THE SEA-TROUT 17 



cutting joins the river, hooked and landed a brace of 

 bonny fish each turning the scale at over eight pounds. 

 Whether his success was a remarkable coincidence, or 

 whether he had accounted for the pair which had escaped 

 from the rhine I know not, but the strange part of the 

 story is that this river can in no respects be described 

 as being good sea-trout water. Probably in a season it 

 yields no more than a score of fish. However, this catch 

 gave the river much publicity and established an undying 

 record for it. 



One question that is put to me regularly, year after 

 year, is whether sea-trout feed when, for spawning pur- 

 poses, they return to the river, or whether they are like 

 salmon which, during their stay in fresh-water, according 

 to the accepted theory, ignore all tit-bits. 



Some salmon fishers, with the utmost assurance, will 

 tell you that salmon snap at a fly merely out of curiosity, 

 other men will glibly inform you that the fish is irritated 

 by the proffered bait and seeks to destroy it, while other 

 users of the salmon rod are equally positive that the fish 

 cannot resist sampling a properly thrown dainty morsel 

 whether it be fly or prawn, minnow or plug, or even a 

 bunch of garden worms. I have no means of deciding 

 what is the mental attitude of a salmon concerning the 

 value of the variety of lures offered to it, but in an attempt 

 to gain knowledge, I have lain on a river bank, under 

 which a salmon has been sheltering, and have flicked 

 lobworms into the water in the vicinity of the fish. 

 Several minutes after the worm has settled on the bed, 

 the salmon has appeared, picked up the prize and vanished 

 under the spreading bushes. Whilst on many occasions 

 from my lookout I have observed a salmon dash, again 

 and again, through a shoal of minnows. Further, I have 

 seen a salmon, with a six inch trout broadside in its 

 mouth, slipping through a pool. Whether any of these 



B 



