The Harvest of the Sea / A contribution to the natural and economic history of the British food fishes

by James Glass Bertram

The place to try an angler is a fine Border stream or a grand Highland loch; but I shall not presume to lay down minute directions as to how to angle, for an angler, like a poet, must be born, he can scarcely be bred, and no amount of book lore will confer upon a man the magic power of luring the wary trout from its crystalline home. The best anglers, and I may add fish-poachers, are the gipsies. A gipsy will raise fish when no other human being can move them. If encamped near a stream, a gipsy band are sure to have fish as a portion of their daily food; and how beautifully they can broil a trout or boil a grilse those only who have had the fortune to dine with them can say. Your gipsy is a rare good fisher, and with half a rod can rob the river of a few dozens of trout in a very brief space of time, and he can do so while men with elaborate “fishing machines,” fitted up with costly tackle, continue to flog the water without obtaining more than a questionable nibble, just as if the fish knew that they were greenhorns, and took a pleasure in chaffing them. Mr. Cheek, who wrote a capital book for the guidance of what I may call Thames anglers, says that the best way to learn is to see other anglers at work—which is better than all the written instructions that can be given, one hour’s practical information going farther than a folio volume of written advice. It is all in vain for men to fancy that a suit of new Tweeds, a fair acquaintance with Stoddart or Stewart, and a large amount of angling “slang,” will make them fishers. There is more than that required. Besides the natural taste, there is wanted a large measure of patience and skill; and the proper place to acquire these best virtues of the angler is among the brawling hill streams of Scotland, or on the expansive bosom of some of the great Cumberland lakes, while trying for a few delicious charr. A congregation of fish brought together by means of a scatter of food and an angler’s taking advantage of the piscine convention over its diet of worms, is no more angling than a battue is sport. An American that I have heard of has a fish-manufactory in Connecticut, where he can shovel the animals out by the hundred; but then he does not go in for sport, his idea—a thoroughly American one—is money! But despite this exceedingly commercial idea, there are a few anglers in America, and as there are much water and many game fishes, there is plenty of sport. In North America there are to be found in large quantities both the true salmon and the brook trout; and as a great number of the American fishes visit the fresh and salt water alternately, they, by reason of their strength and size, afford excellent employment either to the river or sea angler. One of the best of the American fishes is called the Mackinaw salmon.

ANGLERS’ FISHES.
1. Great lake trout (Salmo ferox). 2. Salmo fario. 3. Trout.

To come back, in the meantime, to Scotland and the trout, and where to find them, I may mention that that particular fish is the stock in trade of the streams and lochs of Scotland,—Scotland, the “land of the mountain and the flood,”—and there is an ever-abiding abundance of water, for the lochs and streams of that country are numberless. One county alone (Sutherland, to wit) contains a thousand lochs, and one parish in that county has in it two hundred sheets of water, and all of these abounding with fine trout, affording rich sport to the angler—rewarding all who persevere with full baskets. As I have already hinted, the fisher must study his locality and glean advice from well-informed residents. The gipsies of a district can usually give capital advice as to the kind of bait that will please best. Many a time have anglers been seen flogging away at a stream or lake that was troutless, or at their wit’s end as to which of their flies would please the dainty palate of my lord the resident trout. But I shall not further dogmatise on such matters; most people who are given to angling are quite as wise as the writer of these remarks; and there are as fine trout in England, I daresay, as there are in Scotland; indeed there are a thousand streams in this Great Britain, Ireland, and Wales of ours, where we can find fish—there are splendid trout even in the Thames. Then there are the Dove and the Severn, as well as rivers that are much farther away, so that on his second day from London an active angler may be whipping the Spey for salmon, or trolling on Loch Awe for the large trout that inhabit that sheet of water. The change of scene is of itself a delight, no matter what river the visitor may choose. At the same time the physical exertion undergone by the angler flushes his cheek with the hue of health, and imparts to his frame a strength and elasticity known only to such as are familiar with country scenes and pure air. May and the Mayfly are held to inaugurate the angler’s year; for although a few of the keenest sportsmen keep on angling all the year round, most of them lay down their rod about the end of October, and do not think of again resuming it till they can smell the sweet fragrance of the advancing summer. Although few of our busy men of law or commerce are able to forestall the regular holiday period of August and September, yet a few do manage a run to the country at the charming time of May, when the days are not too hot for enjoyment nor too short for country industry. In August and September the landscape is preparing for the sleep of winter, whilst in May it is being robed by nature for the fêtes of summer, and, despite the sneers of some poets and naturalists, is new and charming in the highest degree. Town living people should visit the country in May, and see and feel its industry, pastoral and simple as it is, and at the same time view the charms of its scenery in all its vivid freshness and fragrance.

Some anglers delight in pike-catching, others try for perch; but give me the trout, of which there is a large variety, and all worth catching. In Loch Awe, for instance, there is the great lake trout, which, combined with the beauty of the scenery, has sufficed to draw to that neighbourhood some of our best anglers. The trout of Loch Awe, as is well known, are very ferocious, hence their scientific name of Salmo ferox. This trout attains to great dimensions; individuals weighing twenty pounds have been often captured; but its flavour is indifferent and the flesh is coarse, and not of a prepossessing colour. This kind of trout is found in nearly all the large and deep lochs of Scotland. It was discovered scientifically about the end of last century by a Glasgow merchant, who was fond of sending samples of it to his friends as a proof of his prowess as an angler. The usual way of taking the great lake trout is to engage a boat to fish from, which must be rowed gently through the water. The best bait is a small trout, with at least half-a-dozen strong hooks projecting from it, and the tackle requires to be prodigiously strong, as the fish is a most powerful one, although not quite so active as some others of the trout kind, but it roves about in these deep waters enacting the parts of the bully and the cannibal to all lesser creatures, and driving before it even the hungry pike. Persons residing near the great lochs capture these large trout by setting night lines for them. As has been already mentioned, they are exceedingly voracious, and have been known to be dragged for long distances, and even after losing hold of the bait to seize it again with great eagerness, and so have been finally captured. These great lake trout are also to be found in other countries.

In Lochleven, at Kinross, in the county of Fife, twenty-two miles from Edinburgh, there will be found localised that beautiful trout which is peculiar to this one loch, and which I have already referred to as one of the mysterious fishes of Scotland. This fish—although its quality is said to have been degenerated by the drainage of the lake in 1830, at which period it was reduced by draining to a third of its former dimensions—is of considerable commercial value; it cannot be bought in Edinburgh under two shillings a pound weight; and if it was properly cultivated might yield a large revenue. I have not been able to obtain recent statistics of “the take” of Lochleven trout, but in former years during the seven months of the fishing season it used to range from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand pounds weight, and at the time referred to all trout under three-quarters of a pound in weight were thrown back into the water by order of the lessee. Eighty-five dozen of these fine trout have been known to be taken at a single haul, while from twenty to thirty dozen used to be a very common take. As to perch, they used to be caught in thousands. Little has or can be said about Lochleven trout, except that they are a speciality. Some learned people (but I take leave to differ from them) consider the Lochleven fish to be identical with Salmo fario, but never in any of my piscatorial wanderings have I found its equal in colour, flavour, or shape. It has been compared with the Fario Lemanus of the Lake of Geneva, and having handled both fishes I must allow that there is very little difference between them; but still there are differences. Boats can be hired at Kinross for an hour or two’s fishing on Lochleven. Mr. Barnet, the editor of the local paper, himself a keen fisher, will, I have no doubt, put gentlemen in the way of enjoying a day’s pike or trout fishing on the loch.

I need not go over all the varieties of fresh-water trout seriatim, for their name is legion, and every book on angling contains lists of those that are peculiar to the districts treated upon. If anglers’ fishes ever become valuable as food, it will be by the cultivation of our great lochs. With such a vast expanse of water as is contained in some of these lakes, and having ample river accommodation at hand for spawning purposes, there could be no doubt that artificial breeding, if properly gone about, would be successful. The Lochleven trout in particular might be made a subject of piscicultural experiment; it is already of great money value commercially, and could be cultivated so as to become a considerable source of revenue to the proprietor of the lake and amusement to the angler.

JACK IN HIS ELEMENT.

There are some pretty big pike in Lochleven; I lately examined a very large one, weighing sixteen pounds, that had been feeding very industriously on the dainty trout of the loch. As every angler knows, the pike affords capital sport, and may be taken in many different ways. Pike spawn in March and April, when the fish leaves its hiding-place in the deep water and retires for procreative purposes into shallow creeks or ditches. The pike yields a very large quantity of roe on the average, and the young fish are not long in being hatched. Endowed with great feeding power, pike grow rapidly from the first, attaining a length of twenty-two inches. Before that period a young pike is called a jack, and its increase of weight is at the rate of about four pounds a year when well supplied with food. The appetite of this fish is very great, and, from its being so fierce, it has been called the pirate of the rivers. It is not easily satisfied with food, and numerous extraordinary stories of the pike’s powers of eating and digesting have been from time to time related. I remember, when at school at Haddington (seventeen miles from Edinburgh), of seeing a pike that inhabited a hole in the “Lang Cram” (a part of the river Tyne), which was nearly triangular in shape, supposed to be the exact pattern of its hiding-place, and which devoured every kind of fish or animal that came in its way. It was caught several times, but always managed to escape, and must have weighed at least twenty-five pounds. Upon one occasion it was hooked by a little boy, who fished for it with a mouse, when it rewarded him for his cleverness by dragging him into the water; and had help not been at hand the boy would assuredly have been drowned, as the water at that particular spot was deep. As to the voracity of this fish many particulars have been given. Mr. Jesse, in one of his works, says that a pike of the weight of five pounds has been known to eat a hundred gudgeon in three weeks; and I have myself seen them killed in the neighbourhood of a shoal of parr, and, notwithstanding their rapidity of digestion, I have seen four or five fish taken out of the stomach of each. Mr. Stoddart, one of our chief angling authorities, has calculated the pike to be amongst the most deadly enemies of the infant salmon. He tells us that the pike of the Teviot, a tributary of the Tweed, are very fond of eating young smolts, and says that, in a stretch of water ten miles long, where there is good feeding, there will be at least a thousand pike, and that these during a period of sixty days will consume about a quarter of a million of young salmon!