GRILSE 37 
grilse may be expected. When the grilse appear on 
the coast of Skye it is certain they are not on their 
way to any rivers in Skye, because the Skye streams 
are in summer so small that even a grilse would run 
aground amongst the stones. When the autumn 
rains have swollen those streams, fish ascend to 
spawn. In the same way the Raasay grilse must 
be on a passage elsewhere, since there are absolutely 
no salmon streams in the island. The manager of 
the fisheries says he has no idea whence the fish 
come or whither they go. 
But many of the grilse which travel along the 
coast do not go into fresh water. When the chart 
of curves illustrating the 1902 grilse fishing at 
Aberdeen was constructed the net and coble fishing 
was also recorded from the river mouth. The results 
of this fishing in the river are far below the result 
of the bag-net fishing on the coast to the north of 
the river. It may be said in reply to this that the 
coast nets met the first of the run and caught the 
great majority of the fish. There is no means of 
proving that they did not, but equally it may be 
said there is no reason for believing that they did. 
The fish were on the coast in great numbers. 
The following statement shows the number of grilse 
and salmon, and their weights, taken at the fishings of 
the Aberdeen Harbour Commission from 1872 to 1897, 
the great majority of the grilse peing captured in 
coast nets. The table is from the sixteenth Report 
of the Fishery Board for Scotland :— 
