EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION vii 



Tom Todd Stoddart, than whom no amateur ever devoted 

 more time and attention to salmon fishing, tells how "a 

 well-known landed proprietor in the north of Scotland, the 

 possessor on both sides of a noted salmon river," never used 

 any flies except those dressed entirely of white material ; 

 " and although occasionally competed with by one of the 

 ablest craftsmen in the district . . . who actually took 

 pleasure in using flies of the opposite colour [black], managed 

 generally to bear off the palm." 



The late Lord Percy, a keen and accomplished salmon 

 fisher, once told me that it did not much matter what fly 

 one used in the North Tyne, provided it was not a Blue 

 Doctor, at which the fish would never look. I turned up my 

 old fishing book, in which there was fixed a fly of that very 

 pattern, and written under it" Seven salmon in North Tyne. 

 Tied by the porter at Reedsmouth Station." These fish had 

 been killed in the same stretch of water that Lord Percy 

 used to fish, namely, the Hargroves beat, just below Reeds- 

 mouth. 



As it is a matter of perfect indifference to me what fly I 

 with for salmon, always provided that it is of the size that 

 seems suitable for the water and the season, when I am fishing 

 a river with which I am not acquainted I usually put up, for 

 the sake of harmony, whatever the gillie or boatman pre- 

 scribes. But whereas these local experts are sometimes very 

 dogmatic, desiring the angler, after one fly has been tried with- 

 out success, to change it for another, my patience is not always 

 equal to the occasion. Tweed boatmen are apt to be specially 

 exacting in this respect, probably because there is no salmon 

 river to which so many inexperienced fishers come as to fhat 

 classic stream. I was fishing the Bemersyde water some years 

 ago ; my attendant was even more tyrannical than the average 

 of local experts, perpetually prescribing a change of fly and 

 specially insisting upon a Silver Wilkinson (Plate XVII, Fig. 3), 

 which at that time was the fashionable fly on Tweedside. I 

 became so bored by his insistence that, before returning 

 to that water in the following year, I devised a fly quite 

 different from the everlasting Wilkinson, and determined to 

 fish with no other. Without consulting the boatman, I put up 

 the new fly, a fiery creature with a body all gold tinsel and a 

 magenta beard.* 



* The latest edition of the Wilkinson has been toned down by adding a 

 sky-blue hackle over the flaring magenta. 



