usually in swampy or marshy areas. The females are usually attended by several 

 males all of whom lash their tails as the milt and eggs are spawned. No attempt 

 is made to guard the eggs which are adhesive and cling to whatever they happen 

 to fall upon. After a period of a week to two weeks, depending on the tempera- 

 ture, the young pickerel hatch. 



Small pickerel can be seen throughout the summer along the shallows near 

 shore. 



The pickerel are well known as predaceous fish with an undisputed piscivor- 

 ous diet. They have been accused of eating most anything including frogs, 

 snakes, ducklings, mice and muskrats. They are solitary feeders lying motion- 

 less in wait for their prey and then capturing it in one quick lunge. The impor- 

 tant food of the pickerel in Maine is the yellow perch, white perch, and min- 

 nows. These are the fish with which the pickerel is ecologically associated. 



Two pound fish are common with a few taken weighing up to three and one- 

 half pounds. 



Where the pickerel and other warm-waters species have increased there fol- 

 lows logically a reduction in the numbers of the more desirable cold-water 

 species. 



EEL FAMILY (Anguillidae) 

 AMERICAN EEL 



Anguilla hostoniensis (LeSueur) 



The American eel is easily recognizable from all the other fishes of Maine 

 with the possible exception of the lamprey eel. However, the American eel 

 with its true jaws is readily distinguished from the lamprey eel possessing the 

 oral sucking disk. The American eel is distributed throughout eastern North 

 America. 



The spawning migration of the fresh-water American eel has attracted the 

 attention of natural historians for many years as one of the most unusual of 

 the natural phenomena. Most fishermen have observed the fall, downstream 

 migration of the eels particularly obvious in the fishways. Again in the spring 

 of each year they have noted the upstream migration of millions of elvers three 

 to four inches in length and slightly smaller than the diameter of a pencil. The 

 elvers migrating up the stream are thought to be the females while the males re- 

 main behind in the estuaries. Both sexes feed voraciously during their stay in 

 fresh water which may extend anywhere from five to twenty years. When the 

 adults reach sexual maturity they grow darker, loose their voracious appetites 

 and begin their downstream migrations. Their destination is somewhat southeast 

 of Bermuda in the Sargasso sea in the warmest waters of the North Atlantic. 



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