xviii DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SALMON FISHING 



may be summed up in the statement, applicable 

 to kelts as well as clean fish, that " salmon will take 

 food in fresh water if it comes to them easily, but 

 they do not need to do so, and they do not feed in 

 any regular way like fish which are permanent 

 residents in the rivers." As we know, salmon rivers 

 always contain plenty of other fish, especially 

 trout and parr, which are small and well suited to be 

 the food of big fish. When the shoals of salmon 

 ranging from 5 Ib. to 30 Ib. are occupying the 

 pools, hundreds at a time, what would happen to 

 their small neighbours if they were seriously inclined 

 to feed ? There would not be a living fish of small 

 size left anywhere near them. That consideration 

 seems to me to dispose utterly of the theory that 

 salmon, or kelts, " feed in fresh water." And if 

 any further disproof were required there is the fact 

 that at certain times an angler may spend weeks on 

 a river which is full of salmon and utterly fail to 

 catch any, though he tries every lure which ingenuity 

 has suggested as likely to tempt them. I know that 

 this is so from sad experience. There is none of the 

 purely fresh-water fish, even the difficult carp, 

 which would so utterly defy so much intensive 

 effort. 



Scrope has some remarks on the sea trout and bull 

 trout, which in his day were supposed to be different 

 species. Now the naturalists seem to be agreed not 

 only that these two forms have no specific differences, 

 but also that S. fario, the brown trout, is merely 

 a third form of the same species. Differences 

 in habitat and feeding presumably produce the 



