230 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



These are the wiser. During their open the season vivaciously. For 

 stay they are excellent sport. Sal- many they end it also. It is a bright, 

 mon fishing is at its best when the roe isolated episode. Through the second 

 is young say when April cloud and half of January and into March they 

 sunshine are on the water. Many give sparkling weeks ; the only spark- 

 elect to wait in the river against the ling weeks to those who rent no water, 

 distant spawning day. They soon lose They bring the earliest visitors to 

 colour and virility, and pass a sluggish Scotland, filling the hotels on the 

 existence in the deeper pool, seldom banks of the river and the shores of 

 rising to a lure. the loch. Therefore this somewhat 



Scarcely have the spring fish lost obscure run of winter fish is followed 

 the sheen of the sea and taken to the with interest by those who are not very 

 pools than the grilse appear. The familiar with the movements of other 

 run may last from midsummer till salmon. It is the only one which con- 

 early autumn. Milt and roe are bud- cerns them. 



ding. These immigrants are the breed- They average some seventeen pounds, 



ing stock. In their turn they retire For the most part they are barren, 



into the deeper places and wait on, in roeless, and miltless. They come later 



semi-quiescence. So far all is clear, than the autumn run, because, not 



The running has to do with one of the hurried by a like imperious necessity, 



dominant phases of life. These fish they come earlier than the spring run, 



of different ages are there to breed. without the excuse of impatient fore- 



In the closing weeks of the year a cast. Yet they come as regularly 



somewhat exceptional run of salmon as either, and in fairly constant num- 



enter a limited number of our northern bers. Were the visits more occasional, 



streams. I have not heard of them on they would be less puzzling. They 



the Tweed. They enter the Forth and are not there for the ordinary purpose 



make their way, past Stirling and of spawning. They have simply fed 



Callander, to those magic lochs strung full and turned their tails to the sea. 



on its head waters. In numbers, next to those of the 



On the Tay their presence is known Tay, the winter salmon are found in 



to all the world. There they turn the the Ness. They pass up the six miles 



winter of an angler's discontent into of clear, swift, shallow current. Thence 



an early and glorious summer. They along the line of lochs strung on to the 



