A PISCATORIAL PUZZLE.

67

CHAPTER IV.

ON SALMON FLIES: MATERIALS OF WHICH THEY ARE MADE. SPECIAL AND GENERAL LISTS OF THEM. THOSE THAT

ARE MERELY LOCAL, AND THOSE THAT ARE GENERAL,

KILLERS.

If I were even to contemplate telling my readers that I knew why and wherefore salmon rose from the depths of the water and seized upon what are called salmon-flies, I should consider myself meditating an arch-deception. This why and wherefore (I make an unity of the two) puzzles me as much as ever were puzzled those learned writers of the Lower Empire and early mediæval times, who confused themselves and the world by lucubrations as to how many angels, or spirits floating between earth and heaven, could dance on the point of a needle. A dissertation to prove why salmon took one artificial fly, and rejected another, which other salmon afterwards very willingly take, would just be as sensible and profitable as that referring to the angels fairies if you will-and the needle's point. Many and many an hour do I pass in speculative surprise and open-mouthed wonderment, for there

68

SALMON-FLIES ARE NONDESCRIPTS.

is nothing I am alluding to minor mattersthat astonishes me more than the effects of a salmon-fly manoeuvred after a certain fashion through the waters of a salmon-river.

There are some clever and minute observers -who maintain that there exists a likeness between salmon-flies and certain insects. I wish there did; but I could never see the slightest likeness, excepting, perhaps, in two or three of the flies, out of the hundreds that are used. The living insect commonly named the "dragon-fly," is also called by some the "pike-fly," by others the " salmon-fly." I think it merits the second better than the last name; first, because it is commonly found amongst the reeds and sedges of ponds; and secondly, because an artificial fly can be made like it, but of larger size, which will be taken more readily by pike than salmon. The larger and rougher sort of artificial pike-flies, salmon will not rise at; but one made delicately, somewhat after the fashion of the third beautiful fly in the first plate or frontispiece, and styled "Erin-go-Bragh," will attract that capricious fish. Flies of that sort are the only ones that

resemble living insects,

and then only partly,

viz. in the colour and shape of the body, for their wings are not like those of any insect ever

AN OLD THEORY NOT ABANDONED.

69

seen or found in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. Amongst my plates of flies, will be found a beauty a piscatory Peri- which I have, in justice to the artificial creature, christened " Ondine." In the north of Ireland it is called the " Spirit-fly," and the able artist who made the model for the engraving, declares that it is an imitation of certain natural flies which he has seen. I fancy this a day-dream of angling genius. Perhaps,

like the Phidian Venus, it is a statue made up of the separate beauties of divers animated models. Be that as it may, I never saw an insect like it, or any thing like it, and all I know about it is, that salmon will take it eagerly in certain rivers.

In trout-fishing with the fly, I shall not as yet abandon my theory insisted upon in my " HandBook of Angling," perhaps too dogmatically, but certainly too pungently, as far as regards certain Scotch writers of the anti-imitation school. That theory is, that trout-flies can be well imitated, and that the nearer the imitation the better. It is now the fashion to maintain the contrary. Be it so. But if ever I fly-fish for trout again, and see living insects "out"-be they March-browns, oak-flies, green-drakes, &c.—I shall certainly use

70

CAPRICIOUSNESS OF SALMON.

the best imitations of them I may have in my flybook, in preference to nondescripts, as recommended by the innovating piscatorial philosophers. If I am obstinate, I cannot help it. My imitation theory extends only to the common river, non-migratory trout, and to the grayling; I totally abandon it with respect to salmon, and all migratory salmonida.* They are as capricious as the days are long. Account for it?-Alas! I cannot. But I may suggest that, as the natural history and habits of salmon are abnormal, or normal only as per se, I do not see why their appetites or tastes for food should not be also abnormal, or beyond all fixed rule.

Some tell me that salmon-flies are taken for butterflies or for birds by salmon. God bless my heart! We have no humming-birds in this country, or insects of Cashmere. Look at fly No. 1. in the frontispiece"The Goldfinch," and in what fairy fields will you find bird or insect like that? Look at that gorgeous artificial, "The Shannon," in plate No. 2., and tell me where, in this clime of ours, you will find living thing possessing the tenth of a tithe of its brilliancy. Yet these splendid formations of feather, gold, and dyed fur, are especial attractions for the salmon of the Shannon

*It holds good with the insectivorous carp tribe.

UNACCOUNTABLE SALMON-PREDILECTIONS. 71

and of the river Erne. The salmon of other rivers despise them. In Tweed water they would be fishfrights. There, salmon prefer Nubian beautyfor instance, the dusky " Toppy" of plate No. 5. Behold me now in another dilemma. Is the fly called "The Goldfinch," or that called "The Shannon," bred on the banks of that famous river? Does the Tweed produce black insects, with wings tipped with white, like "The Toppy?" I wish somebody would say, "Yes; " and produce specimens. If "The Goldfinch" were a general fly, if "The Shannon" or "The Toppy" were one, I should not be confused as I am, for then I should see that one general taste prevailed amongst salmon, that it was as regular as most of their habits are in every river, whether near or far apart; whereas, the tastes or likings of salmon for flies differ and contrast as widely as any set of rare-ree things, collected from every point of the compass, and jumbled together in kaleidescope-confusion. No man, out of Hanwell, can, if he considers what I have just said, imagine for an instant that a salmon takes a salmon-fly as being the "counterfeit presentment" of any sort of edible it has ever tasted. It takes it unquestionably for some animated, edible substance; and that is all I know about the matter.