a forage fish until they reach sizes of eight inches or more. Suckers are fre- 

 quently berated by fishermen who claim they are spawn eaters. Actually the 

 suckers who have migrated from lakes are usually not in trout streams until the 

 eggs of the trout have hatched. On the other hand resident stream suckers can 

 eat only the trout eggs which have not been properly covered with gravel and are 

 doomed to death anyway. 



The main food of the suckers in Maine lakes is aquatic insects. This may 

 explain the small sizes of the white sucker here in Maine. The average size in 

 the lakes runs from 7 to 15 inches due probably to the scarcity of the bottom 

 fauna in these lakes. 



They make good bait and are one of the easiest fish to propagate. If and 

 when laws are established prohibiting bait dealers from seining minnows whole- 

 sale from streams the sucker will gain great popularity with the bait dealers 

 forced to raise their live bait. 



LONGNOSE SUCKER 



Catostomus catostomus catostomus (Forster) 



The longnose sucker is distributed from the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes 

 basin westward. This species is not as abundant as the white sucker but ranks 

 second only to the white sucker among the larger fishes in Maine. Fishermen 

 seldom recognize this species as being different from the more common white 

 sucker. 



Their breeding migrations coincide in general with those of the white 

 sucker occurring in May and early June. They are taken at greater depths than 

 white suckers. The Maine surveys report this fish as living pelagically in the 

 deeper waters and Lake Superior commercial fishermen report taking them at 

 depths of 600 feet. 



The two species of suckers, white and longnose, were found to make up the 

 chief food of lake trout over 5 pounds. The young of the longnose, as the other 

 suckers, are of value as forage fish. 



Longnose suckers taken from Maine waters averaged from 8 to 1 inches in 

 total length. The largest specimen obtained was 1 1 inches in length. 



Zli 



