320 Roosevelt Wild Life Btilletin 



essential for the maintenance of our fisheries as is the largest 

 measure of artificial propagation." 



Legal Sizes for Catching. Bean ('i6) says: "Inquiries indi- 

 cate that there are many persons who do not understand the exact 

 significance and necessity of the six-inch law for brook trout, and 

 of similar regulations regarding the size at which other species may 

 be taken. Until an individual of a given species has reached the 

 prescribed size, it has never spawned ; and if all the individuals 

 were caught before they had arrived at the spawning age, it is 

 perfectly plain that the complete extermination of the species would 

 be a matter of only a short time. It is therefore to the interest of 

 every angler to see that under-sized fish are not destroyed. Every 

 food and game fish should have a chance to spawn at least once before 

 being taken." 



The principle conveyed by the foregoing paragraph is sound in 

 its general application, but it seems to the present writer that the 

 size limit for trout, at least, is one for local regulation, or rather 

 in imposing a size limit local conditions should be considered. In 

 some localities the brook trout, and possibly other species, are 

 known to attain maturity at a size below the legal limit of six 

 inches, and never reach a much larger size. In other instances 

 they attain a much larger size than that legal size limit of capture 

 before maturity. 



Under favorable conditions trout grow rapidly, but there is no 

 way of answering definitely the frequent query, " How long does it 

 take a trout to grow to a certain size?" According to circumstances 

 a trout may attain in two years only three or four inches in length, 

 or it may attain ten or more inches. Under certain conditions, as in 

 circumscribed localities like a small brook, trout often reach 

 maturity when only four or five inches long and still bearing the 

 marks of a young fish. Again, mature trout have been seen of 

 not over five or six inches in length in which these marks of youth 

 had nearly or quite disappeared, and the male fish was a facsimile 

 of its larger brother of the lake. Also trout of nine and ten inches 

 still immature have been seen in lakes and streams of considerable 

 size. For example, " large " trout, sexually immature, were noted 

 on October i8, 1916, in a large pool below the dam at the foot of 

 Matagamon Lake, East Branch of the Penobscot River, Maine, by 

 the present writer who caught 14 trout from 6^ to 10^ inches 

 total length, all of which were immature. Apparently they never had 

 spawned, for there was no second crop of visible eggs as is usual 

 when the fish have spawned once. Six of the trout were males from 

 about 9 to about 10% inches total length and eight more were females 

 ranging from 6j4 to lo^^ inches total length. 



Writing of trout in the Connecticut Lakes region in Northern 

 New Hamsphire, the author (Kendall and Goldsborough, '08, p. 53) 

 said : " Every stream and pond in the region contains more or less 

 trout, varying in size according to the body of water and in number 

 accordingf to the accessibility and ease with which the water is fished. 



