SEA-TROUT FISHING 



By A. R. MACDONOUGH, 



WHAT is a sea-trout? A problem, to begin with, though 

 quite a minor one, since naturalists have for some time past 

 kept specimens waiting their leisure to decide whether he 

 is a cadet of the noble salmon race or merely the chief of the familiar 

 brook-trout tribe. Science inclines to the former view, upon certain 

 slight but sure indications noted in fin-spines and gill-covers. The 

 witness of guides and gaffers leads the same way, and the Indians 

 all say that the habits of the sea-trout and the brook-trout differ, 

 and that the contrast between the markings of the two kinds of fish, 

 taken from the same pool, forbids the idea of their identity. Yet 

 the testimony of many accomplished sportsmen affirms it. The 

 gradual change of color in the same fish, as he ascends the 

 stream, from plain silvery gray to deepest dotted bronze ; his haunts 

 at the lower end of pools, behind rocks, and among roots ; his action 

 in taking the fly with an upward leap, not downward from above, — 

 all these resemblances support the theory that the sea-trout is only 

 an anadromous brook-trout. If the form and disposition of the spots 

 are material, then new names of species need to be devised for 

 the many varieties of California trout, some blotched with color like 

 a snake's skin, others striped from gills to tail with a single vermilion 

 streak. Indeed, the difference in color between the brook-trout and 

 the sea-trout ranges within a far narrower scale than that between 

 parr, grilse, and salmon. The question has already been before a 

 jury, as so many questions involving facts of science do curiously 

 drift under the sagacious ken of that palladium of our liberties so 

 unfit to solve them. Certain poachers of the south shore of Long 



