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

by James Glass Bertram

The root of the evil as regards the scarcity of salmon is to be found in the avarice of the lessees of fisheries, who have overfished the rivers to an alarming extent. The increased value of all kinds of fish food during late years has engendered in these parties a greed of money that leads to the capture and sale of almost everything that bears the shape of fish. The tenant of a salmon-fishery has but one desire, and that is to clear his rent and get as much profit as he can. To achieve this end he takes all the fish that come to his net, no matter of what size they may be. It is not his interest to let a single one escape, because if he did so his neighbour above or below him on the water would in all probability capture it. As a general rule, the tenant has no care for future years; he has no personal interest in stocking the upper waters with breeding fish. He is forced by the competition of his rivals to do all he can in the way of slaughter; and were there not a legal pause of so many hours in the course of the week, and a close-time of so many days in the year, it is questionable if a score of fish would make their way past the engines devoted to their capture. A watcher can stand on the bridge of Perth, and at certain seasons can signal or count every fish that passes in the water below him, and every fish passing can be caught by those on the look-out; and I have seen the same watch kept on the Rhine,[6] and on other salmon rivers. The accompanying sketch of a salmon-watcher’s tower on the great German river may interest some of my readers who have never been on that beautiful water.

This unhealthy competition will always continue till some new system be adopted, such as converting each river into a joint-stock property, when the united interests of the proprietors, both upper and lower, would be considered. The trade in fresh salmon, which has culminated in some rivers by the total extermination of the fish, dates from the time of Mr. Dempster’s discovery of packing in ice. Half-a-century ago, when we had no railways, and when even fast coaches were too slow for the transmission of sea-produce, the markets were exceedingly local. Then salmon was so very cheap as to be thought of no value as food, and was only looked upon by the population with an eye of good-humoured toleration—nobody ever expected to hear of it as a luxury at five shillings a pound weight. No Parisian market existed then for foul fish, and fifty years ago people only poached for amusement. But in the excessive poaching which now goes on during close-time we have a minor cause nearly as productive of evil as the primary and legal one; for of course it is legal for the tacksman of the station to kill all the fish he can. Add to these causes the extraordinary quantities of infant fish which are annually killed, coupled with that phase of insanity which leads to the capture of grilse (salmon that have never spawned), and we obtain a rough idea of the progress of destruction as it goes on in our salmon rivers. Fifty or sixty years ago men caught a salmon or shot a pheasant for mere sport, or at most for the supply of an individual want. Now poaching is a trade or business entered into as a means of securing a weekly or annual income; it has its complex machinery—its nets, guns, and other implements. There are men who earn large wages at this illicit work, who take to “the birds” in autumn and the fish in winter with the utmost regularity; and there are middlemen and others who encourage them and aid them in disposing of the stolen goods. A few men will band themselves together, and in the course of a night or two sweep fish from off the spawning-beds which are totally unfit for human food. There is a ready market always to be found even for spawning fish. Few of my readers can have any idea of the immense number of salmon which are destroyed by this cause, and at the very time when they are at their greatest value, intent on the propagation of their kind. Indeed, on the very spawning-bed itself, the “deadly leister” is hurled with unerring aim and mighty force; and the slain fish, safely hidden in the poacher’s bag, is carried off to be kippered and sold for the English market. A party will start at nightfall, and, dividing into two companies, sweep the Tweed with a net from shore to shore, and capture everything of the salmon kind that comes within reach. The takes upon such occasions average from ten to forty fish. The first night upon which my informant—a weaver—went out, the result was seventeen large fish, three of which weighed ninety pounds. Upon the second occasion the take was much larger, thirty-eight salmon of a smaller size being the reward of their iniquity, weighing in the aggregate four hundred and forty pounds, and producing in cash £8 sterling, divided among eleven people. These stolen fish pass through numerous hands. A person comes at a given time and takes away the spoil; all that the actual poacher obtains as his share is a few pence per pound weight. They are bought from the thieves by middlemen, who again dispose of them to certain salesmen—each party, of course, obtaining a profit.

In former times, as at present, there were more ways of killing a salmon than by angling for it. Parties used to be made up for the purpose of “burning the water,” a practice which prevailed largely on the Tweed, and which afforded good rough sport. The burning took place a little after sunset, when an old boat was commissioned for the purpose, and flaming torches of pinewood were lighted to lure the fish to their destruction. The leister, a sharp iron fork, was used on these occasions with deadly power; rude mirth and song were usually the order of the night; and the practice being illegal was not without a spice of danger, or at least a chance of a ducking. Burning the water, it must, however, be confessed, was more a picturesque way of poaching than a means of adding legitimately to the produce of the fisheries as a branch of commerce. It would have been well for the salmon-fisheries had the arts of poaching never extended beyond the rude practice here alluded to; but now poaching, as I have endeavoured to show, has become a business, and countless thousands of the fish are swept off the breeding-beds and sold to dealers. There is on most rivers an organised system of taking and disposing of the fish; France, till very lately, affording the chief outlet for this kind of food—an outlet, however, which a recent Act of Parliament has done much to close up. Legislation on the salmon question has of late been greatly extended, some powerful Acts of Parliament having been passed for the better regulation of the various British salmon-fisheries.[7]

It is recorded that at one time great hauls of salmon could be taken either in the rivers of Scotland or Ireland, and that in England salmon were also quite plentiful. One miraculous draught is mentioned as having been taken out of the river Thurso, on which occasion the enormous number of two thousand five hundred fish were captured. We shall never again see such a haul, unless we give the rivers a rest for a space of five years or so. A jubilee would greatly help to restore the status quo. The discovery of packing in ice by Mr. Dempster led, as was to be expected, to so large a trade in fresh salmon between Scotland and England, that it at once effected a great rise in the price of the fish. High prices had their usual consequence with the producer. Every device was put in requisition to catch fish for London and the Continent; and if this was the case at the beginning, it will be readily understood how rapidly the fish-trade rose in importance as new modes of transit became common. The demand and supply at once assumed such enormous proportions as to tell with fatal effect on the fisheries; and the high prices led at the same time to such extensive and organised poaching as I have attempted to describe, and which, notwithstanding much police organisation, still exists.

At one time there were famous salmon in the Thames, and hopes are entertained of fish being successfully cultivated in that river. It is certain that much deleterious matter has been allowed to get into that stream and also into that famous salmon river the Severn; and in the rivers of Cornwall I believe the hope of ever breeding salmon has been entirely given up in consequence of the poisonous matters which flow from the mines. Many rivers which were known to contain salmon in abundance in the golden age of the fisheries are now tenantless from matter by which they are polluted, such as the refuse of gasworks, paper-mills, etc.

Another fertile source of harm to the salmon-fisheries are the fixed engines of capture which so many people think it right to use, and which the Lord Advocate’s Salmon Bill of 1862 left almost in statu quo, except that a little power on this part of the salmon question is given to the commissioners appointed to carry out the Act. Stake and bag nets in Scotland are known to have been very destructive, as have the putchers, butts, and trumpets of the English and Welsh rivers. It would be tedious to describe the different fixed engines invented for the capture of salmon; what I desire to show is that they have injured the fisheries. A controversy has been raging in Scotland for some years back on this point of the salmon question, which, there can be no doubt, will ultimately result in their entire extinction. That they have been a most fruitful cause of injury to the fisheries has been proved by a long array of facts and figures. A striking example of the effect of bag-nets occurred with regard to the Tay. The system having been extended to that river, the productiveness of the upper portions of the stream was very speedily affected; and again, 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.

Although I have already referred to it, it is most important to note here much more particularly the fact that, with probably the solitary exception of the Tweed (and there the deterioration has only recently been arrested), the size and weight of salmon are annually diminishing, and, as some fishermen think, their condition and flavour also. There can be no doubt that in the golden age of the fisheries they attained much larger proportions than they do now. I need scarcely quote in support of this opinion the fish mentioned by Yarrell, which was exhibited by Mr. Groves, and weighed eighty-three pounds; nor that alluded to by Pennant, which was only ten pounds lighter; nor the fact that in all virgin salmon-rivers the fish average a greater weight than any now taken in the British streams. It is within the memory of anglers that fish of forty pounds 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 the present day. Mr. Anderson, the lessee of some 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 now is reduced to about sixteen pounds; and by the Tweed Tables, the average weight of those killed by the net between July and September, though apparently on the increase, in no month rises to fifteen pounds. 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 kill are two years old, or at the most three—fish running from eight pounds 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 speedily not be even a three-year-old fish to pull out of the water. It is very suggestive of the state of the salmon-fisheries that we have now eaten down to our three-year-olds.

Another fertile source of destruction is the killing of grilse; the grilse being a virgin fish, its slaughter is just analogous to the killing of lambs without due regulation as to quantity. In this respect, “the conduct of salmon proprietors is as rational as high-farming with the help of tile-drains, liquid-manure, and steam-power, would be for the purpose of eating corn in the blade.” As many as 100,000 grilses have been taken from one river in a year—a notable example of killing the goose for the golden egg. If we had an Act of Parliament to prevent the capture of grilse, we should never want salmon. The parr and smolt are protected. Why? Because they are the young of the salmon. Well, so is grilse the young of the salmon, and grilse also are sadly in want of protection.

STAKE-NETS ON THE RIVER SOLWAY.