THE SMELTS 
279 
Mead (1883) wrote: 
About all the streams emptying into Long Pond and Sebago Lake are visited every spring 
by large numbers of smelts. Of these we have two kinds or varieties, known locally as the 
“large” or “big smelt” and the “little smelt.” The point of difference, so far as common obser- 
vation goes, is in the size and a slight variation in the time of coming to the brooks to spawn. 
Concerning these two sizes J. G. Rich (1883) asks: “Are they both alike? 
Will the small fellow grow to be like the first run, and come up first next year?” 
Mead again wrote (North Bridgton, 1885) : 
It would be a work for the scientists to fully explain the different varieties of smelts and 
their habits. That they belong to the salmon family all agree, but in this particular locality 
[Maine] there are three different varieties, commonly called the big, salt-water, and little smelts. 
The salt-water smelts, Osmerus viridescens, are common in all the rivers, creeks and streams along 
our coast. They are said to bear transferring well, even into waters entirely land-locked and fresh, 
but always with a diminution in size. The big smelts are like the salt-water variety in some re- 
spects, but are larger and darker colored. They are over ten inches in length, and average nearly 
a quarter of a pound in weight. Many occur much larger than this, and one was weighed here 
a few years ago that was caught through the ice with hook and line, and turned the scales at 
eleven ounces. A few are mentioned even larger, but they are rare, to say the least. The little 
smelts are but miniature representatives of their larger relations, weighing less than half an ounce 
each. Some have thought that these little fellows are only the young of the larger variety, but 
this can hardly be true, as they seem to be fully developed and are ready to spawn as they ascend 
the streams to their breeding grounds. They do not run up the streams until about a week later 
than the larger ones, and are much more abundant. They are also found in many localities where 
the big smelts do not occur. They vary somewhat in size, in different places, and are said to be 
larger in Norway Lake, only twelve miles away, than they are here. In the last mentioned lake 
no big smelts are found. 
On April 28, 1911, Wilfred Rivers, a fisherman of Phillipsburg, Quebec, on Mis- 
sisquoi Bay, Lake Champlain, told the present writer that they sometimes got a few 
small smelts^, not over 3 or 4 inches long, and that they had spawn in them. 
These small smelts, he said, were sometimes entangled in the nets or mixed with 
larger fish when fishing through the ice with seines. No hook-and-line fishing for 
smelts or “ice fish” was done for the market in this region. 
It has been suggested that if one or the other of the two sizes were to be trans- 
planted the result might indicate the relationship of the two forms; for if the small 
smelt developed into large smelt or large and small smelts, or if large smelts when 
transplanted should develop into small smelts only, or into both categories, it would 
show that the two were merely different groups, probably age or year classes of the 
same species. 
An instance of what are apparently two races or distinct sizes of transplanted 
smelts is that of the Rangeley Lakes in Maine. Small smelts of 4 or 5 inches are 
very numerous, but large ones, up to 10 inches at least, have been caught. 
According to the late Arthur Oakes, of Rangeley, the large smelts are restricted to 
Mooselucmaguntic Lake, while only small smelts occur in Oquossoc. This fact at 
first seemed to indicate that small smelts would grow large when placed in favorable 
waters, for the first smelts planted in those waters were from Weld Pond, where the 
fish, as has been shown, are very small. However, it subsequently developed that 
