2 12 AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



Trout containing well developed spawn, in each of the sum- 

 mer months. Such cases are not infrequent, and I believe 

 that similar observations have elsewhere been made. 



Trout are cold water fishes, and according to Green, can- 

 not thrive in water warmer than 68 degrees Fahr. They 

 are at their best at the approach of winter. They rarely 

 exceed two or three pounds in weight, except in a few favored 

 localities. I remember long ago an offer of P. T. Barnum of 

 a prize for a four-pound Spotted Trout, but none was forthcom- 

 ing. In the Rangeley Lakes they have been taken weighing 

 eleven pounds or more. One taken in 1867, in Rangeley 

 Lake, weighed ten pounds after three days captivity, and 

 was thought by experts to have lost a pound and a half in 

 transit from Maine to New Jersey, where it died. Its length 

 was thirty inches, and its circumference eighteen. 



"The Nipigon River claims still heavier fish. Hallock 

 mentions one said to have weighed seventeen pounds." 



According to Agassiz, these large Trout may have reached 

 the age of one or two hundred years. "The rate of growth 

 is determined by the amount of food consumed. Some two- 

 year-old fish weigh a pound, some half an ounce, as Mr. 

 Stone's experience shows." 



Endless are the dissertations which have been written in 

 praise of the Speckled Trout and its pursuit "with the angle," 

 but no one has as yet succeeded in so portraying this sport and 

 its objects as fully to equal the remembrances which live ever in 

 the memory of an old and successful Trout-fisher. For him 

 there is no sport like Trout-fishing, and though seduced per- 

 haps from time to tmie by the lordly Salmon, the silvery Tar- 

 pon, or other of our notable game-fishes north or south, he 

 ever returns with renewed zest to the pine-shadowed lake 

 or brawling mountain stream — the scenes of earlier tri- 

 umphs; and as he sees the bright hues of a ten-inch Trout 

 gleaming through the meshes of his landing net, he once more 

 says, as often in the past: "Well, there's nothing like Trout- 

 fishincT after all." 



