20 UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES OF MARINE FISHERIES. 
the upper reaches and small tributaries, for here are the chief 
spawning grounds, and it is the proprietor of these waters who 
gets the least benefit from the salmon, because they arrive there 
last. Often they do not reach the head waters until the close 
time, so that the proprietor whose stretch of water is of the most 
value to the river as a whole, gets absolutely no benefit from the 
salmon fishing. What does he do? If he is fond of fishing he 
turns his attention to trout, and sees that his water is well stocked 
with these, and the result is that the spawning beds are over- 
crowded with fish. Early trout eggs are rooted up by salmon, 
and their eggs are in turn rooted up by the late trout. It is a 
fearful state of affairs, which can only result in disaster to the 
river as a whole, and the irony of it is that the unfortunate 
fisherman gets the blame when salmon get scarcer. It is all very 
well to say that the fisherman does nothing for the benefit of the 
salmon, which, by the way, is not altogether the case, as will 
be shown later, but it must also be borne in mind that neither is 
he guilty of wasteful mismanagement. 
How ANGLING Is HARMFUL. 
Another point which I should like to emphasise strongly is 
that angling for salmon with rod and line is the most harmful 
manner of catching the fish in a river, and where fly fishing only 
is allowed this applies equally to trout, because it is the young 
and lusty fish which are caught by such lures, and these are 
precisely the fish which should be allowed to remain as breeders. 
Think what it must mean to any river to have the cream of its 
stock taken every year, and the old and infirm left to spawn. If 
you examine the fish on the spawning beds, you will find a very 
large majority of old fish, particularly males, which ought, for 
the benefit of the river, to have been taken out long ago. This 
is one of the services the fishermen render a river—the nets catch 
their fair percentage of old fish which are past being of value as 
breeders. There are several important reasons why old fish 
should not be allowed to become too numerous in any river :—(1) 
As breeders they are inferior, producing fewer eggs for their 
weight, and eggs of an inferior quality, which produce weakly 
alevins. (2) Old fish spawn later than those in the prime of life, 
and very frequently root up eggs already deposited in order to 
lay their own. (3) Old males are quarrelsome brutes, and by 
