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Be prepared. The time will come when you play your trophy fish when he will make for some rapids, despite the braking power of your slap-drag clutch. There is one trick, and that alone, which may stop him. Lift the pick-up finger and give him slack. Don't keep an ounce of pressure on him. With the monofilament peeling off and tension removed, he will seldom go more than a hundred yards, if that. Nine times out of ten, he will pause before he's gone fifty yards; the line will be carried below him by the current, and the light tension which the current created on the line below is enough to cause him to turn upstream toward the hole where you first hooked him and give you that heaven-sent opportunity to get below him and then tighten up, forcing him to take more vigorous action. Making your trophy fish fight an upstream battle saps his strength more quickly. In a four-mile-an-hour current, a fish which travels about eight miles an hour at top speed will be reduced to four miles an hour if he stays in mid-current, while if he were to go downstream he could merely keep upright in the water and exert an equal pressure on your outfit. Actually, by using his own top speed he could go twelve 20A
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