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KENDALL: NEW ENGLAND CHARES. 
he later stated that the male fish weighed after death 10 pounds, 1 ounce, and that according 
to Stanley and Atkins it would weigh approximately 12 pounds. 
This weight was not equaled until eleven years later when two men dipping Blueback 
Trout in October, 1878, caught two trout one of which, a female, according to Commissioner 
Stanley, weighed 12 pounds, and a male which weighed lOj pounds. Both were returned to 
the w'ater. This is possibly the record referred to by Captain Barker in a letter to Forest and 
Stream under date of March 28, 1886, in which he says: “As far as I know the large trout taken 
near Rangeley Dam a few years ago, by the men fishing for breeding purposes, still stands at 
the head of the list of our large trout. I did not see the fish weighed but a man who did 
told me this afternoon that the weight was an honest twelve pounds two ounces.” 
In September, 1879, another large trout was heralded in the papers as weighing 12 pounds, 
caught by a Mr. Marble and his guide, Steve Morse, of Upton, at Upper Dam, September 30. 
A correspondent of Forest and Stream, who saw the fish weighed, stated that its actual weight, 
taken sometime after the fi.sh was caught, was 111 pounds. He wrote: “It was a most ungainly 
fish, a male with a wonderfully prominent hooked jaw. I saw the fi.sh a few moments after its 
capture and had seen him several times on the spawning bed which the trout had made at that 
time a few feet above the dam, owing to the low water. The trout, evidently an old one, was 
thin and flat, but very wide, with a crooked back. The numerous pictures on the covers of 
guide books, and on the advertisements of the Maine Central Railroad, do him justice only in 
point of ugliness. Still he had the bright spots and the vermilion sides of the perfect Salmo 
fontinalis at breeding time.” 
The Forest and Stream of July 8, 1886, published the following: “The Biggest Brook 
Trout. — We have to record the capture of a brook trout weighing 12^ lbs., by Mr. J. Frederic 
Grote, of 114 East Fourteenth Street, New York City, in Mooselucmaguntic Lake, Maine, 
on June 11. The fish was a female and Mr. Grote kept it in a car for one week when it died. 
It was weighed several times at the Mooselucmaguntic House, in the presence of Mr. John 
Schultz, of Philadelphia, and the proprietors, Messrs. Crosby and Twombley. It was 26j 
inches long, 17| inches girth, 7| inches deep, and was 4 inches thick through the back. The 
guide was Jerry Ellis . . . .We believe this to be the largest brook trout yet recorded.” 
In Forest and Stream of June 23, 1887, George Shepard Page wrote in comment that C. T. 
Richardson informed him that the trout was one that Jerry Ellis, Mr. Grote’s guide, called an 
8-pound trout, but did not weigh it. After the entrails were removed, after having been in 
the car four days, it weighed pounds. Commissioner H. 0. Stanley estimated the weight 
as 8| or 05 pounds, basing his estimate on the known weight of one of the same dimensions. 
Of trout weighing 11 pounds and over, but below 12, the one previously referred to, ll| 
pounds, caught by Steve Mor.se, guide to Mr. Marble, was taken September 29, 1879, and 
reported as a 12-pound fish. Doubtless ll| is authentic. 
On June 7, 1887, Dr. S. J. Mixter, of Boston, caught, by deep trolling with minnow bait. 
