In color the pike is olive brown, marked with green and yellow.
Trout
Perhaps the greatest favorite of all anglers is the trout, which, in one or more of its various species, is to be caught in almost every swift stream and highland lake throughout the temperate zone, except where the race has been destroyed by too persistent fishing. This happens everywhere near civilization, unless protective laws regulate the times and places where fishing may be done. Similar laws are required to save many other kinds of fishes from quick destruction at the hands of the thoughtless and selfish, and they should be honestly obeyed and supported in spite of their occasionally interfering with amusement.
Trout are graceful in form and richly colored, most of them having arrangements of bright spots and gaily tinted fins. The common trouts of Europe and the eastern half of the United States and Canada are much alike; but in the Rocky and other mountains of the western shore of our continent others quite different are scattered from the Plains to the Pacific. One of the most interesting and beautiful of these, the rainbow-trout, has been brought into the East, and has made itself at home in many lakes and rivers of the Northern States and Canada.
The trout is an extremely active fish, and when it is hooked it tries its very hardest to break away, dashing to and fro, leaping, twisting, and fighting, and often giving the angler a great deal of trouble before he can bring it in. In small streams it seldom grows to any great size, but in some of the Scottish lochs and lakes of Maine trout weighing fifteen or even twenty pounds are often taken. It is sometimes considered, however, that these belong to a different species.
The Salmon
More famous even than the trout is the salmon, the largest and finest of all our fresh-water fishes, which often reaches a weight of forty-five or fifty pounds, and sometimes grows to still greater size.
It is hardly correct, however, to speak of it as a fresh-water fish, for although salmon are nearly always caught in rivers, they spend a considerable part of their lives in the sea.
Salmon are of two kinds—the Atlantic and the Pacific species; and the life-history of each is a very curious one.
During the winter the parent fishes of the Atlantic salmon, which used to be exceedingly numerous in all our northern rivers emptying into the Atlantic, and still haunt the rivers of Northeastern Canada, and of Scotland, make their way as far up a clear and gravelly river as they possibly can, till they find a suitable place in which to lay their eggs. The mother then scoops a hole at the bottom of the stream, in which she deposits her eggs in batches, carefully covering up each batch as she does so. At this time both parents are in very poor condition, and the males are known to anglers as "kelts." For a time they remain in the river, feeding ravenously. Then in March or April they travel down the river and pass into the sea, where they stay for three or four months, after which they ascend the river again, as before.