260 Salmon- Fishing. 



but what if the fashion of the fly is to keep pace 

 with the fancy of the "female"? Moreover, if 

 " female pride " is to direct in the matter of colours, 

 why not also in the matter of cut ? 



Stoddart tells us that in his day it was held that, 

 " in the lower parts of Tweed, salmon were not to 

 be allured with any degree of readiness by means 

 of the same colours and descriptions of flies as 

 those successfully employed against them twenty 

 or thirty years before." But although he con- 

 sidered that in those former times salmon were, 

 like our grey-haired forefathers, of sober tastes and 

 simple habits, content with homely fare and scorn- 

 ful of new-fangled delicacies, he was disposed to 

 think that the desire for change originated as much 

 in the capriciousness of the angler as in the vagaries 

 of the fish. I am inclined to believe with him that 

 there must have been then " a great deal of preju- 

 dice, self-conceit, and humbug exhibited by salmon- 

 fishers generally with respect to their flies a mon- 

 strous mass of nonsense hoarded up by the best of 

 them ; " and were my own anxious fears allayed by 

 the assurance that there might be honourable ex- 

 ceptions in the case of " the best of them," I should 

 not hesitate to repeat in this year of grace the same 

 charitably sweeping denunciation of " salmon-fish- 

 ers generally." At all events, I have no confidence 

 in the thousand and one salmon-flies of prismatic 



