Striking, Playing, and Landing 127 



forty-one and thirty-nine pounds, were landed in 

 twenty and eight minutes respectively, and the 

 latter one never ran out twenty yards of line. I 

 should say that fifteen to twenty minutes was 

 plenty of time to land salmon averaging twenty 

 pounds, fairly hooked, and it must be an extraor- 

 dinarily strong and stubborn fish that cannot be 

 brought to gaff in half an hour. There are 

 many anglers who take delight in protracting the 

 struggle as long as they can, and will hold down 

 their rods when a fish is hardly able to move, in 

 order to encourage him to try to make one more 

 run, like a cat with a moribund mouse, and this 

 they call sport. Fortunately such anglers gener- 

 ally loose a good proportion of the salmon they 

 hook. 



Here I wish to quote from a letter written me 

 by Andrew Williamson, a well-known Scottish 

 sportsman and author, equally skilful with rod 

 and rifle, and who has killed salmon, and many of 

 them, in both hemispheres : 



"Why do salmon in Canada and Norway give so much 

 finer sport than those in Scotland? So much so that for my 

 part I would rather kill one there than five in my own country? 

 In the latter, the heavier the fish the more sluggish he is. In 

 the former I have found it just the reverse. In the Annan, on 



