86 THE SALMON FISHER. 



and very little profit to their impounded fellow-cap- 

 tives or the fisherman. 



Singular as it may seem, the best trout fishermen 

 make but a poor fist at salmon fishing at their first 

 venture. They have much to unlearn. They need 

 coaching; for they invariably waste precious time in 

 prolonged and indiscriminate threshing of unlikely 

 places, and skitter their flies over the broad surface 

 of the pools with artistic play but fruitless reward. 

 Now, a trout seldom takes a submerged or still fly. 

 He seems to perceive the deception and leaves it. 

 Salmon, on the contrary, almost always take the fly 

 a little submerged. As a general rule the proficient 

 angler casts straight for the tail of a pool without 

 making any graduated approximate essays, for the 

 rising fish seldom lie anywhere else, and casting at 

 random is sheer waste of time. The distance to be 

 cast should be calculated nicely, and no longer line 

 be thrown than is necessary. The cast being made 

 the angler at once imparts to his fly some such mo- 

 tions as a shrimp makes in the water (which it is 

 supposed to resemble), though not so jerky, moving 

 the top of the rod laterally three or four feet every 



