TO CIRCUMVENT CONDITIONS OF WEATHER. 247 



without a knowledge of botany we may admire flowers and trees, yet 

 only as strangers only as one may admire a great man or a beautiful 

 woman in a crowd." 



These remarks might easily apply to Salmon-angling, for only the 

 adept gets a full measure of enjoyment from it. With Anglers, as with 

 other people, there is no accounting for the idiosyncrasy which leads one 

 to simply observe with interest the development of phenomena, and 

 another to analyse their causes. Sometimes the tastes of a Fisherman 

 lead him only in the direction of getting at the action of an ideal rod, so 

 as to make himself master of the various methods of casting. The taste 

 of another inclines him to study temperature, light, and shade, or 

 geological formation as affecting the choice of flies ; or even to try ex- 

 periments in fly composition on occasions when the fish seem positively 

 spellbound and refuse to be inveigled ; and so on. But with regard to 

 this particular mood of the fish, it would be wise for the Angler to dispel 

 from his mind the old-fashioned belief that Salmon have their own 

 especial feeding times. When a pool, nay, the whole district, is blank, 

 not a movement seen, not a "rug" had anywhere by anyone, surely some 

 mysterious influence must be at work. As a matter of fact, we know 

 that under certain conditions, those, for instance, when a whole reach is 

 literally alive with fish, and within a few moments not a splash, not a 

 ring seen for hours, it is absolutely useless to persevere with ordinary 

 flies. We believe the fish have become amenable to some secret agency, 

 the effect of which has been made only too evident to the observer as the 

 waters have become more and more contaminated by the ever growing 

 and disgraceful pollutions. Nevertheless, by the inductive process of 

 reasoning from accurate observation and comparison of notes, we have 

 managed to formulate certain rules in fly composition, and constant per- 

 severance under the above circumstances with special patterns has led to 

 a solution of, at any rate, one of our most intricate problems. May I 

 repeat, if the cause of these things lies in some obscurity, the fact of our 

 occasionally mastering these fish remains. 



Now we may safely lay it down as a sound principle from which to start 

 this interesting subject that the lingering doubt evinced by Salmon on 

 certain days is not due to caprice, but rather to agencies, which, though 



