FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 

 one at the foot of the Rough Isle of the Minnick. On that occasion I 

 managed to follow the salmon through the roaring rapids below, and 

 killed him in the Kettle Pool. Not so happily, for me at least, did my 

 encounter end with a wild fish in the Norwegian Kvina in the summer of 

 1911. Hooked at the top of the Boat Pool (so called because there is no 

 boat there) this fish never rested a moment, but tore up and down the 

 whole length of the stream without a moment's hover or pause, finally 

 disappearing over the fall at the foot, where no tackle could hold him and 

 whither I could not follow. 



The position of the rod in playing a fish is a matter of cardinal mo- 

 ment. The line must be kept taut all the time, but the rod must never be 

 allowed to fall so nearly into a plane with the line as to lose the play of 

 the flexible top joint. If that should occur a sudden plunge or twist by 

 the fish would assuredly break the casting -line or the hook. It is the 

 elastic pressure of the top and middle joints that eventually wears out the 

 strength of a salmon. But if nothing else were done to bring the struggle 

 to a conclusion, it might be indefinitely prolonged. The humane angler, 

 desiring to be mercifully prompt in bringing it to an end, has another 

 resource at his command — he can make his fish feel the power of the 

 butt. Now this process has been the subject of endless misapprehension. 

 To give a fish the butt is often understood as raising the rod to the 

 perpendicular or beyond it as shown in Plate XV. To do so is to take 

 the strain off the butt and to throw it upon the slender upper parts of 

 the rod. To bring the power of the butt into play the rod should be held 

 at about an angle of 45 deg. (Plate XVI), which, while retaining the play of 

 the upper joints so as to relieve the strain on the line, throws the chief 

 weight upon the strongest parts of the rod. 



There are times when a man may have to land heavy fish unaided by 

 gillie, gaff or net. On such occasions the character of the river bank be- 

 comes an important consideration, for the salmon must be *' tailed " 

 — ^that is, played till quite exhausted, towed into shallow water and grasped 

 by the small of the tail. It is a delicate but fairly simple operation, when 

 the shore is shelving, like the gravelly beach of the cast called Jock Sure 

 in the Bemersyde water of the Tweed, where the boatman Moodie, fishing 

 alone late one evening, hooked, played and tailed out a salmon of 42 lb. 

 It is a difficult, often impossible, feat where the current is deep and swift 

 and the sides rocky and precipitous, as I found to my cost one day when 

 two ladies expressed a wish to see a salmon killed, which they had never 

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