Then in a most entertaining passage he describes how “the river has cleared and has become perfect for the fly. It ought to be a tip-top day, but you are tempted of the devil to try just for an hour the phantom minnow ... and then you go on with the minnow all the day long ... dragging out the fish ... and at the end of the day feeling that you have been rather a butcher than a fisherman and that you might almost as well have used a net.” This means, of course, that success in minnow-fishing is simply a matter of luck, and does not depend on the fisherman’s skill. In a later passage he describes in most forcible and amusing language “the relapse to minnow, when after a good day minnowing you find next morning that the water is right for the fly and you resolve to make it a day of fly only. You put on your best fly and you begin, full of hope. For an hour or two you cover much water without a single rise, and you begin to doubt whether the fish mean to take at all to-day. Soon, just to see whether they will move at all, you put up the spinning-rod just merely to have one try down the pool. A fish takes the accursed thing and you are lost. Abandoning all sense of decency, you pursue the horrible craft, and at dusk you stagger back to the fishing-hut with half a dozen great fish upon your back and with your conscience hanging about the neck of your heart, which keeps on protesting in vain that this was really no day for the fly.”
Even Chaytor, however, admits that “in a cold, wet season, when the river is in flood for weeks together, with only odd days when fishing is possible, the minnow can be really and legitimately useful.” On the other hand, in contrast to the above warnings and diatribes, Mr. J. Arthur Hutton, who is so well known, particularly in connection with the Wye, and is, of course, a most experienced and successful salmon fisher, as well as one of the most learned in the life-history of the salmon, describes spinning for salmon as “a form of fishing requiring a very large amount of skill and experience which may provide one with sport on those many occasions when the fly is useless ... a fine art which requires much practice and long experience, far more so than fly-fishing.” “For every good hand with the spinning-rod,” he says, “you may find twenty who are excellent fly-fishermen.”