34 ANGLING IN GREA T BRITAIN. 



which will run down and smite the salmon on the snout. 

 It will be astonished and angry, but will make tracks, and 

 so the great end is gained. Dangerous as the movement 

 is, I rather prefer the pleasure of seeing a good fish break 

 water, and flash his silver sides in the air, though the risk 

 be a broken line. I would rather have a dozen somersaults 

 than a prolonged sulk below, with that ominous trembling 

 which so often ends in the gut being sawn off against a 

 sharp stone. But our fish now hooked does neither. It 

 runs up and down the pool, and continually returns to the 

 spot where it met disaster. Finally it goes swiftly down 

 stream, whither the angler has the opportunity of following 

 it, and in twenty minutes the young man in attendance 

 goes in knee deep and nets it, as it is on the point of 

 steering once more into the stream — a fifteen-pounder, in 

 immaculate condition. 



Lucky for the angler that the finish was on that wise. 

 Fifty yards down, the water was broken and rock-studded, 

 and the nature of the bank fatal to any further pursuit on 

 land. Salmon-fishing is full of such narrow escapes, and 

 fish are not always taken with such ease. The exertion 

 and tension of nerve undergone by the angler will never- 

 theless explain the possibility of a gentleman meaning 

 what he says when he declares that, after the strike, and 

 the first run or two, he has lost interest in the business. 

 We have all heard of the aiigler who invariably hands his 

 rod to the gillie, should the salmon play longer than ten 

 minutes ; and of the worthy who, the fish escaping after a 

 vigorous play of forty minutes, exclaimed, " Thank God, 

 that's over." 



Salmon, however, are taken by other means than the 

 artificial fly. Quite legitimately in Tay and other Scotch 

 lochs, and in the Irish lakes, the fish in the spring, be- 



