The Sportswoman's Library, Vol. 2 of 2

by Unknown

Sea trout also belong to the migratory species, and of them it may be said, shortly, that they are, in appearance much like miniature salmon, and have game and fighting qualities of very high order.

I may perhaps be allowed to say here that I have found mackerel, caught in the sea with a light trolling rod and trout tackle, give a great deal of sport. They are particularly muscular little fish, and the curl of their lithe tapering bodies, and forked tails, seems to give them a hold on the water which is out of all proportion to their actual size. When caught, after they have been killed, the large vein in the throat or gills should be torn. They bleed to quite an extraordinary extent, but are much better eating and less oily when they have been treated thus.

Bull-trout are something between the salmon and the sea-trout, and are also migratory fish of much the same habits and characteristics. They are very common in some rivers, less so in others, but I remember seeing one caught in Dhulough, County Mayo. There were also in this same place numbers of sea-trout which rose to the fly or came at a minnow, but as far as we could learn there was no egress from the lake by which these fish could get into the sea. They must, however, have had some means of descent.

The Salmo Ferox, or Great Lake Trout grows to an enormous size, weighing as much as thirty pounds. They give quite as good sport as a salmon, and many of them were caught some years ago in Loch Arkaig. The method of fishing was to troll for them in a boat, either with a fly or with a small gudgeon or minnow, but always with pretty fine tackle, heavily shotted so as to sink to a considerable depth. I hear that none have been taken in this way for a very long time in that water.

There only remains to be mentioned the ordinary brown trout of our streams and rivers, so common and so delicious when in good condition, but by far the most wary and difficult to catch of all his tribe.

The Cast for Salmon.

One of the greatest initial mistakes made by the novice in salmon-fishing is to continue flogging the water for hours together, without intermission, and regardless of the state of the sky or water. It is very difficult to give general directions as to the latter, for circumstances vary in different rivers, and experience only can enable the angler to judge when the right moment has come, but in floods or in rising water no fish will, as a rule, pay the slightest attention to the fly. As to the weather, a fresh breeze which ripples the current of the river or the surface of the lake is always a point in the angler's favour, and the sky should be overcast. A bright sun is generally fatal to any chance of sport, but there are of course exceptions to this rule. The largest salmon I ever caught, and which weighed thirty-two pounds, rose to a fly just before sunset, after a cloudless day, during which he had remained at rest close under the bank, holding a levée of numerous visitors who came to admire his fair proportions as he lay motionless and, apparently, without fear, within a foot of the surface of the water.

I have seen fish rise as if they were mad, in a gale, with pelting rain and flashes of lightning. In weather like this, my father caught in one day some years ago, thirteen salmon and one hundred-and-seventy sea trout to his own rod in the Erriff. It was a sort of convulsion of nature and the fish seemed to look upon it as an opportunity for a Saturnalia.

In all rivers and lakes with which I am acquainted I have found that the Salmon rise at certain fixed hours morning and evening, and sometimes also in the middle of the day. As salmon do not rise from hunger, as far as we know, it is difficult to understand why this should be. I leave the explanation to others and merely state the fact as I have found it. In that part of the Hampshire Stour with which I am best acquainted, the hours for rising were five in the morning, one p.m., and sunset. At one p.m. the fish were so regular in their habits that the servants' dinner-bell, which rang at that hour and was audible for some miles round, came to be called the Salmon bell.