OCTOBER 191 



five salmon in the current season ; but his method of 

 fishing was such as I should have deemed almost pro- 

 hibitive of success. Every other salmon-fisher that I 

 have known believed in a low point and a fly well 

 sunk ; to allow the fly to leave a trail on the surface of 

 the stream is reckoned to denote a tyro, but Dr. B 

 (the Brownie of the Tyne, we used to call him) never 

 gave his flies a chance of sinking. And such flies they 

 were ! They were all of much the same pattern, and 

 so far as I saw, of much the same size, pretty big (I 

 never can remember the numbers on the Limerick 

 scale), immensely overwinged and with thick bodies of 

 rabbit- wool. He always fished with two a tail-fly and 

 a bob attached to unstained treble gut, even under 

 conditions of water and sky that seemed to postulate 

 the finest and most transparent strand. Wading very 

 deep for so short a man (he cannot have stood more 

 than five foot six in his brogues) he flung a shortish 

 line straight across the stream, then, raising high his 

 light Castle Connel rod, he brought those fearsome 

 flies tripping and bouncing along the surface after a 

 fashion, one should have thought, better calculated to 

 warn than to wile to terrify than to tempt any 



salmon over which they passed. Howbeit, Dr. B 



killed more fish than any one else on that beat of 

 North Tyne; 1 partly, no doubt, because the river 

 flowed close past his house, and he could choose any 



1 He had command of two excellent casts Reedsmoiith and ' the 

 Doctor's stream,' which he allowed the Duke of Northumberland and 

 his friends to fish, in return for which he had liberty to fish the far 

 greater extent of Hargroves when none of the Duke's party were 

 out. 



