318 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
in mind the one body of water and the immediate conditions obtaining there upon 
which to base their conclusions. 
Smelts abound in Sebago Lake, Me., and they are apparently just as abundant 
one year as another, but the fishing varies; one year or at one portion of the season 
the fishing is good, at another bad. Which is the smelt accountable for? In Sun- 
apee Lake also there have been seasons of good fishing, notwithstanding the smelts, 
and there were times of poor fishing before Sunapee knew the smelt, if the reports of 
the State commissioners can be trusted. 
As for fly fishing being ruined by the abundance of smelts or other food supply, 
other waters where the smelt abound and where fly fishing is unexcelled need only 
be cited to controvert the contention. One of these is Grand Lake, in the western 
St. Croix waters. In any body of water one principal reason that fish are not taken 
on the fly is that they are not fished for with the fly. Notwithstanding the preva- 
lent opinion that salmon never take the fly in Sebago Lake owing to the smelt, when- 
ever anyone has persistently fished with a fly salmon have been caught by that 
means, and one usually has to persistently fish by any method to land many fish. 
Furthermore, the writer has examined hundreds of Sebago salmon, and while the 
majority, when they contained any food at all, had smelt in their stomach, many 
have been found having insects only, and some containing both insects and smelts 
or some other fish. 
These remarks apply mainly to the landlocked salmon and it may be added 
that the writer has still fished for smelts and salmon on the same “grounds” and 
used live smelts, live shiners, and pieces of smelt for bait for salmon, and has caught 
just as many on shiners as on smelt and nearly as many on the “cut bait” as on 
live bait. 
In trolling for salmon, while a fresh dead smelt is regarded as the best bait 
they are often taken on shiners and artificial lures, even while smelts are running 
and dead and dying strew the lake. 
In the two weeks prior to mid-September in 1924 fly fishing for salmon and 
trout at upper Rangeley Lake was reported as very good on certain days. Some 6 
and 7 pound salmon were thus taken. As previously stated, smelts abound in 
Rangeley Lake, and the fact is that salmon and smelts occur together in the deeper 
water during the summer months. It can not be for lack of smelt food that salmon 
take the fly or other baits at other season than in the spring, and it hardly can be 
attributed to the abundance of smelts that trout and salmon fail to take the fly or 
other lure in the spring. The writer was told by an angler who has fished Rangeley 
Lakes for 50 years or more that he seldom had found more than one or two smelts 
in a salmon at one time, but often caught trout on a fly and found them to be gorged 
wdth smelt. 
It is quite possible that abundance of some food, as the smelt for instance, may 
modify the fishing. Perhaps fewer fish are caught than would be the case if there 
were no smelts. There is one more thing, however, and that is that landlocked 
salmon would not attain a very large size in any considerable numbers if deprived 
of smelt food or its equivalent in some other species. 
