FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 



When at last the secret did come out, " the Mystery," with suitable 

 refinement of material and garnishing, was received with enthusiasm 

 on many a river side, and was found to do quite as well as any other fly 

 — and no better. 



Viewed in the cold light of reason, such an incident as this ought surely 

 to enable one to declare that it matters not one spin of a farthing whether 

 the prevailing hue of a fly be red or blue, yellow or black, or an equal 

 combination of many hues; and the only important consideration is that 

 the lure be of suitable size and be given life-like motion. Well, that 

 is the conclusion to which I have been driven, malgre mot ; but such is 

 the weakness of the human intelligence that I have found it beyond my 

 strength to act upon it. There is such a mute fascination in daintily 

 dressed salmon -flies, their outline is so graceful, their tints so delicately 

 blended or so cunningly contrasted, that no nature sensible of beauty can 

 contemplate them with indifference. Consequently, I suppose I spend as 

 much time as anybody else at the outset of a day's fishing in hesitating 

 between the modest lustre of a " Silver Grey," the sombre dignity of a 

 "Black Dog," and the freakish gaiety of a "Popham," deaf the while to 

 the monition of intelligence that the result must be exactly the same 

 whichever is chosen. Truly it hath been said that salmon-flies are 

 designed rather for the delectation of fishers than for the deception of 

 fishes. 



That being so, no treatise on salmon fishing would be received with 

 favour that did not contain a description of a few, at least, out of the be- 

 wildering variety of patterns from which the angler has to make his 

 choice. Yet in doing so I shall endeavour to support the doctrine of 

 indifference by giving the figures of a few flies most in favour in the 

 middle of last century, to compare with those that bear the highest 

 reputation as killers in the present day. 



Probably few people would care to be identified with the doctrine that 

 salmon have changed their taste during the last hundred years. No 

 animal is of more conservative habits than salmon; with few exceptions 

 they return each to the river in which it first saw light; arriving there, 

 they take up the identical resting places that have satisfied creatures 

 of their race from immemorial time; and there they perform the self- 

 same aerial antics which had earned for it, before Pliny's day, the 

 appropriate title of salmo, the leaper, a saliendo. Nothing is more im- 

 probable than that a predacious fish should acquire a predilection for 

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