PREPARING FOR THE ENCOUNTER. 295 
forthwith commenced splicing our rods. To save me that 
trouble, as he saw my anxiety, the doctor kindly tendered 
me the use of a Castle Connell rod, which, he stated, had 
nearly broken his back and used him up, but he hoped it 
would behave more generously with me. It was a twenty- 
foot rod, by which a long cast could be made; but it was so 
top-heavy, and with a sort of double action, like a “kick in 
the handle,” that it came back on me several times, and 
made me sit down in the river to cool off; but not on that 
day. 
The doctor accompanied me, to give an idea where I would 
likely find salmon, and how I had best move my fly so as to 
render it captivating in that wide and rapid river, TI ad- 
mired the river; the breaks of salmon of from ten to twenty- 
five pounds each excited me. I soon thanked the doctor, 
and told him that I believed myself a match for them, when 
he ignited a cigar, and proceeded onward to where he ex- 
pected the salmon were waiting for his flies. 
Left alone, with the injunction that if I should hook a sal- 
mon, to shout for a gaffer to come to my assistance, 2s Dun- 
can had returned to the mouth ef the river for provisions, I 
again examined my tackle. “It is true,” thought I, “ these 
fish average from cight to thirty-eight pounds only, and I 
have taken a forty-pound striped bass; but my tackle for 
striped bass was a strong line, while here it is only a single 
silk-worm gut.” 
Having intellectually weighed and investigated the theory 
of the audacious fish in that river of great power and majesty, 
and so examined that I thought all things were right, [made 
a cast and let my fly float round from the current to the side. 
I continued so to cast and drop down stream a step at cach 
cast, about half an hour, when a salmon accepted my lure. 
The fish did not take the fly as a trout does by rushing at it 
from beneath, but rose over the fly and took it on goihg back. 
He soon convinced me that he was there by a jerk and a leap 
above water, and out farther into the river where the current 
P 
