SALMON FISHING WITH THE FLY. 203) 
my friend T. F.—the water was very low, and we could see 
from rocks overhanging every salmon in the pools. At the 
bottom of a pool celebrated for fish taking the fly, we saw 
four salmon lying close together. The pool was, I should 
say, ten feet deep. I scrambled down the rocks to where I 
could cast my fly over them. My friend stood above watching 
my proceedings. After about six or seven casts over the fish, 
he said, ‘When your fly was in a particular position, one of 
the salmon seemed to get uneasy and shifted his position a 
trifle.’ This happened two or three times, until at last the fish 
could not stand it any longer, and took my fly, but I had the 
bad luck to lose him after a hard fight. 
Upon another occasion, when a little farther down the river, 
I was standing upon a rock watching my friend fish, where I 
could see everything which was going on. The water was high 
but very clear, and nearly a dozen times running I saw a fish 
rising to the fly whenever it came to a particular part of the 
stream, but he did not attempt to take it, and did not approach 
nearer to it than at least a foot. The sun was shining on the 
pool at the time, and thinking it was of no use trying any more 
until sunset, we waited until the sun had disappeared behind 
the hills. Afterwards, the very first cast my friend made he 
hooked the fish and landed him. 
These are the only two occasions on which I have had the 
chance of knowing what has taken place below the surface of 
the water while a pool was being fished over, but after what I 
saw I cannot quite believe a fish gets scared by seeing too 
many flies. I have no doubt many a fish which we know 
nothing about comes ‘shy’ at a fly in the manner I have stated. 
We leave the pool we have perhaps fished the whole day blank 
in disgust, yet it often happens another fisherman takes posses- 
sion of it, and hooks a fish before we are out of sight. What 
can be more aggravating than this? Yet there are few of us 
who have not had our tempers thus tried.! 
1 In 1879 in July, about 6 A.M., I was first on the water on the Ristigouche, 
fishing down, at Metapedia, in a canoe. I had on * Jock o’ Scott.’ I did not. 
