THE BRITISH ISLES 381 



by far and away the best. He had a knack of casthig It and coiling 

 the Hne in his hands, and the takes that he made when he first intro- 

 duced it up at Ballater, some twenty years ago, were prodigious. 

 Latterly, though, I don't think the salmon has been so' easily tempted 

 with the minnow, and the last one or two years that I have fished 

 on the Dee I have tried it with little effect, though I must admit 

 that I have only tried it when I found 1 could do nothing with 



the fly. 



• It is difficult to know whether salmon-fishing in the rivers of Scot- 

 land has deteriorated within recent years or not, for the simple reason 

 that there may be, as in Pharaoh's days in Egypt, years of prosperity 

 and years of want. But in Ireland, from what statistics I have 

 seen, I should say that the rivers have steadily fallen off. In the 

 Galway river and at the mouth of the Blackwater, perhaps the grandest 

 salmon river in the United Kingdom, a fenced iron trap is laid across 

 the mouth from bank to bank, with just one gap, maybe a couple of 

 yards wide, through which the salmon can pass to the upper reaches, 

 and, from what I know of the Irish character, I should think that very 

 probably that one loophole of escape is very often closed when no one 

 is looking. 



It is astonishing to me, considering the prices City men will pay for 

 a stretch of water which salmon have been known to frequent, that 

 proprietors along the banks of a river cannot devise some scheme by 

 which salmon may be caught with the rod in the upper stretches of a 

 river without all being waylaid at the mouth. Of course, it is the old 

 story of greed ; and the man at the mouth asks more than the man up 

 above will c^ive. Yet never do I look into the window of a London 



