FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 

 running hard down stream, faster than the boat could follow. Already full 

 one hundred yards of line were out; the point of the rod was dangerously 

 low. "Give him line!" we shouted from the bank. "I can't," was the 

 despairing reply, "the reel's gone wrong." 



It had indeed; it was hopelessly jammed. The tackle was good enough, 

 and stood several violent wrenches, but the strength of the stream and the 

 weight of the fish combined to overcome it; the rod -point was dragged 

 under water for a fateful moment; next moment it reappeared with a piece 

 of limp line dangling from it. 



The reel, a new one, was afterwards submitted to autopsy, which re- 

 vealed no defect in make or material, but a total, absence of lubricant. 

 Revolving rapidly after the racing fish, the metal had become heated, the 

 spring check ground the racket into fine chips which choked the action, and 

 thus a fine salmon — perhaps the salmon of that season or of many seasons 

 — ^was lost through lack of a drop of oil ! 



Ninety -nine fishermen out of every hundred attach the reel so that 

 when it is under the rod the handle is to the right. I would strongly coun- 

 sel the beginner to get into the habit of fishing with the reel put on the other 

 way, with the handle to the left. Once this habit is acquired, the action 

 becomes automatic of turning the rod directly a fish is hooked so as to 

 bring the reel uppermost with the handle to the right. The result is that, 

 while playing the fish, the line lies along the smooth surface of the rod 

 instead of being supported only on the rings with correspondingly in- 

 creased friction. 



It was the neglect of this precaution which probably brought to a tragic 

 conclusion the adventure so graphically described by the present Bishop 

 of Bristol in the "Cornhill Magazine" for 1869. He was harling with a 

 minnow the broad tidal water near the junction of the Earn with the Tay, 

 where he hooked a very large salmon about half an hour after noon. It 

 took him far down into the firth and remained master of the situation 

 for about four hours. Then a strand of the reel -line parted about twenty 

 yards from the end " through the constant friction of the wet line run- 

 ning through the rings for so many hours." They managed to get the 

 fish to lie quietly under the boat while the old line was knotted to a fresh 

 one on another rod. It was pitch dark by this time, and the contest was 

 resumed as they drifted up channel towards Elcho. It finished about 

 midnight by the hooks being pulled off the tackle and the salmon going 

 free. 

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