THE TROUT-FISHING SEASON.
IT is in March that the trout flits from the silent depths in which he has been wintering, to see whether any flies are yet abroad on the rippling shallows. This year he must be suffering severe disappointment ; for, although it pleased Mr. Kingsley and inspires Mr. S winburne, the snow-laden north-easter is too much for the constitution of the March Brown. Perhaps the angler will not be sorry that the season is late of beginning. If he be a naturalist, he will probably anticipate a compensation for these barren weeks. All over the Kingdom last year sport was very poor. The trout were hardly ever known to rise so lustily as in the brave days of old. They could not be satis- factorily tempted either by the finest lures of orthodox pattern, or by the daintiest devices of modern ingenuity, such as fly-minnows made from quills and young eels from mother-of-pearl. They sulked and skulked ; and, saving as regards Loch Leven, the season's baskets on which were rather above the average, the sport was uniformly bad. The trout were not known to be specifically indisposed. Curiously enough, they have never, as a whole, been touched by the salmon-disease. The trout is cousin to the monarch of the stream ; yet the especial affliction of the chief has not descended to the lowlier generation. Rivers in which every visible salmon was white with the sickening fungus were the home of trout apparently in perfect health. Nevertheless, something was mysteriously wrong with the trout too. There was a sad falling-off in their appetite for all the dainties anglers could provide. That was the burden of the tales that came from every district of Scotland, of England, of Ireland. Thus, as we have said, these tedious north-east winds are perhaps fraught with a certain advantage. It may be that a little wholesome 4‘ starvation" to begin with will make the trout more apprecia- tive of the good things offered by the angler amid the sun- chased showers of April and "when leafy May time broadens into June."
Still, the state of affairs is too serious to be frivolously dismissed with the humour of hope. It should be inquired into, and, if possible, understood. Towards the close,of last year, an enterprising Scottish journal published two pages of reports from the rivers and the lochs north of the Tweed. The Editor had ordered his correspondents to inform him whether it was really true that sport was on the wane, and if that were so, to state what the causes might be. Four-fifths of the answers confirmed the dismal gossip of the angling country-sides. They said that the baskets had for four or five years been becoming poorer every season, and that the sport had never been so meagre as daring the season then closed. Whilst thus generally at one in respect to a matter of fact, the chroniclers had nothing like a common theory about the cause. Some said that the trout were becoming fewer because the growth of manufacturing industries was accom- panied by pollution of the rivers ; others surmised that the blight had come about simultaneously with the custom of enriching the arable lands with chemical manure, which, they said, poisoned the waters when swept by floods into the streams; others, again, were convinced that there would have been nothing to complain of if the law against fishing with salmon-
roe had been enforced. The third theory is not tenable at all. Sometimes, particularly during the spates of early autumn, roe is a very successful bait, and frequently the fish will not look at worms or at flies when it is within scenting distance ; but, on the other hand, it as often happens that roe fails while the other lures named, or minnows, or gentles, are succeeding. Certainly, when one thinks seriously, it does seem absurd to believe that the trout of Scotland are demoralised by a liking for roe, just as the people of Scotland are said to be by "the observance of toddy." Fish, it should surely be admitted, live in a state of nature, and are not subject, as the unfortunate higher animals are, to temptations seductive of their moral welfare. At the same time, we agree with the complaint, current in Scotland and in many parts of England and of Ireland, that the roe-fishers ought to be put down. In order to have bait, they must, either by their own or by other hands, kill salmon out of season. Thus, every man possessing roe is, act or part, an offender against the law ; and, even if there is no other reason, he ought to be rigorously dealt with on that account. There is something to be said for the theory that pollution from the refuse of manufactories, or from chemical manure, is what has caused the state of affairs generally lamented. It is noticeable that in England, where arti- ficial manuring is less customary than in Scotland, and where manufacturing industry tends to gather itself round certain large towns apart from the trouting rivers, the decline of sport has not been so distinct. We are not sure, however, that the pollution works in the way generally taken for granted. It is supposed to be poisonous ; bat there is evidence, both negative and positive, that it is not usually so. If ordinary pollution were deadly, we should see many dead fish ; but dead fish are hardly less scarce than dead donkeys, which are pro- verbially rare. Then, there is good reason to believe that, far from being killed by pollution, trout often thrive on it. They grow notably fat on the refuse of farina works, which gives the streams a peculiarly odious aspect ; and, as the writer in the Field has mentioned, some of the largest British trout ever landed away from the Thames were caught in a North of England river at its junction with a copious common sewer. Whilst it thus seems plain that what may be called moderate pollution is not usually a blight on angling by poisoning the trout, it is also clear that it may be so in another way. It may surfeit them with artificial food, and cause them to lose taste for the legitimate lures.
Given the most liberal value, the theories we have reviewed cannot be allowed even jointly to exhaust the subject. They do not take any account of the fact that, with the growth of our population, the goodly company of fishers is increasing enor- mously, while the waters to be cast angle on neither expand nor multiply. A stream that would perennially yield excellent sport to fifty rodmen will become " dour " if it is thrashed. by two or three hundred. That has been proved over and over again. It has been proved on the Tweed, the glorious baskets of "speckled beauties" caught on the banks of which are now mainly a reminiscence from the time of Sir Walter Scott and the Ettrick Shepherd. It has been proved on Lochleven, where the predecessor of the man in charge of the pier-head scales, who compliments you highly if your basket weighs twenty pounds, used not to be surprised at fifty. It has even been proved on the Thames, whose majestic trout, although they are probably numerous as ever, are now much "more of a curiosity," from being much less frequently seen upon dry land. The philosophical angler will not precipitately say that the change we are noting is altogether deplorable. He is not a "pot-hunter." He fishes from love of sport, not from any liking for what Mr. Ruskin would call the lewd sensation of slaughter. Six trout artistically landed are as valuable to him as a score captured in a spate are to the roe-fisher, or murdered in the shallows by the man with the grappling-gear. Still, just as there is no reason why the law against salmon-roe should be held in abeyance, there is no reason why pollutors should be tolerated. They, too, defy the Statute-Book; and they cannot plead that they do so in the interests of the community, for by the science and art of sanita- tion means other than the river are provided for the disposal of factory refuse. Trout grown fat on artificial feeding are indelicate to the taste as well as indifferent to the proper demands of the sportsman. Gooseberry-wine does not differ from champagne more than such fish do from the game little trout of Highland streams and lochs. Indeed, they are so much changed that, although they themselves have survived pollution, those who un-
warily eat them sometimes fall sick nigh unto death. Therefore, on all considerations, the law should be enforced. That would not materially injure any class, and it would greatly benefit the people at large.
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