SALMON-FISHING 217 



The variety of material, the combination of colours, and 

 ingenuity of design displayed in salmon-flies is truly in- 

 exhaustible. Personally I am thoroughly sceptical about the 

 superiority of one pattern over another, having repeatedly, in 

 the course of a long experience, had excellent sport by using 

 whatever flies happened to be in my box, and disregarding the 

 warning of local fishermen to the effect that none but flies of a 

 peculiar hue and shape were of any avail in their waters. I 

 could name half a dozen different rivers in which, when I was 

 a youth, grey, brown, and neutral tinted flies were prescribed 

 as essential to success. At the present time in these waters, 

 the brightest combinations of colour and tinsel are pre- 

 ferred, and, so far as I am concerned, it is a matter of perfect 

 indifference whether I display an old-fashioned dun turkey 

 or grey mallard, or mount a hook bedecked with gleaming 

 tinsel and half the colours of the prism. William Scrope, 

 writing sixty years ago, mentioned that brightly-hued Irish 

 flies had recently been introduced on the Tweed, and added 

 that the fishermen on that river attributed the scarcity of 

 salmon, whereof they had to complain, to the terror inspired 

 by these uncanny baits, which, they believed, drove the 

 fish back to the sea ! The fact is that favourite locally indi- 

 genous flies are nearly always dull in colour, because bright 

 feathers and materials were not easily obtained by those who 

 invented them a hundred years ago. There is no surer 

 killer in any river than the dun turkey — a venerable creature 

 devised Lord knows how many generations back. What does 

 it consist of ? Strands from the tail feather of the dun turkey, 

 once to be found in almost every farm on every river, although 

 now the breed is nearly extinct, supplanted by more fashion- 

 able strains ; a black hackle from the neck of the barn-yard 

 chanticleer ; some black and red yarn from any frayed and 

 worn carpet, and a tag of yellow wool from the good-wife's 

 basket. When salmon-fishing became a fashionable sport, 

 travellers and visitors adopted these local patterns, which varied 



