THE SCANDHJTAVIAN PENINSULA 



Gula, ' Child of the bright and stainless snow,' is an interesting 

 stream, though not of the best. It rises near a wide snow- 

 field, drawing from a vast area, and runs its tempestuous course 

 of fifty miles before it is lost in one of the most attractive fjords 

 of Western Norway. It is of peculiar interest, as mid-way it 

 forms two great lakes, ten and fifteen miles in length. 



In the lower reaches there are many falls and rapids ; one 

 fall is fifty feet high and the salmon pass around it by a ladder. 

 If this was in America, the fall would have been blown up long 

 ago, and converted into a rapid, so that many salmon could go up 

 and the value of the river enhanced. As it is, the Gula affords 

 to two rods in June and July about one hundred and fifty salmon 

 and two hundred grilse. The largest salmon on record weighed 

 thirty-two pounds, and the average was thirteen and one-half 

 pounds, sport that should satisfy any one. This fine second- 

 class stream is, we are told by Mr. Charles Thomas Stanford in his 

 A Biver in Norway, a fly river ; not only this, but you can cast 

 and do not have to drag the fly across the stream, or troll for 

 the fish. TroUing with a fly, it would appear, comes into the 

 class of spoon or dead-bait fishing. 



My fishing means to cast and drop a fly then recall it imme- 

 diately. I should call ' harUng ' ' troUing,' and I note that Mr. 

 Stanford makes the point. But ' harhng ' or towing the fly 

 across the river is absolutely necessary in many Norwegian 

 rivers, if salmon are desired. In this way I took my salmon in 

 the WiUiamson in Oregon in 1912. A fly would never be taken, 

 so I fell from grace and used a spoon. 



The fishing in the Gula begins the first of June, where the 

 temperature of the water is forty-eight degrees. The water 

 below the faU is fished first, as the principal run up the ladder does 

 not begin until July. A certain ' Leivik pool ' is the best. The 

 lower stream is very attractive : a low beach for casting on one 

 side, and a precipitous wooded-precipice on the other, and far 

 away high mountains with lines and patches of snow lingering 

 into summer. By following up this river, one is led along beauti- 



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