TASMANIAN TROUT.

Otago Witness, Issue 1928, 2 November 1888, Page 28

TASMANIAN TROUT.

Nearly all the colonies have, to some extent, sought to illustrate natural history in their courts at the Exhibition, but few of. them have succeeded more creditably than Tasmania, In her court one may read, in the faint print of the rocks older by tens of thousands of years than the oldest volume in black-letter type, of a time when the island was clothed in forests of oak, elm, and beech, and there was neither eucalyptus, pine, nor blackwood upon the highlands of the Huon. To-day her fauna differs materially from that of the mainland; for the marsupial tiger, which is rather a wolf or hytena than anything feline, still roams through the Tasmanian forests, but what traces we find of it in Australia, deposited in caves or embedded in rock, show that when it lived here long ago it was the contemporary of the giant Diprotodon and the marsupial lion. One goes to the Tnsmanian court, therefore, in expectation of seeing strange things ; but the very first exhibit on the wall absorbs him. It is not the plaster cast of Truganini, with the eyebrows of the last of the Tasmanian race firmly held iv the clay, but a gleaming of silver and gold, and a dusting of red and brown spots upon the sides of some emigrant fishes. All that an Australian may have read or thought or dreamed of troufc aud salmen is intensified, in parb realised, as he stands before this grand collection of the grandest of fishes. They eeem to appeal to a particular trait of the Briton in him which has been rather dormant than absolutely lost in acclimatisation. There are 11 of them altogether, some with the deep-brown colour, the rugged head, the powerful jaw of the great lake trout ; others shapely, aristocratic, symmetrical in every curve, like the true salmon. Take the largest of them, for example— a fi^>h caught with the spinning minnow in a bend of the Huonj some 20 miles from Hobart, by Sir Robert Hamilton, the present Governor of Tasmania. Its natural condition was exactly as shown here. It fought gamely for half an hour before it was brought to bank ; outside it had all the rich markings of the Salmo salar, inside was the true salmon pink of the flesh, and the same exquisite flavour of the Home fish ; yet scientists shake their heads and say, " Well, not quite but very nearly a salmon." Sir Thomas Brady, who should be a sufficiently reliable authority for colonials to follow in these matters, says that thousands of such fish are taken from the Irish rivers every year, and sold as the true s&lmon. The test applied by naturalists in a dilemma of this kind is to count the number of scales from the origin of the adipose fin down to the lateral line. If there be 10 only, then, though ifc may look like a trumpeter, ib is yet a salmon, but if it has 13 and upwards, not all the logic and casuistry of all the anglers in the world can lift it above tho dignity of being at best a salmon-trout. This specimen, which is 3ffc in length, has a girth of 26in, and weighs 29lb,has more than 10 scales, but less than 13, so there is just a scale's width of doubt as to its bona fides. But if an angler might be sure of a few such fish in the year, scaling well in the balance, the extra scale upon their sides would hardly damp his enthusiasm. All the fish in the large case are from the Great Lake in Tasmania, a sheet of water which stretches for 60 miles, and promises in years to come to be the salmon centre of Australia, as the most famous of the Scottish lochs are in the Old Couutry. Seven out of the eight fish in this case average 181b, and the largest is but 23£lb, so that they are a nice even lot. Scarcely two of them are alike in outward markings, and several are beautifully freckled with golden 'spots. Some particulars of their capture will interest anglers. In April lasb, which is the c!o?e of the Tasmanian angling season, a party iucluding jtho Governor of Tasmania and his sou, Sir Thomas Brady, Mr Alex. Morton, curator of the Hobarfc Museum, and one or two other gentleman, took a run up to the Great Lake for a creditable ending to the fishing season. The road is easy and picturesque. First by rail for 20 miles up the. main line to Brighton, and then by coach through Green Ponds, Boswell, and some of the most picturesque spots in Tasmania right through to

the lake, a journey of 12 hours. The coach pro* prietor has established, a home for anglers there, and proposes to further extend and complete his accommodation. Well, upon that trip Sir Thomas Brady and Mr Morton used a small net, having scientific ends in view, while others of the party went out with rod and fly, minnow and grasshopper, and the result of the trip was 77 fish, weighing 384£1b, some of them nuggety brown trout, others, for all practical purposes, thoroughbred salmon. " Ah, the destructive net ! " anglers will say, but it was not the net alone, for upon one day Mr H. Hamilton, the Governor's soa, took 25 fish, weighing in all 641b, as a result of eight hours' fishing, and on the afternoon of the following day he had 13, varying in weight from 21b to 41b. Sir Robert Hamilton also landed several fish of 41b and 51b weight. The lake altogether is as near heaven as an angler wishes to get on this side of the grave. The waves wash upon a beaoh strewn with small shingle and silver sand, just the spot that breeding trout and salmon love. The Shannon — appropriate name for a salmon stream— as it enters the lake is broad and clear with low banks, and not a single impediment to stop the rush of a hooked fish. No giving a desperate fish the butt of the rod here every moment, to turn him from a half-sunken log or a reed-bed. If the smart 10-pounder has the best of the angler in anything like systematic manner, it is because the latter has yet to learn something of fishcraft. (To le concluded iiext week.)