FOOD AND FEEDING. 147 



wind. On some days the surface of the lake would be covered locally by a variety of 

 forms upon which the salmon appeared to feed indiscriminately; sometimes some par- 

 ticular insect would predominate, or perhaps it would be the only insect present. But 

 the salmon gorged themselves on them. At this time it is impossible to enumerate all 

 the forms that have been found in the salmons' stomachs. But I recall various beetles, 

 including June bugs and potato beetles; various winged insects such as flying ants, 

 bumble-bees, mayflies, moths, grasshoppers, and various others, including spiders. 



In the Presumpscot River the resident salmon appeared to subsist largely upon the 

 aquatic stages of various insects such as caddis fly larvae, stonefly and mayfly nymphs, 

 alderfly larvse and nymphs. Frequently the fish would be gorged with these bottom 

 forms, but often they would take the adult insect at the surface and even leap from the 

 water for the flying insect. Adult stone flies (locally called 'millflies') were excellent bait 

 for the so-called 'jumpers' of the Presumpscot. Occasionally the larger salmon contained 

 one or more fish, such as a small perch, a shiner, or young sucker. In the early spring, 

 when the smelts were ascending in the streams to spawn, the salmon pursued them up 

 the larger streams and about the mouths of the smaller ones flowing directly into the 

 lake. 



After the breeding season of the smelt, dead and dying smelts occurred in numbers 

 at the surface of the lake where the salmon would pick them up. The only means of 

 learning where salmon occur when not observed at the surface, is by fishing. By this 

 means it has been found that they may be caught in water as deep as 70 feet but more 

 often nearer the surface, even where there were 70 or 100 feet of water. While some 

 anglers still-fishing for salmon and the large smelt at the same time, which is usually 

 in about 70 feet of water, fish near the bottom, others, while fishing for smelt near the 

 bottom have out only about 30 feet of Une for salmon. This indicates that the salmon 

 vary the depths at which they feed as well as the food which they eat. I have caught a 

 salmon on a fly at the surface near where others were getting them in 60 or 70 feet of 

 water. 



During midsummer the salmon is not so frequently caught by trolUng as in the spring 

 and early summer, but the largest salmon that I ever caught, a 16-pound fish, was taken 

 by trolling with smelt bait on the first day of August, 1907, while on the same day the 

 largest salmon ever taken on a hook, a 223^-pound fish, was caught by still-fishing in 

 deep water, with red-fin shiner bait. 



The salmon used to begin to ascend the Songo River on the breeding migration in 

 September. Apparently they then practically ceased to feed, for seldom would one take 

 a bait or a fly, although in the river they would be seen rising to the surface as though 

 getting something there in the way of food. 



However, even in October I have caught 'jumpers' on artificial flies and bait, and the 

 stomachs of these fish, which had weU developed reproductive organs, sometimes 

 contained insects. 



The young, after they have attained the parr stage, while in the streams subsist 

 largely upon insects, both those in the aquatic stages and such various forms as fall 



