50 
WILD NORWAY 
for the natural fly, which in summer forms the bulk of 
their food. Hence there is infinite scope for skill in 
dressing trout-flies to imitate as exactly as may be, a 
known natural object.^ 
But it is of less importance how the fly is presented 
to the trout—floating, drowned, or otherwise—provided 
that no suspicion of danger or deceit is conveyed before, 
or along with the lure: 
Salmon, on the contrary, never take a fly as such— 
that is, as an insect—nor as food at all. For salmon do 
not require to feed in fresh waters. They may, and do, 
from sheer idleness, mischief, or curiosity, or possibly to 
keep the digestive organs in working order, snatch at 
and swallow some darting creature or living object they 
may chance to see passing by or overhead—say a “ blue 
doctor,” or an “ angel.” But that is not feeding ; they 
do not feed in the sense of nourishing their bodies. 
What nourishment they need during their sojourn in 
rivers, is derived from the abundant reserve of fat, or 
“curd,” with which high living at sea has interlarded 
the flakes and overlaid the flanks of a new-run salmon. 
If there are those who still hold that salmon 
“feed” while in fresh water, let them consider what 
the hypothesis involves. Salmon ascend favourite 
streams in shoals ; they are by nature rapacious and 
voracious—their build and equipment show this, as 
well as the rapidity with which they recover condition 
and put on flesh at sea. What is there in any river to 
* That is, the imitation must exactly follow the natural through¬ 
out the latter’s progressive stages towards maturity. It follows that 
the former (whether fished dry or sunken) must correctly mimic the 
real insects, perfect or imperfect, under the same conditions as those 
in which their prototypes would then be existing. 
