THE COMPLETE ANGLER 129 



by degrees grow sick, and lean, and unseasonable, and 

 kipper ; that is to say, have bony gristles grow out of 

 their lower chaps, not unlike a hawk's beak, which 

 hinders their feeding ; and in time, such fish, so left 

 behind, pine away and die. It is observed, that he may 

 live thus, one year from the sea ; but he then grows 

 insipid and tasteless, and loses both his blood and 

 strength, and pines and dies the second year. And 

 it is noted, that those little salmons called skeggers, 

 which abound in many rivers relating to the sea, are 

 bred by such sick salmons that might not go to the 

 sea ; and that though they abound, yet they never 

 thrive to any considerable bigness. 



But if the old salmon gets to the sea, then that gristle, 

 which shews him to be kipper, wears away, or is cast 

 off, as the eagle is said to cast his bill ; and he recovers 

 his strength, and comes next summer to the same river, 

 if it be possible, to enjoy the former pleasures that 

 there possessed him ; for, as one has wittily observed, 

 he has, like some persons of honour and riches, which 

 have both their winter and summer houses, the fresh 

 rivers for summer, and the salt water for winter, to 

 spend his life in ; which is not, as Sir Francis Bacon 

 hath observed in his History of Life and Death, above 

 ten years. And it is to be observed, that though the 

 salmon does grow big in the sea, yet he grows not fat 

 but in fresh rivers ; and it is observed, that the farther 

 they get from the sea, they be both the fatter and better.* 



* Salmon, having spawned, proceed to sea immediately they 

 have recovered from the exhaustion consequent on spawning. It is, 

 therefore, in the spring, before summer, and not as Walton says, 

 " before winter," that they generally migrate sea-ward. Their 

 remaining for a year, under any circumstances, in fresh water, after 

 they have become adult, never occurs. The gristle, or crook-shaped 

 excrescence, is only found in male salmon, generally about spawning 

 time, and some weeks afterwards, and disappears as the fish gets into 

 condition, to re-appear again the following breeding season. The 

 use of this excrescence is not accurately known. Skeggers are smolts, 

 the one-year-old produce of healthy, and not of " sick salmons." 

 100 E 



