And some think that he feeds on water-thyme, and smells of it at his first taking out of the water; and they may think so with as good reason as we do that our Smelts smell like violets at their being first caught, which I think is a truth. Aldrovandus says, the Salmon, the Grayling, and Trout, and all fish that live in clear and sharp streams, are made by their mother Nature of such exact shape and pleasant colours purposely to invite us to a joy and contentedness in feasting with her. Whether this is a truth or not, is not my purpose to dispute: but 'tis certain, all that write of the Umber declare him to be very medicinable. And Gesner says, that the fat of an Umber or Grayling, being set, with a little honey, a day or two in the sun, in a little glass, is very excellent against redness or swarthiness, or anything that breeds in the eyes. * Salvian takes him to be called Umber from his swift swimming, or gliding out of sight more like a shadow or a ghost than a fish. Much more might be said both of his smell and taste: but I shall only tell you that St Ambrose, the glorious Bishop of Milan, who lived when the Church kept fasting-days, calls him the flower-fish, or flower of fishes; and that he was so far in love with him, that he would not let him pass without the honour of a long discourse; but I must; and pass on to tell you how to take this dainty fish. First note, that he grows not to the bigness of a Trout; for the biggest of them do not usually exceed eighteen inches.† He lives in such rivers as the Trout does; and is usually taken with the same baits as the Trout is, and after the same manner; for he will bite both at the minnow, or worm, or fly, though he bites not often at the minnow, and is very gamesome at the fly; and much simpler, and therefore bolder than a Trout; for he will rise twenty times at a fly, if you miss him, and yet rise again. He has been taken with a fly made of the red feathers of a paroquet, a strange outlandish bird; and he will rise at a fly not unlike a gnat, or a small moth, or, indeed, at most flies that are not too big. He is a fish that lurks close all Winter, but is very pleasant and jolly after mid-April, and in May, and in the hot months. He is of a very fine shape, his flesh is white, his teeth, those little ones that he has, are in his throat, yet he has so tender a mouth, that he is oftener lost after an angler has hooked him than any Hippolito Salviani, an Italian physician of the sixteenth century: he wrote a treatise De Piscibus, cum eorum figuris, and died at Rome, 1572, aged 59.-H. + Pennant notices as a rarity, a Grayling taken near Ludlow, above half a yard long, and weighing four pounds six ounces. Another was killed near Shrewsbury which weighed full five pounds. other fish. Though there be many of these fishes in the delicate river Dove, and in Trent, and some other smaller rivers, as that which runs by Salisbury, yet he is not so general a fish as the Trout, nor to me so good to eat or to angle for.* And so I shall take my leave of him; and now come to some observations of the Salmon, and how to catch him. CHAP. VII. PISCATOR. THE Salmon is accounted the King of The Salmon. fresh-water fish; and is ever bred in rivers relating to the sea, yet so high, or far from it, as admits of no tincture of salt, or brackishness. He is said to breed or cast his spawn, in most rivers, in the month of August:† some say, that then they dig a hole or grave in a safe place in the gravel, and there place their eggs or spawn, after the melter has done his natural office, and then hide it most cunningly, and cover it over with gravel and stones; and then leave it to their Creator's protection, who, by a gentle heat which he infuses into that cold element, makes it brood, and beget life in the spawn, and to become Samlets early in the spring next following.2 The Salmons having spent their appointed time, and done this natural duty in the fresh waters, they then haste to the sea before winter, both the melter and spawner: but if they be stopt by floodgates or weirs, or lost in the fresh waters, then those so left behind by degrees grow sick and lean, and unseasonable, and kipper, that is to say, have bony gristles grow out of their lower chaps, not unlike a hawk's beak, which hinders their feeding; and, in time, such fish so left behind pine away and die. 'Tis observed, that he may live thus one year from the sea; but he VARIATION. 2 protection, by whose power the spawn becomes Samlets the next spring following. -2d edit. *Notwithstanding Walton's assertion, experienced anglers affirm that although the Grayling may, yet he very rarely does, take the minnow. He will take gentles very eagerly. When you fish for him with a fly, you can hardly use one too smal. The Grayling is found in great plenty in many rivers in the north, particularly the Humber. And in the Wye, which runs through Herefordshire and Monmouthshire into the Severn, have been taken, with an artificial fly, very large ones; as also great numbers of a small, but excellent fish, of the Trout kind, called a Last-spring. They are not easily to be got at without a boat, or wading; for which reason those of that country use a thing they call a Corracle, or truckle: in some places it is called a coble, from the Latin corbula, a little basket; it is a basket, shaped like the half of a walnut-shell, but shallower in proportion, and covered on the outside with a horse's hide; it has a bench in the middle, and will just hold one person, and is so light, that the countrymen will hang it on their heads like a hood, and so travel, with a small paddle which serves for a stick, till they come to a river; and then they launch it, and step in. There is great difficulty in getting into one of these truckles, for the instant you touch it with your foot it flies from you; and when you are in, the least inclination of the body overset's it.-H. Their usual time of spawning is about the beginning of September, but it is said those in the Severn spawn in May.-H. |