72 GENEKAL AND SPECIAL SALMON-FLIES. 



It will be asked by the less than half-learned 

 salmon-angler, why I have given so long a list of 

 widely varying and only slightly varying salmon- 

 flies. I will tell him. Tliough there are general flies 

 that will kill in the majority of rivers, they will 

 not always do so, and they must be only used for 

 want of the better local flies, or Avhen salmon- 

 caprice requires a change — when there has been a 

 surfeit of daily bread. The salmon of every river 

 in the empire have favourite flies, some widely 

 differing in size and colour, some less so ; and a 

 discriptive and special seriatim catalogue of them 

 must necessarily be a long one. I will grant that it 

 sometimes happens that a Shannon fly will kill in 

 the Tweed and vice versa, or that a Spey fly will 

 kill in the Shin, or that a Blackwater fly will kill 

 at Ballyshannon or in the Bann ; but this forms 

 the exception and not the rule. The flies for 

 each river have some specific characteristic. Thus 

 Tweed flies are, generally speaking, of dark or 

 subdued hues, with plain unmixed wings. Shannon 

 flies have quite a contrary speciality ; they are 

 always of gay colours, and sometimes of very gay 

 colours, as to their bodies ; and the crest-feathers, 

 or toppings of the golden pheasant, always form 

 their wings, so that a chief part of each fly is as 

 brilliant as can be. Flies with fiery brown or 



