SALMON-FISHING 219 



to drop down-stream gently in zigzag fashion, which plays the 

 flies over all the likely places. A bight is pulled in the line 

 just above the reel and laid on the thwart ; a pebble keeps it 

 in its place, which bounces off with a fine clatter when a fish 

 seizes the fly, perhaps rousing the angler from a snooze, to 

 which this indolent kind of fishing renders him very prone. 

 Then there ensues a fine scuffle, the sportsman seizing the rod 

 in play to do battle with the salmon, the boatman reeling in 

 the free lines at express speed to avoid a foul. There is 

 only one river in Great Britain where harling the fly is still 

 practised, the Tay to wit ; but even there it has fallen out of 

 favour, and casting has become more the custom of late years. 

 Whether harling be practised in the Shannon, I cannot tell, 

 never having angled in that noble stream ; but in the 

 Namsen, the Alten, and some other great rivers of Norway 

 it is the rule. 



Besides the fly, there be other lures reckoned legitimate 

 in angling for salmon namely, the spinning bait, natural or 

 artificial ; the boiled prawn, and the worm, each of which often 

 proves successful at times when the others fail. The element 

 of uncertainty, which is inseparable from every mode of taking 

 fish depending upon their voluntary act, is greater in salmon- 

 fishing than in any other, for the simple reason that salmon are 

 never " on the feed " in fresh water. Everything depends 

 upon the caprice, not the appetite, of the fish. You may fish 

 over a pool with twenty salmon lying in it, yet not one may 

 take the fly or other bait. On the other hand, you may hook 

 and kill the only salmon in a pool at the first trial ; and again, 

 you may fish over him twenty times, and never move him till 

 the twenty-first, when you bring him to the gaff. The first 

 salmon I ever killed in Norway afforded an instructive illus- 

 tration of this glorious uncertainty. It was on the Rauma, that 

 splendid torrent which tears its way through the stupendous 

 Romsdal. It was five o'clock on a Saturday evening the 

 last day of June when 1 arrived at the lodge, and found that 



