SALMON FISHING WITH THE FLY. 181 
sea lice is a certain sign of a new-run salmon : these parasites 
die after being twenty-four hours in fresh water.) I also re- 
member, when fishing in the Galway river, in Ireland, in the 
spring months, where from twenty to thirty salmon were killed 
daily with rod and line, nine out of ten had sea lice on them. 
The fish congregated in the stream below the weir in thou- 
sands, and, although they had only been a short time in fresh 
water, they did not seem to care much about feeding.! 
To account for this satisfactorily is impossible, but it may 
be reasonable to assume that for the first few hours after a 
salmon has left salt water, where he has been in the habit of 
feeding voraciously, his appetite does not leave him: but 
eventually the absence of the food he has heen accustomed to 
will make him sulky and disinclined to feed. He is in such 
good condition that he can afford to abstain for a while ; but he 
will sooner or later be obliged to feed to maintain his strength, 
in order to enable him to reach his spawning ground. It is not 
to be supposed he can exist on water, and we know that at 
times he takes a fly or bait greedily, particularly after a ‘ fresh,’ 
when he shifts his quarters up stream. He will then take the 
first fly he sees; but when once he is lodged it is generally 
difficult to get a rise out of him. 
There is a certain time of year when salmon are less 
inclined to feed than at any other period—this is generally 
from about the middle of July to the middle of September. 
The temperature of the water and of the atmosphere is then 
higher than at any other time, and this has doubtless a great 
1 The most extraordinary thing is the difference in the habits of salmon in 
_ different rivers. In theSpey, for instance, in Scotland, fish rise most freely, and 
as freely take the fly, almost in the tide-way, which comes up but a short distance. 
In the Wye, where the tide runs ten miles up, the fish do not take freely till 
they have run up seventy miles. Does this result from the fact that the Spey 
fish are never in muddy water? the sea and river being quite clear and the 
bottom pebbly, whereas the fish come twenty miles up the muddy Severn 
and then have ten or more miles of muddy Wye besides to run up before they 
get to clean water. This may make them so sick that they do not recover 
before reaching the Hay in Breconshire, and only above that, seventy miles from 
the mouth, do they take freely.—ED. 
