SALMON AND SEA- TROUT. 2 1 g 



of it are very great, and the reward, when it 

 comes, magnificent. Salmon fishing is the one 

 branch of the sport in this country in which a man 

 has to use his strength. It is no mean exercise to 

 wield a big rod thigh-deep in a strong river all 

 day ; and it is no light labour to contend with a fish 

 that, at the end of the line, is as strong as you are, 

 for half-an-hour or perhaps more. Men have been 

 beaten by salmon before now through sheer weari- 

 ness. On the whole, I think the pains of the game 

 (and I have been acutely conscious of them often 

 enough, sometimes to the point of desperation) are 

 more than balanced by the stray gleams of pleasure 

 that are vouchsafed to him who works hard. With 

 the first pull of a fish one becomes a hero, drinking 

 delight of battle ; when the fight is won, one sits 



amid the gods.* 

 v 



* By the way, the novice maybe enjoying these sensations 

 in spring or early summer, in which case let him beware of 

 the kelt, or spent salmon, lest, having killed it, he finds him- 

 self sitting in a far less exalted position, for the kelt is pro- 

 tected by law. The ordinary kelt, blotched and hideous, will 

 not bother him ; even the partially- mended kelt, for all its 

 silver, is so big of head and shrunken of flank that it is easily 

 detected. But the "well-mended" kelt is the dickens, the 

 more so because there is, apparently, a kind of degenerate 

 salmon which potters about estuaries instead of going honestly 

 to sea, and then ascends rivers in a half-fed condition, tech- 

 nically clean (since it has been in salt water), but practically 



