14 Fly Fishing for Salmon, 



a minute or two, and then with a whirl and a swirl 

 away he went, taking out ninety yards of line, and 

 with a tremendous leap, showing us what he was, 

 he stopped short, and came with a rush back again, 

 so that winding up was a difficulty. "Ah," said 

 Aitken, " he is not the biggest, but it is the other, 

 and we shall never land him ; we must try to keep 

 him up in these pools ; if he once goes to the rapids 

 we are done." For three hours and twenty minutes 

 he led us a pretty dance up and down, never able 

 to get him up into the deep part of the Coa Pool, 

 where we might have had a chance. At last away 

 he went over the rapids, down into Tumbledown, and 

 after a race or two all round that pool, away again as 

 hard as he and we could go into the next, Fern-a- 

 mor. Now if the casting line will only hold, we 

 may still get him, when lo ! the line suddenly came 

 away without the hook, the gut fairly rubbed into 

 a shred, and so the fish beat us, and after three 

 hours and forty minutes we had to throw up the 

 sponge, — not in shame, for it was a gallant fight ; 

 he was not hooked foul, for twice we brought him 

 almost to the surface, and saw the hook was in his 

 jaw ; but he, as many a big fish has done before in 

 this river, simply beat us. 



In Gay's " Rural Sport," published 1720, there is a 

 capital description of killing a salmon, although full of 

 poetical license, and wanting in physiological facts. 



