FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 



As for the Tweed, that noble, most productive, but ill-used river — 

 over-netted in spring and summer and kept open unreasonably late 

 for rod -fishing to propitiate the upper proprietors who are robbed of 

 their fair share by the nets, and ruthlessly poached during the spawning 

 season — the Tweed, I say, suffers further under the reproach of refusing 

 to yield spring salmon except to spinning -baits. Never was calumny 

 more groundless. Spring salmon are seldom taken from the Tweed with 

 fly because fly is seldom offered to them. Here and in other rivers where 

 bait is allowed, the fly perhaps is tried for an hour or so without success; 

 then the sensitive, finely-poised greenheart is exchanged for a stiff, stunted, 

 unsympathetic spinning -rod, and if a salmon or two come to hand in the 

 course of the day, it is held that the superiority of bait over fly has been 

 demonstrated. 



Once I came across a salmon in the Dunkeld water of the Tay which 

 manifested a finely catholic taste in the matter of lures, for it took a 

 ' ' Gordon " fly offered by me as readily as it had previously taken a gudgeon 

 belonging to somebody else, which, with a whole flight of hooks and a 

 few inches of gut, were hanging from the poor creature's lip when I landed 

 it. This fish was a large kelt. 



From what is written above, the reader who elects to fish with bait 

 will expect no further counsel from me, but will seek it elsewhere. I 

 cannot, however, refrain from noticing one most remarkable result of 

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