Part 18 (2/2)

”Well,” said Colin, shaking hands, ”I'm ever so much obliged, and I really feel now as if I knew something about a hatchery. And I've had a share in one experiment, anyway!”

On his return to the cottage he found the professor getting out fis.h.i.+ng-tackle.

”Going out again?” queried Colin.

”I thought you might like to try a little sport-fis.h.i.+ng,” was the answer; ”you said you were going down to Santa Catalina, and you might as well get your hand in. You can stay over another day, can't you?”

”I suppose I could,” Colin answered, ”and I should like to catch a really big salmon with a rod and line, not only for the fun of it, but because I happen to know that Father's never caught one, and I'd like to beat him out on something. It's pretty difficult, though, to get ahead of Dad!”

The professor shook his head with mock gravity.

”That's not a particularly good motive,” he said, ”and I don't know that I ought to increase any boy's stock of conceit. It is usually quite big enough. But maybe you won't catch anything, and I'll chance it.”

”Oh, but I will catch one,” Colin declared confidently; ”I'm going to try and get one of the hundred-pounders that I've read about.”

”You'll have a long sail, then,” his host replied, ”because fish of that size don't come far south of Alaskan waters. Twenty-five or thirty pounds is as big as you can look for, and even those will give you all the sport you want.”

”Very well,” Colin responded, a little abashed, ”I'll be satisfied.”

”It's rather a pity,” the professor said, when, after lunch, they had started for the fis.h.i.+ng-grounds in a small catboat, ”that you haven't had a chance to go up to The Dalles to see the salmon leaping up the falls and the rapids. I think it's one of the most wonderful sights in the world.”

”I've seen the Atlantic salmon jump small falls,” Colin said, ”but I don't think I ever saw one larger than ten or twelve pounds.”

”I have seen hundreds of them fifty to eighty pounds in weight leaping at falls in the smaller Alaskan rivers. I remember seeing twenty or thirty in the air at a time while the water below the falls was boiling with the thousands of fish thres.h.i.+ng the water before their leap.”

”How high can they jump?” asked Colin.

”About sixteen foot sheer stops even the best of them,” the professor said, ”but there are not many direct falls like that. Nearly all rapids and falls are in jumps of five or six feet, and salmon can take that easily. Still, there is a fall nearly twenty feet high that some salmon must have leaped, for a few have been found above it, and they must either have leaped up or walked round--there's no other way.”

”How do you suppose they did it?”

”In a very high wind, probably,” the professor answered; ”a gale blowing up the canyon might just give the extra foot or two at the end of a high leap.”

As soon as they were about four miles out, the sail was taken in and, following the professor's example, Colin dropped his line over the stern. The s.h.i.+ning copper and nickel spoon sank slowly, and the boy paid out about a hundred feet of line. Taking up the oars and with the rod ready to hand, Colin rowed slowly, parallel with the sh.o.r.e. Two or three times the boy had a sensation that the boat was being followed by some mysterious denizen of the sea, but though in the distance there seemed a strange ripple on the water, nothing definite appeared, and he forgot it for the moment as the professor got the first strike.

With the characteristic scream, the reel shrilled out, and the fish took nearly a hundred feet of line, but the angler held the brake so hard that the strain rapidly exhausted the fish, and when it turned toward the boat, the professor's deft fingers reeled at such a speed that the line wound in almost as rapidly as the rush of the fish. As soon as the salmon saw the boat it tried to break away, but its captor had caught a glimpse of the fish, and seeing that it was not too large for speedy action, reeled in without loss of time, and gaffed him promptly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THIRTY-POUND ATLANTIC SALMON LEAPING FALLS AND RAPIDS IN A NEWFOUNDLAND RIVER.

_By permission of H. K. Burrison._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EIGHTY-POUND PACIFIC SALMON LEAPING WATERFALL ON AN ALASKA RIVER.

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

”Small chinook,” he said, as he tossed him into the boat.

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