GILPIN ON THE GASPEREAUX, 111 



agree tliat the young fry go down into the sea in September and 



October, at which time they are over four inches in length. Messrs. 



Treat & Sons' gaspereaux spawned about the first of June. The 



date of placing them in fresh water is not given, but as they would 



scarcely have been obtained before the first of May, it gives them 



three weeks for their spawning period.* 



From all these we learn that in three or four weeks after leaving 

 ' . . . 



the salt water, his brief holiday over, our fish commences 



his return. Unnerved by the exhausting toil of reproduction, by the 

 absence of food (their stomachs axe found empty on the lakes), and 

 perchance by the warming summer waters, he addresses himself to 

 the perils and dangers of descent. Too poor for an object of capture, 

 he slips down unnoticed, save by the idle or curious, where, a few 

 weeks before, a whole population watched his ascent. It is said 

 those marine wolves, the eels, follow the advancing and retreating 

 armies in theii" rear, gobbling up many a weak fish, or unlucky 

 little one on the march. A dry summer has emptied the lakes and 

 turned the foaming torrents of the spring into dusty rills. He often 

 gets caught in these lukewarm shallows and dies. Not unfrequent- 

 ly the hunter finds them in bushels in the fords; quite as often the 

 bear secures a rich feast — dipping his hairy paws into the shallow 

 pools. He may be seen approaching nervously and timidly a rapid, 

 then striking up stream, and returning pass down tail first. Those 

 which are seen in July, or passing down in August, we must con- 

 sider fish that have left the sea late in May, or that are caught by 



* Messrs. U. S. Treat & Sons, of Eastport, Maine, placed Gaspereaux in fresh 

 water ponds during the spring of 1857 ; on the first of June they spawned, in six 

 weeks the eggs were hatched, in four months they were let down to the sea from three 

 to five inches in length. — Patent Office Report, 1857, pat/e 230. 



A gentleman who allows me to use his experience, but not his name, and who is 

 entitled by his position and practical knowledge to the highest consideration says, 

 " My observation has led me to note that the gaspereaux having free access to their 

 spawning grounds, remain exactly twenty-one days in fresh water, and during the 

 twenty-four hours, only journey downwards to the salt water between the hours of 

 three and five P. M. The fry of gaspereaux leave the lake in which they spawned on 

 the dark nights of September, together with the eels. Any one can notice this that 

 choses to watch an eel weir placed upon a stream. When gaspereaux are heard and seen 

 at night breaking the water about the sandy margins of a lake, in my opinion they 

 are spawning and act in a precisely like manner to salt water herring when they seek 

 shoal-water in saltwater for that purpose. I have never observed a gasper eau to rise at 

 a fly; but I know of many instances of their being hooked by fishermen, but it was what 

 I call a foul hook — the angler having thrown over them when the school arose to the 

 surface of the water. The instances that I have witnessed have invariably taken place 

 when a multitude of gaspereaux have been detained on their ascent by a dam." 



