Fish Culture in Inland Waters 299 



In a discussion of a paper by the present writer read at a meet- 

 ing of the American Fisheries Society (Kendall, '20), Mr. Titcomb 

 said : " Something like thirty years ago I was talking with United 

 States Commissioner McDonald, and I asked him what results he 

 had obtained with rainbow trout in the East. I remember he stated 

 that they had sent great numbers of them into the waters of New 

 York State, and that they had all disappeared. I have not had 

 much experience personally with New York waters, but it is 

 particularly interesting to me tO' study the results of planting rainbow 

 or steelhead trout. We do not know absolutely what waters are 

 suitable for rainbow trout. It is a curious thing, but we have 

 streams in New York and a few in Vermont where planting of 

 rainbow trout has been followed with very good results, and where 

 they have reproduced and maintained themselves afterwards. But 

 in the majority of these streams in New York State where the 

 rainbows have been planted, the fish have absolutely disappeared ; 

 and yet there are streams which we annually plant with fish and 

 which afford good fishing for the rainbow trout, so-called. It is 

 corroborated by anglers that these are good rainbow trout streams. 

 Now we choose for the rainbow, as we do for the brown trout, the 

 lower waters of the streams where the tendency is for the water to 

 become considerably warmer and is not congenial for the native 

 brook trout. We do not consider the rainbow so destructive to the 

 brook trout as the brown trout. The rainbow trout, if planted in 

 the headwaters, naturally w'orks down into the larger, deeper pools 

 of the lower part of the stream, where the temperature is higher." 



No adequate explanation for the vagaries, idiosyncrasies or uncer- 

 tainties of the rainbow trout as shown by the foregoing quotations, 

 and many other accounts of experiences, has ever been offered. 



The paper to which Mr. Titcomb's discussion just quoted per- 

 tained was an attempt to indicate the present situation as concerns 

 the rainbow trout of eastern fish culture. It stated that from about 

 1880 to about 189s the only rainbow trout propagated and dis- 

 tributed in the East were raised from eggs of trout from the 

 McCloud River, which is one of the headwater tributaries of the 

 Sacramento River. For a number of years the propagation of the 

 rainbow met with varying success according to the conditions obtain- 

 ing where its propagation was carried on. It was found that they 

 did better at some hatcheries than at others. But finally difificulties 

 and puzzling conditions arose for which the remedy was thought to 

 be the adding of " wild " rainbow trout to the " domesticated " 

 brood stock. 



At first these wild trout eggs came from California, but as the 

 records show, not from the McCloud River but from the Klamath 

 River basin where the McCloud trout did not occur. Later, wild 

 rainbow eggs were taken in Nevada and Colorado. In both of 

 these places the rainbow trout were originally introduced, and con- 

 sisted partly of McCloud trout and partly of Klamath trout. Still 

 later the United States Bureau of Fisheries has been securing its 

 wild trout eggs from fish of the Madison River, Montana. These 



