234 FLY FISHING AND SPINNING 



but a little fellow who has to depend entirely on his own 

 resources during his three to five months' stay in salt water. 

 Luckily for him he is full of life and vigour, and his river 

 training has given him wonderful speed and quickness, 

 while his good fairy, Instinct, is always with him. 



THE SMOLT IN SALT WATER 



Nothing is definitely known as to the wanderings of the 

 smolt after reaching the sea, either as to the period which 

 elapses before he leaves the company of his fellow-s molts, 

 or of the distances to which his travels thereafter extend. 

 What we do know is that the chemical properties of the salt 

 water are most favourable ; that his enemies are numerous 

 and voracious ; that his food is plentiful and wonder- 

 fully nourishing, and his appetite abnormal ; that, escaping 

 from the ogres of the wonderland in which he travels, he 

 increases in size and strength in a most remarkable manner ; 

 and that, after satisfying his feeding instincts and stuffing 

 to repletion, he is called by his fairy godmother, and guided 

 amid the hills and valleys, the trackless plains and forests 

 of the ocean floor, back to the home he left. It is possible 

 that, as he nears his destination, some perceptible flavour 

 of his own river may entice him nearer ; but whatever the 

 ties may be which draw him home, he may be found in 

 the following year a full-grown grilse of from three to six 

 pounds in weight, with numbers of other grilse of his own 

 season, in the lower reaches of the salmon rivers, waiting 

 for a further call to take him away back to the upland 

 stream of his birth. 



During the last six years owing to the development of 

 the science of scaleology to coin a new word it has been 

 conclusively proved that a grilse seldom returns to his 

 river during the year in which he goes down to the sea as 

 a smolt, and that if a fish does happen to do so, it does not 



