Sea -Trout i 79 



At one time the Coquet was a splendid salmon and grilse river, 

 but now holds very few. This is not to be wondered at, as the 

 passage over so many high weirs prevents salmon reaching the 

 higher parts of the river to spawn. A sea-trout will surmount weirs 

 and go through difficult fish-passes where a salmon would fail. I am 

 at present designing fish-passes for these weirs to allow salmon to pass 

 up, and I hope to see the time when salmon will again be plentiful 

 in this river. 



I have compared these so-called bull-trout with the sea-trout of 

 the Tay, which are never called bull-trout, and I can find no difference 

 except that the large ones in the Tay are better fed. They have all 

 the same number of scales fourteen from the adipose fin to the lateral 

 line. Many of them are supposed to be crosses between a salmon and 

 a sea-trout, which no doubt some of them are. I give the photograph of 

 one which the fishermen of the Coquet thought to be a cross (Fig. i/o). 

 What the result of the after-cross would be I leave others to judge. 

 These sea-trout are distributed over the whole of Great Britain, but 

 are more plentiful in the Coquet and in the Tweed than in any other 

 river I know of. As anglers are the people who are chiefly concerned 

 with the life-history of the Salmonidae, there ought to be some simple 

 way for their determining what salmon, sea-trout, and trout are, 

 without having to wade through books and become more confused 

 than ever. Salmo salar should be called fry, parr, smolt, salmon ; 

 foul salmon in the spawning season, and kelt salmon after spawning. 

 Salmo trutta should be called fry, parr, yellow-fin, sea-trout ; and if a 

 further distinction is wished, grilse could be called young salmon, 

 and whitling young sea-trout. 



In small rivers, such as the Dovey in North Wales, where salmon 

 have been over-netted and poached, they have decreased while the sea- 

 trout have increased, showing that sea-trout are more difficult to 

 exterminate than salmon. When on this river not long ago I found 

 that the belief amongst fishermen there is, that the sea-trout Salmo 

 trutta -is different from the bull-trout ; but besides sea-trout and bull- 

 trout they have another which they call brith dail, because it is 



