Letters to a Salmon Fisher's Sons

[Editor]

An outstanding book about salmon fishing on the main Tyne between Hexham and Corbridge (Good water!) around the 1900's.

The book is full of extremely sound practical advice as well as great tales of fish caught and lost including a fine 40lber. Almost a must read for a beginner and expert alike. Outstanding, and in my top 10 great salmon books of all time.

 

[Ephemerella]

Chaytor was a barrister, one reviewer said: "His writing tinged with a lawyer's dryness..." An uneven book, but well worth wading through.



Drewett Chaytor wrote of his father: "His success, measured by the takes of others on the same river, was often remarkable. It was particularly noticable in difficult conditions such as dead low water, that he seemed always to be able to catch fish when few others could do so."




Hugh Falkus was a great admirer - stating in his posthumously published 'Some of it was Fun' Chapter XII 'Chaytor': "If fate could give me the chance of spending a day with any salmon fisher of the past, I think I would choose Chaytor. It would be an education to watch him at work, teasing one out of the pool in dead low water after everyone else had given it best."


First published in 1910; Chaytor's letters were often constructed from within his London bound express train compartment, returning from his Tyne beat below Hexam.
He was to write part of a second edition next to the Flanders battlefields of 1915/16 prior to the poison gas attack that invalided him.