ON LAKES 103 



water, flowing at a rate greater than is usual in 

 the stream, buffets them, or teases them, or stimulates 

 them, and revives the predatory instinct ? There is, 

 I know, another theory to account for the improve- 

 ment in sport that is brought by a flood ; but it is 

 only fair to the writer in The Field, and to the 

 memory of Mr. Almond, to mention a possibility 

 tending to show that their conjecture is not so absurd 

 as it may have seemed to many readers. 



In the third place, it may be that the salmon 

 which takes a lure trailed in the wake of a boat has 

 not been lying in the path of the boat. He may 

 have dashed at the minnow laterally. That is my 

 own surmise. It should be remembered that, as we 

 have seen, the eyesight of the fish is mainly lateral. 

 It should be remembered, too, that an artificial 

 minnow is a very conspicuous object. Not only is it, 

 as a rule, flagrant in colour : also it spins, and, 

 should it be tinselled, flashes. It can be seen from 

 afar on either side of the course in which it whirls 

 along. After thinking over the possibilities, I am 

 strongly of opinion that every fish that takes it 

 has been lying aside from the track of the boat. 



Why any fish should take it at all is a question 

 equally entertaining. It would be wrong to repeat 

 in an affirming sense the commonplace statement 

 that all artificial minnows are unlike any creatures 

 of nature. Some of them, though exaggerated in 

 size and less delicate in hues, are modelled after 

 living things. The action of the artificial minnows, 

 however, is quite unlike that of the real ones. Real 



