, until the songs of all men are ended.
And that is where Chalmers ended his introduction. He would, no doubt, be interested to hear how his beloved Thames has fared since 1932 when the book was first published. Things have changed but the Thames is still a lovely river for fishing, despite his well-founded concerns about pollution and the loss of native species like crayfish and lampreys. He would, I’m sure, have applauded the conservation and restoration work that has been done over recent years and, despite its murky brown appearance, the Thames is once again home to seals and seahorses . . .
Read more by Patrick Chalmers in
At the Tail of the Weir