184 SCKAP. 



in those days kelts were counted salmon. John 

 Small, like John Younger, was a shoemaker, respect- 

 able and respected, and like him he dressed flies, by 

 which he eked out his living. Both father and son 

 fished from boyhood to old age. 



JAMES BAILLIE 



Was, we do not hesitate to say, the best fly-fisher 

 ever known in the Borders. We have mentioned 

 him in some of our notes to the present work, and 

 some of these were printed before he died, his demise 

 having taken place in November 1861, at the age of 

 forty six. He angled almost solely in the Leader 

 and the Gala, and he seldom tried from spring to 

 autumn any other lure than fly. In the hottest 

 days of June and July, when these waters were at 

 their smallest, and when almost no angler ever 

 thought of trouting with fly, he could, every day, 

 and in a few hours' fishing, kill from 10 to 15 Ibs. of 

 trout. For many years before his death he was in 

 feeble health, and he could not stand the fatigue of 

 fishing more than four or five hours a day; and 

 during these years he had to refrain from wad- 

 ing, as wetting his feet would have prostrated him 

 entirely. He fished always up-stream, and his prin- 

 cipal flies were " spiders," thinly dressed. He spoke 



