Crossword-Solution: SMOLTS 6 letters, 8 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 8

The question is not so much whether the salmon can come up, as whether the smolts, or young salmon, could get down through the polluted water.

Some of the male Kipper (Kelts) come down in December and January, but the greater part of the females remain in the river until April, and they are occasionally seen herding with shoals of Smolts in May.

For several years previous to 1816 the Salmon were unable to ascend into the upper parts of the river Wharfe, being prevented either by the high weirs in the lower parts, or by some other cause, and of course there were no Smolts or Par; but in that year either the incessant rains of that summer or rumours of the formation of an association for the protection of fish, or some other unknown cause, enabled some Salmon to ascend the river, thirty or forty miles, and to spawn there.

George Houy, states that the Smolts are sometimes found there ten inches long, which he attributes to their not being able to get down at the proper period for want of a flood in the river.

But I know that in the Ribble Smolts will go down to the sea without there being a flood at all, if that does not come within ten days or a fortnight of the time at which they usually descend to the sea.