THE SALMON FAMILY. 81 
free from the shaft. This crest is armed with 
strong teeth. There are also large hooked teeth 
on the hyoid bone, and the teeth generally are 
proportionately stronger than in most of the other 
species. The great lake-trout is grayish in color, 
light or dark according to its surroundings; and 
the body is covered with round paler spots, which 
are gray instead of red. The dorsal and caudal 
fins are marked with darker reticulations, some- 
what as in the brook-trout. The great lake-trout 
is found in all the larger lakes from New England 
and New York to Wisconsin, Montana, and Alaska. 
It reaches a much larger size than any other Sadé- 
velinus, specimens of from fifteen to twenty pounds’ 
weight being not uncommon, while it occasionally 
attains a weight of fifty to eighty pounds. Asa 
food-fish it ranks high, although it may be re- 
garded as somewhat inferior to the brook-trout or 
the white-fish. Compared with other salmonoids, 
the great lake-trout is a sluggish, heavy, and rav- 
enous fish. It has been known to eat raw potato, 
liver, and corn-cobs, — refuse thrown from passing 
steamers. According to Herbert, “a coarse, 
heavy, stiff rod, and a powerful oiled hempen or 
flaxen line, on a winch, with a heavy sinker; a 
cod-hook, baited with any kind of flesh, fish, or 
fowl, — is the most successful, if not the most or- 
thodox or scientific, mode of capturing him. His 
great size and immense strength alone give him 
value as a fish of game; but when hooked, he pulls 
strongly and fights hard, though he is a boring, 
deep fighter, and seldom if ever leaps out of the 
water, like the true salmon or brook-trout.” 
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