SALMON FLIES 



6. "The Blue, Black and Silver Doctors.'* Tag, silver wire and 

 yellow floss; tail, a topping and Indian crow; butt, scarlet wool 

 worsted; body, sky-blue floss, ribbed with silver twist and a sky- 

 blue hackle; wing, gold pheasant tail feather, grey turkey, pintail, 

 with fibres of yellow and red swan, topping over all; headt scarlet 

 worsted. 



The "Black" and "Silver Doctors" are similar in all respects, save 

 that the first has a black floss body and black hackle, and the body of 

 the second is of silver tinsel, with no hackle, save a sky-blue one at the 

 shoulder. 



7. " The Wilkinson " resembles the " Silver Doctor " in all re- 

 spects save that it has no hackle over the body, no red worsted on its 

 head, but it is indemnified for the loss of these by a flaming magenta 

 shoulder hackle and a pair of blue chatterers on the cheeks. 



No fly, except "Jock Scott," has acquired such a reputation on Tweed - 

 side as the " Wilkinson," and indeed it kills quite as well as any other, 

 there or elsewhere; but I got so tired of hearing it extolled at the expense 

 of equally meritorious compositions, that I devised one to compete with 

 it, which was afterwards called by my name. 



8. " The Sir Herbert." Tag, gold tinsel; tail, a topping and sprigs 

 of ibis; no butt; body, gold tinsel carried on from the tag for two- 

 thirds of the length; gold twist over and a yellow-dyed cock's hackle 

 with a black list down the centre; remaining third scarlet mohair 

 with magenta shoulder hackle; wing, two tippet feathers, strips of 

 bustard, white and scarlet swan and wood-duck, and a few fibres of 

 emerald peacock herl. Blue chatterer cheeks and red macaw horns; 

 head, bronze chenille. 



The Tweed boatman's face to whom I showed this fly was a study 

 In physiognomy. Amusement and disdain flitted across it, changing to 

 contempt and emphatic remonstrance when, on an October morning, I 

 proceeded to attach it to the line. In the evening, having landed seven 

 salmon weighing 122 lb. in the Haly Weil at Bemersyde with the strange 

 fly,* when I ventured to observe that the gold body had not done so badly, 

 all my friend could find to say was, dryly — " Maybe ye'd have done better 

 wi' a Wulkisson." Which was a surmise incapable of disproof. As for the 

 fly itself, it has proved itself just as effective as any other in British and 

 Norwegian waters; but the yellow body hackle merely serves to add 



•On November 2, 1892. The weights were 22, 22, 20, 18, 16, 16, 8 lb. 



51 



