1 82 SALMON AND TROUT. 



effect on the appetite of a salmon. I have found this to be 

 the case upon ahnost every river I have fished. It matters 

 httle whether the fish are fretrh-runor stale : they are indifferent 

 to taking food, and it is quite exceptional to get a good day's 

 sport during those months. They begin again, however, to 

 take at the latter end of September and up to the time of 

 the close season ; but these are mostly gravid fish, and hardly 

 worth the trouble of fishing for. ' 



After a salmon has spawned he is at his lowest ebb — thin, 

 emaciated, and unsightly to behold. He then gradually makes 

 his way to the sea, but, as it is necessary to recruit his strength 

 before he finally leaves fresh water, Nature seems to have pro- 

 vided hmi with ample means for so doing at this particular 

 season, as on his downward journey he is accompanied by 

 millions of the fry of his own species, and it is supposed he 

 makes such havoc amongst them that it has been in contem- 

 plation to alter the salmon laws, making it legal to take spent 

 salmon after a certam date. I have seen spent salmon in such 

 a condition that it has been difficult to distinguish them from 

 newly run fish.^ 



It is commonly believed, because nothing has ever been 



1 In all rivers August is the worst. 'Soolky Agust ' (sulky August), the 

 Irish fishermen call it, the warmth of the water making fish sick and idle— in 

 Canada the latter half of July is as bad — but throughout Scotland, Ireland, and 

 Wales I have found fishing to be worst in August. — En. 



^ In 1879 I got to our camp on the Natasquham on the borders of Labra- 

 dor, a Lower Canada province of Quebec, on June 9. The river was full of 

 thousands of fish bright as silver, and apparently in first-rate condition. They 

 were every one of them mended kelts, i.e. fish of the previous year that had 

 spawned in October or November, and, for some unaccountable reason, had 

 not returned to the sea. Usually at that season there are no fish in the water, 

 but just within a week, sooner or later, the new fish come up. That year the 

 old fish did not go down till about June 20, and no new fish came up before 

 July. The mended kelts are useless for food, and scarcely any of them would 

 rise. I went away across the gulf to the Ristigouche between New Brunswick 

 and Lower Canada on June 27, not having seen a fresh-run fish, and only killed 

 half a dozen kelts on the Natasquham. One of my friends who stayed through 

 July often killed twenty-five fish a day. From June 10 to the 20th I could sit on 

 a rock and count from si.vty to eighty fish jump in a pool within an hour. No 

 one could account for this unusual delay in the going down of the old and 

 coming up of tlie new fish. — Ed. 



