250 ON SALMON-FISHING WITH THE FLY. 



ments, by carefully studying the habits of the fish he 

 wishes to capture their food and feeding hour their 

 customary and occasional haunts the effects of different 

 states of weather or sizes and colours of water upon 

 their tastes together with a hundred other matters 

 essential to be known, before he can venture to claim 

 for himself the reputation of an adept in the craft. I 

 do not say he is to refuse the instructions of others ; 

 far from it. These he should receive and treasure up 

 with due gratitude ; but let him do so only after they 

 have been weighed and examined, when the occasion 

 and benefit of them are ascertained and understood. 



That salmon-fishing, as practised from the boat on 

 Tweed, is upon the whole a very agreeable recreation, 

 affording exercise and some measure of joyous excite- 

 ment to the person engaged in it, I do not mean to deny; 

 but it is not, to my mind, nearly so pleasurable or satis- 

 factory a sport as when pursued on foot. Give me a 

 stream which I can readily command, either from the 

 bank or by means of wading a dark, hill-fed water, 

 like the Lochie or the Findhorn, full of breaks, runs, 

 pools, and gorges give me the waving birch-wood,- the 

 cliff and ivied scaur, tenanted by keen-eyed kestril or 

 wary falcon more than this, give me solitude, or the 

 companionship, not less relishable, of some ardent and 

 kindred spirit, the sharer of my thoughts and felicity 

 give me, in such a place, and along with such an on- 

 looker, the real sport of salmon-fishing the rush of 

 some veteran water-monarch, or the gambol and caracol 

 of a plump new-run grilse, and talk no more of that 

 monotonous and spiritless semblance of the pastime, 

 which is followed by the affluent, among the dubs and 

 dams of our Border river. The two modes of angling, 

 with their attendant circumstances of place and com- 



