BLUEBACK TROUT. 
31 
emptying into Rangeley Lake at points six miles apart, and the outlet of Rangeley Lake, six 
miles from Dodge Pond, are thronged by myriads of this exquisite fish. The waters of the 
streams are actually filled with this crowding, springing multitude, gathering as do smelts and 
alewives, to deposit their spawm. They do not make a ‘ spawning bed,’ like the salmon and trout, 
but deposit their eggs in all parts of the stream, remaining about ten days, when they return 
to the lake, and are never seen until the 10th of October the following year.” In the same 
journal for December, 1874, Mr. E. S. Merrill says: “Five or six years ago I spent the month of 
October in the Maine woods, and for the first time saw the Blueback trout, of which I had heard. 
This was in Androscoggin River, between Indian Rock and the dam. The trout came from the 
Cupsuptic or Mooselucmaguntic Lakes. They came up from Indian Rock to the dam. In 
the pool below the dam there were myriads, the water being literally black with them, and under 
every stone, slab, or log in the stream, scores would shoot out when disturbed; you could 
scarcely step anywhere in the stream without starting some, and so of the streams emptying 
into Rangeley Lake.” 
In American Angler of April 14, 1873, Mr. Rich wrote that they ran up the brook at night 
and back in the morning. 
Regarding the run of Bluebacks in Sawmill Brook in the fall of 1887, a corre.spondent of 
Forest and Stream of December 15, 1887, wrote that one reliable guide, Mr. Oscar Cutting, said 
that the stream was lined with them for a long distance up into the running water . The Blue- 
backs were so intent upon breeding or reaching their breeding grounds that they were literally 
piled up in the shallow water in the little pools and eddies. 
Captain F. C. Barker, in Forest and Stream, January 12, 1888, writing regarding the 
disappearance from below Upper Dam and appearance in Sawmill Brook, said that the dis- 
appearance was plainly due to the fact that the water in the lake below was so high that it 
backed up over the “rips” where they have usually done their spawning, rendering the whole 
line of “rips ” as quiet as a mill pond. Their leaving this point altogether is probably the cause 
of so large a number in Sawmill Brook, but no doubt there has always been more or less of them 
spawning there. 
J. Parker Whitney, in a letter to Forest and Stream written in October, 1896, and reprinted 
in the Report of the Commissioner of Inland Fisheries and Game of the State of Maine for the 
year 1896, wrote : “Now the latter part of the month the blueback (Salmo oquassa) are spawning, 
and swim in large quantities in the shallows below Upper Dam. They are invisible by day, but 
at night come on in large numbers, and do not appear at any other season of the year. They 
undoubtedly inhabit the deepest water of the lakes. They remain on the spawning beds during 
the nights of about a week in the latter part of October, and sometimes in such numbers that 
barrels full could be taken if nets were used.” 
The only mention of the food of the Blueback is the statement of J. Parker Whitney {1. c.) 
who said that their teeth were very fine and plentiful, and that they evidently live on ground 
