NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLY-FISHING. 459 



These implements are used on a scale very different to 

 trout-fishing and, generally speaking, with less delicacy in 

 proportion to the increase of sweep, and the coarseness of the 

 tackle ; but in salmon-fishing, so much depends upon the 

 extent of water covered in throwing the fly, that no pains 

 should be spared to acquire this power as fully as possible. 

 It must be remembered that in salmon-fishing, unlike 

 trout-fishing, the river is often too broad for any line to 

 reach nearly over all the good casts, and success is here 

 often obtained solely by the power which some men have 

 of sending their fly into parts which their weaker or less 

 expert rivals cannot possibly cover. With the young 

 angler, the first thing to be done is to secure the assistance 

 of some resident guide well acquainted with the haunts of 

 the fish, who will give him confidence, if he does nothing 

 else. Without his aid the angler, if unsuccessful, will 

 wander from point to point, and will be unable to do jus- 

 tice to himself, because he has no confidence that there are 

 fish where he is trying for them. Indeed, even the experi- 

 enced salmon-fisher is all the better for this assistance, if 

 he is on strange water, as, though he may give a shrewd 

 general guess as to the most probable casts for fish, he will 

 often pass over good ones, and select those which are much 

 inferior to his rejected localities. He will also get some 

 information as to the probability of his flies suiting the 

 particular river and time, and generally as to the fitness of 

 his arrangements for that precise spot. This knowledge, 

 once obtained, will serve as long as the river continues in 

 the same state ; but if rain, or the reverse, should alter the 

 condition of the water, making it either much lower or 



