212 AN ANGLER'S SEASON 



arrangement of Nature, and not open 

 to criticism. 



Man, however, has supplemented the 

 arrangement. On the western watershed 

 he is less solicitously mercantile than he 

 is on the east coast and for a good way 

 inland ; in which large region he has 

 prosecuted commercial fishings with an 

 assiduity that has amounted to persecu- 

 tion. Of the millions of seatrout and 

 salmon that every year enter the estuaries 

 on the east only a few thousands ever get 

 beyond the top of the tide. The others 

 are taken by the nets. The nets are off 

 the waters only for two or three weeks 

 at the beginning of the season and for 

 two or three weeks at the end. That 

 is why from the beginning of June until 

 the August flood there are hardly any 

 seatrout or salmon taken by the rod from 

 rivers flowing to the east. The fish of 

 the early migration that escaped both 

 nets and rods have been so long in the 

 fresh water that they do not rise at fly. 

 There are no fresh-run fish in the rivers. 



