TAKING THE EGGS. 95 



THE SPAWNING SEASON. 



As the cold fall days come on, the male trout take 

 on brighter colors, the lower rays of the anal and 

 ventral fins show brilliantly white, their bodies grow 

 lank, their noses sharp, and there is an unmistakable 

 air of expectancy in their whole expression, peculiar to 

 this period. The females grow big with spawn, and 

 lose some of the brightness of their color, though 

 their forms still retain a grace which does not leave 

 them till the eggs are deposited. You need not 

 have any fear about telling the sexes apart. After a 

 very little experience, you can hardly make a mistake 

 in this particular, at this season. The brief descrip- 

 tion just given will be a sufficient guide. 



Some time before any eggs are deposited, both 

 sexes become indifferent to food, and work up into 

 the shallow swifter water below the spawning beds, 

 the males usually in advance. By the second week 

 in October, and sometimes before, in the mean latitude 

 of New England, a few stragglers, like advance skir- 

 mishers, will get into the beds and begin making their 

 nests. The exciting season of taking spawn is now 

 close at hand, and as soon as you perceive that the 

 fish on the beds have completed their nests, you may, 

 if you adopt the artificial method of taking the eggs, 

 proceed to try whether they are ripe.* 



The method of capturing the spawning fish is as 

 follows : t A net of coarse bagging, six or eight feet 



* See p. 113. 



t For directions for collecting the eggs obtained by the 

 " natural " method, see remarks about Ainsworth's Screens and 

 Collins's Roller Spawning-Box, pp. 29-36. 



