ii4 Fly-fishing for Mahseer. CHAP. vn. 



they let Franklin off for the very same crime. Perhaps I, too, may 

 escape. I will trust to the enlightened age. I wish very much though 

 that I could find some theory on which to base fly-fishing for Mahseer. 

 I only look to salmon-fishing to help me in this matter, but I look in 

 vain. As far as I can see the principle at the bottom of all fishing is, 

 the presentation to the fish of a hook, so concealed under something 

 which is its natural food, or which is so like its natural food, that it is 

 taken unsuspectingly in place of food. This principle is thoroughly 

 acted up to in the tying of artificial flies for trout, they being the 

 closest possible imitation of the actual flies on the water, and the 

 fisherman changes his fly every hour of the day that the fly on the 

 water changes. But what on earth a salmon fly is meant to represent 

 no one knows, nor, indeed, why it is called a fly at all, except from 

 the trout fly having given the idea that salmon also might be fished for 

 in the same manner, only with a larger fly. It is only surmised that it 

 is taken by the salmon for a small fish or shrimp, or some other thing 

 unknown. My belief is that it is simply taken for the thing unknown, 

 and experimented on by the salmon in the manner above suggested. 

 In brief the fly is dressed more to suit the fisherman than the fish. 

 The fisherman must have a fly he believes in ; he cannot possibly fish 

 well if he has no faith in his lure. A fly of your own fancy always kills 

 best. If the fish are in a taking humour, that is, are eagerly on the 

 look out for food, they will take any fly you throw in sight of them. 

 If they are not they will only take the fisherman's fancy fly. Therefore, 

 if you have any fancy fly use it for Mahseer ; if you have not, then take 

 somebody else's fancy, mine if you will. For with only fancy and no 

 rationale to guide us, and the necessity for having a fancy of some 

 sort, all we can do is to look about till we find a man who has had the 

 good fortune to kill pretty often with any particular fly, so that he has 

 grown to have a confidence in it, and to use the same till we find a 

 better. Now I have a very thorough belief in black as the colour. I 

 had arrived at such a belief, unbeliever though I am, in 1873. I have 

 been only confirmed in it by subsequent experience. Aye, wedded to 

 it. And I find I am by no means alone in my belief. I find numbers 

 of men use a black fly in preference to any other, and I have been 

 surprised on asking good fishermen at great distances what was their 

 pet fly, to get back from them simply my old friend the black. I 

 believe that anything black will do bitsiness. I have tried black wings 



