124 The Atlantic Salmon 



morning paper. After this literary diversion he 

 stirred up the salmon again, and succeeded in 

 landing him at breakfast time — weight fourteen 

 pounds. 



The largest salmon I have ever known to be 

 taken with a fly, was killed by Mr. Dun on the 

 Cascapedia some years since, and weighed fifty- 

 four pounds. A farmer on the Restigouche, 

 Sandy Macdonald, told me he took one in a drift 

 net on that river early in the eighties, weighing 

 sixty-five pounds, which is perhaps heavier than 

 any of those which I and other anglers have 

 played and lost. Both of these were male fish, — 

 " kippers " they are called in Britain, — though 

 according to Badham in " Prose Halieutics," p. 

 313, " a kipper is a salmon previously well scoured 

 and cleaned that has received several dry rubbings 

 of pepper and salt, and afterward been dried 

 either in the sun or else in the smoke of peat and 

 juniper berries." 



If a salmon of twenty pounds or above had 

 intelligence equal to his strength, he could not 

 be held for two minutes by any tackle in ordi- 

 nary use. Most anglers have had the opportu- 

 nity of realizing their own powerlessness against 

 such a fish in case, as two have done with me, 



