Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 392, June, 1848. Various

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      "With regard to the ravages committed among the fry of the salmon, I may mention that almost every pike captured by me during the months of April and May contained in its stomach, or disgorged, on being landed, the remains of one or more smolts. These frequently were quite entire – to all appearance, indeed, newly killed; they were sometimes also in a partly-digested state, and on other occasions presented to the eye little more than was sufficient to distinguish them as having been small fish. I have taken five or six salmon-fry, in the stages above described, out of the stomach of a single pike. Two, three, or four, is a matter of common occurrence. Such being the case, and if it be true, what many ichthyologists affirm, that fish dissolve their food with such astonishing rapidity as to rival in some instances the action of fire; nay, allowing that the stomach of the pike occupied a couple of hours in completing the digestive process, the amount of havoc committed by this ravager on Teviot during the smolt season is quite astonishing. Confining my calculation within very moderate bounds, I shall presume that each pike, on the average, as his daily meal, during the months already referred to, engrosses four salmon or bull-trout fry. This, in the course of sixty days, gives an allowance to every individual in Teviot of two hundred and forty smolts; and supposing there are from Ancrumbridge downward, a stretch of water nine or ten miles in length, not more than one thousand pike, the entire number consumed by these, in less than one-sixth of the year, amounts to two hundred and forty thousand, or nearly a quarter of a million of salmon-fry, – a greater number, there is no question, than is killed during the same extent of time by all the angling poachers in the district put together."

      "I find a number of anglers at one with me in opinion upon this subject; and all who have witnessed night-leistering on Tweed during the autumnal or winter months, will acknowledge that even the romantic character which torch-light and scenery invest it with, fails as an apology for the ignoble, wasteful, and injurious nature of the occupation. In nine cases out of ten, it is pursued, either during the spawning season itself, or when the fish are heavy with roe – when they are red or foul, having lain a considerable time in the river, and, moreover, when they have lost all power of escape, or are cut off from exercising it, both by the lowness of water, and by the circumstance of their being hemmed in, at the head and foot of the pool or place of action, by nets and other contrivances stretched from bank to bank.

      "It can scarcely be credited, but I relate a fact known to many on Tweedside, that, about four or five years ago, upwards of three hundred breeding fish, salmon and grilses, were slaughtered in the course of a single night, from one boat, out of a stretch of water not far from Melrose, two leisters only being employed; and of this number – I allude to the fish – scarcely one was actually fit to be used as food, while by far the greater part of them were female salmon, on the eve of depositing their ova. In the neighbourhood of Kelso, upwards of ninety have frequently been butchered with this implement during a single night, from one boat, – all of them fish in the same rank and unhealthy condition above described. In September 1846, according to the most moderate calculation, no fewer than four thousand spawning fish, consisting chiefly of full-grown salmon, and comprehending the principal breeding stock of the season – those fish which, from their forward state, promised the earliest and most vigorous supply of fry, were slaughtered in Tweed, with the consent, and under the auspices, of the upper holders of fishings, in the manner I speak of. Need it be said, that the injury done to the salmon-fishings in general by this malpractice on the part of two or three lesser proprietors, is incalculable, and, when linked with the doings of poachers during closetime, to which it unquestionably gives encouragement, and the system pursued on Tweed of capturing and destroying the kelts and baggits, it must operate most prejudicially against every plan devised to further the breeding of this highly-prized article of food."