10 CATCHING THE WILY SEA-TROUT 



ubiquitous beauties are ever ready to give good accounts 

 of themselves, while the salmon are waiting throughout 

 the season to take advantage of spates, whereas the sea- 

 trout in some rivers do not make their appearance until 

 spring has given way to summer. Therefore, from the 

 opening of the season until the close, both trout and 

 salmon rods can be employed with a fair measure of 

 success, but the sea-trout specialist has to exercise 

 patience until his quarry decides to venture a run. 



Again, the trout man and the salmon fisher may 

 choose, at any period in the long season, the day of days 

 when sport is at its best, but such good fortune, in some 

 districts, cannot be enjoyed during the same extended 

 period by the seeker of the sea-trout. 



Personally I do not regard the sea-trout seriously in 

 the rivers which I fish until midsummer-day is past, as I 

 consider the prospect as being hopeless. True, an odd 

 fish may run in the early days of the season, but to whip 

 pool after pool with the object of connecting with a 

 solitary fish does not appeal to me as being sufficiently 

 alluring. 



We anglers, however, desire something more than mere 

 opinion to influence us ; therefore, with the aim of 

 obtaining documentary evidence to support my views, 

 I scrutinized a year's fishing reports in the angling press, 

 and my labours were well recompensed, as I discovered 

 many informative notes which upheld my contention. 



One contribution from an Irish correspondent was 

 most illuminating. He stated that latterly sea-trout 

 had been appearing much earlier than formerly in the 

 rivers of Antrim and Deny, lor May and even late April 

 had seen the arrival of these fish, as against late June 

 and early July of some years back. 



The writer of the April angling notes on the Lan- 

 cashire Lune, that excellent sea-trout water, reported 



