PREPARING FOR THE ENCOUNTER. 225 



forthwith commenced splicing our rods. To save me that 

 trouble, as he saw my anxiety, the doctor kindly tendered 

 me the use of a Castle Connell rod, which, he stated, had 

 nearly broken his back and used him up, but he hoped it 

 would behave more generously with me. It was a twenty- 

 foot rod, by which a long cast could be made ; but it was so 

 top-heavy, and with a sort of double action, like a " kick in 

 the handle," that it came back on me several times, and 

 made me sit down in the river to cool off; but not on that 

 day. 



The doctor accompanied me, to give an idea where I would 

 likely find salmon, and how I had best move my fly so as to 

 render it captivating in that wide and rapid river. I ad- 

 mired the river ; the breaks of salmon of from ten to twenty- 

 five pounds each excited me. I soon thanked the doctor, 

 and told him that I believed myself a match for them, when 

 he ignited a cigar, and proceeded onward to where he ex- 

 pected the salmon were waiting for his flies. 



Left alone, with the injunction that if I should hook a sal- 

 mon, to shout for a gaffer to come to my assistance, as Dun- 

 can had returned to the mouth of the river for provisions, I 

 again examined my tackle. " It is true," thought I, " these 

 fish average from eight to thirty-eight pounds only, and I 

 have taken a forty-pound striped bass ; but my tackle for 

 striped bass was a strong line, while here it is only a single 

 silk-worm gut." 



Having intellectually weighed and investigated the theory 

 of the audacious fish in that river of great power and majesty, 

 and so examined that I thought all things were right, I made 

 a cast and let my fly float round from the current to the side. 

 I continued so to cast and drop down stream a step at each 

 cast, about half an hour, when a salmon accepted my lure. 

 The fish did not take the fly as a trout does by rushing at it 

 from beneath, but rose over the fly and took it on going back. 

 He soon convinced me that he was there by a jerk and a leap 

 above water, and out farther into the river where the current 



P 



