346 FLY FISHING AND SPINNING 



views of local fishermen are based, but many varieties of 

 flies, or other lures, used on any particular river have come 

 into favour because they have been those used by the most 

 successful of the local fishermen. Other flies, or other 

 lures, are either not tried at all, or not until the more 

 favourite flies and lures have proved unavailing, and they 

 are for that reason often condemned because the mind has 

 already decided that the salmon are untakable, and the 

 faith and its attendant perseverance which alone bring 

 success, have not been exercised when fishing with them. 



On certain portions of the Wye, for instance, it is generally 

 believed and this belief consequently influences the choice 

 of the fishing lure that spinning bait can be used in the 

 spring to far greater advantage than the fly, and the fly in 

 autumn to greater advantage than the minnow. Yet I 

 have on more than one occasion proved that such a rule is 

 better honoured in the breach than in its observance, and 

 that the minnow at times in the autumn is equally as killing 

 as the fly, if not even more so. Variations in the killing 

 properties of any particular kind of lure generally follow 

 any pronounced meteorological disturbance. 



In the autumn of 1912, when fishing on the Wye below 

 Builth, my hostess, who was using a fly, caught three salmon 

 on the lower part of the upper pool of her water between 10.30 

 and 12 o'clock, while I, who had been fishing the upper part of 

 the same pool with an artificial minnow, had not had a touch. 

 Finding that the salmon were no longer coming to the fly 

 of my hostess, I moved down at noon, and fished the lower 

 part of the pool with my minnow, and with this lure I 

 killed three salmon before one o'clock. Plate L. shows 

 Macdonald, the gillie, gaffing one of the salmon taken on 

 the fly. 



But while the nature of the lure may be varied with 

 conspicuous success during the day, the following advice 



