PISCATORIAL.

Westport Times, Volume IX, Issue 1284, 28 May 1875, Page 4

PISCATORIAL.

If Mr Eufchevford, of Geelong, is a reliable authority, the Tasmanians have been sold in the matter of salmon ova. Mr Rutherford has returned from a trip to Tasmania, his chief object having been to obtain good fishing. He visited the breeding ponds at Mew Norfolk, and found there has been a mistake made in importing ova of the bull trout instead of, as was supposed, brown trout. He found he could catch none of tlie fish with the fly, to which brown trout always rise. Uaiting his line with

grasshopper, he took one of the fish about 18 to 20 inches long, and at once ascertained that it was a bull trout, a species which in Scotland they give five shillings rewird for every head produced. Splitting the fish with a knife from end to end, he found the flesh to be pure and white, whereas if it had been a brown trout it would have been pinkish. The bull trout is a very voracious fish, and very destructive to young salmon, and these fish having been turned out of the pond and thriven greatly prior to the turning out of the young salmon, Mr Rutherford concludes that the bull trout destroyed them all, and consequently it is vain to. look for any grown salmon frotn all the efforts which have hitherto been made. Mr Rutherford inspected the preserved fish at Hobart Town pronounced scientifically to be a real salmon, but he avers most positively that it is a salmon peeler, that is, an overgrown salmon trout, which must have escaped from somewhere.