578 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



The issue of that paper of May 31 of the same year stated that "One man dipped 

 4 bushels of smelts, and they were fine eating." The same paper of April 28, 1910, 

 noted: "Smelts have begun to run early this year. A large quantity was taken from 

 Kennebago Stream last week and more this. The smelts are of good size and fine 

 quality, and the quantity is said to be unlimited." 



The duration of the spawning run varies in different localities, sometimes con- 

 tinuing a month or more or lasting only a week or two. The Maine Woods, May 12, 

 1905, stated that the run of Rangeley smelts began as soon as the ice was out and 

 lasted a week or 10 days. The males first appeared on the spawning beds, later both 

 sexes. The eggs are small, numerous, and viscid, becoming attached to stones, stocks, 

 plants, etc. It is recorded that a smelt weighing 2 ounces yielded from 46,000 to 50,000, 

 but the eggs of a smelt 4^4 inches long, counted by the writer, numbered only 5,893. 



The smelts of Rangeley Lakes appear to attain only a small size. Thirty-six speci- 

 mens collected in Oquossoc Lake about the loth of May, 1904, ranged in total length 

 from 2|f to 3j% inches, of which 24 varied only ^ of an inch (t,ts to 3^). 



Throughout the season, especially after a "blow", smelts are often found 

 washed up on the beaches, but particularly during or immediately after the spawning 

 time they are found in large numbers, dead and dying, at the surface or washed up on 

 the shore. The cause of this mortality has not been ascertained. Only a few years 

 after the introduction of the smelts into Rangeley Lakes it was reported that about 

 the spawning time they were washed up in windrows and by their decay produced 

 an almost intolerable stench. In the year following the recorded introduction Forest 

 and Stream, June 13 (1896) stated that in the vicinity of Rangeley Lake there was 

 a good deal of concern manifested among guides and others at finding a great many 

 dead smelts along the shore of that lake. The suggestion was that some disease had 

 broken out among them. The same paper. May 27, 1899, stated that the dead and 

 dying smelts had been unusually numerous. The Maine Woods, May 12, 1905, 

 reported "lots of dead floating on the surface." 



There are those who aver that the presence of smelts in any lake destroys fly 

 fishing and is generally very injurious to bait fishing. Forest and Stream, June 12, 

 1897, contained the following from the pen of a Rangeley Lakes correspondent: 



Perhaps the poor fishing in Mooseluctnagxintic and Richardson Lakes is due to the smelts, which 

 have appeared in great numbers for the first time this spring. Perfectly reliable guides say that the 

 water has been alive with these smelts. Later they have died by the thousands and have been seen 

 floating on the surface dead or dying. Every trout caught has been simply gorged with these smelts. 

 This I saw myself in the case of trout being dressed. The question of these smelts ever having been 

 introduced into the Rangeley waters is a very grave one. Guides and sportsmen who have watched 

 and fished these waters for years are in doubt, to say the very least, and some of them are mad all 

 through. I heard it freely expressed that the most wonderful brook-trout fishing of the world — at 

 the Rangeleys — has been ruined by putting in smelts for landlocked-salmon food — landlocked salmon 

 that can, at the vey best, never equal what the brook trout have been to these waters. As for myself, 

 I have no opinion at present. The smelts in the maw of the trout I have seen and have seen the dead 

 smelts on the water. I have also seen the remarkably fattened condition of the trout as compared 

 with the fish of the past 20 years, with which I have been familiar, catching and examining them each 

 year in greater or less numbers. Would it not have been much better for the State of Maine, through 

 its fish commissioners, to have hatched a great many brook trout each year and put them into Rangeley 

 waters, thus keeping up the supply of a fish altogether satisfactory, rather than to have been dabbling 

 with fish not formerly found there? Who does not remember the introduction of the English sparrow? 

 Who will claim that natural conditions as to fish and game are not the best? 



