172 WANDERINGS AND MEMORIES 



four or five salmon. It is, of course, true that the 

 superior fisherman, especially when he knows any 

 particular river, and has comprehension of where 

 the fish will lie in spate or drought, will always 

 catch two or three times as many fish as the indiffer- 

 ent angler, but then that is what must always be. 

 Whereas, however, it takes exceptional skill to kill 

 the slowest-moving trout, the expert salmon angler 

 has fewer chances of doing wonderful things, because 

 it is only on rare occasions that salmon are plentiful 

 and the river just in that condition when they will 

 rise, and even then a duffer may do as well as an 

 expert. I remember such a day at Stobhall about 

 the year 1887, when Mr. Murray of Taymount, an 

 excellent fisherman, thought he had done well when 

 he had killed nine good fish, but on one beat higher 

 up on the same day, a boy of eighteen, the son of 

 the clergyman of Birnam — ^this being his first day's 

 salmon-fishing — ^killed nineteen salmon.^ He was, 

 in fact, playing fish all day. The next day, too, 

 my aunt, Mrs. Stibbard, who is a good angler, 

 killed sixteen in Burnmouth, no mean physical 

 feat for a lady, as they were all big fish. Thus 

 salmon-fishing being so much a matter of chance in 

 getting plenty of fish and suitable water just at 

 the right time, we have to pray that it may be our 

 luck to be there on such fortunate occasions. But 

 no matter how hard we work or how often we go the 

 occasions will be rare — sometimes dishearteningly so. 

 From the foregoing it may seem that my con- 

 clusions lead to the point that no special skill is 

 required to kill salmon. That is far from being 



* It must be explained that in this instance all these fish 

 were caught " harling." 



