S!XTH DAT.] SALMON. 161 



not think a fish would rise for many hours, even at a 

 natural bait. 



POIET. — Your experience is so great, that I dare say 

 I was mistaken, yet it seemed a fLh of the same size. 



HAL. — Salmon often in this season haunt the 

 streams in pairs; but so far from rising again after 

 being pricked, they appear to me to learn, when they 

 have been some time in the river, that the artificial fly 

 is not food, even without having been touched by the 

 hook. In the river at Galway, in Ireland, I have 

 seen above the bridge some hundreds of salmon lying 

 in rapid streams, and from five to ten fishermen 

 tempting them with every variety of fly, but in vain. 

 After a fish had been thrown over a few times, and 

 risen once or twice and refused the fly, lie rarely ever 

 took any notice of it again in that place. It was 

 generally nearest the tide that fish were taken, and the 

 place next the sea was the most successful stand, and 

 the most coveted; and when the water is low and 

 clear in this river, the Galway fishermen resort to the 

 practice of fishing with a naked hook, endeavouring to 

 entangle it in the bodies of the fish ; — a most unartist- 

 like practice. In spring fishing, I have known a 

 hungry, half-starved salmon rise at the artificial fly a 

 second time, after having been very slightly touched 

 by it; but even this rarely happens, and when I have 

 seen it, the water has been coloured. 



M 



