Large quantities of the fish are caught in weirs. The Indians, also, knowing that the salmon avoids currents if possible, build out into the river from the shore, for ten or a dozen feet, walls of stone a few inches in height. The salmon crowd into the quieter water caused thereby, and are easily captured in nets or by spearing. They are so numerous in places that the Indian can often flap them out of the water, by a sudden dexterous jerk of his paddle, to his squaw on the beach, who then immediately knocks them on the head and guts them.
At the curing houses, mostly owned by Americans, the labour is chiefly performed by Chinamen under the superintendence of white men. “John” quickly and cleverly guts the fish and cuts off its head; then cuts it into chunks, which are boiled, first in salt and afterwards in fresh water. Next the tins are filled, and soldered down, all but one little hole in their tops. The tins are then immersed in boiling water, and when every particle of air is excluded, a few drops of solder effectually seal them up till wanted for the table. The process is in effect the same employed in the preservation of meats and fruits in tins.
Many British and Irish waterfalls are celebrated for their salmon leaps. In Inverness-shire at Kilmorack, at Ballyshannon in Donegal, and Leixlip near Dublin, in Pembrokeshire and elsewhere, the leaps are noted, and at many of them there are osier baskets placed below to catch the fish when they fail and fall. Sportsmen have even shot them, on the wing as it were, in their leap. At the Falls of Kilmorack “Lord Lovat conceived the idea of placing a furnace and frying-pan on a point of rock overhanging the river. After their unsuccessful effort some of the unfortunate salmon would fall accidentally into the frying-pan. The noble lord could thus boast that the resources of his country were so abundant, that on placing a furnace and frying-pan on the banks of its rivers, the salmon would leap into it of their own accord, without troubling the sportsman to catch them. It is more probable, however, that Lord Lovat knew that the way to enjoy salmon in perfection is to cook it when fresh from the water, and before the richer parts of the fish have ceased to curd.”
In our own land, the Tweed, Tay, Spey, and Severn, are all noted rivers for salmon; the Tay fish sometimes weigh sixty pounds. It is a curious fact that the full-grown salmon never feeds in the rivers. “Juvenile experience on the part of the fish, recurring as a phantasm, causes them to snap at a shining artificial minnow or a gaudy fly, but they never rise out of the water; the bait must dip to them, and when hooked they shake [pg 168]the intruder as a terrier does a rat.” Their superabundant store of fat enables them to live on themselves, as it were, as do the Asiatic and African doomba sheep when avalanches and heavy snow-falls stop their supplies of herbage.[45] They become much thinner during their stay in fresh water; their colour becomes duller, and their flavour much depreciated. Izaak Walton’s statement that “the further they get from the sea they be both fatter and better” is utterly erroneous, for they fatten only in the sea. In March, 1845, the Duke of Athole took a ten-pound salmon in the Tay after it had spawned, and attached a medal to it and then let it go to sea. The same individual, with its decoration, was fished up five weeks and a few days afterwards, when it had been to the refreshing salt water. It had more than doubled its weight, for it weighed twenty-one pounds.
THE SALMON (Salmo salar).
CHAPTER XV.
Ocean Life.—The Harvest of the Sea (concluded).
The Clupedæ—The Herring—Its Cabalistic Marks—A Warning to Royalty—The “Great Fishery”—Modes of Fishing—A Night with the Wick Fishermen—Suicidal Fish—The Value of Deep-sea Fisheries—Report of the Commissioners—Fecundity of the Herring—No fear of Fish Famine—The Shad—The Sprat—The Cornish Pilchard Fisheries—The “Huer”—Raising the “Tuck”—A Grand Harvest—Gigantic Holibut—Newfoundland Cod Fisheries—Brutalities of Tunny Fishing—The Mackerel—Its Courage, and Love of Man—Garum Sauce—The formidable Sword-fish—Fishing by Torchlight—Sword through a Ship’s side—General Remarks on Fish—Fish Life—Conversation—Musical Fish—Pleasures and Excitements—Do Fish sleep?