Then there was the taking of salmon from the "redds" as they spawned, of
all methods of capture the least allied to "sport," for the fish then
were soft and flabby, and almost useless as food. Nevertheless, there
was in that, too, a strong element of excitement, for the weapon used,
the clodding or throwing leister, required no mean skill in the using.
This throwing leister was a heavy spear, or rather a heavy "graip,"
having five single-barbed prongs of unequal length but regularly
graduated. To the bar above the shortest prong was lashed a goats'-hair
rope, which was also made fast to the thrower's arm, carefully coiled,
as in a whaling-boat the line is coiled, so that it may run free when
the fish is struck. This leister (or waster) was cast by hand at fish
lying in not too deep water--generally, in fact, when they were on the
spawning beds. It was with this weapon, as one may read in Scrope's
_Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing_, that Tam Purdie--Sir Walter's
Purdie--when a young man captured that "muckle kipper" that seemed to
him to be the "verra de'il himsel'," so big was he. One Sunday forenoon,
as he daundered by the waterside (instead of being, as he should have
been, at church) Tam saw him slide slowly off the redd across the
stream.
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