90 FISHES AND PISHING IN SUNAPEE LAKE. 



is due to abundance of food, and the food still abounds. So far, then, 

 as breeding and feeding conditions alone are concerned, the lake is as 

 favorable as ever for the existence of the white trout. 



The other indigenous species are either too scarce or too unim- 

 portant to merit further discussion than has already been given them 

 in the foregoing report. 



INTRODUCED FISHES. 



The dangers to indigenous forms by introducing alien predatory 

 fishes into any lake have been discussed, and have to some extent, 

 perhaps, been exemplified m Sunapee Lake, especially with the 

 salmon. By the advent of the chmook, unless checked, these dangers 

 bid fair to be still further demonstrated, modified more or less by the 

 abundance of smelt food at present. 



Of the introduced species only the smelt, black bass, landlocked 

 salmon, and chinook have manifested themselves in sufficient num- 

 bers to produce any appreciable effect on the conditions and fauna 

 of the lake. 



Smelt. — The smelt has been the savior of the salmonids that still 

 exist in the lake, for without the smelt the trout doubtless would have 

 disappeared long ago or the white trout v/ould have continued small 

 and rapidly disappeared before the landlocked salmon and trout 

 combined, as in the case of the blueback at the Rangeleys. The 

 salmon would not have attained the large size that it did. The small 

 salmon would not have yielded so many eggs, and the salmon stock 

 would have more quickly become reduced in numbers. 



The smelt evidently does not find sufficient food to cause it to reach 

 the size attained in some lakes. (It is possible, however, that the 

 Sunapee smelt is a different species from the large ones referred to.) 

 But the small size renders it all the more suitable for fish food. 



Landlocked salmon. — This fish, once fairly numerous, has greatly 

 decreased in numbers, owing, no doubt, to its inability to find suitable 

 natural breeding places and insufficient fish-cultural attention. So 

 far as the two species of trout are concerned, this is an advantage, but 

 it has been offset by the continued introduction of another salmon. 



Chinook. — Sunapee Lake seems peculiarly favorable to some phases 

 of the Chinook's existence, principally that of growth. But regarding 

 it enough has already been said to indicate, to the writer's mind at 

 least, that it is uncertain and undesirable. It must be obvious to 

 everyone that an indefinitely continuous supply of chinook eggs from 

 the West can not be depended upon. Therefore, unless the present 

 stock of the lake shows itself self-sustaining, it is a waste of time, 

 money, and fish to continue planting it. For the time will undoubt- 

 edly come when the supply of eggs must fail, then if the fish has been 



