Essays in Natural History and Agriculture

by Thomas Garnett

Hitherto the law has never properly recognized the claims of the upper riparian proprietors. These men have all the trouble and expense of rearing and protecting the young fish, whilst the owners of estuary fisheries, men who never lift a hand nor spend a penny in taking care of the brood, take above ninety per cent. of the grown Salmon when in season; and even then think they are hardly used. How can it be expected that the upper proprietors should be very earnest in their protection of fish from which they derive little or no benefit, merely acting the part of brood hens and hatching the chickens for the benefit of other people?

In June, 1769, 3,384 Salmon and Salmon Trout were taken at a single haul of the net in the Ribble, near Penwortham. Now the sea is as wide, and, for anything we know to the contrary, as capable of feeding them as it was a hundred years ago; and the rivers are as capable of breeding and rearing them now as they were at that time; and therefore I do not see why, if proper steps were taken, they should not be as abundant now as they were then.

If we take a sheep or a bullock, and to his first cost add the rent of the land on which he has pastured, and something for insurance and interest on capital, the transaction is not a very profitable one in the long run. But in the case of the Salmon, we send a little fish down to the sea which is not worth a penny, and he remains there, paying neither rent nor taxes, neither gamekeepers' nor bailiffs' wages, costing nothing to anyone, until he returns to the river, worth ten or twenty shillings, as the case may be. Surely this is a branch of the public wealth that deserves sedulous cultivation.

I think with you that the Calder can never become a Salmon river, so long as manufactories flourish on its banks, and it is not desirable that it ever should become so at their expense; but even in the Calder (and its tributaries) a little care would prevent immense mischief. Some people at Church, a few years ago, very carelessly pushed a quantity of poisonous matter into the Hyndburn brook, and the first thunderstorm that followed carried it down the Calder into the Ribble, and poisoned all the fish between Calder foot and Ribchester. Take another instance of carelessness in the Ribble, the emptying of the gas-holder tank at Settle, which when turned into the river killed nearly all the fish between that town and Mitton. Several other instances occur to me, but these two are sufficient to show the great mischief occasioned by avoidable neglect and carelessness. Such mischief should not be perpetrated with impunity.

The act of 1861 was very good as far as it went, notwithstanding some oversights; but it did not go far enough. It did not give to the upper riparian proprietors such an interest in the fish as they are entitled to, nor is the interest they now have sufficient to induce them to exert themselves in the preservation and increase of the Salmon as they might and would do if such additional stimulus were given to them. The law now is, that no nets shall be used in the taking of Salmon between twelve o'clock at noon on Saturdays, and six o'clock on Monday mornings. That is, forty-two hours per week. But in the Ribble, as a rule, we never see seasonable Salmon until May. Now from that time to the 1st of September, is, say sixteen weeks, and at forty-two hours per week (the length of the weekly close time) this gives twenty-eight days during which time the fish may pass up the river without interruption; but this is by no means the true state of the case. Everyone conversant with the habits of Salmon knows that they never ascend rivers except when they are in a state of flood; and in average summers, partly owing to droughts, and partly to the rapid evaporation and absorption of moisture by vegetation, these twenty-eight days may fairly be reduced by two-thirds, to give the true time allowed for the ascent of the fish. But say ten days, which are supposed to give an adequate supply of fish to a hundred miles of river,—the extent of the Ribble and its Salmon-breeding tributaries. Is it surprising that the upper proprietors are not satisfied with this state of things? It would be surprising if they were content with such a cheeseparing allowance.

When the bill of 1861 was before the House of Commons, I had an opportunity (indirectly) of suggesting to the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis the propriety of a considerable extension of the weekly close time. He replied, "You might as well propose to shoot partridges only three days a week, as to restrict the netting of Salmon to only three days." With all due deference to such an authority, there is no analogy between the two cases. But if partridges had all to migrate and return before they could be legally shot, and had, like Salmon, to come by one road, and if, like them, ninety per cent. of them became the prey of men who had neither bred nor fed them, I fancy the sportsman who reared them would want some restrictions placed on their being shot by men who had not spent a farthing in breeding and protecting them, but who took the lion's share in their appropriation.

I saw Lord Derby on the subject last spring. He had, however, so little time at his disposal that he could only give me a few minutes. He said a good deal must be allowed for vested interests. I said, "My Lord, I am a manufacturer. When the Ten Hours Bill was passed, manufacturers were deprived of one-sixth of their fixed capital at a stroke, and had not a farthing allowed for their vested interests; nay, more, that measure involved the destruction of machinery which had cost millions. All this was done on grounds of public policy. And is not the Salmon question one of public policy? If, as I suppose, the measure I advocate produced a great increase in the breed of Salmon, the estuary fisheries would be the first to profit by it. They are the first on the river. Indeed, the stake nets in the estuaries are taking fish daily in times of drought, when fish will not ascend the river at all."

In 1859 we had not a fresh in the river between the 10th of April and the 1st of August. And last year we had only a few days of flood between the beginning of May and the 31st August, when close time (for nets) commences.

I have said above that only ten days per year are allowed for the supply of fish to the upper proprietors. I may be told that they have two months (September and October) in which they are allowed to angle for them. True, but what are they worth? They are not allowed to be sold, they are not fit to eat, the fish are black (or red), the milt and spawn nearly at maturity, and the only temptation they offer is to the poacher (who often pots the roe as a bait for Trout); and he is a poacher, whatever his rank or station, who will kill an October fish when full of spawn.

Last year, at my suggestion, a meeting of gentlemen interested in Salmon fisheries was convened at Worcester, during the meeting there of the Royal Agricultural Society, and a number of suggestions were made, and resolutions were come to, which were intended to serve as a basis for the desired alterations in the Salmon Bill of 1861. I have no memoranda to which I can now refer, but the most important, according to my recollection, were the following:—The extension of the weekly close time; the annual close time to be extended to Trout; a right to be given to all conservators and water-bailiffs, duly appointed, to pass along the banks of Salmon rivers without being deemed guilty of trespass; a tax on fishing-nets, rods, and implements, to defray the expenses of protecting the rivers from poachers.