142 LETTERS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN. j 



Far better, as I think, to call it simply " lure/' without 

 attempting definitin of the original of which it is a copy. 

 The truth is, in spite of all our talk about salmon " flies," 

 that we never fish for salmon with anything intended to 

 represent a " fly," nor present the lure to him in any manner 

 which a natural fly possibly could suggest. Of course, 

 salmon have been caught accidentally with floating May fly, 

 when the angler was fishing for trout, but that does not 

 affect the argument. But as we are always really fishing 

 for salmon with lures, probably presenting themselves 

 to the salmon's gastronomic attention as imitations 

 of the Crustacea, therefore it never seems to me that we are 

 descending from a higher to a lower form of sport when we 

 quit the long rod used for the throwing of these things that 

 we call the salmon flies and betake ourselves to our spinning 

 rod for casting minnow, spoon bait or prawn. If I have 

 ever, as has happened to me on a discoloured stream, for- 

 saken trout flies and tried the Devon minnow for these fish, 

 then I have always had the guilty feeling that it was " not 

 cricket," that I was lowering myself as a sportsman in so doing. 

 With salmon it is quite otherwise. No matter how we may 

 talk " flies," it is never the delicate likeness of the delicate 

 insect, most delicately to be presented, that we are proffering 

 to the salmon. It is always a grosser business than fly- 

 fishing ; it is always, really, an affair of showing him some- 

 thing which we hope he will mistake for a live thing swimming 

 freely in the water ; it is never something which we would 

 have him take for a thing floating on its surface and descending 

 with the stream. 



There is a great charm, to me, in the ease with which you 

 can flick out the minnow, or whatever the lure may be, from a 

 short spinning rod, the distance to which it will fly and 

 the accuracy with which you can pitch it. Assuredly I do 

 not write as any master of the art of spinning, but it is 

 an art so easy, relatively to fly fishing, as to be very 

 flattering to the learner. There are one or two first principles 

 to be grasped, and when they are once learned the rest is a 

 matter of practice. I believe, however, that half an hour's 

 practice on a lawn, with an efficient teacher, should enable 

 any intelligent person to go out forthwith and catch a 



