Salmon Fishing. 147 



fix the hook, and so we parted with number four probably fifteen or 

 twenty minutes ago. 



Johnny looked unutterable things, and began to cast up in his own 

 mind what unlucky object he had met in the morning ; and, failing to fix 

 it upon any special otdd witch, devoted his attentions to jiumber five, 

 whom I had just slipped into under the far rock. He was a rattling 

 good fish of 201b. and over. He played to admiration, going to the other 

 side again and again, and making the reel sing as he made a thirty 

 or forty yards rush, now up and now down stream. At length, after some 

 ten minutes of this he began to run short, and, putting on a good slant 

 round towards the shore, I began to tow him slowly nearer, nearer, round 

 to where Johnny stood on the bank, gaff in hand, ready to do the deed. 

 Checking or giving to each little bolt which he made, I still persuaded 

 him, and he had come walloping unwillingly in to within eight or ten 

 yards or so of the shore, where the water began to shallow ; when, whether 

 he caught sight of Johnny, and thought him exceptionally ugly and 

 objectionable, or whether his tail touched something, or what it was, I 

 don't know; but he seemed suddenly endued with an entire new stock 

 of vitality, and, making a dash and a dart, he gave a heavy lunge along 

 the surface, as you may see in Mr. Cooper's capital sketch of it ; and by 

 the living immortal Jingo, ofE went number five ! The hold gave at 

 the last moment; and Johnny, who was just stooping to creep on to 

 him with the gaff, straightened himself and looked on like a statue, and 

 said something which I fear was naughty ; and, as he wasn't given 

 to that, it was the more effective. As for me, I am free to confess that 

 if the Captain's had been the next throw below,* it would have earned 

 its name. You don't hook five fish in the Erne every day ; and to lose 

 them all one after the other, and two of them unusually big and one a 

 monster, was uncommon hard cheese, and so I have always thought. 



"Well, I emptied my flask, for grief is dry work, and, leaving the Captain, 

 I descended to the Ledges. There is one spot there, a sort of quay or 



* The next throw to the Captain's is called " the cursed throw," because no one now catches 

 fish in it, though formerly it was good. The fall of a big rock at the tail of the Captain 

 has injured both casts. Half a pound of dynamite would be of no little use here. 



