Spence's Bridge, at the mouth of the Nicola river, where it joins
the Thompson. He believes these fish to be salmon, and it is possible
that his view may be correct. But it is also possible that they may be
silver trout or steel-head trout; the evidence is not yet complete. No
salmon have ever been taken in this way with spoon or minnow above this
point, in spite of the number of years that fishing has been carried on
in these waters. The Indians never catch salmon by trolling with the
spoon, though they troll persistently for trout, the line being fastened
to the paddle of their canoe.

Mr. Inskip states that these fish never take the fly, and he has only
caught them in October. There is, of course, no doubt of the truth of
his statement, and a possible explanation might be that the steel-heads
run up as far as this point, and go up to the Nicola River. It has never
been thought that the steel-head runs as far as Kamloops Lake, and I
have never heard of anyone who claimed to have caught one; it is,
however, quite within the bounds of possibility that some of these fish
may come up with the salmon. The problem can be easily solved by
counting the rays in the anal fin; in the true trout these rays only
amount to about nine, in the salmon there are fourteen to sixteen
well-developed rays.

The cut-throat trout is unknown to me. I have never caught it in British
Columbian waters, unless some fish mentioned later in the account of the
Nicola River belonged to this species. It may occur in some of the
southern British Columbian coast rivers, and is common further south in
the neighbouring States of the Union. Prof. Jordan states that it is
always found in the country of the Sioux Indians, and hazards a
suggestion that they may have taken their tribal mark from it. This mark
consists of a couple of lines of red paint under the jaw on each side of
the neck, and is very similar to that which gives this fish its curious
name. The rainbow and the so-called silver trout are the only kinds
which are met with in the central plateau of British Columbia.

The next subject for consideration will be the fishing in the mountain
lakes; but before proceeding to it it may be as well to consider the
fishing as a whole in the waters already described, for the question
which most naturally suggests itself to an Englishman is whether the
sport to be obtained is worth coming so far for. Anyone with the
necessary money and time at his disposal