302 SPORT IN EUROPE 



daughters ; has a good house with every comfort and most luxuries, 

 including mosquito-nets ; and lives on the best of everything. He 

 has also excellent, in some cases wonderful, sport, notwithstanding 

 the kilcnolcr or baLT-nets. of which there are some lo.ooo in the 

 fjords of Norway. 



In the Alten. which may be selected as the type of a first-class 

 Norwegian river, with twenty-eight miles of fishing water, mostly 

 adapted for casting, four rods can. in a good season, take lo.ooo lbs. 

 of salmon, the fish averaging over 20 lbs. It is all in the hands 

 of one Enoflishman. In the Namsen. divided into eight or nine 

 beats, splendid sport is also obtained, and fish of over 50 lbs. are 

 occasionally caught. All the fishing is there done by "hading," 

 or trailing the fiy or spoon down-stream from a boat which is worked 

 zigzagwise across the current. In second-rate rivers each rod may, 

 in good seasons, on which, after all, everything depends, tairly expect 

 from 800 lbs. to i.ooo lbs. of salmon. The comparatively small Aaro 

 river, in Sogn, is remarkable for yielding fish of upwards of 60 lbs. 

 Most of the Norwesfian salmon fishinir is done from boats, but here 

 and there is found a first-class river, such as the Leirdal, which may 

 be worked from the bank or by wading. 



The Swedish rivers, with the exception of a few which run into 

 the Kattegat and the Baltic, and are in the hands of native sportsmen, 

 have been pronounced, after several trials by experienced anglers, 

 to be worthless to the salmon-fisher. And yet there are many 

 of them, large and small, swarming with fish, which are taken in nets. 

 It is supposed that the brackish condition of the Gulf of Bothnia 

 (the water is nearly fresh on approaching the head of the gulf) is the 



