5 1 o Sea - Trout Fishing. 



distances from its shores. The annual return of many, if not all, 

 of the survivors of those hatched in a particular river to the very 

 nooks of the coast and tidal streams where their life as young fry 

 began is undoubted. Extraordinary as so subtle an instinct seems, 

 compared to our senses, with their limited relations to the world 

 about us, it is not more wonderful than that which guides the 

 returning flight of birds, through an element as trackless, to their 

 original nests. The frequent experiments of Scotch experts with 

 marked salmon, and lately those of our own fish commissioners 

 with shad, prove that this recurring and unerring sense of locality 

 is not an old-wives' fable, but a true discriminating and impelling 

 heimweh. 



Even when they "swim into our ken," the study of the ways of 

 fish is perplexing and uncertain. Fur and feather do not elude us 

 as fin does. The naturalist can track a beast to his haunts, and 

 finds him tangible and of the earth. Birds descend from their 

 heights to nest and live within his view. Fish fleet like shadows 

 through their mobile element, and much of the science regarding 

 them must be as shifting and wavering as light in water, — much 

 that goes with their vagrant and invisible existence must always 

 remain within the sphere of conjecture. When, therefore, the return 

 of migratory fish to their home rivers is spoken of, absolute precision 

 as to times and ages is not intended. Some salmon are found in 

 rivers, and the same is probably true of sea-trout, in every month 

 of the year, at every stage of growth, both ascending and descend- 

 ing. But there is a general law that, at a fixed period and for the 

 purpose of spawning, guides the great body of migratory fish up to 

 the head-waters of the tidal streams out of which they originally 

 came. 



Along the Canadian coast, sea-trout begin to press in toward 

 fresh water in the latter part of July. They enter the estuary of 

 the St. Lawrence by myriads upon myriads, sending off detachments 

 north and south as they move on until the main body is scattered 

 into groups, of which those tending to the upper river make their 

 appearance off the Saguenay during the first week in August. In 

 the particular stream of which experience enables us to speak most 

 definitely, their arrival is timed with singular punctuality for the 5th 

 or 6th of August. Often a pool that on one of those days held only 



