390 SALMON AND TROUT. 



silver-bodied ' Bush-rangers,' as we used to call them, before I 

 was fast in a good fish. 



This, as regards salmon fishing with the fly, is, however, the 

 exception, and not by any means the rule. With the worm 

 the chances of coloured and uncoloured waters tell much less 

 heavily against the rod. On the Bush and on the Usk also I 

 have killed salmon with the worm when the water was slightly 

 removed from the consistency of pea-soup. Once on the Bush, 

 with the river in this state, and when all legitimate efforts had 

 failed of success, I recollect killing a salmon with — well, with- 

 out the worm— in the well-known pool bearing the odd- sound- 

 ing appellation of ' Jeannie's dam.' At this spot, where a broad 

 sweeping flood showed the river to be anything but dammed, 

 I sat down to watch the spate and smoke a consoling cigar, 

 when I noticed a large fish repeatedly rising in the exact same 

 spot, some fifteen or twenty yards from the bank — rising, 

 indeed, with such persistency as to suggest an idea that I 

 hastened to put into practice, but on account of which, I need 

 hardly say, I have ever since suffered the pangs of remorse ! 

 Judging the distance of the rising fish as well as I could, I 

 kept steadily casting over him. Presently, as I had anticipated, 

 the fish and my fly arrived at the same point on the surface at 

 the same moment, when, as Artemus Ward would have said, 

 ' by a dexterous movement of the body he managed to bring 

 his off pectoral fin into vigorous contact with the barb of my 

 fly-hook.' The contest was sharp, but not short. My friend, 

 a fish with the tide lice still on him, and who eventually turned 

 the scale at 15 lbs., showing the most furious indignation at 

 the ungentlemanly treatment he had received,— rushing hither 

 and thither, up and down stream, back and across, over and 

 under, in a way that was a 'caution.' He gave me one of the 

 warmest twenty minutes' work that I ever remember. 



But this is a digression — or rather a confession, which I 

 make, perhaps, with a view to 'absolution.' 



So shall my soul of conscience-prick have ease. . . • 



To return to worm fishing. 



