SALMON IN SHOALS.
This spring appears to have attracted to our rivers, in Ireland as well as Scotland and England, such quantity of salmon as equals any record in recent annals. The other day a fisherman on the Tay, who went forth not to fish but merely to see, calculated that he saw at least 800 salmon within an hour or two. I am told that at the mouth of another river that shall be nameless the numbers caught in nets near the mouth exceeded two thousand. Accounts of exceptional number of fish come from the west coast of Ireland, and, indeed, from some parts of the Continent. The run of the salmon is early as well as strong. Of course our rivers-- especially in the west of Ireland—differ inexplicably in earliness. I knew and have watched one ardent fisherman who began to flog the water of the Drowes in Leitrim from mid- January. It is true that he usually spent many weeks in Vain labour, but he was intent to prove that his pet river was as much as three, if not four, months earlier than the more northerly stream fished by his friend. One of the best sports- men it is my fortune to know tells me of the prevalence of a theory that a good salmon year—and this, he says, promises to be the best in his memory—usually means a good grouse year. Can there be any truth in such a correlation ? It is perhaps a little difficult to find what the philosophers call " a causal nexus "
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