"How high can they jump?" asked Colin.
"About sixteen foot sheer stops even the best of them," the professor said, "but there are not many direct falls like that. Nearly all rapids and falls are in jumps of five or six feet, and salmon can take that easily. Still, there is a fall nearly twenty feet high that some salmon must have leaped, for a few have been found above it, and they must either have leaped up or walked round—there's no other way."
"How do you suppose they did it?"
"In a very high wind, probably," the professor answered; "a gale blowing up the canyon might just give the extra foot or two at the end of a high leap."
As soon as they were about four miles out, the sail was taken in and, following the professor's example, Colin dropped his line over the stern. The shining copper and nickel spoon sank slowly, and the boy paid out about a hundred feet of line. Taking up the oars and with the rod ready to hand, Colin rowed slowly, parallel with the shore. Two or three times the boy had a sensation that the boat was being followed by some mysterious denizen of the sea, but though in the distance there seemed a strange ripple on the water, nothing definite appeared, and he forgot it for the moment as the professor got the first strike.
With the characteristic scream, the reel shrilled out, and the fish took nearly a hundred feet of line, but the angler held the brake so hard that the strain rapidly exhausted the fish, and when it turned toward the boat, the professor's deft fingers reeled at such a speed that the line wound in almost as rapidly as the rush of the fish. As soon as the salmon saw the boat it tried to break away, but its captor had caught a glimpse of the fish, and seeing that it was not too large for speedy action, reeled in without loss of time, and gaffed him promptly.
Thirty-pound Atlantic Salmon Leaping Falls and Rapids in a Newfoundland River.