FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



129 



to spawn that year, plus a certain number of im- 

 mature grilse that have passed 1 year at sea. And 

 Dr. Huntsman 87 has pointed out that the move- 

 ment of the salmon riverward may be very slow; 

 thus the salmon may take as much as a month to 

 cover the 20-odd miles to the head of tide in the 

 Petitcodiac River, while some of those that enter 

 the estuary of the St. John River in autumn pass 

 the winter there (probably in a lethargic state) 

 before moving up to the head of tide 80 miles 

 distant. In any case, only such fish as are ap- 

 proaching sexual maturity (irrespective of age), 

 and some immature female grilse, run far up into 

 the rivers; all the others remain in salt water, or 

 at most they do not run above the head of tide, as 

 has often been remarked. 



The majority of the Gulf of Maine salmon be- 

 come "river-mature" as it is called, long before the 

 spawning season, for while none of them spawn 

 before October, some of them enter fresh water as 

 early as March and April. But the chief runs come 

 later, varying in date, not only from river to river, 

 but from year to year in a given river. In the 

 Penobscot, some fish may enter in March ; they are 

 to be expected in the lower reaches after the first 

 week in April; more come in May, perhaps two- 

 thirds in June, with a few fish entering later still. 

 Available information is to the effect that few enter 

 the Narraguagus and Dennys Rivers until well 

 into May, the chief runs there coming in June, with 

 some entering as late as September. We have not 

 been able to obtain definite dates for the spring 

 and early summer runs in the St. John River. But 

 it seems that salmon continue to enter the latter 

 until well into the autumn, judging from catches 

 of fish so fat that they must have come in recently 

 from the sea. Salmon enter other streams tribu- 

 tary to the Bay of Fundy from May on. As a 

 rule the large salmon come earliest, the grilse not 

 until later, probably because it is not until later 

 that the latter have reached the degree of fatness 

 associated with river maturity. Accordingly, the 

 heaviest runs in the Shubenacadie, mostly grilse 

 (p. 130.), are said to come from August until late 

 in the autumn. 



Every salmon fisherman is familiar with the fact 

 that salmon enter in "runs" that are spaced irreg- 

 ularly in time, and that vary in date from year 

 to year, depending on the height of water in the 



" Progress Report, Atlantic stations, Biol. Bd. Canada. 8, 1933, p. 6; and 

 unpublished notes. 



210941—53 10 



river and on the strength of the current. Freshets 

 tend to bring them in; if the current becomes too 

 strong they simply hold position, to breast it 

 again as the flow slackens. The fish that are in 

 the estuary remain there during the periods be- 

 tween freshets, waiting, as it were, for the message 

 from upstream that starts them on their way. 

 And the salmon within the river are similarly 

 quiescent during periods of low water and weak 

 current. This is the chief reason why salmon 

 angling is so uncertain a sport, even in the best of 

 rivers. 



A good deal of discussion has centered about the 

 question whether the earliest fish stay in fresh 

 water from then until spawning time (a matter 

 of 6 months) or whether there is more or less move- 

 ment in and out of the river mouths at the begin- 

 ning of the season. The latter view may be cor- 

 rect for the small streams, but it seems safe to 

 say that after the run is well under way in late 

 May or early June no fish return from fresh to salt 

 water until autumn. Tagging experiments carried 

 out in Canadian rivers have also yielded the very 

 interesting information that no matter when a 

 salmon runs upstream in one year, it may do so 

 either early or late in the next. 88 



It is a matter of common knowledge that salmon 

 average larger in some rivers than in others, and 

 growth studies based on the scales have shown that 

 these differences are due chiefly to the average 

 ages of the fish that enter. In the St. John, as 

 Huntsman has pointed out, 89 there are three prin- 

 cipal groups of salmon: (a) male grilse, averaging 

 about 6 pounds, that are mature and fated to 

 breed that same autumn; (b) the ordinary spawn- 

 ers that have passed two years or more at sea; 

 these average 10 to 15 pounds in weight and enter 

 from May to August, the late comers running 

 heavier than the early comers; most of them are 

 virgins, but some of them have already spawned 

 once or twice; (c) immature female grilse, averag- 

 ing about 9 pounds, that enter from November to 

 January. Few, however, return to spawn in the 

 rivers of Maine until they have passed 2 years at 

 sea ; not more than 3 or 4 grilse to 70 adults were 

 taken in the St. Croix, for example, when there 

 still was a good run there, and not more than 1 



* Fifty-fifth Annual Report of the Fisheries Branch, Department of Marine 

 and Fisheries, Canada, (1921-22) 1922, p. 19. 

 ■ Nature, vol. 141, 1938, p. 421; Pub. 8, Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci , 1939, p. 34. 



