THE OPENING OF THE DEE.
THERE are many moments in salmon-fishing which bring a"thrill" peculiarly their own, but there is none, per- haps, which carries quite the same sense of tense expectancy as to stand for the first time on the banks of a river before the season has opened and to guess at what to-morrow keeps in store. What will be the height of the water P you wonder before you come to the bank. Will the rock by the bridge, the ridge of stones below the rock, be showing P To which side of the river will this or that pool " belong " P Is " she," which is the river, rising or falling ? Has there been a run of fish, and are they in the river above or below ? Are there any fish to be seen from the bridge P Some of the long string of questions can be answered at once; most wait for to- morrow.
To-morrow, this year, happened to be a Monday. The Dee, like most Scottish salmon rivers, opens on February lIth, and that day, being a Sunday, offered an afternoon for walking up. the river bank to look at the half-dozen pools above the bridge and to mark the rise or fall of the river along the bank. The river was full—higher than it had been on the opening day for several years. Evidently it had lately been much higher ; we had had news of a flood, but had hardly realized that there had been much more than a mere "banker," only a fortnight since. The familiar up and down paths along the bank, running in and out among crimson brier-stems, gorse, and broom, cut abort by the water bailiff's sickle, were broken and swept with sand; yellow sand lay in broad splashes over the ridged plough above the bank, alder branches heavy with catkins and close-furled buds lay caught in the wire of the fence, and far out in the plough lay a rim of woody wreck ; the flood had pushed its spume and drift over twenty yards of levelled ridges. On the opposite bank stood a brand-now fishing-hut ; the speckless match-boarding asserted its youth to a mile of river, A fortnight ago the old fishing but had proclaimed itself a shelter against wind and weather ; then came a morning when it was absent from its place. All this
preludes and accompaniments of frost, ice, had happened with and snow ; the snow as we walked up the river bank still lay unmelted in shadows and ditches, and, as a reminder of snow gone and snow that might yet fall again, there shell suddenly out from a tangle of green fern a brilliant streak of white. The streak became a curl, the curl a spot with a black speck in it. A stoat, in his winter coat of ermine, pushed up an inquiring nose, snuffed at us with his feet boldly planted in front of him, and turned down his rabbit- hole, again, with a whisk of his black-tipped tail. Well, the snow might come and go again as be had; meanwhile it was mid-February and a mild air and sunlight. And the river was falling; a twig of alder thrust in a bank of sand on the rim of the lapping water stood high- and-dry an hour later as we walked home. Would " she" keep falling P The wind seemed to be backing to the south- east, which is bad for salmon and men, and is the rainy quarter besides. To-morrow would settle that question. To-morrow came with rain in the small hours and rain at eight. The sky patched grey and yellow in shifting curtains ; the rain came down and lifted again. But " she " was lower ; " she " had dropped ten inches or a foot on the flank of the rock below the bridge, and the.ridge of stones below the rock lay bare. Above the bridge, where yesterday it had looked like fishing from the bank, the shallow water meant wading to cover the lie of the fish ; and there, in the Flats, the pool next above the falls, we were to get the first chance of an answer to the question as to the ran of fresh fish. If there is a fresh-run fish lying in a pool he will take the fly if he sees it—that is the hope, if indeed it is not the creed, of the fisherman at any time in the season. But on the opening day the hope presents itself less as a creed than a certainty. These early fish, if they are there at all, must be wholly uneducated and unwise they are running up the river for the first time in their lives, and in their passage from the mouth of the river to these upper pools they have seen no kind of hook, bait, lure, net, or engine whereby they might learn what shapes danger may assume and the wisdom of avoiding all shapes whatever. Therefore, the fisherman assures himself as he feels the familiar press of the current on his waders, and lengthens his line to make his first full cast, here and now the question of a run of fish awaits an immediate answer. Here and now, however, no answer comes from the Flats except one which the fisherman refuses; he leaves the Flats with its fringe of catkined alders, and goes up stream to the Fence pool—a different stretch of water which travels deep and quiet under a high grass bank. The Fence pool is silent ; above it lies the long curve of Green Banks, with the Sand Bay pool at the top. So at the top there is another beginning, and the big Ackroyd fishes the current round to a level-running sweep of water nearing the rooks below. Half-way down the pool, just as the fly was being lifted for another cast, there is a hold under water— a hold and a wriggle. " Is it? " The question is the shortest possible—a fresh fish or a kelt P Sometimes, as it happens now, the answer is as short as the question. A sulkily tugging, ugly snake of a five-pound kelt is tailed out, unhooked and thrust in again: he dives deep away. The Ackroyd goes out again for better luck, and a yard or two further down the pool comes another sullen tug ; another tug follows, and the hold comes away. " Another kelt, I'm sure," remarks the fisherman. " I am no sure," observes his ghillie. But both are sure, or sure for a moment, a few casts later. This is no sullen tug at the line : there is a savage pull at the rod-point, and an insistent give-me- line-er•I'U-break-you; he gets the line. But he will not show himself : up and down and back and across he goes, taking what line he can and will, reeled up again as he comes nearer the rod. The gut cast comes higher and higher from the surface, and there is a glint of pink. "I don't know, I am sure," comments the ghillie with his gaff. Nor does he know for certain when, having gaffed the fish two or three minutes after, he gazes doubtfully at it on the grass under his knee. The gills, the belly, the vent; there are no sea-lice in the gills, but the shape of the fish is good enough, and as a clean fish he kills it. " I hope you are satisfied," he remarks, regarding it on the grass. And that fish, and the kelts which went before and came after it, sums up the opening of the Dee in the experience of, at all events, one fisherman. Others on the same stretch of river came home with other experiences ; one with nothing better to speak of than three kelts, another with a clean fish to the fly of thirteen pounds, and later—after dark, indeed, when the minnow could do no harm—with another heavier fish. But all the fish were heavy ; the average of fresh-run spring fish on the Dee as a rule is somewhere about eight pounds or less, and of the four which came from this beat none were less than thirteen pounds. The same story came from other beats near the following morning, when the news had travelled east and west among the ghillies along the river. "So-and-so bad four, but they were all red fish ; he was in doubts about putting them back." Then what has happened ? Are these red fish, and the clean fish which are bright enough but not fresh-run, in reality the fish which would naturally have run up last autumn, but which could not get up because there was no water P That seems at least a possible answer, and fits in with the fact that fish were seen above Aboyne in December. What we have not yet had, from all appearances, is a run of fresh spring fish ; but there is plenty of water in the river, and if they began to come now (there are reports of smaller fish, six pounds or so, lower down the river), and if they run up through March and April, that will make no worse a season than last year, when most of the spring fish were waiting here in February in pools at their summer level.
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