Fishing stories are always interesting to me and two fisher-
man friends with whom I was talking last week mentioned that they had each caught birds. One did so while spinning a well-known salmon river. His spinner was taken by a swan. Although the bird struggled in a distressing way, the line refused to break until the swan made several attempts to fly. It went off with the hook in its beak. The other accident took place on a small trout stream where the victim was a swallow that swooped to take the fly as it was about to drop on the water. The bird was brought down immediately, drawn to the bank and released. It suffered no damage. Two years ago I was twice plagued by a small bird that hovered over my floating fly. I had visions of it taking the fly from the surface of the water, and I was forced to move on—where the performance was repeated shortly afterwards. I wondered if the bird had some spiteful desire to spoil my fishing, for the trout went down and stayed there.
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