This excellent salmon is a very handsome fish, the head is small, the body rather long and covered with bright scales, the back is of a bluish shade, the other parts white, and marked with irregular dark brown spots on the head, the covers of the gills, down each side from the lateral lines to near the edge of the back, very few are to be seen below the lines which run from head to tail; the tail is forked.
He takes great delight in pursuing small fish and fry, and in playing and jumping on the top of the water, at insects no doubt, and for his own sport.
It has been often said that there was never any thing found in the salmon's stomach such as edibles, but it has been recently discovered that they prey upon herrings, sprats, fry, and other dainties in their native element; and as these fish are very nutritious and fat in themselves, no doubt the nourishing channel in them receives the substance of the food very quickly, as it appears to be digested so rapidly in their stomachs. He leaves the sea for the fresh water rivers about January and February, and continues to run up till September and October, their spawning time, and some spawn after this time; they are often big with roe in December and January, in the end of August or the beginning of September; when they are in roe regularly, they cannot be in proper season; they get soft, their beautiful color and spots vanish, and they do not appear like the same fish. They travel up rivers as far as they can possibly get, into lakes and their feeders, and tributaries of large rivers, where they take delight in the broad gravelly fords, and strong deep running currents, which they like to be as clear as crystal, to effect which they will leap over weirs, waterfalls, "cuts," "cruives," and "traps," when there is a flood rushing over them, to the great delight of the fly fisher, who loves to see them run and escape these obstructions.
The male fish is supplied by nature with a hard gristly beak on the end of the under jaw, which fits into a socket in the upper jaw to a nicety; with this the Salmon go to work with their heads up stream, rising their tails sometimes nearly perpendicular, and root up the sand and gravel in heaps, leaving a hollow between, wherein the female deposits the eggs; the male fish still performing his part, chasing away the large trout that are ready to root it up (the spawn), he covers it over substantially against the forthcoming winter's floods and storms. By this time he becomes wearied, spent, and sickly, and then turns himself round and makes head for the sea, where, if once happily arrived, he soon makes up for the debility in his blue, his fresh, and ever free element. The refreshing and purging nature of the salt water soon makes him once more strong and healthy, he may be seen leaping and playing in the sea near the river's mouth on his recovery. I have been told by fishermen that they proceed in shoals to the ice fields in the North Seas, and return to the rivers and estuaries in the spring and summer as they departed, in large shoals; they discover themselves in the bays by jumping out of the water as they near the river.
The Salmon haunts the deepest, strongest, and most rapid rivers, and is rarely to be seen in those wherein there is much traffic, or that are sullen or muddy. They prefer the upper parts of rough streams that run into large pools, and the tails of these pools, behind large stones, in the middle and at sides of waterfalls in the eddies, these are the parts to throw for them, but the fisherman on the water will show the angler all the best places. The best months to angle for them are from March till the middle of August, after September they are out of season. They will take the fly best from six or seven o'clock in the morning till nine, and from three in the afternoon till dark, with a good wind blowing up stream. I have hooked them on the very top of a precipice, after surmounting the leap, where they lie to rest in the first deep pool they come to; they generally run down over the rocks or falls of water to the pool beneath, when they often get killed by the rapid descent.
THE SALMON FRY.
These beautiful little fish, the production of the spawn of the salmon, make their appearance in March and April, and if a flood happens to rise or swell the rivers about the end of the latter month, they are taken down in great numbers, till at last they enter the brackish water, where they grow in a short time as large as white trout. The salt water adds much to their growth. In the following spring and summer they run up the rivers in great quantities if they are allowed, and return to the sea again before winter. On their second return up the rivers they will be grown very large, and are then called "Grilse," or "Peals," &c.
There is a Salmon Trout of the same species, which is rounder in proportion to the Salmon, of a reddish hue when in season; it has small fine scales, beautifully intermixed with rich red and black spots on both sides of the lateral lines, from head to tail, and its handsome head is spotted over, as also the covers of the gills; the tail is shorter, and not so much forked as the salmon, and the fins are very strong. The flesh is most delicious, and some prefer it to salmon. They may be seen in the Fishmongers' shops from May till the end of August.