DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 149 



of thought. How long I kept up the encouragement 

 I cannot say, but it answered, and I said aloud, *By 

 Jumbo, I have it !' A spectator's smile made me take 

 my fingers from my head and hurry off, but with the 

 Spoon and Phantom as good as made, and since then 

 many a grand fish has fallen a victim to it. 



It was a Glen Lyon gillie that prompted me to 

 make quite a new departure in my search for the 

 perfect minnow; he had persuaded himself that the 

 salmon's desire to get at the head of what they seized 

 was an indication that if the bait spun backwards it 

 would be irresistible to a coming fish, and, as the logic 



THE NATORAL-SPIN. 



seemed good, I spent odd hours enough, before the 

 next season came, to build a hut, in producing a bait 

 which he thought, at first sight, perfect. When the 

 time came to try it I had fruitlessly spun a Phantom 

 and a Spiral in Long Ladder Pool, where there were 

 several fish to be seen straight down from the high 

 rocks above; indeed, M'Leish, my giUie, called to me, 

 'They're na winking an e'e at ither of them. Try your 

 forward-backward over them, sir.' I put one on and 

 had three casts with it when Mac, throwing up his 

 arms, bellowed out : *Och ! bide a wee; haud it or 

 there'll na be a fush in arl the Glen the mom's morn.' 

 I must not forget that it was to this clever, ever- 

 smiling, never-discouraged gillie that I owe the notion 

 of a bait which should spin in almost gliding fashion 

 through the water, without the aid of flanges, and it 

 was he who christened it the Natural-Spin. 



