FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 81 



in one scoop of a small dip net and 545 with a few "grabs" of his bare hand. Elvers 

 in equal multitudes have often been described in other streams — American as well 

 as European. Eels can live out of water so long as to give rise to the story that 

 they often travel overland, but there is no positive evidence for tliis, which leaves 

 their presence in certain ponds having neither outlet nor inlet (a fact often attested) 

 something of a mystery. 



In a general way it is true, as has so commonly been said, that eels seek muddy 

 bottom and still water, but this is not always so, as large ones are only too common 

 in swift-flowing, sandy trout streams on Cape Cod. The fact is that they can 

 live and thrive wherever food is to be had, and they are at home in high tempera- 

 tures as well as in low ones. Occasionally an eel is caught off the open coast, but 

 this is unusual. 



No fish is more omnivorous than the eel; no animal food, living or dead, is 

 refused, and its diet in any locality depends less on choice than on what is available. 

 Small fish of many varieties, shrimps, crabs, lobsters, and smaller Crustacea, 

 together with refuse of any kind — for they are scavengers — make up the bulk of 

 the diet in salt estuarine and bracldsh water. Being very greedy, any bait will do to 

 catch an eel. As every fisherman knows, they are chiefly nocturnal in habit, 

 usually Ij^ng buried in the mud by day to venture abroad by night, but eels, 

 large and small, are so often seen swimming about and so often bite the hook by 

 day that this can not be laid down as a general rule. 



Although very rapacious, the eel grows slowly, the winter rings on its scales 

 (these do not appear until it is 3 or 4 years old — one larval year and two or three 

 in fresh water) having shown that in the case of the European species full grown 

 adults are from 5 to 20 years old, depending on food supph^, etc. This is corrobo- 

 rated for the American species by the fact that Dr. H. M. Smith, former Commis- 

 sioner of the United States Bureau of Fisheries, found a female on the way down 

 the Potomac to be in her twelfth year. The smallest mature males are about 11 

 to 12 inches long; females 18 inches long. TNIien fully grown, the female eels, 

 traveling mostly at night, drop downstream at the approach of sexual maturity, 

 which takes place inthe fall. They and the maturing males that have been living in 

 the river mouths, bays, and estuaries now cease feeding; the color of the back changes 

 from olive to almost black, while the ventral side turns silvery and the eyes of the 

 males grow to t^vice their previous size. Both males and females then move out 

 to sea. It is not until after they reach salt water that the ovaries mature. In 

 fact no perfectly ripe female eel and only one ripe male (of the European species) 

 has ever been seen. So little is the life history of the eel understood by om* fisher- 

 men that we wish again to emphasize the undoubted fact that no eel ever spawns 

 in fresh water. 



The eel drops wholly out of sight when once it leaves the shore ; ''° no one 

 knows how deep it swims — whether singly or in companies — but it certainly 



"Large eels, on their seaward journey, have occasionally been caught by otter trawlers in the western part of the British 

 channel, but we know of no such occurrence on this side of the Atlantic. 



