Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“What are they made of?” asked John.

“Feathers and silk. All small flies,” said Captain Flint. “It’s no good fishing big ones up here. That’s woodcock and orange silk. That’s dark snipe and purple, and this is a black spider—brown silk and one of the black, shiny burnished feathers from the neck of a cock pheasant. Best fly of the lot on a hot day up here, and the easiest to tie.”

“Did you make them yourself?” asked John.

“Of course I did,” said Captain Flint.

“Can we have a fly to fish with?” asked Titty. “Roger’s got his rod.”

“No good, Able-seaman, you can’t throw a fly with a perch rod, and you’ll frighten the trout away if you chuck a big red float at them. If you’ve got a good lot of worms you could catch some in the beck.”

“We’ve only got one worm,” said Roger, “but he’s a beauty.”

“Well, see what you can do with him in the beck,” said Captain Flint, who was himself impatient to be fishing, while the wind rippled the surface of the tarn. “Come on, John. Keep well out of the way, Mister Mate, and keep the others clear. We don’t want to hook an explorer instead of a trout.”

He began moving slowly up the southern side of the tarn, the side from which the wind was coming, swishing his rod backwards and forwards, letting out line, and then letting the flies drop on the water far out along the edge of the ripples, waiting a moment, and then slowly, slowly, inch by inch, lifting the point of the rod, bringing the flies in again until with a steady upward lift he picked the line from the water, sent it flying up in the air behind him, paused a half-second for it to straighten and then, switching the point of the rod forward again, sent the flies out to fall light as scraps of down one behind the other, a yard farther up the tarn. The third or fourth time his flies dropped on the water there was a splash at the woodcock and orange, the rod bent, and a moment later a fat little trout was being drawn over the net that John was holding ready for him quite still and well below the surface. Roger and Titty wanted to rush in to look at the trout, but Susan knew that trout fishing is serious business, and that a crowd of explorers haring along the bank is not likely to encourage the fish to rise. So she stopped them in time, and they watched the fishing from a distance. Then Captain Flint gave John the rod, and for a minute or two John tried to make the line straighten high in air behind him and then shoot forward, unrolling itself until once more it straightened out, this time in front of him and well above the water, so that the flies should drop like snowflakes. “Up, now. . . . Pause. . . . Forward again,” Captain Flint was saying. “Aim about two feet above the water. . . . Don’t take the rod too far back. . . . No need for force. . . . Make the tip of the rod do the work. . . . Look here. Let me hold your hand and show you the way to do it. Now then.” It was not a very good cast, for two hands on a rod are not better than one if they belong to different people. Still, the flies did, at last, go out instead of landing in a mess only a yard or two from the shore. There was a splash, John struck, the flies flew back over his head and caught in the heather behind him. Captain Flint crawled back and freed them.

DARNING ROGER

“I say, that was a trout, wasn’t it?” said John.

“Of course it was. Try again in the same place. Steady. Remember not to hurry when the line is behind you. It’ll be all right if the point of your rod didn’t go too far back. There he is. Got him. Well done!” and presently Captain Flint was holding the net while John pulled his first trout over it, when Captain Flint lifted it out.

This was too much for Roger.

“Let’s go and fish, too,” he said, opening the tobacco tin in which he had his worm. “The tarn is crammed with fish. Look at the way they’re pulling them out. Two already.”

“We haven’t got any flies,” said Titty.

“Yes, but what a worm!” said Roger. “He’s the best worm I ever caught.”

“Captain Flint said we’d better try him in the beck,” said Titty.

“The beck’s not big enough,” said Roger.

They left Susan and turned back towards the place at which the beck flowed out of the tarn. Susan slowly followed the fly-fishers. “We’ll fish here,” said Roger. “It’s a lovely place for a float.” He and Titty were crawling round the edge of a little bay, where the rock fell steeply into dark water. Together they put up Roger’s perch rod. Together, not without some awful difficulties, they put the giant worm on the perch hook. They pulled the float up the line so that the worm should be deep in the water. Then Roger swung the worm and float out from the rock. They tugged a lot more line off the reel. The red float, moved by wind or the slight current, moved away from the shore and stopped when the line would let it go no farther. Roger held the rod and Titty stood beside him watching it. But the red float moved no more. They sat down to it. Then Roger gave the rod to Titty. After a bit Titty gave the rod to Roger. Then they propped the rod across a clump of heather with its butt wedged under a rock. That was better. They watched it for some time, and began talking of other things. Then they decided that it would be all right by itself, and they went scouting over the rocks till they could see far up the tarn. There were John and Captain Flint and Susan. They saw the splashing as John caught a fish. They saw it put into Captain Flint’s basket. Then they saw John give the rod to Susan and take the basket, while Susan learnt to cast. For a long time they watched, and at last they saw Susan catch a fish. “Perhaps he’d have let us fish too, if we’d gone on,” said Roger.

They looked back down into their little bay.

“I can’t see our float,” said Titty.

“There it is,” shouted Roger. “It’s moving. Titty! Titty! Something’s pulling like anything. Look at the rod.”

There was a frantic race back to the rod which was jerking angrily up and down.

The others had made between them a nice basket of plump little trout, a dozen, perhaps, all about a quarter of a pound apiece, and all very much the same size. “You don’t often get them bigger than this up here,” said Captain Flint, as they walked back together, “but they’re very sweet. Sometimes in the evening you may see a monster moving, but nobody ever catches one of them. A half-pound fish is a very good one, and the quarter-pounders are good enough. The really big ones never seem to come up.”

“What’s the matter with Roger?” cried Susan suddenly.

They heard Titty’s voice, shrill and desperate, “Help, help!”

“They’re all right,” said John. “They’re both there. But what on earth are they doing?”

“Help, help!” shrilled Titty.

“They’ve got a fish,” shouted Captain Flint. “Hang on to the rod, John. Let’s have the net.” And in a moment he was leaping over rocks and heather as hard as he could go, forgetting altogether how much he weighed and how many years had passed since first he fished.

“Hang on to it,” he shouted.

“Roger’s fallen in,” said Susan. “Oh, oh! I ought never to have left them.”

There was a fearful splashing away by the foot of the tarn. Titty was holding the rod now, and they had moved round the point of the little bay where they had left their float, and were at the edge of the shallows close above the place where the beck left the tarn. Into these shallows Roger had splashed, and a few moments later, splashing worse than ever, he scrambled ashore with a big trout clasped in his arms. He slipped as he was getting out. The trout fell, but Roger fell on it, and by the time Captain Flint arrived with the net Roger, Titty and the trout were a safe dozen yards from the water.