146 SIZE AND WEIGHT OF SALMON. 



English and Welsh rivers. It would be tedious to describe the 

 diflferent fixed engines invented for the capture of salmon ; what 

 I desire to show is that they injured the fisheries. A striking 

 example of the eflfect of bag-nets occurred with regard to the Tay. 

 The system having been at one time extended to that river, the 

 productiveness of the upper portions of the stream was very 

 speedily affected ; and shortly after their removal, the fisheries 

 became greatly more productive, as will be seen by and by when 

 it becomes necessary to deal with the figures denoting the rental 

 of that river. 



At the date of the first publication of this work the size and 

 weight of salmon were diminishing, and, as some fishermen 

 thought, their condition and flavour also ; but now there is a 

 change for the better, and our salmon are growing in size again, 

 so that we shall soon find fish as large as those of the olden 

 time, notably the fish mentioned by Yarrell, which was exhi- 

 bited by Mr. G-roves, and weighed eighty-three pounds ; or that 

 alluded to by Pennant, which was only ten pounds lighter. 

 It is within the memory of anglers that f^h of forty-five pounds 

 weight were by no means rare in the Scottish rivers: that 

 "salmon of thirty pounds and thirty-five pounds weight were 

 quite common ; and that the general run of fish were in the 

 aggregate many pounds heavier than those of ten or twelve 

 years ago. Mr. Anderson, the lessee of the best salmon- 

 fisheries on the Firth of Forth, a gentleman who is master of 

 his business, is of opinion that the average weight of fish was 

 reduced at the time indicated to about sixteen pounds ; and by 

 the Tweed Tables of the period, the average weight of those 

 killed, though apparently on the increase, in no month exceeded 

 fifteen pounds. I asked, in the first edition of this work, 

 " How is it, then, that we have no giants of the river in these 

 days ? The answer, I think, is simple and convincing. Let 

 us suppose, for example, that the fish grows at the rate of 

 five pounds per annum : it would, therefore, take ten years to 

 achieve a growth of fifty pounds. Now it is needless to say 

 that, in British .waters at any rate, we never either see or hear 

 of a fish of that weight. The fact is, we do not give our salmon 

 time to grow to that size. The greater portion of the fish that 

 we kUl are two years old, or at the most three — fish running 

 from eight poimds to sixteen pounds in weight. It is clear 

 that, if we go on for a year or two longer at the rate of 

 slaughter we have been indulging of late years, there will 



