THE SALMON

Shannon News, 8 January 1926, Page 4

THE SALMON

, ' — RIDDLE OF ITS MFE. Mr. Arthur Ransome, in writing' in the Manchester ,Guardian, says:— Until recently we knew no more of the eel than we know of the salmon. He, too, had a secret life. We knew where he fed but did not know where he bred. We know where the salmon breeds, but we do not s 'know where ho feeds, once he leaves the river of his birth. know the extraordinary life story pf the eel and can map his birthplace on the bottom of the Atlantic. The salmon still offers us a riddle, one of several that may be solved in no less astonishing a manner. After an infancy in the river he goes to sea, but as soon as he is there we lose touch with him and > know •. nothing of his doings until he returns to offer us an example of fakir-like fasting broken only by suicidal relaxations in favour of salmon flies and pther inventions of the two.leg. ged unicorn upon the banks whose horn is long and waving with an elastic' tentacle that will in time bring the strongest salmon to the \ gaff. Where dobs the salmon go When he leaves the coast? I have been reading an altogether admirable, cautious book by Mr. W. J. M. Menzics, Assistant Inspector of Salmon .Fisheries for Scotland ("The Salmon," by W. J. M. Menzies, London; Blackwood. Pp. yi., 211, 21s net), which, if it Qannot answer the question, at least puts it fairly before us, together with the known facts. , 'Mr. Menzies gives a list of "fairly well authenticated cases" of salmon being caught actually at sea between 1888 and this year. The list is one of less than thirty salmon, and of these ten had been swallowed by a shark and were thus captured at second hand when the shark was caught eight miles from land! The shark may have been returning from a visit to an estuary. Of fish caught a considerable distance from land, four were caught from 30 to 80 miles roughly north-east of Buchan Ness, three on the y Dogger Bank, and several well to the east of ,the Firth of Forth. Even allowed for some that may have been caught and promptly eaten by fishermen more interested in a change of diet, than in the scientific interest of , their catch, the list is amazingly small when we consider the number of salmon that visit and. leave our rivers and the amount of surface and bot. torn fishing to which the' North Sea is subjected. : The salmon must find his way by a road .that avoids the trawls on the sea's bottom and the nets and lines at the surface to a place where men do* not trouble him at all. In that place he eats like the heroes of Rabelais. The snake who gorges and then fasts for a month is a creature of regular habits" in comparison with the salmon who fasts for a month after month in the river and so stuffs himself in his secret restaurant at sea that a smoit of a few ounces, may come back a sixtypounder. Two years only of sea feeding will make a twenty-pounder. The puzzle is complicated by the seeming caprice of the fish, who have not even a regular timetable. Not all parr become smolts and go to sea at the same age. Only a few come back as grilse. Not all return at the same ' seasons, for the same length of. time and after the same length of ab. scence. We have yet to learn what it is that determines the choice in the matters of each individual salmon. Mr. Menzies ""admirably describes the known story of the youthful salmon, how the parr lose the <v "finger-marks," neeome miniatures flf their elders, drop down the' river ]

and forgather just but of' reach of the tide to depart to sea in battalions, as if at a signal. Some go after a single year. Others remain to bother the trout fishermen for two, three and even four years o*f river-feeding. Once at sea they vanish, to reappear with entirely altered characters, by no means so anxious to hang themselves on every artificial fly. Some return early as grilse after only a year of ocean banqueting. Others linger at the feast and return after two years or more as salmon, enormously increased. No one knows where that ocean feast is held. Mr. Menzies describes some interesting experiments made in the hope of finding out. Marked fish have been recaptured .sometimes in their own rivers, sometimes at netting stations on the coast. Mr. Menzies prints a map which leaves him and his readers as puzzled as ever, for some fish are caught north of their own rivers and some south. There is no sign of any regular caravan route to the salmpnic Mecca. The most remarkable" journey thus noted was made by a fish released In the Sprey and caught in the Eden, after travelding at least 630 miles. Another had done 250 miles at 35 miles a day. But all the proved; journeys are coastal. It is not as if marked fish had turned up at Archangel or even in Norway.

Mr. Menzies' book is delightful to read > if only because of its author's absolute freedom from dogmatism. He has an excellent habit of setting beside each apparent clue the facts that tend to. make it valueless. He would, I believe, be almost unhappy if the whole truth were, to be discover--• ed and thus deprive him of his open mind, his philosophic doubt. If it is only the question of why salmon come up the rivers at all, Mr. Menzies has a nut to crack for every explanation. There is the theory that the sexual instinct brings the fish up as much as a year before their spawning time. There is the ingenious American suggestion that salmon return to fresh water because they have grown so fat during their marine junketings that the change in their specific gravity makes them uncomfortable in salt water and they seek the rivers, where the Plimsoll line for fish, as for ships, is higher. Mr. Menzies agrees that salmon swim near the surface in coastal waters and go to the,, bottom and stay there as soon as they enter the rivers. But, says he, thin fish as well as fat come up the rivers. There are hints in the book of experiments now being carried out that should enable Mr. Menzies to give us another book. I hope so.