60 SPORT IN ASIA AND AFRICA 



there was no projection. I paid much attention 

 to these points. The proper adjustment of a 

 bait takes time, but the time is well spent. 



In spinning for salmon the slow-dragging spin 

 is said to be more attractive, but in mahser 

 fishing my experience is that a bait can hardly 

 spin too fast, and the crocodile spinner imparts a 

 very rapid rotatory motion. When a rapid 

 dashes into a pool there is usually a back eddy, 

 and the current flows up-stream at the side of 

 the rapid. It is in this side- water that it is very 

 important to spin your bait ; and, as old Isaac 

 says, " if he spin not, ye be like to catch nothing." 



Personally I always used a Malloch reel, as, in 

 the Giri and the rivers of this class which I usually 

 fished, accurate casting was of more importance 

 than the mere length of the line thrown. The 

 necessity for turning the reel is a drawback ; 

 and on the Namsen River in Norway I found 

 that, amid the more confused and plunging 

 struggle which occurs with a salmon, the reel 

 is not unlikely to jam, or the line to loop round 

 it. With the straightforward, headlong rush of 

 the mahser, however, the reel works well ; and 

 practice soon enables you to get over the turning 

 difficulty. It is not often that a mahser takes 

 on the moment of the bait striking the water. 



For traces I generally used the Killin single- 

 wire steel trace, which can — or, perhaps I should 

 say, could — be bought for a shilling ; and I invented 

 a method of testing these traces which I found 

 very effective. In the morning, before going 

 out fishing, I used to send one of my men up a 

 tree with one end of the trace, and the other 



