240 FISHING IN AMERICAN WATEES. 



to realize an indescribable sensation of nervous hesitancy ; 

 and the more gentle he appeared when first hooked, the more 

 I dreaded the fight that I knew must come, sooner or later ; 

 for a salmon never surrenders until he faints. As the waters 

 settled until as transparent as ether, the fish became not only 

 more shy, but they gave better play and were harder to ex- 

 haust. They bit gingerly and short. I had ample opportu- 

 nity for testing some theories which had been told me by an- 

 glers with great seriousness. One of them is, that " if a sal- 

 mon rises to your fly and misses it, you should not cast again 

 immediately, because he is sure to settle back before rising. 

 You had better, therefore, light a segar and smoke half of it, 

 or take a glass of sherry, and rest the pool at least fifteen 

 minutes before repeating the cast." This I ascertained to be 

 all bosh. Once, in particular, a salmon took my fly at the 

 fourth cast, though having rose to it at every previous one 

 and missed it, while I repeated my casts with as little sus- 

 pense as if angling for brook trout. A salmon will return to 

 the fly, if he rose to it in earnest at first, as often as will a 

 trout ; but either fish, when pricked by a fly-hook, will refuse 

 to come again until he forgets it. Again it is said that " if 

 you hook a salmon and he parts your tackle, taking your 

 hook and a piece of the gut snell to which it was attached, 

 he will not rise to an artificial fly again that season." This 

 is also a mistake ; for the gentleman who owns the " York 

 River," Gaspe, fished with a friend who* lost a, hook and part 

 of a leader by a salmon one morning last July, and on the 

 evening of that day took the salmon with the hook and gut 

 still in his mouth ; and what appears most singular is that 

 he hooked the salmon with the same kind of fly that was 

 then fastened to the jaw of the fish. 



