128 LETTERS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



fly the more it would attract the fish. It is a commonplace 

 with the salmon fisher that if he has risen a salmon to a 

 certain fly, he shall try the same fish again with a smaller 

 sample of the same pattern. I believe the device to be good, 

 and I believe it to hold good not for salmon only, but for 

 trout also. I would counsel you to attend very closely to 

 the feeding fish and see what they actually are taking, for 

 sometimes they will rise in the midst of a multitude of down- 

 going duns. You put over them as close an imitation as 

 you can find of the fly on the water, and yet they will not 

 take it. Often when it so happens you will find, by giving 

 them closer attention, that they are not feeding at all on 

 those duns which make up the great majority of the surface- 

 floating insects, but are fastidiously picking out insects 

 of another kind which are in a small minority — very likely 

 some Iron Blue, for they are a favourite food. The trouble 

 is that some of the things, such as the smuts and curses on 

 which they feed, are so minute that it is impossible to get 

 a pattern of artificial fly small enough to imitate them. 

 The dark smuts and the grey smuts may be imitated, but 

 there is a small white creature called the curse, and not 

 miscalled by any means, which is quite too small for any 

 imitation that shall hide even the tiniest hook. And by way 

 of expressing my own views, just as I have already said to 

 you, " Do not fish with a long line when a short one will 

 answer your purpose better," I might add " Do not fish with 

 a very tiny hook when a larger one will serve equally well." 

 I do not think that the fish much mind a little of the exposed 

 iron, and I hate the feeling, as I am playing a fish, that I 

 hold him only by a hook so minute that at any instant its 

 grip may tear out. There is, I admit, some triumph in killing, 

 say, a four-pound trout on the smallest hook made, but there 

 is more fun in killing two such trout on a hook just a size 

 larger. So I, at least, estimate it. 



I have spoken to you already about the utter, and very 

 common, folly of fishing with indifferent gut, whether it be 

 trout or salmon that you are after ; but there is one antic 

 that either fish may perform which may, if you are'unlucky, 

 defeat you, however quick and skilful you are — that is, if 

 he jumps and falls back on the cast. If you do not drop the 



