MATURITY 149 



If there has been a spoil of dry weather prior to the usual time of 

 any run, in rases where a river enters directly on the sea without any 

 great intermediate stretch of tidal water, the sea-trout congreo-ate in 

 numbers at the river mouth. One may see them gambolling and 

 leaping then on any calm evening manifestly showing the keenest 

 anxiety to enter the river proper, but few of them venturing to traverse 

 the dangerous shallows at the river mouth. At such times they fall an 

 easy prey to the splash-netter and, in unprotected districts, the shoals 

 are sadly decimated by unscrupulous persons even now in Scotland, 

 although of late years the officers of the Fishmongers Company of 

 London have done much to stop this illegal traffic. 



Where the water is of the normal saltness of the sea off the mouths 

 of such streams, sea-trout seldom take freely any lure the angler can 

 offer them. But in many places, such as narrow channels or sea-lochs, 

 where the water is brackish, they will often take fly or " minnow," 

 although it is not easy to say why in one place they should prefer fly 

 and in another minnow and vice versa, as they often do. Even in the 

 sea an ordinary earth-worm is sometimes an effective bait, but, in truth, 

 the feeding habits of the fish — or at least the lures with which thev may 

 be caught — vary so .surprisingly in different localities that no rule can 

 be laid down for angling for them in salt water. Thev will seldom 

 anwhere take at all when actually waiting at a river mouth for the 

 weather to break. When the weather does break the fish eagerly run 

 up with the first of the spate and so closelv crowded on each other are 

 they sometimes that the rushing noise of their passage up the shallows 

 can be distinctly heard above the sound of the rising waters. 



In greater rivers, where there are tidal reaches, even if the river be 

 under its normal flow, a proportion of fi.sh will always risk the ascent 

 at the top of each tide. They pass up to the fresh-water pools during 

 the darker hours, seldom running at all in da\ light. Some of the best 



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