BIG TROUT OF THE NEPIGON 



1867, in one of the Rangeley Lakes, in Maine. Some 

 old anglers, and many younger ones who are ac- 

 quainted with the literature of the subject, will recall 

 the excitement which broke out in the angling world 

 of America in 1863, when Mr. George Shepard Page, 

 of New York City, returned from a trip to the Range- 

 leys, bringing with him eight brook trout weighing 

 from eight down to five and a half pounds each. 

 Scores of letters were sent to the papers which had 

 presumed to call these fish brook trout — some of them 

 interrogative, more denunciatory, others theoretical, 

 and some, again, flatly contradictory. The Adiron- 

 dacks had never yielded a brook trout which weighed 

 more than five pounds, and that, therefore, must be the 

 standard of brook trout the world over. But Mr. 

 Page had foreseen the violent scepticism which was 

 sure to manifest itself, and had sent one of his seven- 

 pounders to Professor Agassiz, who speedily replied 

 that these monster trout were genuine specimens of 

 the so-called speckled or brook trout family, and that 

 they were only found in large numbers in the lakes and 

 streams at the headwaters of the Androscoggin River 

 in Northwestern Maine. The big trout of Lake Ed- 

 ward, of the Nepigon, of Lake Batiscan, Lake Jacques 

 Cartier, and other Canadian waters, were evidently un- 

 known to Professor Agassiz at that time, or he cer- 

 tainly would never have attempted to so limit the 

 occurrence of the monster char. Many of the heavy 

 trout killed in the same waters during the next few 



