90 CHATS ON ANGLING. 



it to say that in my opinion, a good selection of, say four or five, 

 would be as effective as twenty or thirty. The main difficulty is local 

 prejudice, and the uncertain kind of feeling — that if you had not discarded 

 local favourites your blank day might have been fruitful. Once, however, 

 you have shaken yourself free from this feeling, you will very soon 

 gain full confidence in your theory. The blank day that you are 

 mourning would probably have been equally blank if you had been 

 equipped with all that local fancy could suggest. Can it be seriously 

 suggested that salmon can be credited with sufficient intelligence to 

 refuse a Silver Doctor or Silver Grey and to accept only a Wilkinson ? 

 Is it not rather that the fly that was accepted was presented in a most 

 alluring manner, whilst the others which were rejected did not come 

 within the salmon's ken in such a way as to tempt him? Are we not 

 all too prone to change our flies on the slightest provocation, and are 

 we not all inclined to have our own favourite fetish — a fly that succeeds 

 with us simply because we give it ten chances to one of any other ? 

 The vagaries of salmon are universally admitted ; at one time they 

 will allow all lures to pass them unnoticed, and in the next half hour may 

 take any fly, of the proper size, suitably offered. The relative tempera- 

 tures of air and water have, I feel convinced, much to say with regard 

 to this. The fly in which an angler believes, and with which, therefore, 

 he perseveres most, will bring him more fish to bank than any other. 

 It goes without saying that the fly that is most in the water, in 

 the fishable parts of the pools, of course, will catch most fish. The 

 patient, persistent angler has that great advantage over his less energetic 

 brother of the angle. What angler is there, who ties his own flies, 

 who has not built up a combination of fur, feathers, and silk by the 

 river side, and, on trying the novelty, perhaps after days of disappoint- 

 ment, has found it unexpectedly to succeed, and who has thereupon 

 fondly imagined that he has found a " medicine," only to be equally 

 disappointed the next time it is tried ? Scrope, in his day, seems to 

 have been satisfied with five patterns. To come to later times and later 

 writers, Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Gathorne Hardy both advocate four 

 only. The colour of the bottom of the river, of the sky, the brightness 

 of the day, or its cloudiness, all these will affect our choice of fly, whilst 

 the size and volume of the water will affect our choice of size. 



