“Yes, with the bend and give of this sixteen-foot rod, and the certainty with which these matchless Vom Hoff reels work. Look, now, the day is pleasantly cloudy, the water a little thick, riled,—roily, if you like. I think a silver doctor—that’s a fly, see, Rose—will do. There, you can look over my fly-book.”
“Well,” said Rose, “I am compelled to sympathize with the salmon. Are not our Anglo-Saxon ideas of sport a little hard on birds and fish?”
“We will adjourn that discussion,” said her father, “until you see a salmon. Then we shall know whether your store of pity will hold out.”
The canoe was now anchored in some four feet of strong, broken water. The bowman, with his anchor-rope ready, the sternman, on the bottom of the boat, with his face to the pool, his eye on every cast of the fly. Mr. Lyndsay stood a little back from the center, a fine figure, Rose thought, tall, strong, ruddy, with a face clean-shaven, except for side-whiskers. At first he cast his fly near to the canoe, left and right in succession, and giving the rod a slight motion, kept the fly moving down-stream until directly astern of the boat. Then with a new cast, adding two or more feet of line from the reel, he again let the swift water run it out. Thus, casting each time a little farther, he covered by degrees an increasing triangular area of water, of which the stern of the boat was the apex. As he went on fishing, he chatted with Rose, who sat in front of him, so that he cast over both the girl and the burly figure of Tom.
“I am now casting about forty-five feet of line,” he said. “I can cast about sixty-five, from reel to fly. There are men who can cast one hundred feet and more, but here it is needless. I could not do it if it were needed.”
Rose began to think all this a little slow, for a pastime. At last Lyndsay, saying, “Drop, Tom,” reeled up his line within a few feet from the long silk leader. As he gave the word, the lump of lead used as an anchor was lightly lifted and held well in hand, the sternman used his paddle, and the boat dropped some forty feet farther down the pool, and was gently anchored. The stream at this place was more broken, and was what Tom called “strong water.”
The casting business began again, with no better result, so that Rose, to whom it all looked easy enough, began to find it more pleasant to watch the shadows of the hills and the heavy clouds moving overhead. Mr. Lyndsay was now casting some fifty feet of line, and, as Rose turned, trying to analyze for her own use the succession of movements, she was struck with the grace and ease with which the line was recovered at the end of the cast,—sent apparently without effort directly behind the fisherman, and then without crack or snap impelled in a straight line to right or left at an angle from the boat, so that the casting-line and fly dropped or settled lightly on the water; the fly always maintaining its place at the end of the cast. Then she heard, “You riz him!” “We have tickled his fancy, Rose, or tempted his curiosity. Now we have a little game to play. Sometimes we wait a few minutes. I rarely do so unless the fish are scarce. Look sharp. Did you see him rise?”
“No.”
“That fish lies in a line with yonder dead pine. In this quick water the fly buries itself, but as I follow it with the rod, you can guess its place. Most commonly a salmon remains in one spot, with his nose up-stream, and—”
“Oh!” cried Rose, as the fly reached the indicated spot and a swirl in the water and a broad back caught her eye. “Oh! oh!”