THE PIKES: DISTRIBUTIO]Sr AND COMMERCIAL IMPOBTANCE. 27 



scribed, probably reached those places for seK-protection while 

 young fish. The very young, just as in the case of many other fishes, 

 find their way into the shallowest waters and mouths of brooks 

 entering the lake, probably from neighboring localities where they 

 were born. 



According to Mr. Frank Todd, of St. Stevens, New Brunswick,^ 

 a few years after the introduction of pickerel into the St. Croix 

 Lakes, for a number of years a good many individuals of large size 

 were taken by weirs and by hook in salt water some 6 or 8 miles 

 below the head of tidewater. At the time of writing, however, some 

 15 years since the introduction of the fish into that region, they had 

 greatly decreased coincidentally with the pickerel of the fresh waters. 



Food and feeding. — The prmcipal subsistence of adult pickerel 

 consists mainly of other fishes, although it includes many other 

 animals in its bill of fare, such as frogs and other batrachians or, in 

 fact, any living thing moving in the water within reach which it can 

 capture and handle. According to Smith (1907), m the spring about 

 Albermarle Sound, this fish feeds chiefly upon ale wives. 



Like other members of the family, this pickerel is accounted an 

 extremely voracious and destructive fish, but it is seldom found 

 gorged with food, as is the salmon and trout, although it sometimes 

 proves itself successfully ambitious respecting the size of the object 

 it swallows — swallowing, as it were, on the installment plan. When 

 ravenous, it does not hesitate to seize a fish at least half as large as 

 itself or so large that a portion of the fish may be seen protruding 

 from the pickerel's mouth as the remainder is being digested in the 

 stomach. In Umbagog Lake, of Maine and New Hampshire, of 

 numerous pickerel examined, those that contained any food at all 

 usually had small suckers. Three pickerel — 11, 12, and 15^ inches 

 long — caught in a stream in the vicinity of Freeport, Me., contained 

 only aquatic insect larvae. A 2-pound pickerel caught at the mouth 

 of Sebois River, a tributary to the east branch of the Penobscot in 

 Maine, contained a hornpout (Ameiurus nehulosus) about 4 inches 

 long, and in one weighing 2^ pounds, taken m the Wissatoquoik 

 Deadwater of the east branch, was found a smaller hornpout. 



The character of the food of young and adolescent pickerel may 

 be mf erred from the following examples : At Sebago Lake two pickerel 

 about 2J inches long each, contained small insect larvae and small 

 crustaceans, and one about 5.8 inches in length had only a tiny fish 

 in its stomach. One less than 2.5 inches long contained a young 

 sucker, apparently partly digested, about one-half an inch in length. 

 One about 3.2 inches in length contained one sunfish (Lepomis 

 gibhosus) about nine-tenths of an inch long, swallowed head first, 

 and one 4.7 mches in length had fed upon iTothmg but msect larvae 



a Forest and Stream, vol. vni, June 21, 1877, p. 320. , 



