388 SALMON AND TROUT. 
appears to be practically useless ; at any rate, the natural bait 
will kill ten or even twenty to one so taken. 
The extremely local character of the minnow as a spinning 
bait has, however, been already alluded to at the beginning of 
the article. 
WORM FISHING FOR SALMON AND BULL TROUT. 
There are many rivers in which the buil trout absolutely 
refuses to rise to the fly, and some in which salmon are so 
rarely to be tempted as to amount almost to the same thing 
so far as the angler is concerned. There are also frequently 
states of water—sometimes when it is too low and bright, 
constantly where it is too thick—in which fly fishing is so hope- 
less that some other mode of fishing must be had recourse to 
or the riverside abandoned. 
Under such circumstances the worm is a perfectly legitimate 
bait, and used as I am about to explain must be admitted to 
afford quite as much sport, so far as the playing and landing of 
the fish is concerned, as fly fishing itself. 
In saying that the worm may sometimes be used with 
success in water that is very low and bright, I refer entirely to 
this method of fishing, with which as I have myself repeatedly 
had good sport under such circumstances, I am confident that 
both salmon and bull trout may, at any rate in some rivers, be 
taken when the water is at its lowest and the sun at its highest 
and brightest. I will not say that this is always the case, but I 
have known it not infrequently to be so, and where fly fishing 
is out of question there cannot he any harm in at least trying 
the worm. The best water for worm fishing is whilst it is rising 
just before a flood, or clearing and settling down after it. 
Many fishermen assert that fish will not take on a rising 
water, but in the case of worm fishing for salmon and bull trout 
I have repeatedly proved the opposite of this to be the case. 
Indeed, I hardly know which state of the water is the more 
favourable. Perhaps the first symptom of a freshet, bringing 
