320 HOW TO FISH A CAST. 



which are so much waste paper. The only point to be 

 observed in salmon-fishing is, that whereas in trout-fishing 

 you often fish up-stream, in salmon-fishing you more often 

 fish down. True, you may occasionally, with an obstinate 

 salmon that won't bf persuaded, try a cast up-stream and 

 drag down, and may even once in a way get him up to it, 

 but as a rule you fish down and work up-stream. Even 

 when casting across you work as much against the stream 

 as you can. Of course this does not apply to dead water 

 or large eddies, where the fish lie anyhow. Some anglers, 

 and some writers, lay great stress upon working your fly, 

 and how you are to humour it into the stream, and make 

 it work so that all the fibre-like pinions open and shut 

 like a living thing, &c. ; but it is all chips and porridge. 

 I know two first-rate professional fishermen who live but 

 a few miles apart on the same river. One always works 

 his fly, the other swears by a steady draw and an even 

 keel, and yet one is as good as t'other, and they both kill 

 their fair share of salmon. Hear what Mr. Colquhon, a 

 very old sportsman and no mean fly-fisher, says. 1 When 

 he has tried a pool in vain, he makes his cast and merely 

 winds the line home ; this he calls winding over, and it 

 often rises a fish when other means have failed. Of 

 course when a salmon is shy you try all sorts of ways to 

 make him come up : first a gentle undulation of the rod- 

 point ; then an even draw ; then a regular frantic witches' 

 dance, bobbing, and jerking, and working as though your 

 fly were possessed of St. Vitus or a tarantula bite ; then 

 you sink the fly, and perhaps none of them avail, and 

 then what is to be said of it ? Perhaps he does come up 

 to one or the other. If so, that is the killing style for 

 the time ; for salmon, like maidens, are sometimes capri- 

 cious. Sometimes they like a quiet partner in a corner 

 all to themselves, and sometimes nothing but a perfectly 

 1 In The Moor and the Loch.' 



