Sizing up silversides: Were Maine landlocks larger in yesteryear?

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Ken Allen

Recently, I was bottom-dredging a deep pool with a heavily weighted Wooly Bugger when my fly rod doubled up hard and a landlocked salmon began doing what it does best -- long runs and aerial displays. A few minutes later, the feisty, silver leaper came to hand and looked well over 20 inches. A quick inspection showed no clipped fins, indicating that more than likely the landlock was wild.

The fish was big enough for Bill Sheldon, a fishing companion and outdoors writer from Rhode Island, to wade downstream during the battle to shoot a quick digital photo at the end. A few minutes before, he had caught one about the same size but fatter -- a real football-shaped landlock.

Later, I wish we had measured and weighed both salmon with my Zebco De-Liar before releasing them, but the fights had lasted so long our immediate concern began and ended with getting the fragile salmon off the barb-less hooks. My fish shot off like a rocket, so it looked in perfect shape to fight another day.

With honest 20-20 hindsight, I suspect my landlock went 22 or 23 inches but just don't know that estimate precisely. Those two salmon were our only fish of the morning before a shore lunch of cod fillets and potatoes, but the size of them made our outing memorable.

How would a landlocked-salmon angler from 100 years ago view those two fish? The brace would probably have pleased any fisherman from that bygone era, and proof of that statement lies in a recently published booklet put out by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, called "Maine Landlocked Salmon: Life History, Ecology, and Management" by David P. Boucher and Kendall Warner.

On page 74 of this slick publication, a chart shows that 1,641 landlocks caught at West Grand Lake from 1856 to 1858 averaged 1.4-pounds. A Maine landlocked salmon of that weight would measure about 16 inches, according to a chart on page 31. Sure, folks caught bigger trophies at times, but the average proved the same size and even smaller than today.

On page 82, it showed that in 1999, Pierce Pond salmon averaged 18 1/2 inches and 2 pounds. In 2004, Rangeley Lake salmon tipped the scales at a 2.9-pound average. Other Maine lakes and ponds had years when averages far exceeded 1.4 pounds, caught on West Grand in the 19th century.

Here's another little tidbit that astounded me. According to the booklet, hatchery salmon -- on average -- often grow larger than wild landlocks in the same age class, which makes sense. The perfect nurturing environment in hatcheries jump-starts them. Naturally, though, wild salmon survive nature's rigors better.

The salmon catch statistics from the 19th century that show average landlocks to be in the 15- and 16-inch range surprised me little because in the 1970s, I became friendly with the inimitable Ai W. Ballou, a Winthrop resident who just happened to be the father of the marabou streamer.

Ballou was in his 70s when we met, a wonderful man with a razor-sharp mind. Like many senior citizens, though, he often repeated himself, and with me, Ai harped at one point.

"Ken, people think all we caught in the old days were big fish," he would begin. I'd cringe because we had done this all before.

Ballou would drag out his records from the late teens, 1920s and '30s, in which he had meticulously entered landlocked-salmon and brook-trout sizes on 8 1/2- by 11-inch notebooks with locations and dates. A vast majority of the landlocks measured 15 and 16 inches with sprinklings of 17- to 20-inch fish - just like today.

Naturally, in the teens and '20s particularly, Ballou and his cronies were catching double-digit landlocks that tipped the scales at 10 pounds and more, but part of the reason for these giants concerns a biological law. When you first stock a species such as landlocked salmon in places like Pierce Pond, they grow to double-digit sizes.

(In fact, right now, in the Belgrade Lakes, brown trout are enormous for the time being because DIF&W has started a stocking program in Great Pond, and they drop into Long Pond. In a few years, these double-digit sizes will eventually settle back into a more common state average.)

In "Maine Landlocked Salmon: Life History, Ecology, and Management," old photos show some giant landlocked salmon. For example, on page 70, a picture shows a 16-pound landlock from Sebago, caught on Aug. 1, 1907. (I know. I know. Even-sized weights without ounces make me suspicious, too.)

On page 71, a photo shows a 19-pound, 11-ounce landlock from Long Lake in St. Agatha, caught on June 13, 1941. A Lucien Cyr took the giant on a fly rod.

One study in the book fascinated me. From 1990-1999, DIF&W's fisheries biologist did a forage study that revealed landlock stomachs contained rainbow smelts about 80 percent of the time. However, 11.6 percent of the time, they concentrated on insects. The book breaks the forage down by fish ages, too.

This is pure speculation from my part, but I have often wondered if landlocked salmon key more on invertebrates in streams and rivers -- nature's way of protecting the resource. Naturally, juveniles use flowing water as a nursery.

One way or the other, the DIF&W booklet shows landlocks eat baby landlocks 0.2 percent of the time. I've accompanied biologists on enough electro-fishing projects to know that little juvenile salmon hide in ultra-shallow water barely deep enough to cover their backs in hopes of escaping foraging adults.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes is a writer, editor and photographer. E-mail: kallyn800@aol.com