398 SALMON AND TROUT. 
happened on several subsequent occasions—as long as the water 
was clear. In the Dee it is seldom muddy except ina high 
flood, and it clears very quickly. 
‘On the Shannon, at Castle Connell, and on the Galway 
river they seldom use any other bait but the prawn during the 
spring months, because it is found to be so deadly ; and when 
fish are what is called “sulky,” and refuse the fly, I think it 
perfectly fair to catch them with the prawn or any other bait 
they will take. Ido not mean to say they will always take a 
prawn if judiciously offered them; on the contrary, I have 
sometimes fished for a whole day with it without a touch ; but 
such occasions are very rare, and except when trailing the 
prawn behind a boat when fishing alongside of a fly and colley 
on the Shannon at Killaloe I cannot recollect a fish to have 
ever taken any other bait in preference, always assuming that 
the water was clear enough to use it. 
‘It is quite possible that on the occasion I have mentioned 
the fish may have seen the fly or colley before they saw the 
prawn, and being in the humour they took the first of these 
that came across them. I am inclined to this belief, as I 
observed that my boatmen let out a much shorterline for the 
prawn than they did for the fly and colley, and consequently 
the last had the better chance of being first. Prawn, as well as 
all other bait fishing, is looked upon with great disfavour by a 
good many fishermen, who callit ‘poaching ” and an unsports- 
manlike proceeding. They think it useless fishing a pool with 
the fly on the same day that it has been fished with a prawn ; 
and some even go as far as to say that it spoils the pool 
altogether for the season. 
‘Of course a fish that has been-caught with a prawn cannot 
be caught over again with the fly, but barring the pool being 
minus a fish or two, which it is quite possible might have been 
the case had it been fished with a fly, no harm whatever will 
have been done. Prawn fishing neither disturbs nor scares 
salmon ; and I know from my own experience that when the 
water is in order for fly fishing the chances of catching a fish 
