SALMON AND SEA FISHING.*
THE literature of salmon-fishing is so extensive that it might be supposed almost impossible to add anything worth reading to it. How fallacious this notion is becomes apparent when one has read Letters to a Salmon Fisher's Sons, by Mr. A. H.
* (1) Letters to a Salmon Pisher's Sons. By A. H. Chaytor. With Diagrams_ and Illustrations. London: John Murray. gho —(2) Recreations of a Sportsman on the Pacific Coast. By Charles Frederic* Holder. With 74 Mum- trations. London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. CM 65.-net.]
Chaytor. Here, to delight the lover of angling literature, we have a fresh, well-written, and instructive book. Happy must be " my dear boys " to whom the letters are addressed. It is with regret that one learns on the last page that the author has now removed from the North into Sussex, and may not be able to teach his boys salmon-fishing with a rod. Yet he has used his pen to such good purpose that the book abounds in instructive passages. There are many hints that will be new and useful even to fishermen who are no longer boys. In the matter of flies Mr. Chaytor is sensible enough to think nothing of fishing through a long day without changing flies more than once. He gently rebukes a recent writer who describes and figures in colours seventy-two patterns, ven- turing to hope they may be sufficient for ordinary occasions. There can be no doubt that Mr. Chaytor is right, and that a vast stock of patterns is mere waste of money. Yet the first thing is to have confidence in the fly one is using. A letter on " when and where to expect salmon" proves, though it does not admit, that we know really nothing of the causes which may impel salmon to rise or make them fail to rise. It was April 9th, 1795, when Lord Home was fishing on the Dee and caught thirty-eight salmon ; and it was a rainy day with East wind. Yet who can say if the weather or what other causes con- tributed to that record bag ? Mr. Chaytor had his first lessons from his grandfather, whose rules were : "Fish with your heads, don't be in a hurry, keep up your rod top, and never have any slack line in the water." It would be hard to compress more wisdom for beginners into so few words. Upon the natural history of salmon Mr. Chaytor has some- thing to say, and especially on spawning habits, of which he has been a close observer. In particular he deglares the statement, which will be found in every book, that the eggs of the salmon are laid in a trough and then covered up by the fish, to be erroneous. When we come to habits of salmon, there is hardly one that has not provoked bitter controversy. It is new to us to learn that a salmon parr may certainly be told from a trout when lifted out of the water by its wriggles until grasped. A trout of the same size bangs from the book almost motionless. There are at least a dozen useful " wrinkles " imparted in this volume, and the knot for joining gut which is described appears to be almost unknown and of remark- able strength. Besides didactic letters, there are some which are autobiographical and make very pleasant reading. A famous angler had two thousand seven hundred volumes on fishing in his library, yet Mr. Chaytor's book would be a desirable addition' even to such a collection.
We turn to very different angling waters. Mr. Charles Frederick Holder's Recreations of a Sportsman on. the Pacific Coast transports us to Southern California. The present volume bears a certain resemblance to the earlier works of the same author, but those who like dramatic stories of struggles with gigantic fish should not fail to read it. It contains charming descriptions of charming country, made more attractive to some of us—for example, the present writer—than most of the United States by the old Spanish atmosphere which still surrounds parts of California. There are descriptions too of tussles with giant rainbow trout and of sweet trout-streams that descend from the mountain country. But the sea round the island of San Clemente, that paradise of the sea angler, provides Mr. Holder with material for his tales of tuna, yellowtail, black sea-bass, swordfish, and sharks. These game-fish of the Pacific are caught under most sporting conditions in a climate where the land, the sea, and the air combine to make life delightful, It might be thought that a thirty-pound yellowtail on a nine- ounce rod and a nine-thread line would be difficult enough to play. This is the standard of the Tuna Club for fish up to one hundred pounds. Now there is a rival or daughter club which bases its existence on a six-ounce rod, a six-thread line, and a six-foot or longer rod. Fish up to nearly fifty pounds have been taken with this tackle, but it requires skill and coolness. The biggest swordfish for the season 1909 at Santa Catalina weighed three hundred and forty-seven pounds. This we understand to have been killed on a line not much thicker than "an eye-glass cord." It may be an attraction, too, that in this fishing the tiro has as good a chance of hooking (if not of landing) as big a fish as the experieneed angler. A man came into the town of Avalon in 1907 who had never, caught a fish. He visited a shop where large mounted fish were exhibited, and when the ewner wanted. to sell' him one he replied : "I will .go out and catch a
larger one than you have." The fish in the shop were the records of years, but in less than an hour the new-comer had hooked the largest long-finned tuna. Then he returned to the taxidermist saying, like a true fellow- countryman of Mr. Holder :—" There is the fish I went out to catch. You see it's bigger than any you have. Mount it!" The recreations of the fisherman on this coast include gaffing a somnolent sunfish and pursuing (but not securing) an orca with a revolver. The sunfish (called by Americans " moonfish ") may weigh anything up to a ton. The orca is a species of small but ferocious cetacean or whale. We have said enough to show that there is good reading in this book, and the author's veracity is beyond suspicion. He is a great sportsman, and it is worth noting that he places the swordfish above the tarpon as a sporting fish.
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