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 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 exe