240 Fisuinc iv American WATERS. 
to realize an indescribable sensation of nervous hesitancy ; 
and the more gentle he appeared when first hooked, the more 
I dreaded the fight that I knew must come, sooner or later ; 
for a salmon never surrenders until he faints. As the waters 
settled until as transparent as ether, the fish became not only 
more shy, but they gave better play and were harder to ex- 
haust. They bit gingerly and short. I had ample opportu- 
nity for testing some theories which had been told me by an- 
glers with great seriousness. One of them is, that “if a sal- 
mon rises to your fly and misses it, you should not cast again 
immediately, because he is sure to settle back before rising. 
You had better, therefore, light a segar and smoke half of it, 
or take a glass of sherry, and rest the pool at least fifteen 
minutes before repeating the cast.” This I ascertained to be 
all bosh. Once, in particular, a salmon took my fly at the 
fourth cast, though having rose to it at every previous one 
and missed it, while I repeated my casts with as little sus- 
pense as if angling for brook trout. A salmon will return to 
the fly, if he rose to it in earnest at first, as often as will a 
trout; but either fish, when pricked by a fly-hook, will refuse 
to come again until he forgets it. Again it is said that “if 
you hook a salmon and he parts your tackle, taking your 
hook and a piece of the gut snell to which it was attached, 
he will not rise to an artificial fly again that season.” This 
is also a mistake; for the gentleman who owns the “ York 
River,” Gaspe, fished with a friend who lost a hook and part 
of a leader by a salmon one morning last July, and on the 
evening of that day took the salmon with the hook and gut 
still in his mouth; and what appears most singular is that 
he hooked the salmon with the same kind of fly that was 
then fastened to the jaw of the fish. 
