NATURAL PIISTORY OF BRITISH SALMONID^E. 147 



on angling, refers to the capture of a salmon of seventy pounds 

 in the Thames near Fulham, in the year 1789, ' which was sub- 

 sequently sold to Mr. Howell, a fishmonger in the Minories, for 

 a shilling a pound,' and during another season, when fishing 

 for ova on the Tay at Almond Mouth, a fish was netted con- 

 sidered to have weighed over eighty pounds ', as it was six and a 

 half inches longer than one of seventy pounds taken in the same 

 river, of which there is a cast in the South Kensington Museum. 

 It was a male fish in splendid condition, and measuring in 

 length four feet eleven and a half inches, and in girth two feet 

 five inches. As it was the close season the fish was, of course, 

 returned to the water, and, as the writer who reported these 

 particulars observed, some one may have got him with the fly 

 later on. 



Very large salmon are, however, occasionally caught with 

 the rod. One was taken from the Tay in 1895 by the Marquis 

 of Zetland which weighed fifty-five pounds. The late Sir Hyde 

 Parker captured one in Sweden weighing sixty pounds, and a 

 former Earl of Home took another from the same waters of the 

 unequalled weight of seventy pounds within a few ounces. 



I have never myself been lucky enough to kill a salmon over 

 twenty-five pounds, but I have had my 'experiences' with fish 

 which I know both from sight and * feel ' must have been nearer 

 forty-five than thirty-five pounds. 



I once had one on in the Usk from two o'clock till eight in 

 the evening for a good part of the time right under the point 

 of my rod, a sufficiently powerful one, but could do absolutely 

 nothing with him. When he chose to move to another pool he 

 moved there, and when he chose not to move at all he stopped 

 still. At last it began to get dark, and lanterns were brought 

 from the village and dotted at short intervals up and down the 

 river, which was now coming down in a heavy spate. Finally, 

 at about eight o'clock, when the flood was ' roaring from 

 bank to brae,' he made one splendid rush under Panscatlog 

 bridge, where to follow was impossible carried out the whole 

 of the eighty or ninety yards of line, and rolled over the fall 



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