An Angler's Paradise
MR. BARRER is one of those -Englishmen who fall in love with Ireland ; if they are not hunting men they are generally anglers, as he is, and no way of association is more intimate than that of a fishernian wh-o year after year spends day after day with the same gilly who rows him. For Mr. Barker is of ' the less strenuous kind that prefers 'lake fishing, and it is the way to get big baskets and, if the place is well chosen, big fish. Mr. Barker conceals his happy hunting ground where- a lucky man may get an occasional salmon—Mr. Barker got two
• sixteen-pound fish on an afternoon, fishing for trout ; he may get pike in large numbers, and occasionally very heavy —MiAiiiikee :get twO over thirty- pounds ; he may get quan- tities of perch, which Mr. Barker, speaking with connoisseur- ship, considers the beieof fresh Water fish to eat, and also Of rudd or roaeh. But above all he 'may get large baskets bf • noble trout—Mr. Barker, fishing in the twilight, once got 'fifteen which weighed fifty-four pounds.-' - - ; - • At this point the angler who knows -Ireland- becomes in- 'quisitive. The only place at all corresponding to Mr. Barker's
-description is Inchigeela, on the upper waters of the Lee in Mid-Cork. All his fishing was done with the wet fly, or trolling. Now anybody can troll, and the playing of tail is -no great difficulty ; and almost anybody can fish passably with-wet fly from a boat. The like of such sport as Mr: Barker -describes is to be had on the greater lakes—Mask, Corrib, Dem, and those of Westmeath,' though here the big baskets are generally made by dapping .with the natural mayfly—a practice not in use on Mr. Barker's lakes. But trout bigger -than his biggest (seven pounds) are to be had on all of these, and also, wherever there is a limestone formation, fine trout are in the innumerable lesser lakes. Many of us find lake-fishing a monotonous game, but on a day -when trout, and good trout, are .rising, who would _ be fastidious ? And as foi trolling, if.you. can come home with. over a hundredweight ol pike, not to mention some trout and perch, as was once M. Barker's fortune, few would complain of tedium. With any I -luck in any part of Ireland your boatmen will be, as Mr. Barker found them, the most sympathetic company. It is . only on the tourist haunted waters like Killarney that they
• set out to be professionally funny or anecdotic. .
• One may note this also. Mr. Barker speaks of twenty years' continuous experience. Four or five of these must have been rough years in any part of the south-west of Ireland, and nowhere rougher than in Mid-Cork ; yet there is not a hint in this pleasant book of anything but welcome for the English- man who came back to fish as he had always done.
The book has no pretension to be one of the angling classics ; it has no literary quality, but it. is uncommonly pleasant
Previous page
