SALMON-FISHING. 3(^7 



a Salmon should be gaffed in. The first object should be to 

 gaff it somewhere, and even this is not always easy ; though it 

 sometimes happens that a fish is brought near shore, or within 

 reach of the gaff, before it is half killed, and in a lull of the 

 contest or in some quiet moment it may be gaffed, when a 

 prolonged contest might lose it. 



On American rivers, although one is compelled in many 

 places to cast from a canoe, he should fight his fish from the 

 shore if practicable. It is always necessary to land either on 

 the shore, or on a rock at some convenient place in the river, 

 to bring him within reach of the gaff'. 



In the foregoing, I have supposed a case — a common one — 

 as to how a Salmon may act, and endeavored to give the unin- 

 itiated some idea how the case should be treated ; but there is 

 no telling what a Salmon when fully alarmed will do. At 

 one moment he may be jumping, at the next running towards 

 you, towing the slack line as it bags behind him, when it is 

 necessary to run backwards if he comes faster than you can 

 wind up. Or he may turn his prow down stream, and with 

 his powerful propeller, to which the flanges of the Ericsson 

 screw are as nothing (when compared with the size of the 

 body to be moved), and get headway enough to run out your 

 whole line, if you do not follow fast. And then there is that 

 desperate sawing and jerking of the head when the gentlest 

 hand is required ; or, he may dart around a boulder and 

 double towards you, getting a dead pull, or foul the casting- 

 line in a drift-log, and snap it like a cobweb ; or saw it 

 against the sharp edge of a sunken rock, or go over a high 

 pitch, while you have to run along the rocky bank, or shoot 

 the rapid in a frail canoe ; or he may sulk on the bottom, 

 when you have to throw in stones, or the canoe-man poke at 

 him with his setting-pole. But why attempt to describe what 

 a Salmon may or will do ? 



