36 The North Country Angler. 



I suppose it is this pink, that Mr. Walton tells 

 us of, when he says, " There be certain waters 

 " that breed trouts, remarkable both for their 

 c * number and smallness. I know, says he, a 

 " little brook in Kent, that breeds them to a 

 " number incredible, and you may take them 

 " twenty or forty in an hour, but none greater 

 (C than about the size of a gudgeon. There are 

 ff also in rivers near the sea, as at Winchester, 

 "** or the Thames about Windsor, a little trout 

 * ( called a samlet or skegger trout, that will 

 " bite as fast and as freely as minnows; they are 

 " by some taken to be young salmons, but in 

 u those waters they never grow to be bigger than 

 K a herring.*' 



How these pinks are bred is still the question; 

 my opinion of it is this : I have sometimes seen 

 a she-salmon, that had, as I supposed, lost her 

 mate, with two or three milt trouts in a hole, 

 as I thought, spawning with her ; sometimes a 

 milter that has lost his mate, and could not find 

 another in due time, has had two or three she- 

 trouts in the bed with him. I have with a net^ 

 taken them of both these sorts, to satisfy my 

 curiosity, and released them again immediately ; 

 the spawn of both kinds issuing from them : Of 

 these unnatural copulations proceeds the 

 pink; whether it outlives the winter or not I 

 cannot tell; perhaps it may go down to the 

 sea about November, when the salmon go 

 down$ when they have spawned, and may 

 never return ; for I could never see one of 

 them in the spring, above four inches long. 



This little fish however affords the angler plenty 



