296 A BOOK ON ANGLING 



times, I only fished the Ballycroy once. Herewith I give his 

 letter to me, from which it will be seen that he has no faith 

 whatever in the jointed and maned flies which are supposed to 

 emanate from and flourish particularly in Erris : 



" Dear F. The flies on the Owenmore and Owenduff rivers 

 some years ago were always what is called ' jointed,' and were 

 made in two ways ; the first had the joints made of hackles 

 of divers colours, tied as in the pattern I send you, but of 

 course on a smaller hook. The enclosed is a specimen from the 

 Dee, in Aberdeenshire, to which river it was transported by 

 Mr. Gordon, from Ballycroy, and has since been naturalised.* 

 The other jointed fly is made thus : topping for tail, then three 

 different colours of floss silk for body, with three rings of twist 

 at the end of each, and standing out from these joints three 

 long tags of different coloured mohair, ordinary mixed wing, 

 and hackle at shoulder. It is a very difficult fly to tie, and not 

 worth a rush when tied, except that in its dry state it looks 

 very pretty, when in the water, on the contrary, it all bags 

 together, and I never did much good with it. The fly, on the 

 contrary, with the plain turkey wing was an invention of our 

 own, and killed 48 salmon and 137 white trout in one week, 

 on the Owenduff. The fly with the mallard wing and fiery 

 body also kills right well on both rivers, and so do the Ballina 

 flies, more especially one of Pat Hearns', called the Thunder 

 and Lightning. An equally great pet is the enclosed, with the 

 frayed gut. He is confoundedly ugly, sir, having been com- 

 posed by your humble servant ; but treat him with respect, 

 for this very year that identical specimen has slain six Salmo 

 salar in the river Erne that thou knowest of. I enclose four 

 or five more of what MacGowan calls Ballycroy flies, but they 

 are awful impostors (on second thought I don't, for they are no 

 use at all). The fish, in fact, like plain, sober mallard and 

 turkey, and furnace hackles, with either orange or brown 

 bodies, and a jay about the shoulders. 



H. I. S." 



Mr. S. enclosed me several patterns, some with orange and 

 green joints, others of all the colours in the rainbow, and with 

 manes of all sorts of colours. I will not fatigue the reader and 



* I never could understand how the Nicholson, which was a regular Erris 

 notion, got on to the Tay, but the course of its introduction becomes pretty 

 clear from the above. The fly referred to strongly resembles the Nicholson. 



F. F. 



