376 FISHING IN AMERICAN WATERS. 



short of the mature salmon. A shoal of them is like a joy- 

 ous ball-party in full costume. It lacks the embonpoint of 

 the salmon as much as the young people of a gay ball-party 

 do that of their parents. The grilse when attached to a 

 hook plays more gayly and with less judgment than does 

 the full-grown salmon, skipping about and playing with great 

 energy, and never stopping to sulk, or, more properly, to study 

 the cause of its grief, until it gayly darts up to the gaffer and 

 falls an easy prey, as does the coquette to the practiced skill 

 of a heart-thief. 



THE GRILSE. 



The grilse is the same fish which left its river as a smolt. In 

 its ocean pastures, where it has spent one or two winters, it has 

 doffed the -clumsy guise of puppyhood, and the top of its head, 

 dorsal, and caudal have become velvety, while the black beads 

 on its gills and upper mandible begin to appear. It lacks 

 the jetty intensity which the top of the head and some of the 

 fins of the adult salmon disclose, but its white is equal in 

 satiny sheen to the salmon of best condition. Its weight is 

 from five to eight pounds, and, having never spawned, it fol- 

 lows the salmon up toward the spawning-pools at the head of 

 the stream, reaching them toward the end of the spawning 

 season ; and after spawning, the next spring, during its early 

 rains, or in winter before, it falls back again over cataract and 

 rapid until it gains the estuary, to return to sea, and fatten, 

 and enlarge to a veritable salmon. 



Thus the reader may have seen that the fingerling becomes 

 the parr, the parr develops scales to cover the bars on its 

 sides and becomes a smolt, goes to sea and returns a grilse, 

 then returns to sea and comes back a salmon. 



