14 
KENDALL: NEW ENGLAND CHARES. 
clear, deep water, it is seldom found in the main rivers, although when these become clear, as is 
sometimes the case in autumn, numbers of trout find their way thence from the lakes.” 
Hamlin stated (/. c.) that in his original description of the fish, he held that it was to be 
found only in waters of great depth, **and so it was believed at the time, but it seems there 
are exceptions, for the toma is found in Portage Lake, which is not over thirty feet in its 
greatest depth.” 
Food. 
Most of those who write concerning the feeding habits of the Lake Trout are united in 
the asseveration that it is a “ravenous feeder.” Goode states ^ that it was found preying 
upon the cisco, a well known fish closely resembling the whitefish. He said that it was not 
uncommon for a trout to swallow a fish nearly as large as itself. He cited an instance where 
one 23 inches long contained a “lawyer” {Lota maculosa) which measured about seventeen 
inches. The fishermen of Port Huron informed Kumfien that it was not unusual to obtain 
whitefish two or three pounds in weight from the stomachs of large trout. “A twenty-pound 
trout was found to contain thirteen lake-herring and was caught biting at the fourteenth. They 
are as omnivorous as a codfish, and among the articles which have been found in their stomachs 
may be mentioned an open jack-knife, seven inches long, which had been lost by a fisherman a 
year before at a locality thirty miles distant, tin cans, rags, raw potatoes, chicken and ham bones, 
salt pork, corn cobs, spoons, silver dollars, a watch and chain, and in one instance a piece of 
tarred rope two feet long. In the spring wild pigeons were often found in their stomachs. It 
is thought that these birds frequently became bewildered in their flight over the lakes, settle on 
the water, and become the prey of the trout.” (Here is a factor in the extinction of the wild 
pigeon that the ornithologists have not taken into account.) 
Adams ^ says it repairs to shallows to feed on trout, smelts, and the like. Indeed, the last 
named fish would appear to constitute its favorite winter subsistence. It preys extensively, 
also, on eels and cyprinids, and is, in fact, a tyrant with an appetite so voracious that quantities 
of twigs, leaves, and fragments of wood are constantly found in its stomach. 
Hamlin writes in Maine Sportsman {1. c.) that the togue is a nuisance in all lakes where the 
landlocked salmon occurs, and ought to be exterminated if the salmon is to be protected, for it 
is a most voracious eater and requires many fish to supply its appetite. A six-pound togue 
caught at Moosehead by General Locman, of New York, a few years ago, yielded, among the 
contents of its stomach, 115 little whitefish which it had caught within twelve hours. Besides 
these distinct fish there were a dozen more partly decomposed. The editor’s note said: “This 
seems like a story that a fish of the size mentioned could contain, undigested, this number of 
' Fishery Industries, sec. 1, p. 490, 1884. 
^ L. Adams; Field and Forest Rambles, 1873. 
