Fishing the Pool m 



on the Restigouche, where it and the " Lady of 

 Merton," very nearly the same thing, have been 

 ever since found excellent. I fished the Galway 

 River in Ireland one April, and landed the first fish 

 of the season taken with the fly on one I tied in 

 Nicholas Brown's cottage, and from his materials, 

 a rough and simple combination of claret body, 

 gold tinsel, brown hackle, and wild turkey wings. 

 It was so radically different from the gaudy flies 

 in general use on the Galway that Nicholas ad- 

 vised me to " hould to the shrimp," but I got a 

 twenty pounder with it on the " resarve " inside of 

 half an hour. A salmon is quite as likely as a 

 human being to change what answers to his mind, 

 and while at three P.M., of ten fish lying in a pool, 

 one may be disposed to rise, an hour later the ten- 

 dency may have left that one and taken possession 

 of part or all of his fellows. It is a fact that usu- 

 ally but a small proportion of salmon will rise at 

 any given time, and they may come up freely in 

 one pool, whilst at another an hundred yards dis- 

 tant, where they are quite as plentiful, nothing will 

 tempt them. Many salmon start for a fly floating 

 near the surface, and abandon the chase before a 

 break indicates their presence. I have often seen 

 fish make a rush for a fly, stop short, and go back 



