The Salmon Fisher

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Their instinct is upward. A fresh-run fish goes down stream only when lie is bewildered, or when he cannot help it. I do not think a headlong pitch down a rapid is ever a part of his recognized tactics. It takes his breath away. When a fish gets into a rapid he becomes passive at once and is swept down the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Their instinct is upward. A fresh-run fish goes down stream only when lie is bewildered, or when he cannot help it. I do not think a headlong pitch down a rapid is ever a part of his recognized tactics. It takes his breath away. When a fish gets into a rapid he becomes passive at once and is swept down the current like a dead fish. He makes no effort to bore his way up, but tugs at the line in a dogged endeavor to get loose somehow, and is swept down until he fetches up in an eddy, or perhaps in still water behind a boulder. As a rule, the methods of a salmon on a hook comprise a series of short runs alternating with circular sweeps, as Francis Francis has mentioned. Indeed, what can he do otherwise, with a vertical lifting power at his nose which never relaxes except when he temporarily ceases his own exertions ? Then of course the angler at once reels him in, passive, toward the ever ready gaff, and there is nothing for him to do but to make another desperate break for liberty, and pull away with all his might. When he does this he makes the reel sing again, which is the music the angler likes so much to hear. It must be a prodigious exertion for himto dive and hold on to the bottom for so long a time as he often does, say twenty minutes or more. People call this manoeuvre sulking. Save the markt Only spoiled children sulk. Bather call it brave determination and sublime effort. I am quite prepared to believe that the salmon knows instinctively that if he yields the game is up, and that if he continues to run he will only exhaust himself. In such a dilemma where is the alternative ? Simply the leap I This he cogitates out for himself down there on the bottom. It is desperate, but the only resource. And now he girds his loins and fixes his broad tail obliquely. Ha did you notic...