42 THE SALMON FISHER. 



and trout killed by men who know as much about 

 fly-fishing as does a jackass." 



Bait fishing, it would seem, was the primitive 

 method, just as it now is on the Pacific coast rivers. 

 How, then, did our dilettanti anglers and all the 

 book-makers get the idea that salmon could only be 

 taken with the fly ? The answer is sufficiently obvi- 

 ous : It is because the few who angled for salmon 

 fifty years ago were distinctively " gentlemen sports- 

 men" trained to legitimate work. On this side of 

 the Atlantic they were chiefly British army officers 

 who affected only high art ; or possibly they never 

 heard of any other method of taking salmon than 

 with fly, inheriting the idea from a goodly line of 

 piscatorial ancestors who had generations before 

 them been ridiculed into eschewing the vulgar bait 

 because it was "not the correct thing." At all 

 events nobody, up to date, had scarcely thought of 

 testing rising fish with bait of any kind. If the fish 

 did not rise within an hour after persistent whipping, 

 they concluded that they were not in the humor and 

 adjourned for another trial later on. 



It has been mentioned that salmon are almost 



