88 
KENDALL: NEW ENGLAND CHARES. 
guess can be made in comparison. In front of our camp, a space of say five rods up and down 
the river, we secured five hundred trout from the 1st to the 12th of October, and confined them 
in pens immediately in front of the beds. This is not a solitary spawning place for there are 
many more above and below, but perhaps not so convenient to seine ; and considering the great 
eddy and all intermediate suitable localities we shall come to the conclusion that they are as 
the sands of the sea — innumerable.” 
By flapping away the sand and dirt the trout form shallow hollows in the gravel which 
serve as nests in which the eggs are deposited and covered with gravel or pebbles. 
Mr. Rich states that the “beds” are made of small round pebbles piled up in heaps, three 
or four feet across. These pebbles are carried in the fishes’ mouths, sometimes quite a dis- 
tance. The beds accumulate sediment and “river muss” during the year, and when the time 
for spawning draws near the male trout congregate near the spawning grounds in great numbers 
and clean the beds and make them as bright as if they had been polished. The fish then retire, 
and in some ten days or two weeks return with the female trout in large schools, and lie around 
in the vicinity of the beds until their time of deposit arrives. 
While most of this statement is doubtless correct, Mr. Rich has evidently mistaken old 
chub nests for those of the trout, due perhaps to having obseryed the trout utilizing them. He 
must have guessed that the trout carried the pebbles to the heaps in their mouths. In another 
article regarding nests in Kennebago stream he states that his observations there afforded 
no reason for changing his views of the manner of trout spawning except that the beds there 
appeared to be flat, formed of small cobbles. 
The spawning process is thus described by Mr. Rich: “The female drops some spawn, 
then with a dexterous movement of her under fin, turns a pebble over it, whirls back and forth 
around the bed a minute, and then goes through the same operation again; the male occasion- 
ally sidling up to the female, and both touching bellies together for an instant, then the male 
leaves her and looks after the spawn, and if he finds it he gobbles it up. The above operation is 
continued for many days, until the female has deposited all her ova.” 
The eggs are not all emitted at one time, but a female trout, usually attended by one and 
the same male, occupies the nest for several days. Mr. Rich says (1. c.) that if the female is 
taken from the bed the male will leave, but if the male is removed the female will remain and 
ere long a second male will take the place of the other. 
The time necessary for the development of the eggs is dependent on the temperature of 
the water, varying from about 125 days in water at 37° F. to about 50 days in water at 50° F. 
Trout are not infrequently observed with ripe spawn out of season, during almost any 
month of the year. A writer in a sportsmen’s journal in 1894 stated that in the Rangel ey region, 
well into January, he had observed, through the ice, trout spawning, and that he had not long 
before caught, in August, a pregnant seven-pound fish from which spawn was dripping. The 
