SALMON AND TROUT FISHING 

 IN CANADA 



By E. T. D. CHAMBERS. 



FROM the easterly limits of Nova Scotia and Labrador to where 

 the waves of the Pacific wash the far westerly coast line of 

 British Columbia, the waters of the Dominion of Canada swarm 

 with the choicest of the American Salmonidte. Nowhere are 

 more superb game fish to be found than the salmon of the 

 Atlantic coastal streams of British North America, the ouanan- 

 iche of North-eastern Canada, the sea trout of the estuaries 

 and the brilliantly marked, so-called "trout of the fountain" — Salvelinus 

 fontinalis — ^which is really not a trout at all, but the most beautiful and 

 probably the most game of all the chars. 



In Eastern Canada the brook trout and in Western Canada the rainbow 

 and the steelheads are so abundant as to be accessible to all classes and 

 degrees of anglers. Salmon fishing, as in the British Isles, is somewhat 

 more of a luxury, but there are farmers in some of the eastern provinces 

 who own their own salmon pools in fee simple, and who know how to fish 

 them too. 



The eastern American salmon is identical with Salmo salar of Europe, 

 frequently attaining the same size, and, generally speaking, evincing the 

 same habits and disposition as its trans -Atlantic congener. Unlike the 

 latter, however, the Atlantic salmon of North America has seldom, if 

 ever, been known to take any other lure than the artificial fiy. I have 

 no knowledge of the prawn having been offered to an eastern Canadian 

 salmon, but I have tried them over and over again with both worms 

 and spinning bait, without any success, and have yet to hear of any that 

 have taken either of such baits. 



From the waters of the United States the Atlantic salmon has almost 

 entirely disappeared, though in the early years of European settlement 

 in America it was abundant as far south as the Hudson and the Con- 

 necticut. A few fish still ascend the St Croix, which forms a part of the 

 dividing line between New Brunswick and Maine, and some are also found 

 in the Penobscot, another river of Maine. 



The salmon-fishing season is much shorter in Canada than in Europe. 

 The earliest salmon fishing in North America is in Nova Scotia. In the 



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