14 SALMON FISHING 



different from any other experience. It was a 

 successful effort of a peculiarly personal kind. His 

 was the skill that raised the fish ; his the nerve that 

 fought and vanquished. Even the first ride to 

 hounds, however glorious, is not equal to one's first 

 salmon. It is the dogs, not we ourselves, who hunt ; 

 in good truth, though it may seem otherwise amid 

 the glee with which the merry god Pan fills his 

 children, we are onlookers rather than actors. It is 

 we alone who fish, however ; we really, not in appear- 

 ance only ; and in fishing, more, perhaps, than in 

 any other sport, we "find ourselves." Sometimes, 

 with the first salmon, the discovery is amid percep- 

 tions that in after years acquire an amusing fixity of 

 tenure. That was my own case. In a rough part 

 of the Fife Eden, during a Lammas flood, my 

 phantom minnow, wielded by a trout rod, was 

 arrested. I struck, expecting a trout, and seemed to 

 be fast in a rock. That was only for a few seconds. 

 Something of unusual weight and resolution moved 

 across the pool, and then tore down-stream with a 

 ferocity never before known. Up the high bank 

 I scrambled while the reel whirled, and was off after 

 the fish at a speed outpacing the wind. Across the 

 stubble between a mill lead and the main stream, 

 a boy, rod in hand, came flying to my assistance. 

 On the other side of the river a white-haired gentle- 

 man in unworldly orders, out for a walk, quick- 

 ened his steps towards a plank bridge a hundred 

 yards off. When at length we were able to see the 

 salmon, the boy, representing that the want of a gaff 



