62 SPEING SALMON 



to northern atmosphere. It has been a winter mild 

 almost beyond precedent. There has been no ice, fish 

 have been running up for weeks, and the river flows on 

 as of yore, full of promise and full of mystery the 

 fundamental charm of angling. The current ripples 

 under the cliff on the far side with exactly the same 

 eddies as it did twelve months ago, when your fly, 

 passing the point of yonder sunken rock, suddenly 

 stopped, the line tightened, the greenheart bent, the 

 reel screeched, and, ten minutes later, the first clean 

 fish of 1897 drew the index of the steelyard to an 

 honest twelve pounds. 



We don't waste much time at this season in discussing 

 the merits of different flies. A Highlander's imagina- 

 tion runs riot in change; a Lowlander is obstinate in 

 preference for some particular pattern, and turns sulky 

 if you hesitate to conform exactly to what he prescribes ; 

 but a Norseman is sensible, all he stipulates for is size ; 

 provided the lure be big enough to stir fish lying in a 

 snow-fed stream, he sets no store by nice shades of 

 colour or variety of material. On this occasion a new 

 device from the Dee called the ' Mar Lodge ' an elegant 

 confection of black silk, silver tinsel, and jungle-fowl 

 hackles is dispatched to its mission on the waters. 

 Again and again it traverses the well-remembered spot 

 at the rock point ; there is nobody at home there to-day. 

 Twenty yards lower, where the channel shoals and 

 broadens, comes that indescribable elastic ' draw ' which 

 tells of a fish firmly hooked under water ; the exquisite 

 spasm traverses line and rod, making all the fisherman's 



