Country Life
NOT long ago one of the locals fishing in the estuary for flounders found something weighty on his line. He began to haul in and discovered that he had hooked a salmon. Rumour has varied the size of this fish, which might have been any one of a dozen different weights quoted. The bait, too, has varied with the weight, and since the man was fishing in brackish water the bait could have been anything from an earthworm to a soft crab. It was certainly not a Black Doctor. That the salmon was taken on a handline makes it no less sporting if one considers that salmon fishermen arc known to resort to hand-work at, times, working the fly in a way that few men could effectively manage with a rod. I met a man once who was seated by a pool with his rod laid aside and his fly out on hand control. How long he had been there I do not know, but he told me that there was a salmon in the pool. The fly was trembling and swinging at the salmon's nose, and it was a question of exhausting the patience Of the fish. A stubborn way of fishing I thought, until I remembered my own obstinacy in devoting a whole day to a single trout.
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