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. "Odd! my verra heart lap to my mouth whan I gat the glisk o' something mair like a red stirk than ought else muve off the redd. I fand my hair creep on my heid. I minded it was the Sabbath, and I sudna hae been there. It micht be a delusion o' the Enemy, if it wasna the de'il himsel'."