FEATHERS AND FISHERMEN.
DISCUSSION of Bills before Parliament strays often into unlikely channels, and few, perhaps, who have watched the progress of the Plumage Bill, which is designed to prevent the importation of the skins and feathers of certain foreign birds into this country, would have prophesied at the outset that it would take us again into the much-debated question of the reason which impels a salmon to take a fly. However, the change from the highway to the byway of discussion was simple enough. "R. L.," writing to the Times of January 7th, diverted the attack from ladies and their bats to salmon fishers. Those who fished with a fly for salmon, he averred, were responsible for the destruction of immense numbers of brightly plumaged birds. That accusation Sir Herbert Maxwell described in a letter to the same paper as not without grounds. "The infatuation of some fishermen in regard to the colour and material of their lures is far from creditable to their intelligence," he wrote. "They act on the assumption that the lidless, browless eye of a salmon is of such amazing power as to enable the fish to discern every detail of form and oolour in a small object passing between its eye and the high light; although a human eye, in a similar relative position, could perceive nothing but a dark silhouette." It was this delusion as to the salmon's power of vision under water which led to the making of flies tied with the rarest and brightest feathers, he pointed out, and went on to state that he for his part would be perfectly willing to limit himself to flies tied from the feathers of barndoor fowls and native game birds, "with silk and tinsel to smarten them up to human, if not to piscine, taste." He bad failed to observe that salmon show the slightest preference for one fly over another, and the only choice which the fisherman need make was one of size.
This is a theory to which not every angler of experience would subscribe. Among those who have commented upon Sir Herbert Maxwell's statement of doctrine, the Duke of Rutland, for instance, asks whether it has never happened to Sir Herbert that by changing from one fly to another of exactly the same size, he has succeeded in killing fish when up to the moment of change be has not obtained even a rise. That has often happened to the Duke of Rutland, and, indeed, it would probably be difficult to find an angler who has fished much for salmon who would deny that a change of pattern may be successful in moving a fish which has refused to look at the fly firet tried. If thin is so, and if a fish will take, say, a Blue Doctor when he will not stir for a Jock Soak or rice versa, what can be the reason for his doing so except that he notices some change in the appearance of the fly P But on this point we have at our disposal a considerable amount of practical evidence. Dr. Francis Ward, who has devoted a great deal of time to the study of the subject of the vision of fish, and who has made many experiments ix a chamber with a glass window under water, hue given a description of his experiments from which he deduces a number of very interesting conclusions. (Many of these may be verified by the curious merely by visiting the new Insect House in the Zoological Gardens, where it is easy to look up at the surface of the water from below.) Dr. Ward has shown that the human eye—and therefore probably the fish's eye—under water sees objects near it in several different waya. From the eye up to the surface of the water there is a cone of light, resting with its apex on the eye. The angle which the sides of this cone makes with the water is always 48k degrees, so that it is plain that the deeper the fish lies in the water the larger will be the cone of light. Objects within and without the cone are seen differently. Within the cone everything is seen against the light, so that every object which enters the cone becomes a colourless silhouette, much in the same way as an object passed between the human eye and a window into which the sunlight is streaming becomes blurred and grey. Outside the cone the silhouette changes from grey to colour, but the colour may be changed, too, in other ways. If the main light comes from, say, the left-hand side of the cone, then objects seen on the right-band side outside the cone are brightly lighted, coloured and sparkling ; on the other hand, objects seen on the left-hand side of the cone—that is, between the main light and the observer's eye— are much more dimly lighted and show very little colour or sparkle. The difference is the same as would be noticed if a Hiker spoon, for example, were first held between the eye and a window into which the sun was streaming, then hell against the wall below the window, and lastly, placed the other side of the room in full sunshine. Apply these observations to a salmon•fly,and imagine the fish to be lying headup-stream, with the light coming from the right bank of the river, and the angler fishing the pool from the left bank. The angler throws his fly down and across the stream ; the fly touches the water beyond the lie of the salmon, and the stream brings it round as it sinks. When it comes within the range of the salmon's vision it is first seen on his left front as a streak of blurred colour ; then, as it swings into the cone of light, it becomes a grey silhouette, which passes in front of or over the salmon's nose; lastly, it passes out of the cone, and as it does so is suddenly illuminated on his right front as a streak of colour and of sparkling silver or gold. As snob it recedes from him, instil the angler raises the point of his rod and it disappears, Now, in the course of those few seconds, with their three changes of colour and form—for the salmon-fly exactly in a line with the ealmon's nose is, of oom-se, a differently shaped object from the fly looked at sideways—it is inconceivable
that the salmon gets any very exact idea of the materials with which the fly is dressed, but it is certainly arguable that he would obtain very different impressions of colour and form from two such flies as an Ackroyd, for instance, and a Silver Doctor. It has also been proved by experience that one fly will succeed in attracting a salmon when another fails, and there is also, as every fisherman knows, a "taking point " in most of his casts at which he is more likely to get a "pull" than at any other. That is, presumably, the point at which the fly makes its strongest appeal to the fish's instinct or caprice, and possibly when it lights up most brightly just outside the cone of light. A further problem becomes clear, and that is the question why certain pools fish better in the afternoon or evening than in the morning, and vice versa ; the reason is that the sun has changed its position in the sky, and the fly is lighted better, or in a different place, in relation to the lie of the salmon- Lastly, it may be asked, if all flies are alike except in point of size, are all baits alike also ? If so, how is it that a salmon will take a blue " phantom" when it refuses the tail of a sand-eel, or will come to a prawn when it takes no notice of a " phantom " If in a much-fished river the fish have become very dour, which happens often enough when there is no flood to shift them to pools higher up the river, would not most fishermen agree that the best hope of success is to show them something they have not seen before ? It is an expedient, at all events, which is tried every season with success.
As regards the original point at issue, Sir Herbert Maxwell no doubt speaks for salmon fishermen in general. They no more than he wish to encourage the destruction of rare and beautiful birds, and though they would not all of them accept his theories, moat of them would be content to have their flies tied from the materials he selects. As regards the sale of foreign birds' skins that would be affected by the change, the tacklemakers' catalogues offer to fly-tiers the feathers or skins of bittern's, herons, jays, jungle cocks, king- fishers, ostriches, peacocks, redbreasted crows, scarlet ibises, summer duck, teal, snipe, widgeon, turkey and Argus and golden pheasant. Some of these could be picked up as the birds moult ; others are from game birds which would be shot in any case ; some are of birds which are protected by law in England, such as kingfishers ; the sale of others, such as ostriches', can do no harm. But if the scarlet ibis, for instance, were taken out of the list, would it matter? Fewer flies might be sold, perhaps, though even that is questionable, for other feathers can be dyed ; but should we catch fewer salmon? The average fisherman would not take long in answering the question, and it sums up the matter. We can await the opening of the Dee with equanimity, even if our ibises of the future roost in English farmyards.
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