ON LAKES 105 



them. Still, there are first-class salmon anglers who 

 will have none of the traditions. Instead of adopt- 

 ing the precepts of the gillies, they follow their own 

 fancies ; and sometimes they are justified by results. 

 Experiments on the Tweed, where local preferences 

 are particularly definite, have strengthened the 

 sceptical notions. The sceptical notions, however, 

 are themselves empirical. They prove no more than 

 that certain local traditions do not contain the 

 whole truth. They are not in themselves the whole 

 truth. In as far as they would lead us to believe 

 that it does not matter what fly, or what minnow, 

 or what other lure, one uses, they are probably, 

 indeed, a negation of the truth. Salmon must 

 have definite instincts in their choice of things to 

 seize. Clues to some of these instincts readily yield 

 themselves to well-informed scrutiny. A friend on 

 whose loch I sometimes fish told me, when first I 

 went thither, that there were only two minnows 

 which were very successful. One was all brown ; 

 the other was brown on the back and red in the 

 belly. " Do you use them indifferently ? " I asked, 

 " or do you put on one at one time of the year and 

 one at the other ? " " O," he answered, " when I go 

 out I just try one, and then, if it doesn't do, I try 

 the other." 1 My friend did not know that there is 

 a minnow, common to many streams and lakes, 

 which, almost altogether brown at ordinary times, 

 becomes red in the belly, with a tinge of gold, when 

 it is about to spawn. This information, which was 

 confirmed by a study of the minnows native to the 



