Rod-Fishing in the Nith. 27 



3rd. There are now-a-days probably tweuty anglers for one 

 who fished fifty years ago, and the trout have become so highly 

 educated that the young ones are taught to distinguish not only 

 between the natural fly and the artificial, but between the different 

 patterns of the artificial. An elderly trout lying in some nice 

 little eddy points out to her pupils the distinguishing marks of 

 English and Scotch flies, and sometimes when some lovely work 

 of art floats over them, a perfect dream of beauty in tinsel and 

 silk and feathers, unhesitatingly names the artist from whose hands 

 it came, and points out that these are vanities to be severely left 

 alone by all right-minded little trout ! 



No wonder, therefore, that our baskets are not so heavy as 

 they used to be, and that in spite of our finer tackle, and more 

 exact imitation of the natural insect, we are becoming a laughing 

 stock to well-educated trout. But as no man is wise at all times, 

 so no trout is safe from making an occasional mistake, and the 

 increased difficulty of catching trout adds to our pleasure when 

 we do succeed. 



One other cause there is for the decline of rod-fishing which 

 I have not mentioned, that is poaching with nets. I do not know 

 whether that evil practise exists on the Nith, but on the Clyde and 

 rivers of like character it has ruined rod-fishing. 



But it is with regard to salmon that the falling off of rod- 

 fishing is the most serious. When I was quite a boy, I knew well 

 an old fisher in Sanquhar, who told me of wonderful catches of 

 salmon which he had made long before I was born. Of course it 

 is possible that he added a little to the numbers and weight of 

 fish which he had killed. But the legislation of past years with 

 regard to salmon has been against the rod fisher and in favour of 

 the nets. Those who have framed the various Acts relating to the 

 subject have many of them been altogether ignorant of the life 

 history of the salmon. The upper proprietors of our salmon rivers 

 who own the streams in which salmon spawn have been ignored, 

 and the net fishers have got it all their own way. The cry has 

 been that net fishing was a great industry, and that any reduction 

 of the time during which their nets were allowed to work would 

 reduce their earnings, and what was worse, would reduce the food 

 supply of the people. Can you understand the sapient legislators 

 bemg led away by such a cry as that ? Salmon the food of the 

 people ! How many of the people ever taste a bit of salmon from 



