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Common Atlantic Salmon — Part 3
Images coming soon.
Ordinarily the salmon will go well toward the headwaters of the streams to establish spawning beds. As the spawning season approaches they lose their trim appearance and their bright colours. They grow lank and misshapen, the fins become thick and fleshy, and the skin, which becomes thick and slimy, is blotched and mottled with brown, green or blue, and vermillion or scarlet. These changes are most apparent in the males, whose jaws become curved so that they touch only at the tips, the lower one developing a large powerful hook. When in this condition, and after spawning, while returning to the sea they are called "kelts."
While the eggs are laid late in the fall, they do not hatch until early the next spring. When the fry are 2 or 3 months old they begin to show the vermillion spots and transverse bars called parr-marks, which entitle the fish to be called a "parr", and which it retains while remaining in fresh water, and sometimes until 7 or 8 inches long. It remains a parr until the second or third spring, when it descends to the sea, assuming at the time a uniform bright silvery colour, and the "parr" becomes a "smolt." After remaining a time in salt water, the time varying from a few months to 2 years, it returns to fresh water either as a "grilse" or "salmon." The "grilse" is the adolescent salmon, weighing 2 to 6 pounds, and is even more graceful than the adult fish. "There is nothing in the water that surpasses a grilse in its symmetrical beauty, its brilliancy, its agility, and its pluck," wrote Thaddeus Norris. "I have had one of 4 pounds to leap from the water 10 times, and higher and farther than a salmon. Woe to the angler who attempts, without giving line, to hold one even of 3 pounds; he does it at the risk of his casting line, or his agile opponent tears a piece from its jaw or snout in its desperate efforts to escape."
Quoting again from Dr. Goode, who can wonder at the angler's enthusiasm over "a salmon fresh run in love and glory from the sea?" Hear Christopher North's praise of a perfect fish: "She has literally no head; but her snout is in her shoulders. That is the beauty of a fish; high and round shoulders, short waisted, no loins, but all body, and not long of terminating-the shorter still the better-in a tail sharp and pointed as Diana's when she is crescent in the sky."
The salmon reaches an immense size. The largest of which we have seen a record was one of 83 pounds, brought to London in 1821. Perley mentions one of 60 pounds taken long ago in the Restigouche. In the Penobscot examples of 40 pounds have been taken, though that weight is very unusual. The maximum weight of those taken in Maine rivers now does not exceed 25 pounds, and the average is about 10 pounds.
The catch of salmon by anglers in the Penobscot Pool at Bangor in 1893 was 87 fish, with a total weight of 1,477 1/2 pounds. The largest weighed 30 pounds, and the average was nearly 17 pounds. The catch in 1900 was 67 fish, with a total weight of 970 pounds. The largest weighed 23 1/2 pounds, and the average was nearly 14 1/2 pounds.
Head 4; depth 4; Br. 11; D. 11; A. 9; scales 23-120-21; vertebrae 60; pyloric coeca about 65; gillrakers 8+12=20. Body moderately elongate, symmetrical, not much compressed; head rather low; mouth moderate, the maxillary reaching just past the eye; in young the maxillary is proportionately shorter; preopercle with a distinct lower limb, the angle rounded; scales comparatively large, rather larger posteriorly, silvery and well imbricated in the young, becoming embedded in the adult males. Colour, in adult, brownish above, the sides more or less silvery, with numerous black spots on head, body and fins, and red spots or patches on sides in males; the "parr" with about 11 dusky or bluish crossbars, besides red patches and black spots; the colour, as well as the form of the head and body varying much with age, food and condition; the black spots in the adult often X-shaped or XX-shaped.
In the lakes of Maine, New Hampshire and New Brunswick and in Lake St. John, the Saguenay and neigbouring waters in Quebec, the salmon is represented by 2 land-locked forms, one in each region, which are here recognized as species.