Land. — Black-spotted Mountain Trout 193 



other fish, that seem to stay in the headwaters and spawn. These sea- 

 run cutthroats, or salmon trout, as they are generally called by the 

 sportsmen, come into the rivers from the sea along through the late 

 summer, and begin spawning in November and December. One fea- 

 ture is that these fish coming in, as far as I have observed, have lost 

 almost entirely the red marking on the throat. I should like to ask 

 whether in the spawning season that is the case with the trout in 

 Colorado, whether they retain that marking during the entire period 

 or not? 



Mr. Land : I will say they do. 



Mr. Fearing : I would say to Professor Dyche that the coloration 

 of the flesh had been abundantly proven in the case of Long Island 

 trout. Take the case of the South Side Sportsman Club where they 

 breed thousands of trout for their members, for many years previous 

 to the last two years, those fish were fed on beef liver and hog's 

 pluck's, and they were turned out weighing one-half pound and up, 

 fqt - the members to catch. But it is like fishing in a bathtub. The fish 

 were so starved that they would bite anything, even a rag. But those 

 fish bred up and fed in that manner were all white meated. Two years 

 ago some of the members objected to the fact that the people they 

 gave these fish to said they were not fit to eat, that they were soft and 

 flabby ; — it was the truth. Then they began feeding these fish on 

 mummy chugs, shiners and all sorts of small fish caught in Great 

 South Bay, and from that time on their meat gradually turned from 

 white to pink. The brook trout that are wild in the southside waters 

 are bright salmon colored, pink, and those fish feed on the fresh water 

 shrimp and fresh water snails. Thirty-five miles below that location 

 there is a club to which I belong, where the fish are wild and feed on 

 shrimp, snails and larvae, and the meat is red. 



Mr. W. E. Musgrove, Colorado : I have noticed that there was a 

 greater variety in the color of eggs taken from fish than there is in the 

 color of the flesh ; and my theory is that the difference in the color 

 of the fish comes from the different color of the egg from which the 

 fish is hatched. 



Mr. C. K. Cranston, Oregon: I want to ask Mr. Fearing if the 

 change in the diet of these bathtub fish he described improved the 

 quality of the fish as to taste? 



Mr. Fearing : Absolutely — it made the fish fit to eat. 



Mr. Cranston : Were they as good as wild fish after this change 

 in diet? 



Mr. Fearing : Very nearly, — yes, sir. 



Mr. Musgrove : I would like to relate a little experience I have 

 had, and ask other members for the benefit of their experience. I 

 have a number of lakes which are stocked with fry of the brook trout 

 obtained from the Government hatchery at Leadville, and in trans- 

 ferring these fry from the hatchery to my lakes, until within the last 

 few years I have usually had a loss of about 90% of the young fish. 



