A RUN AFTER A SALMON. 399 



drop down with a line and grapnel. When fishing in this 

 way I have had runs as exciting as a fast twenty minutes 

 with foxhounds. On one occasion, at the forks of the 

 Metapedia, a river which in high water is not a suc- 

 cession of rapids, but one continued rapid for nearly 30 

 miles, a fish came at me with a great rush at the junction 

 of the two rivers. I anchored in him at once, and then 

 the beast, without any preliminary skirmishing, sailed 

 down stream. I might as well have tried to stop a 

 steamer, so, jumping into the canoe which my men 

 luckily were prepared with, we gave chase. Three miles 

 we followed him through roaring rapids and the most 

 intricate navigation before I could get a pull at him. 

 The way my Indians handled the canoe was a marvel of 

 skill, through roaring rapids, past threatening snags, 

 they followed just 40 yards in the wake of that fish, who 

 strove to reach the ocean. At last we tried another 

 tactic, and shooting past him in a broad reach of the 

 river, I got the pull on him down stream, and immediately 

 turned him over on his side, when we found him to be a 

 32-lb. fish hooked by the tail. I have often remarked 

 that foul-hooked fish always run down stream, as do invari- 

 ably fish that have been wounded by the spear or the gaff. 

 Heavy fish do not, as a rule, make the lightning-like 

 rushes and throw the succession of summersaults that the 

 moderate-sized salmon and grilse often do. They are 

 either sulky, or else they make deliberate journeys here 

 and there. A fish will sometimes sulk for hours at the 

 bottom of a deep hole if he is let, but he should always 

 in these cases be stirred up with a pole. On one occasion 

 I hooked a large fish almost at dark very soon it was 



