FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



123 



they lose condition gradually as they work up- 

 stream, for they feed very little in fresh water, if 

 at all; they make no attempt, for example, to 

 capture the parr they meet. Most anglers believe 

 that they may occasionally snap up a small fish or 

 other tempting morsel. Many are caught on 

 artificial flies, while every salmon angler knows 

 that they will sometimes take a hook baited with 

 angleworms or with prawns. It has been suggested 

 that salmon recover the feeding habits of their 

 youth to some extent after they have spent some 

 time in the river, for they often rise to floating 

 insects. But the stomachs of salmon caught in 

 fresh water never contain anything but a little 

 yellowish green fluid. And the fact that they 

 keep better with bellies intact than if opened and 

 gutted suggests that the secretion of effective 

 digestive juices has ceased. 



The maturing salmon of both sexes lose their 

 silvery sheen in fresh water during the summer 

 months, to take on a dull brownish or reddish hue, 

 while the belly suffuses with some tint of red, 

 large black spots develop, and the male not only 

 becomes variously mottled and spotted with red 

 or orange, but his jaws elongate, the lower becom- 

 ing so hooked that only the tips come together. 

 His body becomes slab-sided, his fins thicken, and 

 his skin is covered with slime, until altogether he 

 is but a caricature of the beautiful silvery creaturo 

 that came in from the sea. 



In small streams salmon may spawn only a 

 short distance above the head of tide; but they 

 may run upstream for more than 200 miles in 

 large rivers that are not obstructed, as they do in 

 the St. John system in New Brunswick. In Gulf 

 of Maine rivers they spawn in October and early 

 November, on sandy or gravelly bottom, the 

 females smoothing a shallow trough or redd and 

 covering the eggs with gravel. 



As it is with the life of the salmon in the sea 

 that we are concerned here, the reader is referred 

 to Belding 62 and to Kendall M for recent accounts 

 of the mating actions of the males and females. 

 The spent fish, known as "kelts," "slinks," or 

 "black salmon," are thin, weak, and so exhausted 

 that many of them die. Most of those that survive 

 in small rivers drop down at once to the sea after 

 spawning. But many of them linger over the 

 winter in large rivers, improving somewhat in 



" Trans. Amer. Fish. Soc, vol. 24, 1934, p. 211. 



« Mem. Boston Soc. Nat.. Hist., vol. 9, No. 1, 1935, p. 65-6S. 



condition and becoming more silvery, though they 

 take little food. If they survive the winter (which 

 many do not, for spawning leaves them thin and 

 exhausted) they drop downstream to salt water the 

 following spring. 64 



The large (6 to 7 mm.) thick-shelled eggs lie 

 loose on the bottom and develop so slowly in the 

 low temperature of winter that hatching does not 

 take place until late in the following April or early 

 in May. The newly hatched larvae are 15 to 18 

 mm. (0.6-0.7-inch) long, and carry a very large 

 yolk sac for about 6 weeks, hiding among the 

 pebbles of the spawning bed and taking no food. 

 When the yolk sac is absorbed the little fish, now 

 known as "parr," begin to swim and feed. 



Parr live in fresh water for longer or shorter 

 periods according to locality or to other factors 

 not well understood. In the St. John, 65 and in 

 the rivers of Minas Basin, most of them remain 

 for 2 summers and 2 winters, running down to 

 the sea the third summer. But Huntsman has 

 found that some few stay in the Fundian rivers 

 for 3 years. Most of the salmon of the Penobscot 

 spend 2 years as parr, a few 3 years, according 

 to Kendall. It is even possible that some may 

 linger in Gulf of Maine rivers for 4, 5, or even 6 

 years, as is known to happen in Norway. And 

 Dr. Huntsman informs us that some of the male 

 parr in the rivers of the Chignecto Peninsula 

 become sexually mature before visiting the sea. 



Parr may be moving downstream any time 

 from late spring to autumn, but most of them 

 probably make the journey in June and July in 

 Gulf of Maine streams, when they are 5 to 6 inches 

 long. They put off their barred and spotted 

 pattern as they near tidewater, to assume the 

 silvery coat worn by the salmon during his sojourn 

 in the sea. They are now known as "smolts." 



Salmon, small or large, are voracious while in 

 salt water, feeding altogether on live bait, chiefly 

 on fish and on crustaceans. Among fishes avail- 

 able to them in this side of the Atlantic, launce, 

 herring, alewives, smelt, capelin, small mackerel, 

 haddock, small sculpins, and even flatfish have 

 all been reported as entering into their diet in one 

 place or another. Salmon caught off Norway are 

 sometimes packed full of herring, and a hook 



** They are voracious now, and fly-fishing for these "black salmon" as 

 they are called, is a favorite sport nowadays, especially in Miramichi waters 

 tributary to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



•' Huntsman, Bull 21, Biol. Bd. Canada, 1931, p. 31. based on studies by 

 Kerr and by Blair. 



