236 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



one of fifteen, hooked in the same pooh There is conse- 

 quently much difference in the time required to kill a fish, 

 but this arises in some instances from the nature of the 

 water, still or rapid, or the weather and the time of day. 

 The first Salmon I ever hooked — one of sixteen pounds — I 

 killed in about ten minutes, without its jumping once, while 

 a nine-pound fish, which contended with me for two hundred 

 yards down a succession of rapids, required three-quarters of 

 an hour. Then, again, I have killed one of ten pounds in 

 three minutes, from its having exhausted itself by continued 

 desperate leaping. 



Food of the Salmon. — The natural food of the young 

 fish, in its native stream, consists no doubt of small insects, 

 the larva of flies, and the flies themselves that deposit their 

 eggs in pools and running water to pass through the process 

 of incubation. I frequently took the fry last summer when 

 fishing for Salmon with an ordinary-sized Salmon-fly. These 

 young fish appeared not to feed in still pools or in the eddies on 

 the margin of the rapid, as the Trout do, but in the smoothly 

 gliding, swift water, where the Salmon are found ; they would 

 frequently jump at the knots on my casting-line. Before the 

 British Salmon-streams were protected from improper fishing, 

 and before it was known that the little fish then called the 

 " Parr," was really the young of the Salmon, they were 

 indiscriminately slaughtered by boys and foolish anglers. 

 This was also the case, to a great extent, after they had 

 arrived at the Smolt state, and were descending the rivers 

 on their first migration to sea. 



It is supposed, that the feeding-ground of the Salmon 

 at sea, is not very remote from the mouth of the river 

 from which it migrates. 



Regarding its food while at sea, Dr. Knox says : " The tint 

 of its flesh, its superior flavor, and its wonderful growth, is 



