A BOOK OF FISHING STORIES 



fishing on the pool worth mentioning, this time in the evening. 

 We usually dined at 5 p.m., and then fished from 6.30 p.m. or 

 so on into the Arctic night. On the evening in question I had 

 landed nine salmon by 11 P. M. or thereabouts, and thought of 

 going home to bed. " En til " (yet another), said the inexor- 

 able Ole. Out we went and hooked a tenth, then an eleventh 

 and a twelfth in rapid succession, both these last two over 

 thirty pounds in weight, after which I struck work, much to 

 Ole's disgust — he wanted to establish a new record — and went 

 home to bed. Next morning I took seven more salmon out 

 of the same pool, and so, I believe, established a new record 

 of nineteen fish, averaging nearly twenty pounds, in an even- 

 ing's and a morning's fishing on this celebrated pool. What 

 we might have caught had we fished all night, as Ole was pre- 

 pared to do, I cannot guess ; but it was certainly a very heavy 

 run of fresh-run fish that I had been lucky enough to meet. 



Every salmon hooked in the pool was manoeuvred (or such, 

 at any rate, was our endeavour) to the still water at the side, 

 and then played from land in comparative security. It was a 

 curious fact that, with light pressure and steady, careful rowing, 

 heavy salmon could as a rule be quietly led out of the rough, 

 boiling current of the pool into the smooth, slack water before 

 they began to run and fight. Apparently they were not quite 

 sure at first what strange, compelling insect they had got hold 

 of. Then came a moment when alarm seized them, and a 

 hundred yards rush back to the centre of the pool might be 

 the result, with the work all to do over again. One was never 

 quite certain at first how heavy the salmon might be. One 



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