SEA TROUT.
_Salmo Trutta Marina--Salmon Trout--White Trout._
This fish corresponds precisely with the description given by Dr. De Kay
of the Speckled Trout, _Salmo Fontinalis_, except in the following
particulars:
I can find no teeth in the vomer or central part of the roof of the
mouth any more than I can find them on the common brook trout, and I
have examined great numbers of the latter for the purpose. The pectorals
are nearly a transparent white, slightly tinged with red at the origin
of the rays, except that the second ray is darkish. The first ray of the
ventrals is yellow, the second dark, the third and the others orange
fading into white; the origin of the ventrals is directly under that of
the first dorsal. The first ray of the anal fin is orange, the second
and others dark green, growing lighter toward the tail, the origin of
the second and third rays being yellowish. The scales are very small,
imbedded in the skin, and there are neither scales nor defined spots on
the gill-covers. The fin-rays are as follows:
Br. 12; D. 13; P. 13; V. 8; A. 10; C. 19-6/6.
The branchial rays seem to differ sometimes, the same fish having eleven
on one side and twelve on the other, and the highest one is a half ray
or small plate. The anal, properly speaking, has eleven rays, but the
first is so delicate and so lost in the fleshy part of the fin, that it
is hardly distinguishable.
The coloring of these fish differs greatly from that of the common
trout, but it is universally conceded that color is no test or
distinction of species. When fresh run from the sea, and when still
inhabiting the salt water, they are gloriously brilliant; their backs a
liquid bluish green, the under part flashing like molten silver. The
spots and scarlet specks on their sparkling sides are of a purer tone,
and the lower fins more slender and delicate.
They are found in the bays of Prince Edward’s Island, in the harbors of
New Brunswick, and in all the gulf and river of St. Lawrence and its
lower tributaries. In Frank Forrester’s “Fish and Fishing,” a letter
from Mr. Perley, the British Commissioner of Fisheries, is quoted, page
123, in which he says these fish do not ascend into purely fresh water.
In this I am reluctantly, out of respect to his great experience as a
fisherman and high standing in scientific attainments, compelled to
differ from him. I have unquestionably taken these fish far above tide
water, and have the best authority for saying that usually, if not
invariably, the larger trout at least ascend to the head-waters of the
mountain streams to spawn. I venture to say that no large sea trout are
taken in the tide water after the last, and rarely after the first of
August. It is probable that he has been misled by the fact that there
are trout in the same streams that never descend to the sea, and there
is a marked difference in color between them and their brethren,
although I believe they are the same fish. For the correctness of these
views, reference can be made to the experience of many authorities that
would be satisfactory to one that I esteem and respect as much as I do
my excellent friend and brother of the angle, Mr. Perley. While
mentioning his name, it will not be amiss to tender him, in the name of
the fishermen of the United States, our thanks and grateful
acknowledgments for the invariable kindness, courtesy and good humor
with which he has answered the numerous questions entailed upon him by
his mention in Frank Forrester’s “Fish and Fishing,” and the valuable
aid and advice he has furnished the wanderers from the States in their
search for piscatorial happiness. Combining as he does the heartiness of
an Englishman with the sociability of our own country, we are proud to
claim him, while he remains in our vicinity, as half an American. But
let me, at the same time, suggest to my countrymen, that there is a
limit even to the best of tempers, and that, although each one may only
put a few questions and take up a little valuable time, the total
combined may be annoying, inconvenient, and even excessively
burdensome.[4]
In addition to the positive fact of taking sea trout above tide water,
it is to be remarked as a habit of all trout to ascend in summer to the
cool sources of the springy brooks, and our common trout will invariably
be found, after the warm weather is at its height, either in the
rivulets that feed the ponds where they dwell in winter, or at the
head-waters of the ponds. The sun’s rays are so powerful that they
affect any sheet of open water, especially the harbors and bays of the
ocean, and the fish will not live there, but withdraw to cooler regions.
A remarkable case of this kind fell under the writer’s observation at
Masapequa Pond, which is universally admitted to be the best preserve on
Long Island. It is rather small, and quite shallow except in the
channel, and being entirely unsheltered, is liable to become heated in
hot weather. The spring had been remarkably mild, and in the middle of
May, after a number of days that reminded one of June, I visited
Masapequa, and, although the weather was favorable and a lively ripple
darkened the water, only two trout were killed in the entire morning. I
was much discouraged and surprised, until happening to get my flies
caught, I put my hand into the water and found it milk-warm. The
explanation was simple, and I at once told the proprietor, who had been
more astounded than myself, that the fish had run out of the pond into
the brook; and there, sure enough, we shortly discovered them lying in
the deep pools in shoals.
If they cannot retire to cool, fresh, aërated water, they will perish,
as happened one dry, warm season in a pond at Oyster Bay, which,
although well filled with trout, had no extensive head-waters. The fish
crowded round the flume, hardly disturbed by being touched with a stick,
remaining motionless, and evidently suffering. They died and were picked
up by scores.
If sea trout do not ascend the fresh streams, where do they spawn? From
the habits of all the salmon tribe, we know they must have a current of
pure and cool water to vivify the eggs, and they certainly cannot find
this along the shores and bays. Their eggs must be deposited on a
gravelly bed and not on sand, and as the bottom of the salt water, which
is purely sand, even if appropriate spawning ground, is peopled with all
sorts, shapes and sizes of creeping, crawling and burrowing things, from
sand-worms to sea-eggs, the spawn would be utterly destroyed long before
it could come to maturity. If, in spite of all these difficulties, the
eggs should hatch, the young fry being entirely helpless for thirty
days, and little able to take care of themselves afterward, would be
annihilated by their elder brethren or the first sea fish that came
along. Young trout, in their appropriate localities, hide carefully in
little spring rills and close along shore for months after they are
hatched, and not till well grown and active do they trust themselves in
the deeper places among the larger fish. Nature has taught them that the
latter have an excessive fondness for them.
Whether sea trout spawn earlier than brook trout, I do not know, but
very possibly they may, as in cooler countries fish usually spawn
earlier than in warmer ones. However, in August the roe is not developed
to any great extent; no more so, apparently, than with us, and, although
the Canadian Winter sets in earlier than ours, trout do not fear the
cold. The regions they inhabit being extremely difficult of access in
the freezing season, this question may remain some time unsolved.
Whether sea trout should be ranked as a distinct species, or whether
there are any different species of trout in America, has been a serious
question. It is a great misfortune that every naturalist, in his eager
endeavor to discover new species and originate new names, has caught at
the slightest distinctions in appearance, which are often only due to
food or water, and has immediately dubbed the fish a knight and endowed
him with a new name--frequently some horrible Latin perversion of his
own. Real distinctions are those permanent ones that no change of food
and water can affect, nor the chance influence of a few shell-fish or a
muddy bottom. There are distinctions between these trout and brook
trout, of color, comparative size of different parts of the body,
formation of the head and fins; but not more so than one often meets
with in fishing any of the streams of Long Island that communicate with
the sea, or even in the different streams of the wild woods. The sea
trout of Canada certainly do far excel the ordinary trout in size, being
taken, with the fly, weighing nine pounds, and the ordinary average
being from three to four; but otherwise they seem to have no permanent
peculiarity that should distinguish them from the common brook trout.
All other distinctions fade after the trout have been for some time in
fresh water, and a late run of sea trout differs far more from those
which have ascended the streams a month earlier than the latter from the
brook trout. Indeed, some sea trout have become domesticated in the
fresh water, and never returning to the sea, have settled down, although
often of great size, into the ordinary trout.
In Stump Pond, on Long Island, and the adjacent waters, are four
different varieties of trout: the old-fashioned Stump Pond Trout,[5]
with a black mouth, a long, thin body, a big head, and a wolfish,
hungry look; the Salt Water Trout, with a small, sleepy head, a deep
body, and a rich coloring, small fins and red flesh; the Brook Trout,
long, narrow, brightly marked, gracefully shaped and lively; and a trout
which has appeared in a new pond, scarcely yet completed, with a dark,
strong coloring, very black on the back, a thick, stout body, and a well
proportioned head. Any one can distinguish these fish at a glance, but
must they each have a different name, and a Latin one at that?
The fresh run sea trout of the North have beautiful silver sides, almost
as bright as a salmon’s, and in this particular, at least, differ from
the salt water loving trout of Long Island and Cape Cod. Their heads are
small, delicate, and exquisitely shaped, and their lower fins are small
and almost transparent. The heads of the males are larger, and the lower
jaw more hooked than those of the female, and these differences increase
as the spawning season advances. The head of the female bears a
comparison to that of a modest, refined lady, while that of the male
resembles the big head and ugly jaw of the struggling, quarrelling, but
protecting man. At times their flesh is a bright red, often a dull
yellow and rarely whitish. The shape of their bodies is graceful and
broad across the back, to a greater degree in both particulars than the
sea run trout of Long Island and Massachusetts. But as they ascend the
rivers, and after they have been some time in their new abode, these
peculiarities diminish, the color of their backs turns from a beautiful
green to a dull black, the splendor of their silvery sides fades, and
the heavy spots and roseate tinge appear; their translucent fins grow
opaque and strong from greater use in the swift current; their shape
even seems to alter, and they are altogether unlovely by comparison with
their former selves. Are they, therefore, “like Cerberus, three
gentlemen at once,” and entitled to three distinct appellations, or are
they simply our dearly loved old friends, the _Speckled Trout_?
The change in appearance of these fish cannot be explained by the
suggestion that the ordinary brook trout ascend the rivers and mingle
with those of the sea, because the latter are to be caught in every
stage, from the brilliancy of the fresh river fish to the dull colors of
the oldest inhabitant. And it will be noticed that at the heads of the
rivers a bright-colored fish is rarely met with, although they must be,
with few exceptions, all sea trout.
The best trout rivers of Canada are troublesome to reach, difficult to
ascend, and seldom attempted by any but the salmon fisher. To the
latter, the trout, attractive as he seems to us, is a trial and a
nuisance. Abundant and voracious, he often rushes in advance of the
lordly salmon, seizes the fly, and then discovering his mistake, by his
struggles disturbs the pool, ruffles the fisherman’s temper, and
frightens the larger game from its equanimity. He is therefore little
noticed by the frequenters of the headwaters, except to be denounced,
and his delicate peculiarities seldom considered and less esteemed. He
is principally sought in the tide water along the shores, or from boats
in the open bays, but rarely followed to his summer home. The
statements, therefore, of Canadian fishermen with regard to him must be
cautiously received and carefully weighed; their experience may not have
been sufficiently extended.
Whatever be his name, he is a beauty, the fairest of the children of the
sea. There are others of more variegated colors, of gaudier hues, of
more slender shape, but the trout is lord of all. He is the pet of the
true fisherman, whether taken by the name of _Salmo trutta_ in the bays
of Canada, weighing over ten pounds, or as _Salmo fontinalis_, in the
mountain streams of Vermont, reaching not one quarter as many ounces. In
Canada, sportsmen--and none others seem to fish--take the sea trout
solely with the fly. In June, and earlier, they are found in the tide
waters, and there prefer gaudy flies. The scarlet ibis, or curry-curry
of South America, dressed as it is ordinarily done, or diversified by a
little gold or silver tinsel wound round the body, or indeed the entire
hook wound with tinsel alone, is by many preferred to all other flies;
but the red hackle, the golden pheasant, the professor, the grey drake,
and in fact any gay fly, will meet with approval. A much admired fly is
made of a red body and yellow wings; but the more sober colors must not
be forgotten nor neglected, they are often more successful than their
gaudy relations. As the season advances, and the fish ascend the clear,
cool rivers, especially if the water be low and the weather dry, the
sober flies are preferable. Then the cow-dung, the alder-fly, the
turkey-brown, the winged black hackle, and in fact all the ordinary
flies, are in demand; a fly invented by myself, of a blackbird’s wing
and a claret body and legs, and called the early fly, has often proved
itself uncommonly killing; and indeed all the flies usually employed in
other waters are appropriate for the sea trout in Canada.
Neither does the size of hook differ from that ordinarily in use; it
should average about a number nine, with a few somewhat larger for rough
water. It is rarely desirable, on account of the enormous size of the
fish, to use more than one fly at a time, and generally the trout will
soon remove the difficulty by reducing them to that number; but at
times, when fish are shy, they seem to be attracted by seeing several.
In order to kill the largest possible quantity, without any regard to
humanity or sportsmanship, a heavy fly-rod is desirable, as much time is
lost in landing them with a delicate rod.
For many hundred miles below Quebec, the majestic St. Lawrence rolls its
transparent waters in a steady surge toward the ocean. Forward and
backward heaves the mighty tide, piling up the waters eighteen and
twenty feet; but the steady current keeps on its course toward the gulf.
Into this wonderful stream, that can only be likened to an arm of the
sea, at every few miles debouches from the granite hills a river, more
or less extensive and more or less rocky and turbulent. These rivers
rise on the mountain tops, cold and clear, and thunder down over falls
and rapids, through chasms and gorges split in the eternal rock, till
they leap, tumble or crawl into that outlet of a thousand lakes, the
highway of the Canadas.
These streams the salmon and trout ascend, there to disport themselves,
there to make love, prepare their nests, and perpetuate their species.
The water is cool, running from the frigid regions of the north or
supplied by icy springs, and the bottom offers every variety of
spawning beds. There is the stony pool for the salmon, the pebbly one
for the trout, and never do the two spawn, and rarely even live, in the
same. The pool where the salmon lie is deep and rapid, with a bottom
composed of dark limestones averaging about the size of a bantam’s egg.
While the trout hide in a sluggish pool, and often one worn away by the
water and hollowed from a clay bank. It is a tradition, but one by no
means well substantiated, that trout never eat young salmon, nor salmon
young trout. As trout are more fond of their own species than almost any
other delicacy, it is not probable they would be fastidious about
swallowing a nice, juicy little salmon.
The country through which these streams run is very peculiar: rough
hills of granite rise almost perpendicularly from the edge of the water,
many hundred and sometimes many thousand feet. Their sides are bare and
bleak, and if adorned at all with verdure, it is with a stunted pine and
spruce, that only half hides the white rock beneath. The streams wind in
tortuous course among the crags, and slowly gain a high elevation. These
bare, unprofitable hills extend back from the north shore of the St.
Lawrence as far as the foot of man has penetrated, and only at long
intervals by the shore of some of the larger rivers, where forty
centuries of storms have worn away and washed the detritus from the
mountain into some little bay, have half civilized beings been enabled
to build rough cabins and glean a scanty subsistence. Thus are these
waters, the home and nursery of the trout and salmon, protected forever
by nature against the pervading destructiveness of man. Judicious laws
have been passed and will be enforced by the Canadian government, and
the American fisherman may find in neighboring waters what he will never
again see in his own, these noble fish dwelling in abundance, and
protected from worthless, wanton and unreasonable destruction.
It is a burning shame, a foul blot on the character of Americans, and
tarnish on their reputation for far-sighted economy, that their only
idea of the treatment of the wild game of the woods and waters seems to
be total annihilation. “After me a desert,” is their motto; and they
never rest till, by planting snares and liming streams, they have caught
the last partridge and poisoned the last fish. Thus have they already
destroyed one of the most valuable resources of the country; the Hudson,
the Connecticut, the Penobscot, and even the Kennebec, yield no more
salmon, and we yearly pay to Canada enormous sums for what we once had,
and might still have, in plenty on our own shores. Not many years ago a
person buying shad on the Connecticut River was required to take such a
proportion of salmon. Now that the head-waters are covered with
tanneries and saw-mills, and are crossed by dams without the simple
expedient of a flume that the fish could ascend, and now that early
salmon are worth a dollar a pound in New York market, where are the
former denizens of the Connecticut?
All the timber cut on the streams would not pay for the damage done to
the fisheries. In Canada the people have discovered, fortunately for
them not too late, the importance of stringent protective laws. The nets
can only be set within a certain distance, and cannot extend across the
entire stream. In Lower Canada the net fishing terminates on the first
day of August, and the rod fishing on the fifteenth of September, and
spearing, the most cruel, unprofitable and injurious mode of
destruction, is forbidden altogether.
About one hundred and twenty miles below Quebec the wondrous Saguenay
pours its dark waters and fierce current into the placid bosom of the
St. Lawrence. It is one of the natural wonders of our still new and
scarcely explored country. Hills rise a thousand feet sheer up, and its
waters descend a thousand feet deep at their base. The St. Lawrence, at
its mouth, is only some thirty feet deep, but the bottom suddenly
descends at the entrance to the Saguenay, and becomes from five hundred
to a thousand feet in depth. The breadth of the Saguenay is so great
that the grandeur of the mountains is lost to the eye, and the scenery
is remarkable more for ruggedness than beauty. At the mouth of this
river was the first station of the Hudson Bay Company, a little village
called Tadousac, which is pronounced with the emphasis on the last
syllable, and in that village stands the mission church of the Jesuits,
the oldest in the country.
Close to Tadousac, and almost adjoining at the back, is a still smaller
village called L’Anse à l’Eau, and although great ships no longer lie at
Tadousac, and the houses are fast falling to decay, and the good men of
the olden days have long gone their last journey, and the trappers are
never more seen around the famous station, and the glory of the Hudson
Bay Company has departed, the trout and salmon coast along the rocks
and visit the inlets as they did when priests promenaded the natural
terraces of Tadousac, and when the shortest road to the Northwest was up
the Saguenay River. The trout care not though the iron horse has sprung
two great leaps across the water that they live in, and know not that a
woman, the only Catholic that can read, officiates as high priest in the
sanctum of the woman-haters, the mission church of the Jesuits.
The St. Lawrence abounds with most delicious food for trout; there are
acres of small fish; the sand eels crowd the bays yards deep, the
sardines, the mullet, the capelin, the tommy cods, push and jostle their
way along, while shellfish innumerable cover the sandy bottom. Flies
swarm on the water, and the deep rivers in Winter and the cool streams
in Summer constitute the paradise of the _salmonidæ_.
Along the shores of the tide water, early in Spring the trout and salmon
make their appearance, and wandering about pass the merry days of May,
June and July in feasting and junketing, in visiting new scenes and
tasting every variety of food, till instinct warns them the waters are
falling, and they must hasten to their sylvan bowers and enjoy the
pleasures of love and paternity. Then slowly, the largest first, they
leave the tide waters and swarm up all the practicable streams, running
the rapids and steadily advancing to their pebbly spawning beds, which
kind nature appears to have prepared in the heart of these impassable
mountains for their especial protection. Through all this season, June,
July and August, the fishing is magnificent; they are in great numbers,
and of immense size; but after they have once left the salt water, the
angler must accompany them in their ascent if he would continue his
sport, and by day struggle in his canoe against the rapids, up which he
hears them darting at night.
While the fish are still in tide water, and the fisherman is fishing
from the rocks, the head of some bay into which flows a stream of fresh
water, and the time of the lower half of the tide, are both desirable.
The former as furnishing a variety of food, and the latter as
contracting the fishing ground. The eddies of a swift current, and the
hollows of a rocky bottom are both affected by the fish; although they
are often found along a smooth sandy shore, chasing the minnows, and now
and then dashing at a fly or sand-hopper thrown off the land. It is
nothing unusual to capture a hundred fish in as few hours as it will
require to land them, and often the only limit to the number will be the
sportsman’s humanity. They are a difficult fish to preserve; it seems
sacrilegious to salt them; they are not good pickled in brine, and
smoking is both injurious and troublesome. The fisherman, if he would
not have them rot before his eyes, must put a bridle on his eagerness.
They run very large, sometimes above a dozen pounds, are often taken of
five and six, and frequently a whole day’s catch will average three
pounds. They are found at the mouth and along the shore of every river
that empties into the lower part of the St. Lawrence. They ascend the
Saguenay, and are taken at and near its mouth in great numbers, and in
fact everywhere in the lower St. Lawrence and all its tributaries they
abound. It would be more difficult to tell where not to find them than
where to find them. But the best trout-fishing season is later, when
they have followed the salmon and retired to the upper waters of the
mountain streams, where they lie together in shoals, in the deep pools.
Then they may be traced by the wake their motion leaves in the water;
then may the fisherman, casting a long line and careful fly, pick the
finest and go on fishing till heart and soul are satisfied. There, amid
the wild scenery, at the foot of the granite hills, by the shade of the
stunted spruce, he may take his stand upon some point of rocks, near to
a black pool, and deftly wielding the slender rod, may bring to the net
one after another of the mighty denizens of the water. But even then, if
he would take the mightiest he must prove himself a sportsman by keeping
out of sight and casting far and straight. And when his sport is
terminated by the declining day, or his ample satisfaction, and he meets
his companions round the camp-fire, over a well cooked supper improved
by a vigorous appetite, he will exchange experiences of the habits of
fish or the arcana of the angler’s art.
If, however, he loves the “wet sheet and the flowing sea,” a nautical
anomaly, by the way, he may pursue his prey in the open bays, and with a
smart breeze and long line, and gaudy fly dancing from wave to wave,
have great sport. Under these circumstances the fish are almost
uncontrollable and must be often followed with the boat for a long way
before they can be killed. It is gloriously exciting, the bright waters
sparkling with foam, the light boat leaping over the billows, the sky
magnificent in its depth of blue, the fresh breeze cool and strong; and
the fish just hooked, furious, vigorous and courageous, rushing hither
and thither, plunging to the bottom or springing high out of water. Then
the exciting chase as he takes off fortunately down wind, and exhausts
all but the few last turns of line on the reel till it becomes a
question of speed between him and the boat, and at last his final
surrender and capture. Truly is it magnificent.
Rivière du Loup, a little Canadian village situated on the St. Lawrence,
opposite the mouth of the Saguenay, is now connected with Quebec by
railroad, and is only a day and a half distant from New York. It affords
good accommodations, but there is no place anywhere on the Saguenay or
at its mouth where the traveller can stop.[6] The Habitans although
generally willing to offer such accommodation as they possess, are too
dirty in their habits, and often too much beloved of creeping things to
suit American taste. So that as there is little or no trout fishing at
Rivière du Loup, the angler must make his arrangements for a camp-life,
and would do well to descend the St. Lawrence in a pilot boat, which he
can hire with a man and boy for two dollars a day, and stop at the
mouths of all the streams that debouche into it. The river is over
twenty miles wide, and he must look out for storms, as these boats are
open and by no means good sea boats. At night he can go ashore, build a
fire, put up his tent, and call into requisition the numerous luxuries
this mode of travelling will enable him to carry.
A steamboat ascends the Saguenay twice a week, and he can either take it
at Quebec or join it at Rivière du Loup, and by this means enjoy a trip
through the bold scenery of that celebrated river, and can either return
to Rivière du Loup, or take a pilot boat at L’Anse à l’Eau. There is a
generous-hearted Englishman living at L’Anse à l’Eau, but he has been
compelled to refuse admission to all strangers, as any infraction of
that rule would have led to his being overrun.
Many of the streams of Lower Canada are leased to private individuals,
and there are few good accessible salmon streams open to the public, but
the sea trout fishing along the St. Lawrence and at the mouths of most
of the streams is free to all. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and at
Prince Edward’s Island, there is as yet no restriction, and both salmon
and trout are the property of him who can catch them.[7] Nowhere,
however, can any salmon fishing or good trout fishing be had except by
camping out. Canadian canoemen can be obtained, if not required to
furnish canoes, for sixty cents a day, although the Indians, who are far
superior, command over a dollar, and where the angler is unacquainted
with the water he is to fish, he had better take the latter. They are,
however, willful and exacting, and sometimes stubborn and troublesome,
while the former are the best-natured fellows in the world, full of fun,
song and frolic, but often too fond of the liquor case.
The best river of Lower Canada is the Mingan, but if it is not already
leased it soon will be. It can be reached by steamer that leaves Quebec
semi-weekly, stopping at Gaspi, at Bathurst on the Bay de Chaleurs,
which is near Nipisiquit, the best river of New Brunswick, at several
places along the route, and finally at Shediac, whence there is a
communication with St. John or Halifax. The steamer running at the time
this is written is the Arabian, and leaves Quebec every alternate
Monday. The Nipisiquit is within a few miles of Bathurst, where there is
good accommodation, and boatmen can be obtained without difficulty, or
the fisherman may continue his travels to Dalhousie, at the mouth of the
Restigouche, and try either that or the Matapediac. Another mode of
reaching the fishing grounds, is to go to St. John, and thence by
steamboat to Fredericton, and cross over by land to the Miramichi, at
Boiestown, where there is excellent trout and fair salmon fishing. A
list of the distances from Quebec, together with further instructions,
is given under the head of salmon fishing, as the rivers we have
mentioned are properly salmon rivers.
The sea trout fishing is so fine, that many persons prefer it to taking
the larger salmon, and can be indulged in almost anywhere along the
shores of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward’s Island,
Newfoundland and Lower Canada; and were it not for the heavy fogs, the
Bay of St. Lawrence would be a favorite resort of our adventurous
yachtsmen. The Galway line of ocean steamers now touches at
Newfoundland, whose waters abound with the finest fish.
The sea trout ascend to the head-waters of the Miramichi quite early, so
that there are none of large size to be caught in the lower section by
the middle of July. In that river they average from two to five pounds’
weight. But the Tabasintac, a stream half-way between Chatham and
Bathurst, is the most famous sea trout river of New Brunswick. I do not
know of any sea trout along the southern shore of New Brunswick.
The scientific designation of this fish is not yet settled, although the
United States Fish Commission have given it their attention, and it is
to be dreaded that, numerous as he still is, the sea-trout will have
disappeared before we know what to call him.
Canada and the Provinces have been immensely developed since much of the
above was written; travel is easier, pleasanter, quicker, and
accommodations better. But with this improvement have come fishing
restrictions, license fees, and government interference, which more than
counterbalance the advantages.
[Illustration: LAKE TROUT--SALMON TROUT--TOGUE. (_Salmo confinis_)]