SECRETS OF THE SALMON 



twenty or thirty times. The eddy runs full of 

 small flies. The salmon seemed to be feeding as 

 would a trout; in fact I thought at first it was a 

 large trout. When I had completed lunch I put 

 on a very small black fly, caught the fish and 

 examined it carefully. In its mouth were six or 

 eight flies thoroughly crushed and in the stomach 

 was a considerable amount of heavy yellow fluid 

 and one fly. Next season I shall take a microscope 

 to the river and carefully examine the stomach 

 mucus and see if it contains the same cells as would 

 be found in the squeezed juice of flies. If this is 

 so, the age-old question of how a salmon lives 

 without food and why he takes a fly is solved. 

 Personally I thoroughly believe he does absorb 

 the juice of flies; otherwise I do not see why he 

 should take large numbers of small flies when 

 there is a hatch on. Next season I am going to 

 solve this question definitely. 



At Soldier's Gulch, August 5th, a dry fly failed 

 to raise a single salmon and a wet fly down to 

 No. 8 in size was equally unsuccessful. My Never- 

 sink nymph fly fished over the same water just 

 afterward hooked six fish, of which we landed four, 

 and made a very successful morning. 



That same afternoon we took three fish on a dry 

 [ H8 ] 



