Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood Part 4

The largest known was taken when Whittlesea Mere was drained. It weighed 100lbs., and was given to the late naturalist, Frank Buckland." There are fine pike in the lake at Sturton Hall, where permission to fish may generally be obtained; and the present would seem to be an opportunity for placing on record that when, early in this century, the lake, of some eight acres in extent, was first formed by damming the stream which ran through the Park, it was stocked with pike and other fish from the moat which then enclosed the residence of the present writer, Langton Rectory.

I find among my notes on Witham pike fishing, that in 1890 one angler {76b} took, in two hours, five fish, weighing altogether 31lbs.; the largest scaling over a stone (14lbs.), measured 35 inches in length and 19 inches in girth. A few days later he landed fishes of 7lbs. and 5lbs., while another angler, about the same date, secured a pike of 16lbs. But a Horncastle fisherman, {76c} in the same week, captured one of 18lbs. in the Witham near Tattershall. One of our greatest anglers states that his largest pike, taken in the Witham, was 16lbs.; that he has landed 23 pike in one day, of all sizes, and 20 the next day, making 43 fish in two days. In the closing week of the season 18981899, a season below the average, a pike was taken in the Witham, near Tattershall, weighing 22lbs.

The late vicar of Tattershall, the Rev. Mortimer Latham, to whose memory the writer would here pay his tribute of regard and respect for as genuine, and withal as genial, an angler as Isaac Walton himself, "knew,"

as we might say, "by heart," the Witham, its finny occupants, and their haunts; and many a fine fish he landed, the shapes of which he kept, cut out in brown paper, in his study. The largest pike he ever took weighed 19lbs. I have before me, as I write, the paper-cut shape of this fish, lent to me by his daughter; who writes: "It may interest you to know that it was conveyed home in a bolster slip, and was on view in the vicarage courtyard, to the great entertainment of the whole village." Its length was 38 inches, girth about 21 inches. She further adds: "My father, at one time, caught several tench (now supposed to be extinct in the Witham), and I am proud to say that the last one known to be captured was taken by myself, for being one of the keenest fishermen that even Lincolnshire ever produced, he made us as ardent fisherfolk as himself."

I have also the shape of a perch caught by him, weighing 2lbs., length 15ins., girth about 12ins.

No fish is so "coy and hard to please" as the pike. Of them may be said, what someone has said of women,

If they will, they will, You may depend on't; And if they won't, they won't; And there's an end on't.

The proverbial "variabile semper" element is their characteristic feature, a living ill.u.s.tration of a line, pregnant with meaning, of Coleridge,

Naught may endure but mutability.

On one occasion, a well-known angler tells me, he fished three long hours in a gale of wind, which nearly carried him into the river, without stirring a fin, and then, an unaccountable change of mood coming over the "water wolves," through the next hour and a half they "took like mad,"

and he landed 42lb. weight. At the time two Sheffield men were fishing close by, who had been at the work for three days, and had landed only a few bream or roach, and one small jack. Under their very noses he landed three splendid pike, while they looked on thunderstruck. Such are the fortunes of war with fishermen. On another occasion, when the day was dull and calm, and there was nothing, one would have thought, to stir the fish to any animation, he landed at the same spot one pike of 16lb., and three of 9lb. odd each. "In fact," he says, "pike are unaccountable."

In December, 1898, a boy caught a pike of 16lb. weight in the Horncastle Ca.n.a.l, at Tattershall, 3 feet in length and 9 inches in girth; and another of 11lbs. was taken in the Witham, shortly after; and other cases of 14lb., and so on, are recorded. Pike, as is well known, are exceedingly voracious, and not very particular as to what they eat. A writer in the "Naturalist" {78} states that a pair of Shoveller ducks nested in a disused brickpit, and brought off their young; but a pike in the pit gradually carried them off, one by one, taking one when it was large enough to fly. The same fish destroyed nearly the whole of another brood of ducks, hatched at the same pit. The present writer has himself witnessed a similar occurrence. He at one time kept (as he does still) wild ducks, which nested on the banks of the moat surrounding the house.

There were large pike in the moat, and he has frequently heard a duck give a quack of alarm, has seen a curl on the water, and on counting his ducklings, found that there was one less. And if pike are not particular as to their diet-all being grist that comes to the mill-neither are they particular as to the bait, if _they are in the humour_.

The writer, in a day's fishing for trout, in a Scotch river, the Teviot, where he took perhaps a score or two in the day, would vary the sport on coming to a deep pool by taking off his flies, putting on stout gimp tackle, with a single large hook, which was run through the body of a small trout, or parr; and would often, in this way, land a good pike or two. Sometimes when drawing in the pike too hastily, it would disgorge the bait and hook, but on his making another cast, and letting them float down the pool again, the pike would return to the charge, unwarned by experience, and be eventually captured. On one occasion, rowing leisurely in a boat on Loch Vennachar, with his rod over the stern, and line trailing behind him, a trout, of a pound weight or so, took the fly, and hooked itself. This was immediately seized by a good-sized pike, and after a hard fight he secured both with gut tackle. Dining with the Marchioness who owned the above river, he was regaled on a 10lb. or 12lb.

pike, which the Lady Cecil had caught that day, her boat being pushed along the river by a gillie, himself walking in the water, and she fishing with a single large hook, baited with a piece of red cloth.

We have quoted the lines celebrating the pike of the Witham, and the eels of the Ancholme (also a Lincolnshire river), but eels were, at one time, abundant also in the Witham. Large tubs containing hundreds of them used to be taken to Horncastle on market days, or were hawked about to the country houses. It is said that as many as 16,000 eels have been taken in one year. If you bought eels from these hawkers, they were brought to your kitchen door alive, and, being difficult creatures to handle, your cook generally got the seller to skin them alive, and they were often put into the pan for stewing before they had ceased wriggling. Hence the phrase to "get accustomed to a thing; as eels do to skinning." But an eel can only be once skinned in its life, and even the skin, stript from its writhing body, was supposed to possess a "virtue." If tied round a leg or an arm, it was considered a remedy, or preventive, for rheumatism; and your cook would sometimes preserve the skin for a rheumatic friend.

In these days the eels brought to market are few, and not half the size they used to be. Eels, from 2ft. to 3ft. long, and as thick as one's wrist, were formerly quite common. Eels are supposed to migrate to the sea, and, in the year 1903, a large eel was found, early in the morning, about 100 yards from a large pond, in the parish of Wispington, travelling across a gra.s.s field, towards a stream, by which it might eventually reach the sea.

The only other fish which I have to remark upon is the trout. They are not found in the Witham; but the Bain trout are handsome; both the golden, or rich yellow kind, with pink spots, and the purple or mauve-coloured variety, but the former are much finer in flavour. For some years the swans on the Horncastle Ca.n.a.l made great havoc among the young trout and sp.a.w.n {79a} in the neighbouring river Bain, but the last swan died in 1897. Further, there is now an artificial breeding tank established at Horncastle, managed by Mr. Rushton, for keeping up the supply. Some very fine fish have been taken at different times. My notes record as follows:-In April, 1896, one of the anglers already referred to {79b} caught a trout in the Bain, close to Horncastle, weighing 4lb. 6oz., 23in. in length. The same fisherman, in July, 1888, took another, within half a mile of the same place, weighing 4lb. 10oz., 23in. in length. The son {79c} of a quondam veteran angler, and himself one of our keenest fishermen, tells me that he, several years ago, a.s.sisted his father to land a male trout of 7lb. weight, from the watermill pool at Horncastle. It fought so hard that he and his brother had to rush into the water and take it in their arms, their father's tackle not being intended for such a monster. {80a} This, however, was surpa.s.sed by a trout taken by the late Mr. Robert c.l.i.therow, of Horncastle, _a beau ideal_ disciple of the gentle craft, which weighed 8lbs.

Probably the handsomest trout in the neighbourhood, though not the largest, are those of the Somersby "beck," "The Brook," rendered for ever cla.s.sical by the sweet poem of the late Poet Laureate. In years gone by the writer has enjoyed many a picnic on its banks, when we used to pull off our shoes and stockings, and turn up our trousers-gentlemen as well as boys-to catch the trout by the process called "tickling" them, while hiding in their holes; which the ladies afterwards cooked on a fire extemporised on the bank. The music of the rippling stream haunts one still, as one reads those liquid lines of the poet, themselves almost a runnel:

I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles; I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. {80b}

Twenty-five or thirty years ago, the d.y.k.es in the Fens, near the Witham, abounded in fish of the coa.r.s.er kinds, with some goodly pike among them.

As a boy the writer has caught many a pike by the process called "sniggling," _i.e._, a noose of wire, or gimp, attached to the end of a stiff rod, or stick, which is deftly slipt over a fish's head, as he basks among the water weeds, and, when thus snared, he is jerked ash.o.r.e.

When shooting in the Fens he has also killed, at one shot, five or six fish crowded together in a d.y.k.e. But climatic alterations, and over-perfect drainage, have changed all this. The water now runs out to sea so rapidly that the Fen drains are dry for a great part of the year, and the fish are no more.

Enough has now been said to show that the visitor to Woodhall Spa, who has a taste for "the contemplative man's recreation," {81} may find some employment in its vicinity. Most of the ponds can be fished on asking the farmers' permission. As to the Witham, although there are angling clubs at Boston and Lincoln, the river is practically open to every one, in the season. It may be added that close to Tattershall station there is a large "ballast pond" containing good pike, and a letter to the shooting tenant, or to Lord Fortescue's agent, would probably obtain permission to fish. At Revesby there is a reservoir, the source of the water supply of Boston, a large piece of water, which abounds in fish of various kinds. Bream, both of the silver and the carp kinds, are plentiful, running up to 4lb. in weight. Very large eels are taken there. Roach are of a fair size. Rudd are numerous; as also are perch, but small. Gudgeons are plentiful, serving for bait. Pike are abundant.

In one case three were taken by the same rod within twenty minutes, one of them weighing 13lb. Another rod took two of 16lb. and 10lb., and it is commonly said that there is one occasionally seen "as long as a rail."

Permission may be obtained to fish here from the agent of the Hon. Mrs.

Stanhope, Revesby Abbey. There is good accommodation at the Red Lion Hotel.

As, in the next chapter, I am to enter upon a different branch of my subject, pa.s.sing roughly speaking, from the organic to inorganic-from the living to the dead-I will here give a few particulars, recently received, which may interest the entomologist. In the month of August, 1898, I conducted the members of our county Naturalists' Union from Woodhall Spa to Tumby, through a varied tract of country. The following is a list of the Lepidoptera which were found by one of the members:-

Pieris bra.s.sicae E. hyperanthus

P. rapae Thecla quercus

P. napi Polyommatus phlas

Colias edusa Lycna icarus

Argynnis aglaia Hesperia thaumas

A. paphia Spilosoma mendica (two larvae)

Vanessa io

V. atalanta Psilura monacha

Apatura iris Plusia gamma

Pararge megaera Geometra papilionaria

Epinephele janira Cidaria immanata

E. t.i.thonus Eubolia limitata

Two other members collected the following:-

NEUOPTERA

Sympetrum sp.

HYMENOPTERA

Vespa germanica Crabro cribrarius

V. vulgaris C. albilabris

Bombus lapidarius Halictus leucopus

Bombus hortorum Apis mellifica

Formica rufa

DIPTERA

Platychirus clypeatus Calliphora vomitoria

Scatophaga stercoraria

COLEOPTERA