CRISTIVOMER GREAT LAKE TROUT 57 



three pounds weight are not infrequently taken from the stomachs 

 of large trout. A twenty-pound trout caught off Beaver Island, in 

 northern Lake Michigan, had thirteen herring in its stomach. 

 "They are as omnivorous," says Goode, " as codfish, and among the 

 articles which have been found in their stomachs may be mentioned 

 an open jack-knife seven inches long, tin cans, rags, raw potatoes, 

 chicken and ham bones, salt pork, corn-cobs, spoons, silver dollars, 

 a watch and chain, and, in one instance, a piece of tarred rope two 

 feet long." Most of this debris was doubtless taken while the fish 

 were following steamers. 



The greater part of the year is spent by this fish in deep water, 

 but in the spawning season it approaches the shore, depositing its 

 eggs late in October, usually on rocky bottoms, at depths varying 

 from seven feet to fifteen fathoms. Mr. Milner found nearly fifteen 

 thousand eggs in a lake trout of twenty-four pounds weight. The 

 young appear in late winter or early spring. 



Lake trout are taken chiefly in pound- and gill-nets during their 

 spawning season — that is, in September, October, and November — 

 but they are also caught in deep water from the time the ice breaks 

 up until late fall. They may be readily taken with a hook baited 

 with a piece of fish, but they are not sufficiently "game" to reward 

 the patient angler with a "first-class fight." 



The value of the lake-trout fishery is second only to that of the 

 whitefish in the Great Lake region. The. product of Lake Michigan 

 alone in 1899, was five and a half million pounds. The species has 

 been propagated artificially to a considerable extent, particularly 

 in Michigan, where the Northville hatchery recently handled over 

 eleven million eggs in a single year, about 70 per cent, of them suc- 

 cessfully-. 



