124 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



d'appui for the fins can only be found in deep water, therefore in 

 shallow water the leap is feeble and low. Six feet is the average distance 

 in height a salmon can leap. I have read writers, who state that the 

 salmon can swim at the rate of forty miles an hour. No ; nor twenty, 

 nor fifteen. Perhaps, at the top of its speed, it might do ten miles an 

 hour, but only for a short " spurt" when passing through rapids, or 

 when hooked by the angler. In still water, when the salmon is ascending 

 rivers, its progress is very slow a mere walking pace. It has been 

 considered a singular fact, to find salmon with sea-lice adhering to it 

 fifty miles up a river, but as these parasites stick to the fish for, at 

 least, twenty-four hours after it has quitted salt water, the fact only 

 proves an ascending progress of a small fraction more than two miles an 

 hour. I have never hooked a fish that I could not keep up with at a 

 sling trot. A fresh-run salmon, that is, a fish that has just entered 

 the fresh water, is in its best condition, which it loses bit by bit every 

 day it remains in the river. A fresh-run fish is fatter, and stronger, 

 but its strength does not last, than a fish that has been in fresh water 

 a fortnight or a month. The latter fish is, however, much more active, 

 and more difficult to tire out. The reason is, that fresh water indurates 

 its fins, diminishes obesity, and increases muscular endurance. A fresh- 

 run fish of large size makes a powerful rush or two, and then is, to use 

 a racing phrase, "blown;" a fish not fresh-run will not make a 

 tremendous rush at first on being hooked, but he will make a long-con- 

 tinued series of short, rapid runs, jump out of the water, and fight for 

 his life longer, and with more " pluck," than the fat fresh-run, salmon. 

 In my opinion, it is more difficult to slay a ten-pound salmon that has 

 been in fresh water a month, than it is to capture with rod and line an 

 eighteen pounder just fresh and full-fed from the sea. 



The subject is a curious one, and specially interesting to anglers. I 

 will further explain it by an illustrative citation from my "Book of the, 

 Salmon," p. 201, et infra : " Although a grilse or salmon, fresh run 

 from the sea, is larger and in better condition than it will be after a few 

 weeks' sojourn in fresh water, it is neither so strong nor so active at all 

 events, its strength and activity are not so enduring. One evident cause 

 of this is, that fresh water hardens, and renders tough and stiffly elastic 

 the fins, which are soft and feebly pliant in fish fresh from the sea ; and 

 the natural consequence is, that, aided by those whalebone fin-rays (for 

 to the consistency, or very nearly so, of that substance, fresh water 

 reduces them), they are more capable of putting forth enduring effort, 

 and strong and rapid motion, than the obese fresh-run fish, with its 

 limber fins. A man rowing a heavy boat, with short pliant sculls, will 

 make but slow progress through the water, and will be speedily fatigued; 

 whereas, if he have long stout oars, they yield little to the water, and, by 

 resistance but slightly elastic to it, the boat is propelled rapidly onwards, 

 and the labour of the rower is considerably lightened. The pliant, 

 almost powerless sculls of the rower, are the soft fins of the fresh-run 

 fish the stout oars, are the fins of the fish that has been a lengthy 

 sojourner in fresh water : besides, fresh-run fish that have been recently 

 feeding in rich sub-marine pastures, may not be unaptly compared to 



