238 With Rod and Gun in New England 



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manner of handling, and about two baits are stripped to a salmon hooked. 



My fishing was done with a light ten-ounce steel rod, eight feet in 

 length, a multiplying reel, with (500 feet of fine twenty-strand linen 

 line. I found it, notwithstanding the prejudice I had against steel rods, to 

 be almost perfect for the fishing, and altogether superior to bamboo rods. 

 It is lighter and more flexible, and I would have no hesitancy in taking a 

 trial with it over a sixty-pound salmon, or a sea-bass of the same weight. 

 The market-fishermen, as I have previously observed, lose fully half of the 

 salmon they hook by the hand pull, which has no give except that which is 

 compelled by want of strength. The line and hooks are strong, and the 

 fishermen have no time to wait. If the salmon are plentiful they do not 

 much mind the losses, which often occur from neglect in using the gaff. 

 With the light rod the fish, if hooked, is seldom lost. I brought in several 

 with skin-holds, which would not have held for a moment in hand-fishing. 



The average time I found necessary to fetch my salmon to gaff, I 

 should estimate at ten minutes, occasionally less, and sometimes fifteen or 

 sixteen minutes. I believe, however, I am more rapid in landing salmon 

 and trout than the average fishermen, many of whom take more than half an 

 hour with a salmon, and ten or fifteen minutes with a two-pound trout. I 

 have never, except in very rare instances, been more than half an hour in 

 landing a salmon with a fly-rod, and though I have taken, I may safely say, 

 during over thirty-five years of annual trout fishing, many thousands of 

 trout weighing from two to over eight pounds, I have never to my remem- 

 brance been so long as thirty minutes in landing a trout, unless it was 

 hooked by an outside hold. 



I found the salmon which exhibited the most gamy qualities, to do 

 their fighting near the surface, seemingly to disdain any depth after once 

 being brought up, and often to make an almost complete circuit of the 

 boat. Certainly a more beautiful sight than a salmon exhibits with his 

 brilliant colors, as he strokes along with his powerful tail, near the surface 

 in the clear water and bright light, never gladdened the heart of a fisher- 

 man. We all know the dangers to which the salmon is exposed in fresh 

 water, and from which but few survive, as it is doubtful if but very few, if 

 any, ever return from the upper streams, which they ascend after the 

 spawning season, at least when such upper waters are far removed from 

 the sea. If they have the exposures in the deeper waters of the sea which 

 follow them in the shoal water of Monterey bay, their lives are indeed be- 

 set with constant risk. I saw daily in the bay on the fishing-grounds the 

 enemies and consumers of salmon, in the form of seals, porpoises, sharks 

 and cow-fish at their deadly work. One foggy day when I was out, I was 

 startled by the uprising of a curiously-peaked hump, two boat lengths ahead. 

 It seemed to me like a boat's end elevated, with a black cloth over it, but a 



