AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY. 



its handle, and another had a tin pan with its bottom punched 

 full of holes and nailed to a pole. Quaint as these implements 

 were, both, it is said, did good service. Through the evening 

 and well into the night dozens of jacks and torches sent their 

 brilliant glare along the stream and into the surrounding forest. 

 No doubt the excessive light frightened the fish and kept many 

 back in the lake, but still hardly an individual went away with- 

 out fish enough for any reasonable demand. On either this or 

 the preceeding night two men, one to carry a light and the other 

 to handle the net, could have filled an ox cart. This last state- 

 ment, of course, is on the supposition that the two men could 

 have had the stream all to themselves. As it was, the large 

 number of fishermen, especially on the second evening, rapidly 

 scattered the fish and drove the most of them back into the deep 

 water of the lake. 



" The above is only a partial acc:ount of what happened on a 

 single stream, and we hear similar reports from nearly every 

 tributary of the Sebago waters. At Bear Brook, in Harrison, 

 but little more than a mile away, the run has been longer and 

 probably even more fish have been taken. 



"It would be a work for the scientists to fully explain the 

 different varieties of smelts and their habits. That they belong 

 to the salmon family all agree, but in this particular locality 

 there are three different varieties, commonly called the big, salt- 

 water, and little smelts. The salt-water smelts, Osmerusviridescens, 

 are common in all the rivers, creeks and streams along our 

 coast. They are said to bear transferring well, even into waters 

 entirely land-locked and fresh, but always with a diminution in 

 size. The big smelts are like the salt-water variety in some 

 respects, but are larger and darker colored. They are over ten 

 inches in length, and average nearly a quarter of a pound in 

 weight. Many occur much larger than this, and one was weighed 

 here a few years ago that was caught through the ice with hook 

 and line, and turned the scales at eleven ounces. A few are 

 mentioned even larger, but they are rare, to say the least. The 

 little smelts are but miniature representations of their larger 

 relations, weighing less than half an ounce each. Some have 

 thought that these little fellows were only the young of the 

 larger variety, but this can hardly be true, as they seem to be 

 fully developed and are ready to spawn as they descend the 

 streams to their breeding grounds. They do not run up the 

 streams until about a week later than the larger ones, and are 

 much more abundant. They are also found in many localities 

 where the big smelts do not occur. They vary somewhat in size 

 in different places, and are said to be larger in Norway Lake, 



