THE FUTURE OF OUR BROOK TROUT 



By S. F. Fullerton 



I am not a pessimist by nature, in fact I would rather 

 look on the bright side of things than on the dark side. Thus 

 when I say that the brook trout, the lordly Fontinalis we all 

 love, is doomed if we do not change our methods and get 

 closer to nature than we have been doing, it must be plain 

 that I am indeed apprehensive. We have been receding 

 from the natural way of keeping our breeders and getting 

 into what I will call the commercial way. Our aim has been 

 to get all the eggs we possibly can from a given lot of breed- 

 ers regardless of how many of the eggs hatch or the vitality 

 of the fry after being hatched ; in other words, we are in the 

 business for the money there is in it. If we are hatching- 

 fish for the state it is the showing we can make — the mil- 

 lions we can report as sent to the streams from the different 

 stations. It is not the number of good fish sent out, strong, 

 healthy fish that, when the time comes, will reproduce their 

 kind as their forebears did. 



Now let us look at conditions at the average brook trout 

 station. Ponds are prepared of size so as to be convenient 

 when the spawning season arrives. Into these ponds our 

 breeders are put and in nine out of ten cases an insufficient 

 amount of water is furnished to insure good healthy trout. 

 Then they are fed on mush or mush and liver, depending on 

 how cheaply we wish to run the station. The quarters they 

 are in are often entirely inadequate for the number held. 

 The fish cannot get a proper amount of exercise, even if they 

 have the proper food, and when the time comes for them to 

 spawn they produce eggs that hatch puny fish and weak. 

 The percentage of hatch is way below what it should be and 

 those that do hatch hug the screen at the end of the trough, 

 poor weaklings that they are. They have to be nursed and 

 coddled as any other weak infants from weak parents, and 



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