SALMON ANGLING IN IRELAND. 225 



" Don't stand looking at the casting line, yer honour," observed 

 Pat, *' but cover him again there you have him !" 



Mr. M'Hale was wrong, however ; it was no salmon, though a fair 

 substitute for one, tuniing out when netted to be a white trout of 

 51b. I had now an opportunity of examining, more closely than I 

 had hitherto done, the articles with which Teny had provided us. 



" Did ever man see the like," remarked Pat. " I'd not wonder if 

 the maker had caught a rainbow and given you a handful gold, 

 green, blue, crimson, yellow, violet, and orange," continued he, 

 reading one of the despised articles from tail to shoulder ; " divil 

 such a thing ever I see." 



In fact, the flies were rather remarkable, and deserve description ; 

 so, whilst Pat is extracting the hook from the jaw of the trout, we 

 will examine our stock. Whether shade, shape, or steel be con- 

 sidered, never were twelve more unpromising specimens. The hooks, 

 remarkably fine in the wire, inordinately long in the shank, and very 

 small in the bend, were of a kind sometimes used in trout-fishing 

 for taking full-length likenesses of the palmer family, and, as if such 

 ridiculous implements were not already three times too long, Terry 

 had bedecked each with a topping by way of tail. But the bodies 

 ah ! there lay the core and marrow of my grief ; they would have 

 exhausted the patience of a saint, but nearly drove a sinner like 

 myself stark mad, as they lay glittering before me in an endless 

 variety of short joints, composed of the brightest and most opposite 

 coloured floss, relieved here and there with a patch of gold or 

 silver. No hackle shaded these naked beauties, unless a single turn 

 of jay at the head could be considered as a sort of ballet equivalent 

 for the ordinary garb in which salmon flies are wont to appear ; and 

 even this poor apology was more than half obscured by the long 

 turkey wing. Strictly speaking, they looked like nothing on the earth 

 or under the water ; and though Pat's idea of their resembling so 

 many inch stripes of consolidated rainbow might give some faint 

 notion of their general appearance, to my fancy they seemed more 

 like a group of harlequins with yellow tails and long brown coats. 

 To expect sport with such flies, Pat declared utterly impossible ; the 



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