RANGELEY LAKES, MAINE: FISHES, ANGLING, AND FISH CULTURE. 563 



According to some observers, however, the trout is his own worst natural enemy, 

 and this is, to some extent, true. Mr. Rich said that as soon as the female trout begins 

 to deposit her eggs several chubs, suckers, and small trout appear on each side of her 

 ready to devour her eggs. While those on one side are dispersed by the male, others 

 rush in from the opposite side, and thus it continues throughout the spawning season. 

 Mr. Rich thought it was doubtful if on some spawning beds a single egg escaped, and, 

 he continued, the destruction of eggs by trout themselves is a very serious matter. He 

 said that male trout when caught from the spawning beds are often found with their 

 stomaches full of spawn, but he was inclined to doubt if the male in immediate attend- 

 ance upon the female participated in the spawn eating, as when caught he is found to be 

 thin and slab-sided and his stomach usually empty. But Mr. Rich stated that on some 

 beds the spawners seem to be without any particular mates, having a half dozen or more 

 males in attendance, the appetites of which do not seem interfered with and which indis- 

 criminately make a mad rush for the eggs as soon as deposited, apparently securing 

 every one. He wrote that he had seen a hundred trout congregated in an area not over 

 10 feet square and in such close proximity that there was hardly any intervening space; 

 that it was not uncommon in the late autumn, before the ice had made near the shore, 

 to find half a dozen trout digging over the spawning beds for some eggs that may have 

 previously escaped observation; and that in this operation they frequently assumed a 

 perpendicular position, often with their tails flapping above the water surface. 



Probably the most destructive bird enemies to trout were formerly the loon, shel- 

 drake or merganser, heron, fish hawk, and kingfisher. All of these, excepting possibly 

 the kingfisher, are now comparatively scarce. 



Of mammals, mink and otter were the most destructive, the coon and bear perhaps 

 aiding to some extent. All of these, too, are comparatively rare. 



J. Parker Whitney, in the report of the Maine Fish Commissioners for 1896, wrote 

 that next to man he thought the great blue heron was the greatest destroyer of trout 

 at these lakes. He said that this bird was an incessant nocturnal as well as a daily 

 feeder, of inordinate appetite, and although its principal food was chubs and frogs it 

 destroyed a great many trout and would get away with quarter pounders, if not larger. 

 They had no hesitancy in striking and fatally wounding trout of over i pound in weight. 

 Yearly he had seen trout swimming about that had been pierced by this bird's bill, and 

 in 1896 he had caught two which were unfit for food, each over i pound in weight, having 

 holes as large as pipe stems nearly bored through them from the back. It was a ques- 

 tion in his mind if this bird, of which hundreds frequented the shores of the lakes from 

 early spring till the ice, did not, in the aggregate, kill more trout, principally small 

 ones up to one-half pound, than all the fishermen. He went on to say that, aided by 

 the loons, kingfishers, and mink, they undoubtedly did, and added that the mink was a 

 voracious feeder and would destroy large numbers with the greatest ease from congre- 

 gating pools and breeding streams which feed the lakes. 



Destntction by man. — Some of the natural agencies tending toward the depletion of 

 trout waters have already been mentioned. But of all destructive agents man has 

 been, and to some extent still is, directly and indirectly, willfully and unwittingly, the 

 most energetic, most persistent, and most effective. The aborigines resorted to all the 

 means known to them at all seasons to secure fish, and the trout was one of the principal 

 contributors to their support. But the Indian, it is said, never took more than he 



