90 WHAT I HAVE SEEh WHILE FISHING 



often taken fish which, to all appearances, had not 

 been more than twenty-four hours away from salt 

 water. Long ago I arrived at the conclusion that 

 there is such order in the proceedings of these 

 animals, while in fresh water, as leaves no room for 

 doubt that Nature has definitely designed for the 

 more vigorous early comers to travel on and up, 

 while the later arrivals, fatter and more fuller 

 developed, take easier journeys, and to the fattest, 

 fullest and latest are assigned the most easily 

 reached lower beds. 



Although there can be few anglers who have 

 had more opportunities of studying the habits of 

 salmon, or more love in pursuing that study, than I 

 have, yet I speak about the fish " with bated breath 

 and whispered humbleness." My experience reaches 

 back to long before the time when these fish did not, 

 so wiseacres said, feed in fresh water. I was cer- 

 tainly a little upset by this pronouncement, for I had 

 seen them feed, and had more than once been com- 

 pelled to cut my worm-baited hook from the depths 

 of their gullet. 



In the great controversy that arose on the subject 

 the " feeders " held the upper hand, until a professor 

 got hold of a fish, examined it, and said that 

 feeding in fresh water on the part of a salmon was 

 an impossibility owing to certain excremental dis- 

 abilities that the fish had to submit to on its entrance 

 to fresh waters. I never think of this opinion of the 

 professor without being reminded of the wild cats 



