A TRIP TO IRELAND. 81 



between you and this line of rocks was a deepish backwater, and this 

 was our dcus ex machina, and solved the difficulty. In this backwater 

 we stationed the gillie, gaff in hand, and crouched down ; no sooner 

 was a fish hooked than, before he could realise the situation, he was 

 unceremoniously hurried across the pool into the backwater, and there 

 equally unceremoniously gaffed. After two or three fish had been so 

 treated our gillie remarked sadly, "Well, sorr, you may call this fishing, 

 but I call it murther"; and so it really was. 



As an example of how a difficulty may be overcome it was not 

 without its value. The moral is that a fish, when first hooked and 

 before he has realised what is happening, can be readily persuaded to 

 act according to your will, as he will never consent to do later on. 

 Just as a heavy trout lying amongst a bank of weeds can, if you can get 

 his head up, be led holus-bolus over and across the weeds into reasonable 

 water directly you have hooked him, so, in a similar manner, a salmon 

 will often allow you a latitude in dealing with him at first that he 

 won't give you a second time. Frequently the heaviest fish take some 

 time after being hooked before they are roused to a sense of their 

 position, and exert themselves to the full to get rid of the annoying 

 restraint. The strong upward pull of a salmon rod, tending to pull 

 him out of his natural element, is what a fish girds against, naturally 

 enough, and I have frequently found it of advantage to take the strain 

 entirely off a fish that is making too determined an effort to leave a 

 pool. Give him his head and he will often stop his run and save you 

 from the risk of being cut or broken. There is necessarily a considerable 

 element of risk in so doing, but desperate cases often require desperate 

 remedies. As with trout, so with salmon, hand lining can frequently 

 be resorted to advantageously, and it is wonderful how easily salmon 

 can be led by that means out of dangerous places, and even brought 

 to the gaff; the strain being removed, they do not seem to resist an 

 insidious and horizontal pull. 



In the pool below the Pulpit I had my first experience in learning 

 how to deal with a clean-run fish, hooked fairly and firmly in the thick 

 part of the tail. I had, of course, had to play foul-hooked fish, but 

 I had never hooked one in that part before. I was casting a longish 

 line, and rose a fish at the tail of the pool. On my offering him the 



M 



