THE GAME FISHES OF THE WOELD 



temperament,' and if one lias not the latter he has little 

 interest or love for the real esthetic features of fly fishing. What 

 chance has an angler, especially an American, when casting 

 for salmon, on the Tweed, we will say, when a friend whispers, 

 * If yon win cast yonr fly just over there, it will drop not far 

 from the spot where Scott wrote Ivanhoe.' Or when casting 

 for salmon on the Hodder, or was it the Eibble ? Father Irwin 

 of Stonyhurst said, ' Ton gee the old bridge above ns (the charm- 

 ing one I had been devonring with envious eyes) ? Cromwell's 

 army crossed that in the seventeenth century.' And when my 

 friend Annan took me down the Tweed to another bridge, under 

 which salmon were lurking, that I might view its ancient beauty, 

 a bridge that Scott usied, I forgot all about the salmon, the 

 Jock Scotts and other flies the giUie had made for me at the 

 Edinburgh Salmon Club, just as I missed the first salmon on 

 the Eibble thinking of its old bridge and of Cromwell's army, 

 as my seventh great grandfather doubtless crossed it, as he 

 was one Edmund Johnson, a ' fighting parson ' in the army of 

 Cromwell. 



How can a mere mortal concentrate his mind on angling on 

 such rivers as the Tweed, Wye, Ure, Derwent, Esk and others 

 where ifature has outdone herself in producing the most radi- 

 antly beautiful vistas of green, of forests and sweeps of upland 

 and lowland that blend and melt into the blue of the heavens 

 in splendid pictures, no matter which way one turns or looks ? 

 It is possible that I am too critical, but I submit that i£ I do 

 not land my salmon some time on the Tweed or Wye I have 

 at least given a reason. 



With this symposium of seeming levity, or appreciation, I 

 approach the subject of the salmon, which, according to Walton, 

 is ' the king of freshwater fishes.' As to the antiquity of salmon 

 fishing in England, no one knows. The early Britons, the 

 Anglo-Saxons and the Eomans who held the country several 

 centuries, undoubtedly fished the salmon streams of England. 

 The salmon, it is known, has been fished with rod and reel for 



