GREAT LAKE TROUT. 131 



far from the surface ; a specimen which weighed six pounds and a half was killed on the 

 2ist. of September, 1874, in Lough Eske, on a fly by Mr. Arthur Wallan ; its length was 

 twenty-two inches and a half. Mr. Arthur R. Wallace took last season (1878) on a fly a 

 young Salnio fcrox, one pound and a half in weight, in Lough Eske. In the landing-net he 

 ejected from his stomach a small Trout five or six inches in length, partially digested. It 

 was a large fish for its captor to swallow, and had been doubled up in the stomach, for 

 which it wa's evidently too long. Young fish, from one to two pounds in weight, are said 

 to rise more freely to the usual Trout flies ; but neither my brother-in-law nor myself 

 succeeded in catching even a young Lake, or as it is called at Garrison, a Black Lough Trout; 

 and I do not think we ever rose one. 



When I was at Lough Melvin, the boatmen were particularly desirous that I should 

 secure a Salino ferox, knowing that I had come not simply for sport, but chiefly for specimens. 

 After many hours' fruitless trolling, at last the line from the reel ran out briskly, and I had 

 "great expectations" that the fish would turn out to be the Great Lake Trout. "Shure, 

 Sir," said one of the boatmen, "It is a Black Loch," on the fish being landed and seen by 

 him. It was really nothing but the Common Brown Trout of about two pounds In weight. 

 "The wish was father to the thought," and I suspect that fish are often taken in Lough 

 Melvin which the non-scientific angler is led to believe to be Salmo fcrox by the sympathetic 

 boatmen. This feature in the character of the Irish fishermen, for whom I have the greatest 

 respect for their sterling worth, honesty, and good nature, Is well Illustrated by Charles 

 Kingsley, in his book The Water Babies. 



"You must not believe all that Dennis tells you, mind, for if you ask him, 



"'Is there a Salmon here do you think, Dennis?" 



"'Is It Salmon, thin, your honour manes? Salmon? Cartloads it Is of thim, thin, an' 

 ridgmens, shouldthering ache out of water, an' ye'd but the luck to see thim.' 



"Then you fish the pool over, and never get a rise. 



"'But there can't be a Salmon here, Dennis! and if you'll but think. If one had come 

 up last tide, he'd be gone to the higher pools by now.' 



'"Shure, thin, and your honour's the thrue fisherman, and understands It all like a 

 book. Why, ye spake as if ye'd known the wather a thousand years. As I said, how could 

 there be a fish here at all, just now?' 



"'But you said just now they were shouldering each other out of water.' 



"And then Dennis will look up at you with his handsome, sly, soft, sleepy, goodnatured, 

 untrustable, Irish grey eye, and answer with the prettiest smile : 



"'Shure, and didn't I think your honour would like a pleasant answer.'" — (P. 130.) 



Salvio ferox, as its name implies, is a most formidable fish, both from the size to which 

 it attains, as well as from the very formidable armature of its mouth : next to the Pike it Is 

 perhaps the most ferocious of the fresh-water inhabitants of our lakes and rivers. Mr. Couch 

 mentions that the Earl of Enniskillen has taken Lake Trout of the weight of twenty-eight 

 and even thirty pounds In Lough Eske. Thompson was Informed by a fish vendor that he 

 had frequently In his possession for sale specimens that weighed thirty pounds. In a note 

 Thompson says, "In Sampson's Londonderry, the Great Trout of Lough Neagh is said to 

 reach fifty pounds." The fish of this last named lake, I have little doubt, feed extensively on 

 the Pollan, or Fresh-water Herring, so abundantly occurring there. The largest Common 

 Trout ever caught In Lough Neagh, was taken with a night-line, and a Pollan as a bait; if 

 I remember right. It weighed thirty-three pounds. In Loch Lomond there Is a Trout which 

 the people call Powan-eater ; — the Scotch Powan is the same as the Irish Pollan {Coregonus 

 pollan) — this Powan-eater is probably 5. ferox. In Ireland the term Biiddagh Is sometimes 

 applied to this fish. Swift, in A Dialogue in Hibernian Style betiveen A and B, makes A 

 inquire, "What kind of a man is your neighbour Squire Dolt? B. Why, a mere Buddagh ! 



