WHITLING 



129 



Whitling feed ravenously, or at any rate they take a lure with 

 avidity, during their ascent which is generally when the water begins to 

 clear after a spate. Gaudy artificial flies and silver Devon minnows 

 are then the most attractive lures, but the truth is they will take readily 

 any kind of bait of which the earth-worm is not the least attractive. 

 When they have settled down in their quarters in river or loch and the 

 waters have become normal, they will still rise freely to the fly and take 

 other lures, but they are more capricious in their tastes then than when 

 fresh-run. At the same time they feed with more regularity than the 

 mature sea-trout do in fresh water, and if it cannot be said that they 

 increase in plumpness it is at least certain that they do not lose flesh, 

 and apparently they even grow in length, if slowly, after leaving the 

 salt water. 



Although they soon lose their first brilliancy of scale, whitling do 

 not — or at least by far the greater number do not — assume the spawning 

 colours of the mature male fish, nor do the females darken so much. 

 One might count this as another argument against the universal 

 spawning of whitling. But I shall discuss this vexed question 

 immediately. 



I may here describe the appearance of two of these young fish after 

 they had spent the winter months in Loch Lomond — I caught them when 

 trolling on 3rd March, 1913. They were to all intents and purposes 

 identical, both being females of three-quarters of a pound in weight 

 and each measuring 14 inches over all. They were fat, plump and in 

 good condition. The back, speckled as usual with black spots, was 

 in colour a dull green with a transparent watery look, the sides and 

 underparts being of a dingy white. One fish had been feeding freely 

 on caddis, the stomach and alimentary canal being distended with the 

 disintegrated cases, though near the gullet some of the large caddis 

 flies were in a fairly perfect state. The other whitling was literally 

 gorged with she 11 fish, the common pliysa fouttnaUs, and yet both these 



