CHAPTER VI 



SALMON FISHING 



Year by year it becomes more difficult to secure a really 

 good salmon fishery, for even indifferent and downright bad 

 ones never lack tenants. Those who have leases of good 

 ones rarely give them up, and, should they do so, some 

 favoured friend is put in, and the water never comes 

 into the market. The moderate fisheries are tightly held on 

 to by those on the look-out for something better, whilst the 

 bad ones never fail to find fresh victims each season. In 

 renting a stretch of river, it is common to learn from the 

 agents that in a certain season two hundred spring fish were 

 captured up to the middle of May, and no matter if that 

 good take has been made ten years past, it is for ever 

 dinned into the ears of enquirers ; thus the scarcity of spring 

 fishing, added to the desire of the angler to secure some- 

 thing, will tend to make one who is young and enthusiastic 

 argue to himself that what has been done before may be done 

 again, while, trusting he is to be the fortunate mortal, the lease 

 is signed, with the rent fixed at a price representing at least a 

 repetition of the much-vaunted score of years gone by. 



When the new tenant commences fishing, he soon learns 

 that the fortunate gentleman — a first-class performer with the 

 rod — who killed the boasted two hundred, paid but thirty instead 

 of two hundred pounds for his season, and that, at the time it 

 was made, his take was considered little short of marvellous. 

 Furthermore, the new man may find the pools from which the 

 large score was chiefly put together have ceased even to exist, 

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