Salmo salar and the Schoodic Salmon

Abstract

UNDER date of March 13, in the course of remarks on a late report of the U.S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, you express a wish for an explanation of the fact that a sea-going salmon (Salmo salar) was found among the Schoodic “land-locked” salmon. I take pleasure in supplying the explanation. The fish referred to were taken in Grand Lake Stream, which connects two of the Schoodic lakes, tributary to the St. Croix River, which discharges into an arm of the sea on the border between the United States and Canada. Before the obstruction of the St. Croix by mill-dams, there was nothing to prevent the ascent of the sea-going salmon to this stream, and it is among the traditions of the aborigines that they were formerly often taken here along with the small “land-locked” or fresh-water salmon. The sea-salmon they called Pl-láhm; the land-locked, Tag-e-wáh-nàhn; and though for many years the sea-salmon were almost wholly prevented from ascending the river by the mill-dams, they have not been entirely exterminated, and the upper waters have been rendered in a degree accessible to the remnant by means of fish-ways constructed within a few year.