THE SALMON FISHER. 79 



It is this complexity which makes the study and 

 practice of salmon angling a high art. In human 

 nature you cannot interpret one face, or type, or 

 character, by another ; no more can the salmon an- 

 gler predicate the disposition of one river by the 

 idiosyncracies of another. The ambitious aspirant 

 can become an adept only by the widest practical 

 experience. Much less can he instruct others by the 

 card. It is impossible for book or tutor to prescribe 

 and apply stereotyped tactics in handling a salmon 

 or wooing a stream. Just here is where those mar- 

 tinets who devise manuals signally fail to satisfy the 

 neophyte. If all streams were alike, with plenty of 

 breadth and depth and scope, it would be different. 

 Given plenty of sea-room, with a wide-awake boat- 

 man to follow, what tyro would fail to secure a sal- 

 mon that was well fastened ? Its behavior is always 

 pretty nearly the same sort of a circus, much as the 

 lamented Francis Francis describes it in his inimi- 

 table " Sporting Sketches," published in London in 

 1878 : "A twenty or thirty yards' run when first 

 hooked ; then round, head to stream, boring against 

 it hither and thither ; a swim around more like a 



