92 SALMON AND TROUT. 



length of the fisherman who has only got his left hand with 

 which to * show him the butt,' as the expression is ; but that it 

 is a perfectly practicable performance I can testify, having done 

 it over and over again myself, sometimes in the case of very 

 heavy fish. Indeed, even when I have had an attendant carry- 

 ing the ordinary long-handled gaff, I have frequently preferred 

 gaffing the fish with it myself rather than run the risk of the 

 clumsy treatment which it is too likely to receive at his un- 

 skilful or unpractised hands. 



It is curious how difficult it is to become a really first-rate 

 gaffer. Indeed it seems to be an accomplishment as a rule 

 entirely beyond the reach of the uneducated, or half-educated, 

 man. I fail at this moment to recall more than two or three 

 instances — notable ones, I admit — of a gillie or keeper being 

 really an adept in the art, and not once, but constantly I have, 

 I fear, disgusted my professional ' fisherman '-attendant by 

 either gaffing my fish myself with the right hand, whilst the rod 

 was held with the left, or summoning to my assistance the 

 trusty friend and companion of many a red-letter day's salmon 

 and pike fishing to whose steady nerve and skilful hand I owe 

 not one but scores of fish that would never otherwise have 

 been brought to bank. . . . 



On a very rocky bit of the upper part of the Usk where we 

 ■ — Mr. Edwin Darvall and myself — have killed some hundreds, if 

 not indeed thousands, of salmonida, the gaffing business was 

 the despair of my friend's faithful henchman, Timothy — as it 

 is written of him : 



The wily Tim with dextrous gaff 

 ' Tries hard to cut the line in half; 



and I am afraid he has many a time thirsted for my blood 

 when his master has insisted upon my depriving him of his 

 * wand of office ' at the critical juncture. On one occasion the 

 wily Tim not only succeeded in thus cutting the line whilst 

 failing to gaff the fish, but also, by what Artemus Ward would 

 call a ' dextrous movement,' managed to bring the gaff point 



