But let not the reader, who is yet unlearned in the craft, imagine that every salmon is such a fool as to leap at the gaudy lure. From my little experience of the number of these princely fish which run up certain rivers, and the small proportion of them which fall victims to the rod, I would rather be inclined to come to the conclusion that these unhappy individuals must either be lunatics or morbid misanthropical (misopiscical?) specimens of the genus, that a fish who takes the fly is either entirely bereft of his senses, or has firmly made up his mind, wearied with subaqueous trials, to hang himself—upon a hook—and that his vigorous struggles after he is hooked are to be accounted for by that instinct of self-preservation which is the first law of nature, and which often leads a would-be suicide, after he has jumped into the water, to exert himself might and main to get out of it again.
Not the least charm of salmon-fishing is the wild grandeur of the scenery in which the best of it is found, heather-clad mountains, ravines, and gorges, rapid, rushing streams, splashing waterfalls, deep smooth pools, and huge rocks here and there in the river, adding picturesqueness to the scene and increased danger to the line.
Who has not read vivid descriptions of the killing of a salmon?
First comes the "rise," no little circling splash like that of a trout, but a rushing boil in the water, hailed with a joyous shout by the angler and his attendant; then there is a momentary check; then the merry music of the clicking reel as the fish rushes off, perchance quite slowly at first, not apparently quite alive to the danger of his position; but when the fact dawns upon him that the little sting in the tail of the fly he snapped at is attached to something that is seriously menacing his liberty, his struggles become exciting in the extreme. Now comes a swift rush, taking out some fifty yards of line without a check. Now he is seen for a moment—of extreme danger to the tackle—throwing himself high out of water, a huge bar of brightest silver, falling back into it again with a splash. Instantaneous guesses are made at his weight; then comes a long run, fatiguing for both fish and fisherman, up and down stream; then the salmon, getting rather fagged, half turns on his side near the opposite bank, but he is of no use over there. A little later on he comes over to our side, and Sandy or Patsy, as the case may be, "makes an offer" at him with the gaff, but it is too soon; the fish, roused to fresh life by the sight of the horrid biped, exerts all his remaining strength—we have two or three last frantic rushes, moments of intense excitement, during which we have not one single thought for anything in the wide world but that salmon and that gaff. At last the gallant fellow is near the bank, thoroughly tired this time—the gaff is in his quivering flesh; Patsy struggles up the bank with our glittering prize; the fish is knocked on the head, the fly carefully cut out, the hackles blown and cleared of blood or dirt—for some salmon-flies are worth from fifteen shillings to two pounds each—and then we and Patsy, or Sandy, can sit down on the bank and enjoy our well-earned rest.
First we must have a "tot" of whisky to "wet that fish"; then Patsy says, "Sure now, yer honour'll be afther giving the blessed pool a bit of rest, an' we'll thry another directly."
So we sit and enjoy the beauty of the mountain and river scenery, with a pipe of good tobacco and a frequent furtive glance at the salmon, till a freshening breeze, or the sight of a rising fish, inspires us with fresh courage, to result, if we are lucky, in a fresh capture.
Pleasant, too, is the fishing from a boat on the rippling surface of our fair gem of a lake in the grand setting of those majestic mountains; ay, and pleasant too when the salmon are sulky, is the fishing for the beautiful white trout in the various streams between the lake and the tideway; and exciting indeed is the struggle when a white trout with glittering scales, only a few hours from the sea, is hooked on a small trout-fly and fine drawn gut—for your sea-trout is the most active of fish, and will give the angler a braver fight than a brown trout of more than double his size, flinging himself constantly high into the air, a silvery flash of light, game to the very last, making rush after rush, and spring after spring, when you think he should be quite safe for the landing-net.
Ay, and when the shades of evening are falling over mountain and valley, river, lake, and bay, when the smoke from the chimney of our inn, rising from amongst the trees which surround it, suggests busy doings at the huge peat-fire in the kitchen, pleasant is the walk or drive back to that snug hostelry, and jovial the dinner—with salmon and trout fresh from lake and river, grouse not quite so fresh from the mountain, and snipe from the marsh.
Genial and jolly, too, is the evening talk over our glasses of punch, the recital of incidents of sport during the day, the comparison of flies, the arrangement of plans for the morrow. "Early to bed and early to rise," is a very good motto generally for the sportsman; but there are seasons when the morning fishing is of but little account, and, mindful of this, we prolong our symposia and our yarns far into the small hours till our stock of anecdotes and tobacco are alike exhausted.
Many a rich man has paid down his hundreds for the rental of part of a salmon river, and perhaps his fish have cost him twenty to a hundred guineas each. But then again the poor professional anglers often make a good living by it, partly by the salmon they catch, and partly by acting as guides and instructors to tourists and amateurs. And here let me tell the reader to take the anecdotes of his tourist friends anent the salmon they have killed in Ireland or Scotland cum grano salis. I believe that about nineteen out of twenty fish "taken" by non-resident amateurs are risen and hooked by Patsy or Sandy aforesaid.