SALMON FISHIIJ^G IN ENGLAND 



ideal condition. Some of the stories one hears in England re- 

 garding fighting salmon recall my tuna fishing, when to be towed 

 about for eight or ten miles, aU the time fighting the fish, was a 

 part of the game. An Irish angler is said by Conch in his 

 Fishes in the British Isles, to have hooked a salmon that took him 

 three miles downstream in five hours, when, exhausted, he handed 

 the rod to a friend who kept up the fight eight hours longer, during 

 which the fish took him seven miles towards the sea, daylight 

 finding the angler breaking down while the salmon apparently 

 was as fresh as ever. The exhausted angler, in desperation, was 

 induced to sell his chance to a gentleman for a pound banknote, 

 and the fresh angler was taken four more miles downstream in 

 the following nine hours, followed by a wondering and constantly 

 increasing audience. At the end of twenty-two hours the rod 

 broke at the reel and the giant swam out to sea. I have heard of 

 a man being forced to swim half a nule downstream in an Ameri- 

 can river, yet saving his fish, and volumes could be filled with 

 marvellous stories of the salmon. 



I have touched upon that feature of sahnon fishing in England, 

 Scotland and Ireland — the scenery. Elvers are delightful if only 

 to walk down. The charming stretch of the Tees at Barnard 

 Castle, referred to in Nicholas NicMeby, its grandeur and beauties 

 in Westmorland, the Tweed, Eden, the Esk, Wye and others 

 mentioned in the chapter on trout fishing in England. What can 

 excel the delight and refined beauty of the Severn near Arley in 

 Shropshire, the Derwent near Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, the 

 Wye at Symond's Yat in Herts, or on the reach of Mr. Graham 

 White at Ehadnor, Wales, a river I know my forebears fished prior 

 to 1650. 



These noble, often exquisite streams were designed to aid 

 in the development of a great nation. They are humanizing 

 agencies in the attainment of culture and the higher esthetic 

 qualities of mankind, and it is lamentable that in aH lands where 

 this noble fish takes a fiy that laws can not be enforced to reduce 

 nets to the minimum, to make it a crime to poUute a river. 



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