GENERAL FEATURES 49 



but no particulars of individual specimens are given by him. Then a 

 1 weedside angler, who favoured me with his views on " bull trout," 

 puts the limit of weight of these Tweed fish at 25 lb. Mr. Malloch 

 usefully gives a photograph of a sea-trout of 19^ lb., the " largest ever 

 caught in the Tay." I have personally seen a sea-trout of 12 lb. which 

 was caught with the rod in Loch Lomond, and specimens are sometimes 

 taken in the Clyde estuary nets which weigh as much as 15 lb. But I 

 do not know of any statistics which give reliably the weights of the 

 heaviest specimens known to have been caught in British waters.^ 



The limit of age is even more difficult to arrive at. So far as I am 

 aware there are no authentic records in the case of sea-trout. It will be 

 seen that on a later page (page 143) I submit evidence from the scales 

 of a Loch Lomond fish, which weighed only 2^ lb., that its age was 

 actually as much as eleven years. The fixing of any definite limit of 

 age with our present knowledge is probably yet a matter of pure 

 surmise. Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown speaks to having seen a trout 

 nineteen years old. It had been kept in confinement for that time.^ 



There are some points of interest connected with the spots of 

 salmon and sea-trout which I may here conveniently indicate. The 

 dark spots of the salmon are, in fish which have not previously spawned 

 — " maiden " fish as they are commonly called — few and irregular in 

 shape. They are (Fig. i) on the body, mostly scattered above the 

 lateral line with a few of intense black on the cheeks. In a fish which 

 returns to spawn a second time the spots are now recognised to have 

 undergone considerable change. They have become much more 

 numerous (Fig. 2), and suggest the appearance of having been lightly 

 sprinkled on the surface of the shoulders and sides. Until recent 

 years these peculiarly speckled fish were thought to be a kind of " bull 

 trout," and, from the fact of their being frequently seen in that river, 

 they were popularly known as " Tay bull trout." The Tay fish, 



1. Day instances a Tweed male bull-trout of 4411). cauglit in 186S. 



2. "The Wonderful Trout" (1898). p. 16. 



