SALMON FAILURES AND SUCCESSES 



By The Hon. A. E. GATHORNE-HARDY 



This is not, let me say at once, a chapter of so-called " useful 

 information," the value of which, so far as fishing goes, I 

 profoundly mistrust whenever I see it in print. A few hours 

 spent by the riverside, watching and, so far as is possible, 

 imitating a master of the art who illustrates his valuable pre- 

 cept by example, with brief explanations of the reasons that 

 govern his actions, are worth all the contradictory lore printed 

 in all the books collected for his famous fishing library by the 

 late Alfred Denison, and in those, almost as many in number, 

 which have been added since his death. In so far, however, 

 as my text is furnished by some memorable failures, I may 

 perchance point a moral while endeavouring to adorn a tale, 

 and if the reader will only take warning from my confessions 

 and resolve never to use a line, trace, or fly without careful 

 examination and testing, I shall have taught a more useful 

 lesson than will be found in whole volumes of instruction in 

 the arts of casting a line and landing a fish. 



I have fished for Salmo salar almost every year since 1865, 

 when, on a day to be for ever marked with a white stone, I 

 landed my first real " fish," a grilse of some 9 lb. weight, 

 in the Rauma, then rented by that prince among writers and 

 sportsmen, the late Bromley Davenport. During that period 



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