580 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 9, 1909. 
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I regard using the three-six tackle free fishing 
and real sport and pleasure as compared to 
using the nine-ounce tackle, and especially the 
sixteen-ounce tip, which means nothing more 
than brute strength and sheer endurance, as a 
six-hour fight with a big tuna last week enables 
me to testify. 
A slight difference of opinion just at this time 
will serve to help keep alive the fishing spirit 
until the new year dawns. 
Thos. McD. Potter. 
Salmon Habits. 
The following extracts from Napoleon A. 
Comeau’s recent book, “Life and Sport on the 
North Shore of the Lower St. Lawrence and 
Gulf,” are of peculiar interest in view of recent 
comments on the salmon and its habits: 
Where do the large quantities of salmon that 
approach the shores of the St. Lawrence in the 
spring come from? Where have they passed 
the winter? To some extent this is still a prob¬ 
lem. We read of an occasional one being taken 
with hook and line by the Newfoundland cod 
fishing fleet. Herring netters, in St. George’s 
Bay, sometimes capture a straggler in their nets 
in winter. Captain Adams, of Gloucester, a 
celebrated mackerel fisherman, has told me that 
he now and then captures a salmon in his purse 
seines when fishing for mackerel off the Atlantic 
coast in winter, and a few captures have been 
reported by other mackerel seiners. These few 
data have given rise to the belief that most of 
our salmon go out to the Atlantic Ocean and 
winter there, returning in the spring. This may 
probably be true of salmon belonging to the New 
Brunswick shores, but I do not believe that our 
North Shore salmon stray away so very far, 
though possibly a few may do so. I am of 
the opinion that the bulk of them remain in the 
deep waters of the St. Lawrence. In support 
of this I have a record of one salmon being 
taken on a halibut trawl off Caribou Islands in 
the month of April. I have also found remains 
of salmon in the stomach of seals, shot off 
Pointe des Monts in the months of January and 
February. Halibut, herrings, flounders, dog fish 
and Greenland sharks, lobsters, etc., move out 
into the deep waters and return toward land 
in the spring as soon as the ice permits. Why 
should not salmon do the same thing? 
This was for a very long time a much dis¬ 
cussed question, some persons asserting that 
they feed only on small animalcule contained 
in water, and that for that reason nothing was 
ever found in their stomachs. I was still quite 
a boy when I heard of this theory. It was dur¬ 
ing my first year’s guardianship of the Godbout 
River. Two English officers, Major Howard 
and Colonel Charteris, had been invited by Dr. 
W. Agar Adamson to join the angling party of 
the Godbout that season. I think it was in the 
year 1860. Presumably this “food question” had 
been brought up, because on that day orders 
were given not to cut up or split the salmon 
before all the party were present. 
While this was being done later on, I stood 
by, like the others, watching the opening of each 
fish and its stomach. I imagined that something 
had been lost, and with a boy’s curiosity asked 
what they were looking for. Colonel Charteris, 
in answer to my question, kindly explained that 
nothing was ever found in the way of food in 
a salmon’s stomach, and that it was to prove 
this that the fish were being examined, “and as 
you may see,” he added, “this is correct, not a 
speck of food has been found in any of these.” 
There were six or seven salmon. “Why!” I 
answered, “this may be all right as far as these 
fish are concerned, but I can show you hun¬ 
dreds with their stomachs full to bursting with 
caplin.” “You can!” he said. “Certainly, sir.” 
“Well, now, my good boy, look here. I don’t 
want a hundred, but try and bring me one and 
I shall be satisfied.” 
I promised, and the next day got a fish from 
the nets and brought it up to him. It was opened 
in presence of the whole party, Dr. Adamson, 
Captain Holyoake, Major Howard and the 
colonel. The stomach was stuffed with caplin, 
about fifteen or so, in various stages of diges¬ 
tion. They were all carefully collected and 
placed with the intestines in one of Crosse & 
Blackwell’s pickle bottles, filled up with good 
brandy and presumably taken hack to England 
and possibly placed in some collection where, 
for all I know, they may be to this day. I never 
heard anything more of the incident. Since 
that day I have opened many thousands of sal¬ 
mon taken in the sea and in rivers and lakes. 
In those taken in salt water I have found her¬ 
rings, small mackerel, young sculpins, two kinds 
of shrimps.—one very small, and on one occas¬ 
ion two young flounders about three inches long 
in the same fish. A species of bluish-colored 
sea worm is also occasionally found. All of 
the above are rare exceptions, but the regular 
every day food seems to be caplin and sand eels. 
In fresh water I must say that practically they 
do not feed, because out of the many thousands 
that I have examined, killed with the fly, or by 
netting and spearing and in other ways, only 
four contained visible food. This was, in two 
specimens taken in July by angling in each one 
stone-fly, a grayish insect with yellow markings 
on the underparts and long wings, total length 
about one and a half inch. In one speared in 
November I found a portion of a wood mouse 
with some of the hair and skin, one hind leg 
bone and a small portion of the vertebrae was 
present, all the other bones missing. In a kelt, 
caught in a trout net about the beginning of 
May, was a piece of fat with a shred of skin. 
This appeared to come from some species of 
duck, but as there were no feathers left on it 
I could not determine what kind it had been. 
Four salmon, out of fifteen or twenty thousand 
had enough food found in them to keep a small 
trout alive one day. I think that we may well 
conclude that they do not feed in fresh water. 
But the question often posed by anglers 
naturally presents itself: “Why, if they do not 
feed, do they rise to the fly? A fly going 
through the water looks very much like a live 
insect; why do they chase it and snap at it 
sometimes so viciously, if not for food?” This 
is certainly a good argument, but the. fact re¬ 
mains that no flies are found in them. There 
are myriads of flies and grubs of all descrip¬ 
tions in a river, and surely if the salmon were 
taking them as food the remains would be found 
in the stomach. If we open a trout or small 
parr we will generally find it stuffed with in¬ 
sects of various kinds. I have often sat and 
watched these small parrs for hours at a time in 
a sheltered corner or eddy of a river, throwing 
into the water all sorts of things, bits of bread, 
meat, paper and all kinds of crawling or flying 
insects that I could get hold of. The fish would 
rise at everything that dropped, but would not 
always take it. At other times small bits 
would be taken and immediately ejected. Black 
flies, ants, maggots and deer flies would invari¬ 
ably be retained. Of the larger insects they 
would sometimes make three or four attempts 
before they would succeed in swallowing them. 
When parr are abundant in a certain portion 
of a river, one may constantly see them leaping 
and feeding. Therefore, may not this habit of 
the salmon rising to a fly be simply a survival 
of a youthful habit leading them to chase any 
insect that appears and then ejecting it since it 
is not required as food? 
For the joy of all salmon anglers I hope that 
this particular instinct will never be lost. 
When a salmon enters a river in June he is 
rolling in fat. The intestines are one solid mass 
of it. Formerly, when salmon were salted, all 
the intestines were collected, placed in a barrel 
and allowed to melt with the heat of the sun, 
giving about one imperial quart of clear oil per 
two hundred pounds of cured fish. After his 
long and arduous journey up stream his en¬ 
forced or willing fast and the exhaustion due 
to spawning, all this fat has been absorbed and' 
the fish left in an emaciated condition. He is 
then called a spent fish or kelt. He is hardly 
recognizable. His skin is dark, thick and slimy to 
such a degree that his former bright silvery 
scales are invisible. How has this been brought) 
about? By long immersion in fresh water is 
the answer. Very well; then how is it that 
this same fish, continuing to remain in the same ! 
water, emerges in April with bright scales show¬ 
ing again? He is no fatter, still a kelt, but he 
is bright and shining. How was this brought 1 
about? Flere is where I have something new 
He has shed his coat. He has moulted, thrown 
off his outer slimy covering with the old scales 
and grown new ones just in the same way asj 
an animal sheds his coat, birds their feathers 
and snakes their skins also of scales. I imagine, 
I can see my dear reader’s incredulous smile 
when he reads this. I have seen some already 
I saw it on the face of Charles Hallock, the 
former editor of Forest and Stream, when 1 
first propounded this theory to him many year- 
ago. He was a guest that year on the God 
bout, and I had prepared and put up in alcoho 
for him a piece of salmon skin showing the 
new scales growing. I had also explained ti 
him my views of how this change was produced 
He smiled and promised to write an article ii 
Forest and Stream, but he must have for 
gotten it, because it never appeared. Since the! 
I have broached the subject a couple of time:; 
to others, but their looks and silence were toe 
significant for me to continue the subject. I 
is none the less a fact, as I have found by con 
tinued investigation. 
Alex. Russell in his work on “The Salmon' 
has a vague perception of something anomalou 
in the presence of these clean kelts in Scotcl 
rivers in the early spring. He says: 
“It would be dishonest to omit to mention 
merely because we cannot pretend to explain 
another mystery as to the movements of tin 
salmon, which no experiments have done any 
thing to clear up. What are those clean salmoi 
that run up the rivers in later winter or earl; 
spring? They cannot be wanting to spawn, fo 
