SALMON FISHING 



Nicolas Cox includes in his Gentleman's Recreation some 

 account of salmon fishing, but his remarks, with one exception, 

 bear striking resemblance to those of General Venables (these 

 old writers had a flagitious habit of copying without acknow- 

 ledgement), and the exception relieves Mr. Cox from any 

 suspicion of personal acquaintance with the subject. When 

 he describes the salmon as making prodigious leaps with its 

 tail in its mouth, we feel justified in declining his guidance. 



If we may base an opinion on the degree of attention 

 bestowed by the old authorities respectively upon salmon and 

 pike-angling, far more fishermen devoted themselves to the 

 latter sport than to the former ; though, it is hardly necessary 

 to say, salmon were plentiful in rivers where they are now 

 scarce, and also in rivers, as the Thames and Tyne, whence they 

 have long disappeared altogether. It is at least permissible 

 to suppose that Mascall voiced a feeling general among his 

 contemporaries when he described the fish as ' cumbrous to 

 take ' : length for length, a pike is less than half the weight of 

 a salmon. 



The year 1821 saw the capture of the last Thames salmon : 

 two, weighing together 31 lbs., were that year taken at Boulter's 

 Lock. Twenty years before, the season's catch at this station 

 was sixty-six fish, weighing 1124 lbs. : in 1780, more than fifty 

 were caught by one fisherman in the reach opposite Clieveden 

 Springs, and the men working other stations killed as many. 

 Thames salmon always commanded a high price in the London 

 market, no doubt because they were fresher than those brought 

 from a greater distance in those days of slow transport : an 

 18-lb. fish was sold in 1808 for £7, 4s., or 8s. per lb. 



It is not easy to choose a salmon-fishing story from the 

 mass of material offered by angling literature, but perhaps 

 Captain A. P. Gordon Cumming's letter of 20th June 1848, 

 to the author of Natural History and Sport in Moray, recounts 

 the triumph over difficulties as perplexing as any ever en- 

 countered by angler : — 



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