of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 



305 



^Scringing for Salmon and Sea-Troid on the West Coast. 



'The salmon fishing, and still more the sea- trout fishing in all the 

 Argyllshire rivers, and in many bays and smaller streams, for several 

 miles along the coast, to the north and south of Oban, have been for a 

 number of years past terribly injured by a species of poaching known in 

 this part of the west coast as " scringing." Oban is the great centre of 

 this illegal practice, and it is notorious that nine-tenths of the sea-trout 

 sold in the fish shops, and consumed in the numerous hotels of this 

 beautiful and fashionable resort, during the summer and autumn months, 

 are supplied by the scringers. They themselves have no title whatever 

 to fish for salmon in the narrow seas and in the bays and sea-lochs ofE 

 the mouths of salmon rivers, nor have they permission from any one who 

 has a title. They deliberately and systematically break the law, and 

 find law-breaking to be a more lucrative practice than the prosecution of 

 their legitimate industry as fishermen for herrings, cod, haddocks, 

 whiting, and other sea-fish. This state of matters has been greatly 

 encouraged by the fact that, until the recent reconstitution of the Board 

 of the River Awe by the Court of Session, there had been no District 

 Board in the neighbourhood of Oban for at least fourteen years previ- 

 ously ; so that any watching or prosecution of the scringers had to be 

 carried out by proprietors of fishings at their own risk and expense ; and 

 the cost of watching the rivers, bays, and sounds of a coast so deeply 

 indented, and with so many islands, was found to be so great that private 

 persons were unable to undertake it. Several memorials, concerning 

 the evil effects of scringing and the modes of checking it, were addressed 

 to the Home Office and to the Commissioners of Scotch Salmon Fisheries. 

 But no adequate remedy for the evil has yet been found ; though it is to 

 be hoped that the newly constituted Board of the Awe, by means of its 

 watchers searching and arresting the boats of the scringers when they 

 come in to the quays at Oban laden with sea-trout illegally captured, 

 may have some effect in checking this species of poaching. The 25th 

 section of "The Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act, 1868," which is 

 applicable to it, is about as stringently worded a section as could well be 

 desired. It is in the following terms : — 



* In order the better to carry out the provisions of the Act of the 7th and 

 8th years of Her present Majesty, chapter 95, it shall be lawful for any 

 water bailiff, constable, watcher, or officer of any District Board, or any 

 police officer, to search all boats, boat tackle, nets, or other engines, 

 and all receptacles, whether at sea or on shore, which he or they may 

 have reason to suspect may contain salmon captured in contravention of 

 the said last-mentioned Act, and to seize all salmon found in the posses- 

 sion of persons not having a right to fish salmon, and the possession of 

 such salmon shall be held prima facie evidence of the purpose of the 

 possessor to contravene the provisions of the said last-mentioned Act ; 

 provided also that the words " the said recited Act," contained in the second 

 section of the last-mentioned Act, shall be read and construed as if they 

 meant and included this Act and the Acts recited therein. 



'I have often heard the opinion expressed in Oban and in other 

 localities where scringing prevails, that it is necessary, under this section, 

 for the prosecutor to prove the locus where the fish were caught — a thing, 

 in the majority of cases, quite impossible to do. But, with great 

 deference to this opinion, I confess myself quite unable to see any ground 

 for it under the wording of the section, which throws upon the scringers, 

 as clearly and strongly as terms can do, the onus of proving that they 

 got the fish legally. Confessedly, they have no right to fish for salmon 

 or sea-trout except outside the narrow or territorial seas, as fixed and 



