to 
FOI^tEST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. t^, jgoa. 
and a half to three years will averaga fully 2 pounds in 
weiglit. They rise freely to the fly, such as the black- 
gnat and white-miller, seeming to care more for the 
plainer fly than the highly colored. It has very often 
taken me fram fifteen to twenty minutes to land one of 
these fish with a 4 or 5 ounce rod. They seem rather to 
prefer the white spoon with long troll, of a hook baited 
with worms, to the fly. 
"You ask if there is any outlet to the sea from Tuxedo 
Lake. There is not, with the exception of by way of 
the Ram^po River, which you know is damnied up to 
such an extent that the fish cannot get back." 
The one thing I have been in doubt about is, will the 
steelhead remain in fresh-water lakes and make no attempt 
to go to sea, as is their habit on the Pacific Coast, and 
this is a matter that can be settled only by experiment. 
That they will breed in fresh water when confined there- 
in from birth, the U. S. Fish Commission has demon- 
strated. I have planted steelheads in a Loiig Island 
stream where they can easily go to salt water when so 
inclined, and in several lakes in northern New York, 
where they will get to sea only with difficulty after a 
considerable journey by a tortuous route. It may be pos- 
sible to breed the steelhead in fresh water for several 
generations until they in part, if not wholly, lose the sea- 
going habit, and this the State of New York is now 
doing, and I think the U. S. Fish Commission is also 
doing the same thing in Maine and on the Pacific Slope. 
This fish has been planted in Adirondack League Club 
waters, as well as in the public waters of the State, and 
in club waters the- steelhead will be under closer observa- 
tion than in wild waters, so that their habits and pecu- 
liarities may be determined. The steelhead. the red-throat 
and all other members of the salmon family hatched 
artificially in New York State were exhibited alive at the 
State Fair in Syracuse during the week heginnittg Aug. 
27, and visitors had an opporttinit}^ of comparing the 
different species 'so far as coloring and general appear- 
ance goes. 
Mascalonge. 
The only mascalonge hatchery in the United States is 
one operated by the New York Commission at Chau- 
tauqua Lake, where several millions of fry are hatched 
annually. The greater part of the fry is returned to the 
lake, as it is the policy of the Commission to return to the 
waters from which it takes fish eggs of any kind a far 
greater number of fry than would result if the fish were 
permitted to spawn naturally- The State has declined t(< 
plant mascalonge in any waters where they did not at some 
time exist, and where there is a remnant left, and fol- 
lowing this rule, mascalonge fry have been planted chiefly 
in the St. Lawrence and Niagara Rivers, and in some few 
lakes known to contain the fish to a limited extent. Last 
year a considerable plant of mascalonge fry was made- in 
the Niagara River, and last week I went with Com- 
missioner Lansdowne on a tour of inspection of the river 
on a steamer employed by the State to capture illegal nets. 
The most of the mascalonge fry were planted in a 
creek on Strawberry Island, and the game protector told 
us that the creek contained thousands of fingerling from 
the planting. When we went ashore and followed the 
creek toward its source, we saw a number of young 
mascalonge, and upon netting one in a landing net it 
proved to be about 4 inches long, a very satisfactory rate 
of growth, and greater than I had expected, but it was 
accounted for by the great abundance of natural food 
in the water. An incident of our visit to the island I 
would not like to put in print if Commissioner Lansdowne 
had not been a witness of it. Walkmg along a path by 
the side of the creek, I passed under some trees which 
shaded the path, overgrown with weeds and damp from 
a rain the previous night. There was a slight incline 
before me, and as I put my feet on it to aScend, both 
feet slipped backward, pitching me forward so that I 
struck the ground with the palms of my hands. The 
cause of the fall was a vast quantity of caddis flies congre- 
gated on the grass, and when T stepped on them I ground 
them to pulp like oil, and my feet went out from under 
me instantly and my hands crushed the flies into other 
masses of pulp. They seemed to cover the ground half an 
inch deep, and it being early and cool in the ^;hade, the 
sun had not warmed them to activity, as it had an in- 
numerable host of their fellows which filled the air in the 
sunlight, and covered weeds, trees and a deserted house 
as though they had been plastered with flies. Here was 
fish food galore, and it Avas not at all wonderful with 
such a supply of larv^ to draw upon as the flies indicated 
the water possessed, that the mascalonge had grown so 
rapidly. Minnow food was also abundant for the fish to 
avail themselves of when the mascalonge get larger, and 
crayfish were also plentiful, and I was told that at another 
season they had a flight of May flies similar to that which 
is noticeable on the St. Lawrence. The men on the 
steamer have found a large numb&r of illegal nets set and 
seized them, and with a thorough cleaning out of the 
nets future . plftntings of fish in the Niagara should 
thrive wonderfully on the rich pasturage in the water. 
Albino Tfottt. 
Two years ago about fifty albino brook trt)Ut were 
hatched at the Sacandaga hatchery of the Forest, Fish and 
Game Commission of New York, but all died but one. 
This one grew finely, and was kept in one of the hatchery 
troughs until it was 9 inches long. It was almost milk 
white with pink eyes, and last Friday I visited the 
hatchery, which is two miles from Lake Pleasant. I found 
that the fish had died the day before, and it was thought 
that some of the many vi-sitors had iniured it unin- 
tentionally. There is still an albino lake trout at the 
hatchery from this spring's eggs, but the fish is cream 
color, and one eye has been iniured. so it is doubtful if it 
lives long. A. N. Chkney. 
NAMELESS REMITTERS. 
The Forest and Stream Publishing Co. is holdinjp 
several sums of money which have been sent to it fcr 
subscriptions and books by correspondents who have 
failed to give name and a^ldress If this note comes 
to the eye of any such nameless ren:jt|:er fnjBt 
be|ir from Mm, 
The Spawning Habits of the 
Lake Sturgeon. 
BY LIVINGSTON STOKE. 
(Read before the Americ n Fisheries Society,) 
The first I knew about my being expected to present 
a paper this year to the society on the subject of the 
"Spawning Habits of the Lake Sturgeon" was on seeing 
in a recent issue of Forest and Strkam that I was billed 
to prepare such a paper for this meeting. If it were not 
lor my having been put on the programme I should not 
venture to off^er anything on this subject unless it were 
under the title of "What Little I Know About the Spawn- 
ing Habits of the Sturgeon." 
As a correspondent wrote me recently, "the sturgeon 
is a strange fi.sh." At least the lake sturgeon, which is 
the subject of this paper, is a strange fish. It has a 
stfangc shaped body, a strange head, strange mouth and 
skin, and a strange appearance generally; and one of the 
strangest things about the fish is that during the same 
week, and on the same spot, you can find female sturgeon 
with their eggs in almost every stage of development.' 
This throws us all at sea as to their time of spawning, 
ahd we are not much better off in regard to their places 
for depositing their spawn, for if they ever have fixed 
spawnuig l>eds where they go regularly to deposit their 
eggs, I can only say that I never saw a fi.sherman yet who 
knew where those spawning beds were. 
Another strange thing about the lake sturgeon is that 
the .fishermen; never, or^ almost never, catch a spawning 
female in their nets with ripe eggs in her. They catch 
them when thej' are almost ready to spawn, and when 
they have just spawned, and also with eggs in them in 
all stages of development, bul hardly ever with ripe eggs 
reidy to be extruded. 
The peculiarities of this Strartge 'fish have made it 
very difficult to gather information about their spawning 
habits, and still more difficult to collect and impregnate 
their eggs. 
The first instance that I know of sturgeon eggs being 
successfully taken and hatched occurred in 1875. when 
Seth Green, assisted by A. Marks, obtained from the 
fishermen who were fishing at North Llamburg, on the 
Hudson, a ripe male and female, from which four pans 
of eggs were taken by the Cfesarian operation of cutting 
the fish open. This occurred on June 7, about 10 A. M, 
On June 9, about 3 P. M., the first movement of the em- 
bryo was observed. On June 10 the eggs began to hatch, 
and by 5 o'clock the next morning, June 11, all the eggs 
were hatched out. The temperature of the water during 
tlie period of hatcliing averaged ab»ut 70 degrees F. 
In 1888 Prof, Ryder, of the United States Fish Com- 
mission, made a very thorough study of the sturgeon 
at Delaware City, Del. (see the United States Fish Com- 
mission bulletin for 1888), and in 189.3 D''- Bashford Dean 
made some interesting . experiments, also at Delaware 
City, and since that time eggs have been frequently taken 
from sea-going sturgeon. " ' 
All the above experiments and studies have, however, 
been conducted with the salt water sturgeon (Acipenser 
sfurio). 
The lake sturgeon (Acipenser riibicimdus) is another 
fish, and. as far as I am aware, no extended observations 
in regard to this fi.ih have been recorded, except those by 
William Lang, in 1890, for the Ohio Fish Commission, 
hi the spring of 1899 I received permission from the 
United States Fish Commission to hunt for ripe stur- 
geon eggs on Lake Champlain. Two fishermen having 
located at Alburg Springs, Vt., for the purpose of catch- 
ing sturgeon for the New York market, I arranged with 
them to have the privilege of examining all the sturgeon 
they caught before they were butchered, and for the time 
established myself at Alburg Springs with Mr. J. B. 
Lamkin and Mr. Myron Green for assistants. 
On May 18 we overhauled our first batch of sturgeon, 
to the number of sixteen. Two females appeared to be 
nearly ripe and we put them in our pens, hoping that their 
eggs might mature sufficiently in a few days to be taken 
and impregnated. Of the remainder, ten were males and 
four were feinales. These were then butchered by the 
fishermen. On opening the female fish their eggs were 
found to be far advanced toward maturity, and it looked 
as if in a week or two. at the latest, we should strike 
fish with fully ripened eggs. In point of fact, unaccount- 
able as it seems, we never caught any sturgeon the rest 
of the season that had any riper eggs than these had. It 
IS needless to tell the story of our continued disappoint- 
ments. The fishermen brought in plenty of fish and al- 
lowed us the utmost freedom in examining them or pen- 
ning them up, as we chose, but although we followed up 
the sturgeon until the latter part of June, examining them 
all and penning up what we thought to be nearlv ripe, 
we never came across a single ripe fish or took a' single 
egg. All lliat we examined were either spawned out or 
not npe, and none of those that we confined in the pens 
seemed to tnake any progress toward mairurity. 
I will only state that the fish we examined seemed to 
grow less mature, if anything, as the season advanced, and 
at all tmies the development of their eggs presented the 
most perplexing variety. By way of illustration, I will 
.<^tate the conduion of the eggs of the female sturgeon 
that were killed by the fishermen and examined by us 
on several days. As I said above, the eggs of the fish 
that we examined on May 18 were in all stages of devel- 
opment. The same was true of those examined on May 
25. although on both days there were some that were very 
nearly ripe. On the 29th, when Ave had expected to find 
fish about fully npe. we examined, in all, the egg^ of four 
lemales. The eggs of the first fish were only half devel- 
oped, the second fish had just spawned; the eggs of the 
third were just forming, .md tlie eggs of the fourth were 
about one-fourth developed. The same discouraging ex- 
perience contmued until the end, when, after following 
the sturgeon tinrty or forty miles southward from \lburg 
we abandoned this will-o'-the-wisp chase and returtied 
to Cape Vmcent Station, it being then the last week in 
June. 
This spring, looo. I renewed the hunt for ripe stur-eon ' 
ecrars. this time, however, not in the onen waters of fake 
Champlain, btit m the Mi^siscjuoi River, a tributarv 
which emties into the lake in the extreme, northwestern 
corner of Verniortt. That sturgeon went up this river 
in the spring just after the run of pike was over, was 
well known, but whether they ascended the river to 
spawn or to feed on the vast quantities of pike eggs and 
sucker eggs -that had been deposited up toward Swanton 
Dam, was not so definitely settled. 
There being no funds of the United States Fish Com- 
mission to spare this year for the purpose, no systematic 
attempt could be made to find ripe sturgeon, but through 
the obligingness of the river fishermen and the help of 
Mr. Myron Green, we were enabled by persevering effort 
to score some success and to make a few valuable dis- 
coveries. 
While the .sturgeon were running there were two gangs 
of sturgeon fishermen on the river besides those fishing 
at Swanton Dam. We prevailed on those fishermen — I 
do not know how, and it is a surprise to me yet, for 
they never had any pay for it— to Jiold the fish they 
caught until we could examine them, and also to keep in 
confinement any that we thought were nearly ripe. In 
this way we obtained an opportunity to examine over 
a hundred sturgeon. 
Without going into tedious details' more than is' neces- 
,sary, I will state as simply as possible the results of our 
observations, and they are as follows: 
(r). The sturgeon do go up the Missis(iuoi River to 
spawn. This was proved by the fact that the fish going 
up the river all had eggs in them of about the same de- 
gree of ripeness. Some had eggs that were fully ripe, 
while all that were caught going dowrt the i-fver had 
spawned out. 
(2) . The sturgeon 'spavin on the rapids below. Swan- 
ton dam, for they were caught here fully rijje. Mr. 
Myron Green, who is a very careful and correct observer, 
chinks that they lie in the deep water below the rapids 
until they are ready to deposit their eggs and then ascend 
to the rapids to spawn. This corresponds to a consider- 
able degree with what has "been observed of the spawn- 
mg habits of the pike perch. 
(3) . The sturgeon spawning season on the Missisquoi 
River is very short, and when the spawning is over the 
fish aI1 go down the riA'er with a rush, and though there 
may be hundreds in. the river one day, in forty-eight 
hours there may not be one left in the river. The rush 
down stream this year was on the nights of May 27 and 
28. They began to go up the river about the 20th, al- 
though there were sturgeon at the mouth of the Missis- 
quoi River as early as the first week in May. The stur- 
geon spawning season on the river this year was^ there- 
fore, the week between May 20 and 27. 
(4) . The sturgeon docs not alwa3'-s deposit all her 
eggs at one time. A, female fish whose eggs were so 
ripe and loose that they came from her without pressure 
was found, on being killed and examined, to have at 
least two-thiids of her ovaries filled with immature eggs. 
(5) - . When the female sturgeon is ripe her abdomen 
sa.gs when the fi.sh is lifted by the tail, as in the case of 
ripe salmon. Llencc there is no difficulty in distin- 
guishing a ripe- female. Her eggs also flow 'from her 
\ery easily; so easily, in fact, that the difficulty with a 
ripe fish in artificial spawning"- is mt to get the eggs out. 
but to keep them in. 
(6) . The mystery of the fishermen never catchtftg; a 
ripe fish in their gill nets is solved. It has been unques- 
tionably a mystery why lemale sturgetm were caught with 
eggs in every possible stage of unripeness, but never with 
eggs entirely ripe. It is a mystery no longer, however. 
The secret of it all is" that when the f«male is ripe the 
eggs flow from her so easily that when entangled in a 
net she throws out all her ripe eggs in her struggle to 
escape, so that when the fisherman takes her out of the 
net he finds only a spent fish. Mr. Green says that they 
throw their ripe eggs so readily that even in taking a ripe 
female ashore from the pens she would be likely to throw 
her eggs before she could be quieted cnou,gh to be 
stripped. 
-Now that this explanation of what has seemed so 
mysterious has been discovered, it appears so simple 
that the wonder is that no one has thought of it before. 
Very likely this has occurred to many of you who are 
here present, but I can truly say that I have never found 
a fisherman yet who knew the true reason of his not 
catching ripe female sturgeon, or ever even hinted at it. 
(7) . We succeeded in actually taking and impregnat- 
ing a few sturgeon eggs. W'e found them to be glutinous, 
hke pike perch eggs, and requiring the same treatment 
in handli'ig and impregnating. The eggs are about one- 
eighth of an inch in diameter and can be readily hatched 
in the same jars that are used for hatching whilefish and 
pike perch eggs, and in the same way. There is this 
difl'erence. however,, between the eggs of the pike perch 
and those of the sturgeon, that the shell of the pike perch 
e.gg is very hard, and the shell of the sturgeon egg is 
thin and soft. 
Some of the sturgeon fry hatched at the United States 
Hatchery on the Missisquoi River this spring were- 
brought safely to Cape -Vincent Station, the first lake 
sturgeon fry. I think, that were ever hatched under the 
auspices of the United States Fish Commission. 
As to the question whether sturgeon eggs can be 
taken, impregnated and" hatched artificially, I should say 
that great pains must be taken to capture them properly 
and to confine them properly. In fact, the preparatioii 
for this part of the w,ork must be very elaborate. If this 
is not done, lake sturgeon hatching will be a failure; but 
if proper attention is given to these points, I am con- 
vinced that lake sturgeon hatching will be a success, at 
least wherever the parent fish can be found restricted in 
their movements to a small area. as. for instance, in the 
Missisquoi River. 
Allow me to add, in closing, that for most of tlie in- 
formation acquired this spring in regard to the sturgeon 
T am indebted to the persevering eft'orts and keen obser- 
vation of Mr. Myron Green and to the accommodating 
and liberal spirit of the river fishermen, without which 
we shopld htive accomplished nothing. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should teach tis at the 
latest by Monday sniJ a? much •arlier gs practicable, 
