Thanks to the innocence of the salmon, which the Captain had hinted at, their pot-fishing was not entirely without success: the upper part of the reach, where the waters had not yet recovered their serenity after undergoing the roar and fury of the great fall, did actually furnish them with a graul or two; but the salmon that had arrived at years of discretion were very much too cautious to be taken. They had never, it is true, been fished for in their lives with anything more delicate than a piece of whipcord and a bunch of lobworms, as big as a cricket-ball; but, for all that, they were quite old enough to draw an inference, and were perfectly aware that natural grasshoppers were not in the habit of swimming about with lines tied to their noses.
Towards evening there sprang up a light air of wind, and the rises began to be more frequent. The Captain, by making use of Birger’s prescribed form of words, had got the boatman to land him on the rocky island which divides the Aal Foss into two branches. There, concealed by a stubby fir, not quite so high as himself, he was sending out twenty yards of line that fell so lightly that it never seemed to touch the water at all.
There is no doubt that, of all the Erne fishermen, it was the Captain who threw the longest and the lightest line, and well was the Captain aware of that fact: but there is an axiom which “far and fine” fishers would do well to bear in mind, and which, though apparently evident to the meanest capacity, is very seldom borne in mind by any one; and that is, that it is of very little use to fish “far and fine,” when the fish themselves are lying, all the while, in the water close under your feet. This was precisely the Captain’s position; the waters, divided by the rock on which he was standing, were naturally deepest close to the rock itself, and, as naturally, the best fish lay in the deepest water. The Captain understood this well, but he could not deny himself his length of line, and, therefore, contrived to fish the water close to him by raising his arms, bringing the point of his rod over his right shoulder, and then whisking his flies out for a fresh cast with a dextrous turn of the wrist which no man in England but himself could have performed.
“I will tell you what,” said the Parson—who, not having met with much success, had stuck up his rod, and had got himself ferried over to the island—“it is not very likely that a fish of any size will rise this evening, but if such a thing should happen I would not give much for your rod.”
“I wish the biggest fish in the river——”
The sentence was never finished, for, at the word, the wish was granted; and, if not the biggest fish in the river, certainly the biggest fish they had yet seen, rose at the fly when it was not a foot from the rock.
The rod never stood a chance. Raised at a sharp angle over the Captain’s shoulder, the whole strain came upon the top-piece, which, as he struck, snapped like a flower-stalk, without effort or resistance; and away rushed the fish forty or fifty yards up-stream with the top-piece, which had run down upon the fly, bobbing against his nose.
The Captain did all that man could do. Carefully did he watch his fish, anticipating every movement; instantly did he dip his rod, as the salmon sprang madly into air—instantly did he recover it; promptly was the line reeled in at the turn; tenderly was it given out at the rush; but it was of no avail—the rod had lost its delicate spring; and, despite the Captain’s care, every now and then the fish would get a stiff pull against the stump, thus gradually enlarging the hold which the hook had taken in the skin of the jaw, till, at last, just as the Parson, who had been hoping against hope, was taking the cork off the point of his gaff and clearing away the brambles to get a good standing place for using it, the line came up slack; the hold had given way.
The Parson had the generosity to be silent about his warning that had received so immediate a fulfilment.
“Well,” he said, “you have recovered your top; that is something, so many miles from Bell Yard; and as for the fish, depend upon it that there are more where he came from.”