SECTION III. 



STAKE-NETS. 



" In truth I heard it, Provost ; and was glad to hear that the scoundrels had so 

 much pluck as to right themselves against a fashion which would make the upper 

 heritors a sort of clocking hens to hatch the fish that the folks below were to catch 

 and eat. " Redgauntlet . 



AFTER the salmon have left their migratory abode in the ocean, 

 on their return to the rivers, they proceed, as we have stated, 

 in successive shoals along the coast, at a short distance from 

 the land. It is, therefore, obviously a matter of considerable 

 importance to the fishery, that the course of the fish should be 

 kept as clear, and as free from obstructions, as possible.* 

 Formerly, at the periods when the fishery was in its most 

 flourishing state, this was the case, for there was then scarcely 

 even a coble-net fishing to be seen beyond the mouths of the 

 rivers, or if there happened to be one, it seldom extended more 

 than a few yards from the shore ; accordingly, the shoals 

 arrived unbroken at the rivers. In this view the ancient Scot- 

 tish statutes, by which all fixed engines are prohibited within 

 reach of the tide, which necessarily embraced the whole sea- 

 coast of the kingdom, and consequently the course of the sal- 

 mon returning to the rivers, as will be afterwards shown, were 

 of essential service to the fishery. Some years ago, however, a 

 new mode of fishing, or species of fishing-apparatus, called 

 Stake-nets, has been introduced into the estuaries, and from 

 thence extended to the sea-coast, by which the salutary enact- 

 ments of the statutes have been defeated, and from which the 

 most pernicious consequences have resulted, and must farther 



* The method of fishing proposed by Mr Russel (in Edinburgh Review, vol. 

 xciii. p. 365, and Quarterly Review, vol. ci. p. 168), is that, when practicable, 

 river-fishing should be carried on by one fixed engine, that would take every fish 

 when in operation, and could be managed to let them pass at will. 



