FEBRUARY 47 



at starting, for it carried a ferry-boat below which it 

 broadened out into a stretch of comparatively quiet water. 

 There was still half an hour of daylight left ; something 

 bade me give the Dog another swim there. 



Starting at the foot of the pool, I put out a long line 

 and began ' backing it up,' i.e. taking two or three paces 

 backwards upstream at every cast. At the second or 

 third cast a fish came up, fastened, ran a turn or two, and 

 was off. 'A dirty kelt,' thinks I to myself, and a few 

 more casts brought me up to the ferry-boat lo ! I was 

 fast again. This fish ran about for a bit and was landed, 

 a lovely little springer. So was a second, and yet a third, 

 all in exactly the same spot. Then darkness descended 

 on the scene, and the Black Dog returned to his kennel. 

 It was a busy half-hour, though the fish were but small 

 7|lb. to 91b. 



For so much does chance count in salmon-fishing. It 

 was blind chance that prompted me to try that pool over 

 again ; lucky chance that a small shoal of salmon had 

 rested awhile on the slack of the ford. Mischances there 

 are also, about which any truthful fisherman could spin 

 plenty of yarns, were it not for that sundial tendency of 

 his to record none but the shining hours mischances 

 that freeze the blood at the moment and project gloomy 

 shadows far over a man's future. It is the chance and 

 mischance combined that give salmon-fishing its com- 

 manding charm. If one were able to go out any day and 

 find and hook salmon with as much certainty as rabbits 

 may be found and bowled over in a warren, it is not seven 

 hundred miles of winter travel that one would undertake 

 in pursuit of them, with the possibility of finding the 

 river frozen from bank to brae, or a mass of floating 



