TAKING THE EGGS. ICI 



cibly. This is the great fault of beginners. They are 

 so afraid that the fish is ripe, -and that they will not 

 find it out, that they often kill it, if unripe, by using ex- 

 cessive force. Let me say that your danger, if you are 

 inexperienced, is not half so much of losing the spawn 

 as of killing the fish. I knew of a man who had thirty 

 trout, and who killed them all before the spawning sea- 

 son began, without getting an egg, by trying to force 

 the eggs. When the fish is r'pe, the eggs will come : 

 that you may depend on, in nineteen cases out of 

 twenty. If they do not come and come easily in any 

 instance, do not trouble yourself about that fish ; let 

 her go. You will get her the next day again, if she is 

 not quite but nearly ripe. If you have any doubt at 

 all whether the fish is ripe, give the fish the benefit of 

 the doubt. In time you will learn to tell at a glance, 

 and patience and practice will soon bring that time to 

 pass. To tell quickly and surely whether a fish is ripe, 

 is something that cannot be learned from books. 



There are certain signs, it is true, which usually ac- 

 company ripeness in a female trout, of which the loose- 

 ness of the eggs in the abdomen, after they have left 

 the ovaries, is the surest. There are others also, but 

 the specific signs are all fallible, and what an expert 

 tells by, is not one specified sign or another, but an in- 

 describable ripe look, which is neither color, shape, 

 nor condition of organs, but a something pervading 

 the whole, a /^/// ensemble, which tells at a glance that 

 the fish is ripe, as in a similar way you tell that a 

 peach or a blackberry is ripe. This you must learn 

 by practice. Books cannot teach it, but practice will. 



