LAKE TROUT. 
17 
present writer’s experience with the togue was one that prejudiced him against it. But the 
fish was a long, gaunt, dark-colored September “racer” of Telos Lake. When the fish was 
boiling it smelled like scalded chicken feathers and its flavor was about as it smelled. The odor 
and flavor were doubtless due to the oil in the fish, particularly that fat immediately beneath 
the thick tough skin. However, his prejudice was removed by boiled togue with mayonnaise 
sauce served at a summer camp in May at Moosehead Lake. The season was different, the fish 
was different, likewise the cooking and the way it was served. All of these things obtain with 
almost any fish. 
The plump, fat silver lakers of some waters have a red or reddish-yellow flesh. Others are 
more or less white-meated. The red-meated fish are regarded as the better flavored. It is the 
oiliness of the fish that causes it to pall upon the appetite. 
Game Qualities. 
As a game fish it is also held in various esteem. The Fi.shery Industries says the togue or 
lunge of our northeastern boundary is held in much higher favor by the angler than farther west. 
Its game qualities consist wholly in strong dogged resistance. It is not particularly rapid in 
its movements and never leaps from the water. In the spring and early summer and in some 
localities occasionally throughout the summer, it is usually taken by trolling with natural or 
artificial fi.sh bait at or near the surface. During the summer it is sometimes taken at baited 
places by deep-water still-bait fishing. It has the reputation of not rising to the fly. Hallock 
states that the young rise freely to the fly in rapid water. In the Maine Sportsman previously 
referred to, Hamlin says: “A few years ago a big togue rose to within a foot of the surface and 
seized my fly, which had sunk a few inches below the surface of the water. The togue behaved 
much like trout and I didn’t suspect the fish to be otherwise until I landed it.” The present 
writer caught a 5-lb. togue on a brown-hackle trout fly in a pool below the Chamberlain Lake 
dam. It behaved much like a Brook Trout and it required much care to keep it from submerged 
logs and timbers of the dam in the half hour it took to land it. 
In Forest and Stream of May 10, 1902, E. D. T. Chambers wrote: “A seventeen-pound 
lake trout {Salvelinus namaycush) was captured in I.ake St. Charles, near this city (Quebec) a 
few days ago by an angler using a rod and short line with minnow bait. While it is not, of course, 
unusual for the lake trout to take the minnow bait, it is very seldom that it is taken so near the 
surface of the water as upon this occasion. Except in the earliest days of spring and in far 
northern waters, namaycush is a resident of very deep water, and as most anglers very well 
know, it is usually to be had only by deep water trolling. Yet there are instances on record 
where it has taken the angler’s flies. One of these occurred a few years ago in the same Lake 
St. Charles to which reference has already been made. Mr. Lacon Walsh, of this city, noticed 
