244 FLY FISHING AND SPINNING 



attempt while in fresh water. Now, if the salmon's stomach 

 was in the normal feeding condition this small trout should 

 have been completely swallowed by the huge kelt, even as 

 the rat was swallowed by the small salmon ; in which case 

 not the head only, but the whole of the trout would have 

 entered the stomach of the salmon, and would have 

 been reduced to pulp. Salmon have been found in estuaries 

 with full-sized herrings in their stomachs. If they are 

 capable of swallowing full-sized herrings, it is obvious that 

 a huge kelt would have no difficulty at all in swallowing a 

 J-pound trout. The rat, however, found completely in 

 the stomach was undigested. These contradictions may 

 be taken as samples of the proofs (sic) and arguments 

 advanced to show that not only do clean salmon eat and 

 swallow food, but that this is the aim and object of their 

 onslaught on things living and moving in fresh water. 

 Two totally dissimilar results of swallowing, or attempting 

 to swallow, food are advanced to prove this theory ; in 

 neither case are these arguments successful. 



A fish will often seize another which is too large for it 

 to swallow. A fish so seized enters the throat of its captor, 

 and apparently sticks in that position ; fish have been at 

 times caught on a lure in these circumstances. One end 

 of the smaller fish, when removed from the larger one, is 

 more or less in a pulpy condition, or at least shows some 

 signs of decomposition, and it has always appeared to me 

 to be an open question as to the causes which have produced 

 this condition in the smaller fish. The contributor to the 

 Fishing Gazette mentioned above considers it due to the 

 action of the gastric juices, and if this is so these gastric 

 juices must have been in the throat, and not in the 

 stomach ; he ignores the effect of the vomeral bone and 

 teeth, throat pressure, and muscular action, to say nothing 

 of the laceration of the other teeth. 



