978 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 18, 1910. 
probably have struck again at the bait and with 
more effect, so that either of the body ti iangles 
would have accounted for it in any case. By a 
transfer is meant that the fish was first hooked 
by another triangle and in its struggles got trans¬ 
ferred to the flying triangle which thus would 
seem to be the only hook it touched, and conse¬ 
quently many anglers now dispense with the fly¬ 
ing triangle altogether, the bait spins better with¬ 
out it and they find the arming just as effective 
as before. 
But though a triangle on the side of a 
bait is provided with three points, only one 
of these points is really in action. The other 
two pressing against the bait are useless for pur¬ 
poses of offense and merely serve to keep the 
fighting point in position. A snapping fish may 
turn down this hook point and so miss it, and 
though this may bring up another point, this 
want of fixity in the working hook does not 
make for efficiency, and here there is room for 
a needed modification in the form of our tri¬ 
angles. The two idle hooks prop up the work¬ 
ing one, but this very important work is not 
done as efficiently as it might be, and this we 
should like to see altered. The plan is to have 
a triangle consisting of one rather large work¬ 
ing hook, the other two members being shanks 
terminating in short barbed prongs for piercing 
the sides of the bait and so keeping the true 
hook firmly in its place. We move slowly in 
these islands, but still it is encouraging to find 
that one firm with us has got so far as to turn 
one hook of the triangle into a barb, but this is 
a case we think in which compromise has not its 
usual merits. 
More than a year ago the head of this house 
in a correspondence with the present writer said. 
“I agree with you and have long been of opin¬ 
ion that triangles * * * are inferior to single 
hooks for hooking fish,” so that there is still a 
chance for us to see the single hook ti langle 
in general use some day. And this new triangle 
would also remove this reproach of cruelty from 
us. It is quite a humane weapon, and when 
mounted, looks not at all aggressive. But it 
would do its work and the innovation would 
without doubt tell in time on the present mount¬ 
ing of artificial fishlets also. One beat of the 
Shannon at Castleconnell has yielded forty-one 
fine salmon this last March, and not for many 
years has the river fished so well, though the 
conditions, strange to say, have not at all been 
of the best apparently, the water being too high 
and the weather unseasonably cold. 
Major Fraser on the Newgarden be&t had be¬ 
tween March 9 and March 31 twenty-five salmon 
weighing 604 pounds, a very fine average, indeed, 
and this fortunate angler’s basket for the two 
last days of the month is well worth giving in 
detail as an illustration of what this much-fished 
and not too well protected river can do on occas¬ 
ion. He met with eleven fish of which he landed 
eight, 37, 35, 35, 32, 29, 25, 24^ and 18 pounds, 
and when one thinks of the merciless netting 
carried on in the tidal water and the operations 
of the lax-weir at Limerick, it is little short of 
astounding to find the grand old river able to 
yield such sport to the rod. 
The deep upper reaches of the river, however, 
have so far given hardly any sport, and little is 
now to be hoped for there till the grilse, locally 
known as peel, begin to run in June next. 
A salmon when hooked either runs, bores or 
sulks, and as these terms are much in use, it is 
as well to examine them a little, at the same time 
adding that most of what is to be said applies 
fully to the salmon’s blood relation, our brown 
trout also. And it is to be noted that the mere 
hooking of a fish seems very little to distress it, 
a point not without its ethical weight in these 
days when so much is heard about the cruelty 
of angling. 
If the angler breaks in a fish it simply re¬ 
mains quietly where it is, apparently at a loss 
to know what, if anything, has happened. Though 
a fly is sticking in its nose, it does not seem 
particularly to mind it. At most it ceases rising 
for a time, though not infrequently it scarcely 
pauses in its feeding, and this last season I have 
killed a trout in the Shannon with the fly it had 
taken from me five minutes previously still stuck 
in the angle of its jaw. The wounded fish 
neither rushes around nor jumps out of the 
water nor manifests any feeling whatever of 
pain or alarm. It is only when the strain of the 
rod begins to be felt that it rouses itself to 
action, and this always takes the form of re¬ 
sistance, more or less fierce, to being lifted out 
of the water. It is this lifting process that mad¬ 
dens a fish, and every angler knows or should 
know that by keeping the rod point low and put¬ 
ting a horizontal strain instead of a vertical one 
on his salmon or trout, this resistance will al¬ 
most altogether cease. No doubt this does not 
much help to kill the fish, but it will often en¬ 
able the angler to draw it away quietly from a 
dangerous spot without much risk of breaking 
in it. 
I have done the like frequently, and my ex¬ 
perience is that a steady flat strain, so long as 
the fish does not see one, will bring the unre¬ 
sisting quarry anywhere, though it does not do 
to force things, especially down stream, but when 
fairly challenged with uplifted rod, the fish is 
at once fiercely on the defensive and resists the 
strain in long, fierce rushes; it may be frequently 
terminating in a jump. This running policy is 
suicidal to the fish, is merely the blind folly of 
fright and desperation, and if persisted in all is 
over in a few minutes. 
A salmon that fights and dies in this way is 
one of a thousand and of course altogether love¬ 
ly, for though brief, the breathless fight is one 
the angler never forgets. The present writer 
some years ago killed a trout of eight pounds on 
Lough Ree with very light rod and tackle in a 
little under five minutes, but that desperate fish 
fought to'its last ounce in that very short time. 
Repeated wild rushes of eight or ten yards with¬ 
out pause, and each terminating in a desperate 
spring as at the very zenith itself, wore the gal¬ 
lant captive down to utter exhaustion, each run 
growing quickly more feeble than the last, until 
it presently lay utterly helpless and pumped out 
on the top, and so was lifted into the boat like 
a lifeless log. 
“That trout,” exclaimed my boatman, “was 
hooked in a mortal sore place,” and this is cer¬ 
tainly sometimes offered as an explanation of 
the tactics of the rusher and jumper. But few 
fish fight thus, for the hero in all living things 
is rare. A run or two graced with a jump, per¬ 
haps, may begin the fight, but discretion generally 
comes to the aid of the fish and counsels more 
prudent tactics, and then it bores. This really 
means it swims on its head. This is obviously a 
salmon’s best fighting attitude. Resistance to 
being pulled out of the water being its sole aim, 
it has to swim, for should it cease swimming, it 
comes to the surface at once, since in water a 
fish has properly no weight, and the way to 
swim best is to present its tail to the rod top, 
so that the line of strain coincides with its own 
axis or line of greatest resistance. 
It fights quite scientifically, does the borer, for 
on an even keel the effort to keep the rod from 
lifting its head is suffocating. And in this posi¬ 
tion it often plays on the taut line with its tail 
as one strikes the string of a banjo with the 
finger, but this “jiggering” should be stopped, as 
it may knock out the hook, and this can invari¬ 
ably be done, at least for the moment, by draw¬ 
ing away the top of the rod so as to alter the 
line of pull. But pure vertical boring does not 
last long as a rule. The fish presently swims 
heavily onward a little way, onward but down¬ 
ward, for its body is still tilted somewhat. Then 
it allows itself to be drawn slowly, tail first, to¬ 
ward the surface, but only for a moment. Again 
it forces forward heavily and sullen, head de¬ 
pressed, tail up, taking all it can out of the 
angler’s tackle and his endurance. 
Such a fight may last hours and is by no means 
lively, but it is good generalship on the part of 
the fish. In the chapter of accidents is his only 
hope, and it makes that chapter as long as pos¬ 
sible. Sulking, however, is the salmon’s master¬ 
piece. This consists in going down and seizing 
in its teeth a weed, root or other sufficiently firm 
and convenient projection of any kind and hold¬ 
ing on like grim death. Trout which rush into 
weeds and hold on there do this. Many anglers 
think they make fast the cast in some way when 
there, but this is a profound mistake. It is the 
rare exception for trout to “hang up” the angler 
the moment they reach weeds, but they are very 
often practically immovable the instant they get 
there. They have the weeds in their teeth. A 
sulking fish does not move and a fish that does 
not move, no matter how large, must yield to 
the rod strain and come to the surface at once 
just as if it were lifeless, except it is fast in 
something. The sulker is always holding on and 
using its fins only. Did it move its tail the 
slightest it would go forward and lose its grip, 
but it knows better. 
With a fish up to a few pounds in weight a 
steady flat pull will be effective in time, or a 
slack line will sometimes deceive him and set 
him off, but when a big fish takes hold the case 
is often hopeless, and British angling literature 
contains some amazing stories of the sulking 
salmon. Shannon Shore. 
The Easter Angler. 
While the average holiday seeker, encour¬ 
aged by the last few days to bask in the bril¬ 
liant sunshine of anticipation, prays for a con¬ 
tinuance of the bright spell over the coming 
week end, the prospective Easter angler taps the 
weather glass with all the earnest solicitude of 
the harassed agriculturist who, in a time of dis¬ 
tressing drouth, as a last resource, stepped into 
a shop to purchase a barometer. The shopman 
was giving a few stereotyped instructions about 
indications and pressures, when the purchaser in¬ 
terrupted impatiently, “Yes, yes, that’s all right, 
but what I want to know is, how do you set the 
blamed thing when you want it to rain?”—York¬ 
shire Daily Post. 
