CRISTIVOMER GREAT LAKE TROUT 57 



A lake trout twenty-three inches long has been known to 

 swallow a burbot of a length of seventeen inches, and whitefish 

 of two or three pounds weight are not infrequently taken from 

 the stomachs of large trout. A twenty-pound trout caught 

 off Beaver Island, in northern Lake Michigan, had thirteen 

 herring in its stomach. ''They are as omnivorous," says 

 Goode, "as codfish, and among the articles which have been 

 found in their stomachs may be mentioned an open jack-knife 

 seven inches long, tin cans, rags, raw potatoes, chicken and ham 

 bones, salt pork, corn-cobs, spoons, silver dollars, a watch and 

 chain, and, in one instance, a piece of tarred rope two feet 

 long." Most of this debris was doubtless taken while the fish 

 were following steamers. 



The greater part of the year is spent by this fish in deep 

 water, but in the spawning season it approaches the shore, 

 depositing its eggs late in October, usually on rocky bottoms, 

 at depths varying from seven feet to fifteen fathoms. Mr. 

 Milner found nearly fifteen thousand eggs in a lake trout of 

 twenty-four pounds weight. The young appear in late winter 

 or early spring. 



Lake trout are taken chiefly in pound- and gill-nets during 

 their spawning season that is, in September, October, and 

 November but they are also caught in deep water from the 

 time the ice breaks up until late fall. They may be readily 

 taken with a hook baited with a piece of fish, but they are not 

 sufficiently "game" to reward the patient angler with a " first- 

 class fight." 



The value of the lake-trout fishery is second only to that of 

 the whitefish in the Great Lake region. The product of Lake 

 Michigan alone in 1899, was five and a half million pounds. 

 The species has been propagated artificially to a considerable 

 extent, particularly in Michigan, where the Northville hatchery 

 recently handled over eleven million eggs in a single year, about 

 70 per cent, of them successfully. 



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