1 2 Fly Fishing for Salmon. 



rapids, streams and pools, and either cuts your line 

 clean against some sharp rock, or rubs his nose 

 against the bottom, wears your gut to a shred, and 

 you suddenly find yourself minus fly and fish. 



This it is that makes salmon fishing so enticing 

 and so exciting. In many salmon rivers there 

 is but little to prevent a fair fisherman killing 

 a big fish, but in some, the Spean in Inver- 

 ness-shire for instance, the case is very different. 

 Here a big fish has all the advantage. Just get a 

 twenty-five or thirty pounder on your line, and see 

 what will happen ; it is twenty to one in favour of 

 the salmon. Theophilus South says, when his 

 friend observes, "What a splendid fish, but how 

 you tremble ! " " Tremble indeed ; do you fight a 

 salmon even of this size (he is speaking of a twelve 

 pounder), and you will find yourself ' another.' Talk 

 of excitement, catching a salmon is the aicjurj of it." 

 It is, indeed, and when long continued becomes 

 something more. I once lost a fish after three 

 hours and forty minutes' hard work, and this is how 

 it happened. Whilst playing a fish of 14 Ibs. in 

 the Coa Pool on the Spean, a huge salmon, bright 

 as silver, jumped over my line, and almost imme- 

 diately another, its fellow, not quite so big, showed 

 himself a little lower down. After landing the 

 fourteen pounder it was too late, and the pool had 

 been too much disturbed to try for these monsters, 



