>63 



SCOTSMAN, March <)//i, 1896. 



•' I'licre is niiicli moio in Mr. Kelson's Ijook on T/if Salmdii /■"/)', lli.ni tlic 

 title would indicate. It is a coniplctc treatise on the science and art of salmon 

 fishing, written by one who is an acknowledged authority on the art, as well as a 

 noted exponent of it. Mr. Kelson is convinced that care and skill in fly dressing, will 

 meet with their full reward at the waterside, and the directions that he gives for 

 performing the various operations incidental to the making of a fly, are as 

 complete as the veriest tyro could desire, while even the practised hand will find 

 much to learn from his description. A list is given of some 300 standard patterns, in 

 which the materials of the various parts, the rivers and circumstances to which they 

 are appropriate, are carefully detailed. The more characteristic patterns are 

 illustrated by a series of coloured plates. Having dealt with the flies themselves, 

 Mr. Kelson has much to say with legard to their proper choice under various 

 circumstances. The different casts in use are minutely described, and directions 

 for their performance are given, which are as explicit as written directions illustrated 

 by drawings can be. Due attention is also given to other articles of the fisherman's 

 equipment." 



DAILY NEWS, M,iir/i 12///, 1896. 



" The typical salmon fly is a gaudy object ; it is so small that half a dozen 

 may be stowed away in any compartment of a purse without inconvenience, yet in 

 Mr. Geo. M. Kelson's recently published book. The Salmon Fly, it demands a 

 matter of five hundred pages, with profuse illustrations, and type exceeding 200,000 

 words. The interested enthusiast, will perhaps, go into retreat to grajjple with the 

 contents of this gigantic work, and should he live to a green old age may possibly have 

 learned its lessons if he has not climbed to the scientific elevation to which the 

 author points. . . . We have diagrams devoted to the complications of not 

 merely the ordinary and Spey casts, etc. In some of these evolutions the course of 

 the line fills the horizon with its curves and doubles, or ascends to the sky in graceful 

 loops. . . . Mr. Kelson gives a series of eight plates, upon which fifty-lwo 

 patterns of flies are bc.iutifuUy represented in colours, but this is only a tythc. In 

 addition there are the full dressings of 300 salmon flies. No angler for the future can 

 complain that he has not ample store from which to choose, and any successor to 

 Mr. Kelson may be warned that he will find m'arvellously little gleaning in the field 

 which he has shorn so close. . . . We should have liked to do full justice to this 

 bulky volume, for, in truth, it is full of sound instruction and classified information. 

 Mr. Kelson has been known for many years as a highly successful salmon fisher, 

 and one of the foremost living authorities upon the structure of the salmon fly. . . 

 We may add that Mr. Kelson's style is clear, and, if his original theories do not 



