FullReads

The leister used in “sunning” or in “burning the water” differed somewhat in shape from the weapon with which Tam Purdie secured his big kipper. It, too, had five single-barbed prongs, but these were all of equal length, and the wooden handle of this implement was straight, and very much longer than that of the throwing leister; sixteen feet was no unusual length for the handle of the former weapon.

Burning the water, as its name implies, was a sport indulged in at night by torchlight. Sunning, on the other hand, was the daylight form of “burning,” but it could be practised only when the river was dead low, and then not unless the weather were very calm and bright. The salmon, as they lay in the clear, sun-lit water, were speared from a boat, and vast numbers were so killed; indeed, the frightened fish had small chance of escape, for spearing began at the pool’s foot, and men with leisters blocked the way of escape up stream. No doubt into this, as into its kindred sport “burning,” excitement in plenty, and boisterous fun, entered largely; many a man, miscalculating the depth of water in which a fish lay, to the unfeigned delight of his comrades, took a rapid and involuntary header into the icy stream. But both sports partook too much of the nature of butchery–carts used to be needed to carry home the spoil–and they are “weel awa’ if they bide.” “Bide” they must, though in times not remote one has heard faint whisperings of the burning of the waters in some far-off district of the Border. Nor are there wanting those who yet openly defend the practice, deeming it indeed no sin, but rather a benefit to the water, to take from it some of the superfluous fish, which, say they, would otherwise almost certainly die of disease and contaminate the stream.

Yet, if in our day the water has been burned, it cannot have been oftener than once in a way, and probably no great harm has resulted. Nor can the game be worth the candle, one could imagine, for watchers now are many and alert, in the execution of their duties much more conscientious than was common in days gone by. There are none now, we may hope, like the bailiff of Selkirk in the early part of last century, who constantly find salmon in close time mysteriously appearing on their dinner-table. Yet this early nineteenth-century bailiff could truly swear that such a thing as salmon on his table he never had seen. For it appears that his wife, canny woman, having first brought in a platter of potatoes, was wont to tie round his eyes a towel before she brought in the boiled fish; and before she again took away the towel, every vestige or trace of salmon had been carefully removed from the room. Obviously that bailiff, honest man, could not report a breach of the law which had never come under his observation!

Of various forms of netting which in olden days were legal, but now, happily, are forbidden, there was that by means of the Cairn net, a most destructive form, and that by the Stell net, which was worse; but to describe these obsolete instruments is unnecessary, and might be tedious. There was also the Pout net, an implement somewhat like a very large landing-net, wherewith a man might readily whip many a fish out of flooded water. That, however, need not be considered as in these days a serious form of poaching.

Of all poachers of salmon, perhaps that one with whom one is least out of sympathy was the man–is he now extinct, one wonders?–who, fishing with trout-rod and fly, and bearing on his back the most modest of trout creels, instantly, when he came to a likely cast for a fish, was wont to change his trout fly for a salmon one. If he hooked a salmon and a watcher appeared on the scene, invariably the fish “broke” him. If no watcher put in an appearance, generally the angler found that he had sudden and pressing business at home, and that fish left the riverside snugly smuggled inside the lining of a coat, or in a great circular pocket made for the purpose. It was such an one that, nigh on a hundred years ago, Mr. Scrope caught red-handed one day on his rented salmon water near Melrose. The man was a guileless creature from Selkirk, too innocent, it appeared, to be able to account for the salmon flies in the inside of his dilapidated hat, or for the 10 lb. salmon reposing in his pocket.