254 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 



but few of these early fish escape to the spawning-beds. If 

 inspectors and water bailiffs are on the alert to insist on the 

 statutory minimum of mesh if inch from knot to knot 

 when wet every fish weighing 2 Ib. and under ought to get 

 through the net ; but it is within my own knowledge that the 

 law is pretty commonly evaded in this respect, and a much 

 smaller mesh employed. Even where the mesh measures no 

 less than i|- inch from knot to knot when dry, it contracts far 

 within these limits so soon as it is put in the water. 



As the season advances, salmon-trout continue to run from 

 the sea, but show a marked diminution in size, until, at the 

 beginning of August, great shoals of small salmon-trout, from 

 half a pound to one pound in weight, make their way into the 

 rivers and brooks. These are the equivalent in age of the 

 grilse of salmon ; that is, they are virgin salmon-trout, leaving 

 the sea for the first time, and are known in different localities 

 as finnocks, herling, whitling, whiting, etc. Once they get into 

 a river with a good leading head of water, salmon-trout run up 

 to their appointed ground much quicker than salmon. If the 

 river run through a lake, they will tarry awhile therein, 

 behaving exactly like their non-migratory kin ; but when 

 gravid they hasten to the spawning-grounds, deposit their ova, 

 and are off again as kelts to the sea at much greater speed than 

 salmon. In many rivers they show a peculiar and inveterate 

 preference for certain tributaries, and desert the main stream 

 for these, in some instances when the favoured affluent joins it 

 only a short distance above the tide. 



The local names of the salmon-trout are numerous and 

 varied. On the Tees it is known as scurf, or cochivies ; in 

 Scotland generally as the sea-trout, except on the Berwickshire 

 coast, where that name is applied to the bull-trout ; in Cumber- 

 land as mort ; and on the Tweed as whiting, or whitling, though 

 that term is generally restricted to this fish in the grilse stage, 

 corresponding exactly to the Highland name for it, finnock 

 i.e., fionach^ the white fellow. Elsewhere in Scotland these 



