THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 187 
and sat in an anchored boat, chatting the glory of the muscallonge, 
fishing for salmon for want of better sport. 
And presently a salmon struck. No one knows how big he was, 
but he hung his mighty strength on the hook with a swift down- 
ward tug until rod and line and fisherman trembled. He raged up 
and down the river; he took line off the reel so fast that it blis- 
tered the angler’s resisting thumb. He charged toward the boat, 
then dove straight down. He sulked and tugged for half an hour. 
Once only he showed himself, a brief instant, on the surface sixty 
feet away. Then he turned, a great broad tail hesitated half a 
second out of the water, and he started down the river. In vain 
the angler tried to stop him. On and on he went, fifty yards, one 
hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred, while the reel sung. 
Then a sudden, short stop. He had come to the end of the line. An 
instance of tense, vicious straining—the line broke at the reel, and 
he was gone. The angler sat dazed and a trifle unsteady, looking 
ruefully at the empty reel and his blistered thumb. He turned 
limply to his host and said hoarsely: 
‘‘A muscallonge is a tame fish!’’ 
The setting is picturesque. At Oregon City in a great horse- 
shoe the river flings itself over a wall of solid rock and rushes a little 
way through rock walls to quieter reaches, then flows steadily 
onward ‘‘winding, widening to the sea.’’ Flanking the falls on 
both sides are great mills for the making of paper and woolens and 
the generation of electricity. Between and above the mills the 
river leaps from a rocky height made higher by a concrete wall, 
and falls roaring into a basin from which rises a constant, shifting 
cloud of spray, wherein the sun plays at making rainbows. Behind 
the mills on one side are the locks where river boats pass. From 
both sides the water is taken to turn the wheels of industry. At 
intervals below the falls this water rushes from tail races into the 
river. 
Danger lurks there in that seething quarter-mile of maelstrom 
below the falls for the entertainment of those hardier souls who 
seek a constant thrill. A short half-mile farther down a_ stfspension 
bridge leaps from one rock wall to the other. Here the water is 
safe and quiet and the current steady and serene—an admirable 
place to row lazily about with a troll line dragging astern. Here 
and below the fishing is as good as any; here and below women and 
children are seen in the boats. Below are sand bars where one may 
land for leisurely lunch and where children play: 
It is a matter of keen regret that the chinook does not take the 
fly. The popular lure is a large spoon (number five) with treble 
hooks. Rather heavy sinkers are used to keep the twirling spinners 
_near the bottom, where experience has taught the angler to keep 
them. Short, stiff rods are used, most of them between five and six 
feet in length, but many of them shorter. Of lines the variety is 
infinite. You can hear a fisherman boasting proudly that his line is 
tested to hold sixty-five pounds dead weight. Never less than one 
hundred yards of line is used—more often two hundred yards, and 
always on a multiplying reel. 
Good sportsmanship is not wanting, and a club has been organ- 
ized whose members use six-ounce rods of a minimum length of five 
feet, with lines of eighteen pounds maximum test. Moreover this 
elub requires the angler to gaff his fish unaided—a feat of no small 
difficulty. To quality for membership in this elub—it is called the 
Salmon Club of Oregon—an angler is required to land a fish, weighing 
