i7g The Salmon 



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if it had been feeding and growing fatter, it is still losing weight. It 

 is not, therefore, the fish that is growing fatter ; it is the eye that 

 is deceived by the scales becoming more silvery and the fish more 

 showy. The kelt, of course, does become much stronger in April, 

 and is then more difficult to land ; but the same thing holds good 

 with regard to spring fish, for in the cold weather in January and 

 February they are not nearly so strong as they would be if caught 

 in April or May. It is the higher temperature of the water that 

 is the cause of this : it is not that the fish has become stronger 

 through feeding. No doubt a fish immediately after its exertions 

 in spawning is weaker than it would be, say, two months later, 

 but its strength is due to good health and not to feeding. In all 

 my experience I have never observed a kelt chase a parr, smolt, 

 or trout, nor have I ever known of any one having seen such a 

 thing, although I quite recently read an article in which the writer 

 mentions that kelts make great havoc amongst smolts ! If salmon 

 do feed in fresh water there would be nothing but parr, smolts, 

 and trout for them to feed upon. If such were their food, then the 

 hundreds of thousands of salmon in some of our rivers would 

 swallow them all up in a week. They will take a cherry, a goose- 

 berry, an acorn, a leaf, or almost anything that swims against the 

 current. On taking any of these, however, the fish eject them even 

 although they have been swallowed, and allow them to fall to the 

 bottom without exciting any further curiosity. 



I have on several occasions dropped prawn from a bridge into a 

 river. They were readily taken, but after a few nibbles the fish 

 allowed them to fall to the bottom. I have dropped sweets in the 

 same way, and the fish took them, but treated them as they did the 

 prawn. A few years ago, for the sake of experiment, I obtained 

 leave to kill as many kelts as I wished during the last week of 

 April, at which period the river is full of smolts. I killed many of 

 them, but failed to find any food in their stomachs. At the same 

 time I killed many sea-trout kelts, weighing, in some cases, 3 and 

 4 Ibs. In most of these, however, I found flies and the larvae 



