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. . «5 
To return to worm fishing. 
