278 A Sportsman at Large 



occasion I had taken unto myself a partner to share the 

 expense of my enterprise and all its possibilities. This new- 

 comer, Tom Lambert, was an old hand at every form of sport ; 

 whilst his cheery and attractive young wife was as keen as 

 mustard, especially as regards angling for the lordly salmon. 

 My C.O. was in evidence again, and later on the irrepressible 

 Teddy Maurice put in an appearance, bringing with him a 

 marvellous invention of his own, which was supposed to 

 prevent that regrettable accident known as an " overwind." 

 We all stood on the rocky bank of the Foss Pool, intent on 

 observing his manipulation of this astonishing contraption. 



Presently he became attached to a fish apparently of 

 negligible size but he was so busy engineering the product 

 of his inventive brain that he quite lost touch with it. Teddy 

 was obviously ill at ease, but, in order to impress us to the 

 contrary, kept attempting to light his pipe, whereby he wasted 

 a whole boxful of matches. He " played " (if, indeed, such 

 a demonstration could be so called) the salmon for fully an 

 hour. Then the fish, being evidently tired of swimming round 

 and round the pool on a slack line, quietly sailed away between 

 Scylla and Charybdis, taking out the whole of the angler's 

 line and backing, straightening his rod, and breaking him to 

 blazes ! 



We others came to the conclusion that we would not adopt 

 Teddy's weird invention, though we were bound to admit that, 

 since the salmon had stripped the reel clean, there could be no 

 question of an overwind ! So perhaps our volatile friend was 

 justified in claiming that his invention was " IT." 



But again I find myself anticipating. 



We had commenced fishing about the middle of June, and 

 immediately hit on a run of remarkably ponderous fish. 

 I may here and now state that by the time our tenancy was 

 up, we had accounted foi forty-seven fish, averaging 25! Ibs., 

 an extraordinary figure, which I believe constitutes a record. 



In the sporting papers I have challenged all and sundry to 

 put forward an authentic figure which would lower it, but, so 

 far, my brothers of the angle have remained silent. 



In the previous chapter I ventured to suggest that descrip- 

 tions of fights with monster salmon have been overdone, and 



