CHAPTER XI 



APPLICATION 



WE have treated at considerable length of the four 

 principal methods usually employed for capturing 

 trout. The reader may perhaps be disappointed that 

 salmon-roe fishing has not been added as a fifth ; but 

 our reason for keeping it out is, that we do not con- 

 sider it a justifiable method of angling, the high price 

 the roe brings affording great, indeed the princi- 

 pal, encouragement to the wholesale destruction 

 of breeding salmon which goes on in Tweed 

 and its tributaries during close time. We think 

 that in the first Act introduced upon the sub- 

 ject of the salmon fisheries there should be a 

 clause inserted rendering it illegal for any one 

 to fish with salmon roe, or to be found with it in his 

 possession. Doing away with this traffic would do 

 more to protect the Tweed than all the water-bailiffs 

 between Tweedsmuir and Berwick. There are cer- 

 tainly a few salmon taken shortly before the fishings 

 close with roe sufficiently matured for curing, but 

 the roe legally obtained in this way is not a 

 hundredth part of that taken illegally during 



