n6 THE SALMON 



hooked all his fish himself, he then immediately 

 changed rods and left his attendants to land the salmon. 

 Some such plan must, I think, necessarily have been 

 adopted in order to get the number in the time, as 

 although Lord Lovat was notoriously very hard on his 

 fish, it would have been hardly possible to have 

 landed such a quantity of good-sized fish in such a 

 stream in the time. 



The marvellous readiness with which the salmon 

 took the fly as soon as a way was engineered for them 

 into the river and lakes after their long involuntary 

 detention at the mouth, seems to throw some additional 

 light upon the question, before referred to, of their 

 feeding in fresh water. They are very seldom 

 captured with any kind of lure in the salt water when 

 gathered together and waiting for a flood to take them 

 up the stream, but it would seem that they take the 

 fly very greedily when from prolonged drought they 

 have been compulsorily detained in salt water for 

 an abnormal period. I cannot boast of any such 

 extraordinary results as I have quoted from Mr. 

 Naylor's Diary ; but the largest number of salmon I 

 ever killed with rod and line, in a given time, was also 

 after a prolonged drought, when, in October 1894, 1 I 



1 See ' Nil Desperandum,' Badminton Magazine, October 

 1896, 



