practically impossible to classify the fish an angler catches
according to the methods which he employs, as most fish can be taken
by at least two of these methods, while many of those most highly
esteemed can be caught by all three. Sporting fresh-water fish are
therefore treated according to their families and merits from the
angler's point of view, and it is briefly indicated which method or
methods best succeed in pursuit of them.

_Salmon_.--First in importance come the migratory _Salmonidae_, and
at the head of them the salmon (_Salmo salar_), which has a two-fold
reputation as a sporting and as a commercial asset. The salmon
fisheries of a country are a very valuable possession, but it is only
comparatively recently that this has been realized and that salmon
rivers have received the legal protection which is necessary to their
well-being. Even now it cannot be asserted that in England the salmon
question, as it is called, is settled. Partly owing to our ignorance
of the life-history of the fish, partly owing to the difficulty of
reconciling the opposed interests of commerce and sport, the problem
as to how a river should be treated remains only partially solved,
though it cannot be denied that there has been a great advance in the
right direction. The life-history of the salmon, so far as it concerns
the matter in hand, may be very briefly summed up. It is bred in the
rivers and fed in the sea. The parent fish ascend in late autumn
as high as they can get, the ova are deposited on gravel shallows,
hatching out in the course of a few weeks into parr. The infant salmon
remains in fresh water at least one year, generally two years, without
growing more than a few inches, and then about May assumes what is
called the smolt-dress, that is to say, it loses the dark parr-bands
and red spots of infancy and becomes silvery all over. After this it
descends without delay to the sea, where it feeds to such good purpose
that in a year it has reached a weight of 2 lb to 4 lb or more, and it
may then reascend as a grilse. Small grilse indeed may only have been
in the sea a few months, ascending in the autumn of the year of their
first descent. If the fish survives the perils of its first ascent
and spawning season and as a kelt or spawned fish gets down to the sea
again, it comes up a second time as a salmon of weight varying from
8 lb upwards. Whether salmon come up rivers, and, if so, spawn, every
year, why some fish are muc