Country diary 1922: the seldom seen smelt

Two hundred years ago Richard Brookes stated that the small salmonoid smelt was to be taken annually in Rostherne Mere “for ten days about Easter.” He called them “sprats or sparlings” and confused them with young herring, but he stated a fact, and I know of no earlier reference to their presence in this water. The smelt is no longer taken annually; indeed it is seldom seen; but it is in the spring, about the season of spawning, that it is occasionally detected, for it still lives in fresh water, an anadromous fish that has changed its habits. Once, when the mere was frozen, a number were netted at an air hole cut in the ice, and it was from the ice that I excavated the one that I found in 1895. In April 1912, I found two floating dead at the margin, and this year, on the last day of March, discovered another.

Whether in ancient days they could ascend the Mersey and Bollin to reach spawning ground in or round the mere is uncertain, but there seems little foundation for the assertion that they were originally introduced; there is none for the suggestion that the bottom water is salt. The smelts might, if they wished, struggle down to the sea, but they could not now ascend the weirs; they have ceased to require salt water and live a permanent fresh-water life.