io8 The Atlantic Salmon 



a fish soon after beginning, on a Nepisiguit 

 Gray, and when I landed him found that the 

 hook, a Sproat, had, after the custom of its kind, 

 bent considerably. Pounding it back into shape 

 with a stone, I returned to the same place and 

 directly hooked another fish, after landing which 

 I found the hook had straightened again so much 

 that I thought it unsafe for further use. On look- 

 ing over my book, I found no fly of the same 

 pattern, and so tried four or five others, but no 

 fish would rise to any of them. Then, bending 

 the hook of the gray fly back into shape, I tried 

 that from the same position, and at the first cast 

 hooked a salmon. Him I landed, but the temper 

 of the hook, through frequent bendings, was so 

 nearly gone that, though salmon would rise to 

 it, after pricking a couple, which escaped at their 

 first run by straightening the hook, I took off 

 the gray fly, and tried various others without 

 avail ; then, putting it on again, I rose a fish to it 

 at once in the same place I had been casting 

 over. All this was done in so confined a space 

 that there could not be the least doubt of the 

 same fish being cast over with all the different 

 flies used, and that the only one to which they 

 would pay any attention was the gray one. 



