Some Peculiarities of Trout 
By C. McDougall, M. D. 
New York, Feb. 7, 1914. 
Editor Forest and Stream : The speckled trout, 
that Prince of the pure, cold, spring water brook 
or pond, like the sportsman who follows him, is 
in a class by himself. He is the aristocrat of 
fishes. Brainy and valiant, he is a delight from 
his capture to his place on the table, but it has al¬ 
ways seemed to me strange that, although he has 
been studied by the most intelligent class of 
sportsmen, and writers on piscatorial subjects, so 
much of the trout’s habits and peculiarities should 
remain unknown, or at least uncertain, and in 
some matters even a mystery. 
Within the same variety his color and mark¬ 
ings may vary to a considerable extent. In a 
certain stream supplying a pond not a hundred 
miles from New York every trout that I caught 
presented the familiar yellow and golden color 
with crimson and blue markings, while in the 
pond itself the trout were of a uniform silver¬ 
like color, resembling the salmon. This differ¬ 
ence could not be attributed to their food, as 
both had access to pond and stream alike, neither 
could it be charged to the water or to the soil 
underlying or surrounding it, these being exactly 
the same in stream and pond. On investigation 
I found that the change in color was coincident 
with the trout’s growth. 
But I met with a more remarkable variation in 
color markings when on a fishing expedition some 
years ago in the Province of Quebec. I was 
camped on a small lake where I caught many 
hundreds of trout, all presenting the well known 
markings of the ordinary speckled trout. The 
lake was connected, with another about a mile 
distant, by a large stream, which, with the ex¬ 
ception of the ruins of an old beaven dam, offered 
no obstruction to the passage of a canoe, much 
less the migration of fish, yet, in the other lake 
all the trout taken (and these were many) were 
of an entirely different marking from those in 
my lake; they were at the same time the most 
beautifully marked trout that I ever had seen. 
While their colors resembled those of the ordi¬ 
nary speckled trout their markings differed in a 
peculiar manner, the peculiarity consisting in 
the display of a collection of bright, blue rings, 
about a quarter of an inch in diameter, each 
surrounded by a narrower ring of brilliant car¬ 
mine and filled in the centre with a golden yel¬ 
low. These tri-colored spots were distributed 
along the sides of the fish, becoming smaller 
and less distant as they approached the median 
line. I have still in my possession some good 
photographs of these trout, taken at the time 
of their capture, which show the extraordinary 
marking, although, of course, not the color. 
The habits and peculiarities of the trout offer a 
more interesting field for study and a more im¬ 
portant subject for the consideration of the 
sportsman, and it is of this that I would more 
particularly desire to speak. Why does the 
trout, the wariest of all fishes, rise to an arti¬ 
ficial fly? Is it because he is hungry and thinks 
it a natural fly? He will rise to a black gnat or a 
silver doctor when the water is covered with a 
variety of living insects, and it can hardly be 
possible that he mistakes an artificial fly for any 
living thing that ever inhabited the air or the 
water. It has been said that he rises to the arti¬ 
ficial fly only for sport, for play. If so, why, at 
one time will he rise to a certain fly and at an¬ 
other totally ignore it? Why at one time will a 
black gnat tempt him and at another nothing 
but a coachman will attract his attention? These 
lures are so dissimilar, and each so unlike any 
living thing, that the supposition that he rises for 
food must be abandoned, while the belief that 
he does it for play would involve the theory that 
on one day he likes a dark colored plaything and 
on another a light one, but does this explanation 
satisfy? It has been said that sometimes an old 
fifhting trout snaps at the fly out of anger, not 
relishing the presence of the thing in his vicinity. 
This may be true but is not complimentary to 
the genius of the person who devised the lure 
with the expectation of deluding the trout into 
the belief that he was being presented with some 
kind of succulent insect with which he was ac¬ 
quainted. I have seen trout rise to a floating 
petal of wild cherry blossom, and, taking the 
hint, put on a white moth and a dusty miller 
but without success, and afterward got a rise 
on a red ibis. 
The trout is admittedly the shyest of fish, a 
shadow cast on the water will cause his dis¬ 
appearance with panic, yet, who has not stood 
on a bridge or on a river’s bank overlooking a 
pool and without any attempt at concealment 
watched a crowd of lazy-looking trout lying on 
the bottom, motionless and without fear. On 
such an occasion I have seen a farmer’s boy 
drop a worm-baited hook, fastened by a string to 
a stick, and trail the bait against the noses of 
some of the fish, that, refusing to bite, lazily 
backed away. Were those trout not hungry or 
were they too frightened to eat but not suffi¬ 
ciently so to go? 
There is a lake in Canada inhabited by very 
large trout, many of them weighing eight pounds, 
but, like the Columbia River salmon they will not 
rise to the fly. The lake is very deep, with a 
rocky bottom, and the natives make enormous 
catches by deep trolling with a spinner. In 
neighboring lakes, some of them not more than a 
mile distant and connected with this one by 
streams, trout rise to the fly greedily. I have 
seen specimens of these trout and have found 
them to be in no respect different from any other 
large-sized speckled trout—the Salvetinus Fonti- 
nalis. 
Many more peculiarities of the speckled trout 
might be presented, but I am looking for in¬ 
formation and if what I have already said has 
made out a case worthy the attention of the 
readers of your excellent paper, and that may 
engage their interest sufficiently to induce dis' 
cussion, my letter will have attained its object. 
IS THE CONSERVATION COMMISSION ON 
THE RIGHT ROAD? 
Albany, N. Y., Feb. 4, 1914. 
Editor Forest and Stream : An excellent and 
thought producing communication recently on the 
planting of fish in Adirondack waters should 
have been productive of others from Forest and 
Stream readers, for to none is it given to dis¬ 
cuss such subjects more intelligently. Let me add 
that it long has been my belief that the crying 
need to-day is a scientific examination of our 
inland waters to see if they are suited to the 
fish the authorities are so plentifully placing in 
them. 
With but very few instances, the state has ab¬ 
solutely no accurate knowledge of these waters, 
beyond the fact that yearly so many of such kinds 
of fish are dumped into them. And yet the 
state has in its employ one of the ablest fish 
culturists in the country, has a big corps of pro¬ 
tectors who could help in the work, and is spend¬ 
ing annually through the Conservation Commis¬ 
sion vast sums of money for which to date lucra¬ 
tive offices have been the only apparent return. 
All the while we hear yearly through the Con¬ 
servation Commission’s report that so many more 
millions of fish were planted than ever before. 
And there is an outcry for more fish hatcheries. 
Will any one presume to say that the fishing in 
our inland waters is improved anywhere near 
in proportion to the plant that is said to be 
made ? 
It is time that the anglers of the state made 
themselves heard on this subject. It is now pro¬ 
posed to lump them with hunters and trappers 
in order to get an excuse to tax them, but there 
is no assurance that any of the money taken 
from them will be used for the betterment of 
their fishing. Judging by the way in which the 
hunters were treated in connection with the hunt¬ 
ing license money, no good will come to the fish¬ 
ermen from their taxation—unless they get to¬ 
gether and make the Conservation Commission 
come to definite terms in the Legislature. It is 
time that the anglers did both thinking and work¬ 
ing on this matter. 
As furnishing a good idea of the sort of study 
that in my judgment ought to be made of our 
inland waters before any further fish hatcheries 
are built or much else is done in connection with 
the stocking problem, I suggest that those inter¬ 
ested read one of the latest bulletins of the 
United States Bureau of Fisheries. It is en¬ 
titled “Fishes and Fishing in Sunapee Lake,” and 
is a thorough study of that body of water by 
William Converse Kendall, under the supervision 
of Dr. Hugh M. Smith, the present commissioner. 
Of course, the -manner of handling such an in¬ 
quiry might easily differ, depending on the body 
of water studied. But in the end the anglers of 
the state, and its fish culturist as well, would 
have some definite knowledge of the stocking 
problem, or at least of the elements entering 
into it. 
John D. Whish. 
245 
