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The life-history of sea-trout is much the same as that of salmon, and the fish on their first return from the sea in the grilse-stage are called by many names, finnock, herling and whitling being perhaps the best known. Of the two races Salmo trutta alone is of much use to the fly-fisher. The bull-trout, for some obscure reason, is not at all responsive to his efforts, except in its kelt stage.
The specimen was caught at the mouth of Oyster Harbour by a hook, on the 30th August, 1841. No. 19. CENTROPRISTES TRUTTA. SCIAENA TRUTTA, G. Foster, Icon. 210. Pectorals yellow or orange coloured, with dark bases; scales faintly fan-streaked; last rays of dorsal and anal elongated. Faint oblong, orange-coloured spots on the sides, not in vertical rows. "Rays, D. 9-16; A. 2-10; P. 16."
Either some of the peasants have been fishing over them with the deadly "otter," or else they belong to that variety of the trout family known as TRUTTA DAMNOSA, the species which you can see but cannot take.
My friend Ponsonby Smith, who is one of the oldest fly-fishers in the three kingdoms, said to me once: Take my word for it, there are only four true salmo; the salar, the trutta, the fario, the ferox; all the rest are just varieties, subgenuses of the above; stick to that. Some writing fellow divided all the women into good-uns and bad-uns.
Next to the salmon comes the sea-trout, the other migratory salmonid of Europe. This is a fish with many local names and a good deal of local variation. Modern science, however, recognises two "races" only, Salmo trutta, the sea-trout proper, and Salmo cambricus or eriox, the bull-trout, or sewin of Wales, which is most prominent in such rivers as the Coquet and Tweed.
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