A Masterpiece- I have read it a dozen times!!!
John Waller Hills -- artistic eloquence with empirical observation
Major John Waller
Hills was the perfection of the British aristocracy. Having been honored in
World War II and having an illustrious career in British Parliament, he chose
to pursue these later life in search of the wiley trout of Britain's Hampshire
chalk Stream country. He had access to all the prime beats of the River Test
and with his affiliations with land barons, the Houghton Club and privy to
private beats held by British nobility. Unlike the standard English country
sporting gentleman, who was in search of easy quarry both by fly rod and gun,
who was tucked neatly into his britches and Wellington boots, Tattersall and
tweeds, Hills was an observant naturalist who spent as much time logging notes
and diaries as he did tying on flies.
In his two highly
acclaimed books, “History of Fly Fishing For Trout”,and ,”A Summer on The Test”,
(1921-1952), he used to ask of authorship: one as a fly angling historian
looking at the development of the sport and its flies; the other as a
magnificent prose and observation on his days along the chalk streams on the
world's most magnificent trout waters. For all selective trout anglers the Test
chronicles should be read over -- and -- over which I have. Each time you read
this magnificent and endearing account of the life of a fly angler and the
pursuit of highly selective fish, you gain more insight into a world in which
we don’t often“ stop to smell the roses’, in the heat of fishing pursuit.
In
his”History”, Hills made great observations on the development of the dry fly,
wets and nymphs. His giving credit to the modern establishment of the dry fly
in the early 1800s to G.P.R.PULMAN, and with his work”Vode Mecum of Fly Fishing
For Trout”, (18510, Hills gave accolades to Pullman for the first total dry fly concept
of false casting to dry the fly in casting the fly to float over rising,
surface feeding trout. Whether Pullman's account of false casting was to drive
the fly or line, or to keep either floating, is still up to interpretation.
In Hills”History”, he had opinionated views on the whole
Hallford versus Skues controversy. On Halford's views, Hills goes on to say:
“if he is to be
criticized is because like most reformers he overstated his case. He considered
that the dry fly has superseded for all time and all places all other methods
of fly fishing, and that those who thought otherwise were either ignorant or
incompetent. He did not realize and perhaps it is impossible that he should
have realized, that the coming of the floating fly did not mean that previous
experience and previous knowledge were
as worthless as though they had never been; but that meant that from then
onwards fly fishing was divided into two streams. The streams are separate, but
they run parallel, and there are many cross channels between them.”
As for Hills's comment on Skues development of the nymph he
writes;
“Since Minor Tactics appeared, there has been
another noticeable movement, the use of imitation nymphs. The underwater life
of flies is much better known than it used to be, thanks largely to Hallford,
and the names of the olive dun, the blue-winged olive, the iron blue and pale
watery dun have been identified and are being copied. And those copies are not
taking the form of traditional sunk flies, with head and tail, wing and hackle,
but are being built on new lines, copying more closely the original. These are
now being used extensively and with success on the shyest chalk stream trout.”
However, Hills's major contribution as an empirical selective
flyfishing founder lies in his
observation on the natural world of the trout. He weaved the beauty with science
like no other writer and describes the new Machiavellian selective fly anglers goal
to observe, listen, watch and enjoy spectacle and hand. Hills writes:
“So much has been
written about the scenery and surroundings of fishing, but a late comer in the
field is reluctant to embark on it: so much good areas to which he cannot hope
to obtain, so much bad into which he may easily fall. But, after all, scenery
amd surroundings can hardly be omitted, for I doubt whether anyone thinks of
his great days without at the same time recalling not only the weather which
must be always be a permanent part of the picture in the fisherman's mind, but
also the scenery. You remember the look of the river, the green of the reeds,
the wind blowing over the thick bed of sedges, the long line of rustling
poplars. And while most rivers are beautiful, especially to him who follows the
river and not the road, there is quite particular charm about those of
Hampshire and Wiltshire. It is hard to describe, but we all feel it, deep down
in our beings. We may belong to the north and would not belong elsewhere if we could;
but when May and June come we are caught and swept by a longing for those
gracious and lovely valleys, which is not satisfied till we go there.
In these happy valleys each season is a charm
of its own. There will come days in May
when the olives will sail down in fleets.
As April runs into May, the valley changes greatly. The yellow-green of
the young willows, bright green of the reeds, the blue-green of the iris, the
vivid green of some water weeds -- these are seen simultaneously. May too is the
month of the hawthorn, and thorn trees flourish particularly well on the chalk.
And to the chalk stream fisherman Junr is the best month of all, for would not
if he could choose a windless day in June? It is the month of the meadow
flowers, and through the different shades of green are less marked and are
merging into the summer sameness, the yellow iris makes the banks a garden, the wild
rose stars the hedges. As summer goes on
in the rest of the world grows dry and dusty, the valley remains green and cool.
Running water is everywhere: racing in a miniature trout stream by the
roadside; feeling deep brimming carriers, rivers in themselves; trickling and
percolating over the fields. The Valley is a delight all year!”
Hill’s anecdotal accounts of the selective will trout become
ever more enticing as his observations spin the reader delving into the essence
of the poetic beauty of events such as a chalk stream mayfly hatch is
meticulous in his insect identification. He used a narrow throat scoop and petri dish and kept them in vials for taxonomic
documentation. When he describes an evening on the River Test, you feel like
you were there:
“But it was now past six o'clock: in the spent fly
began to come on the water. All over the surface mayflies were to be seen; they
were in clouds in the air above, busy egg - laying, now dipping down and just
touching the top of the stream, then rising in the air, then dipping again.
They got thicker and thicker, and so did the bodies of dead mayflies floating
down. If you're I followed an individual egg - layer, you noticed, if you could
pick her out from the swarms of her companions, that her trips through the air
got shorter, and her visits to the water more frequent, and that, instead of
just brushing the surface in order to lay her eggs, she began to sit for a second
or so upon it, until the time when she could rise no more. Then her work done,
her store of six or 7000 eggs safely laid, the future of her race assured, she
settled on the surface and sailed down upright; but soon she would give a
shiver, one of her wings would collapse on the water, until finally she died
and fell flat, wings extended in the form of the cross. Thicker and thicker
grew the mass of fly over the water, more and more numerous those carried down
by the current. At first those floating were present in all stages, sitting
upright, or half collapsed, or dying, or dead: but soon the dead predominating,
until all that could be seen with their bodies, the dead fly, the spent gnat.
These came down in ever-increasing quantities. In the backwaters in eddie's
they were packed nearly solid. In the main current, the quick swinging stream
of the lower Test, they were separated only by inches. All the broad river was
covered, and bore them seawards like a moving carrier. Now all these had escaped
the attacks of trout and grayling, and the swifts andswallows and wagtails and
warblers and chaffinches and many other birds which prey upon them: all of them
had escaped, and had reproduced their species: when you looked at the countless
thousands which floated down in the small time during which you saw only a
small part of the river, you realized the quantities of them which had survived
were so vast that the assaults of all their enemies made no appreciable impression
on their numbers” (SUMMER ON THE
TEST)