INTRODUCTORY n 



my friend Mr. W. L. Calderwood, H.M. Inspector of Salmon Fisheries 

 ■^as to which I have no information — I shall be the better pleased. 



In another direction also I think the sea-trout has suffered from the 

 idea that it is a sort of inferior salmon — an idea, still based, I have no 

 doubt, upon its migratory habit. 



Every writer on salmon fishing — there is hardly any exception — 

 used to feel it incumbent upon him to refer to sea-trout fishing, and 

 apparently most of these writers imagined, as Mr. John Bickerdyke in 

 " The Book of the All-round Angler " does, " that to fish for large 

 fresh-run sea-trout is to fish for salmon on a small scale." Mr. Francis 

 Francis, in devoting two pages of "A Book on Angling " to sea-trout 

 fishing, concedes that " the sport is little inferior to the best grilse- 

 fishing." Sir Herbert Maxwell himself is hardly more generous to 

 the gamest of fishes. The net result has generally been rather a 

 travesty of the character of the sea-trout and of the methods of fishing 

 for it. 



I must not be understood to say that no writer who treats of salmon 

 and salmon fishing is to be debarred from treating of sea-trout and 

 sea-trout fishing at the same time, but I think that before doing so in a 

 perfunctory chapter at the end of his book, the writer should consider 

 fairly whether the sea-trout does not, if not on its own account, at least 

 on account of the relationship it bears to each, deserve some greater 

 share of the recognition which has been so freely lavished on the salmon 

 on the one hand, and on the trout on the other. There are signs, how- 

 ever, that this state of indifference regarding the character of the sea- 

 trout, both as a sporting fish and as a study in natural history, will not 

 long continue, for T think that many have recentiv had their interest 

 aroused and their curiosity awakened in the subject. 



If lawyers, then, and, as T fear, many angling writers, by concen- 

 trating their attention too fixedly upon the "migratory " habits of the 

 sea-trout — or in sheer ignorance — have tended to confuse the mental 



