WHITEFISH FISHERY OF LAKES HURON AND MICHIGAN 381 



the error involved is small, as the following catches for the years in which the pro- 

 duction in these two States is known will show: 



Year Pounds Year Pounds Year Poundi 



1922 20,800 



1926 12,094 



1927 22,436 



1928 15,454 



1929 36,375 



1930 10,695 



1931 9,755 



1932 12,450 



1885 '247,086 



1889 37,375 



1890 -94,736 



1897 "39,760 



1899 10,558 



1903 . 2,905 



1908 65,000 



1917 37,750 



1933 6,600 



1934 4,000 



1935 1,500 



1936 6.500 



1937 3,800 



1938 No catch 



1939 do. 



1 Includes longjaws, blackfins, and Menominee whitefish. 



* Includes longjaws,, blackfins, and Menominee whitefish — the total listed for the lake does not. however, include these species. 



1 Fiscal year. 



The tabulation of the statistics of the production of whitefish in the Canadian 

 waters of Lake Huron has been started with 1879, the first year for which statistics 

 are available for United States waters. Available statistics on the production of white- 

 fish in the Canadian waters of Lake Huron for the earlier years, 1867-1878, have been 

 omitted from table 1 because of the lack of comparative data for United States waters. 

 These earlier Canadian records also are open to the criticism that in a number of years 

 the production reported for Huron proper included the catch in the St. Clair River and 

 in Lake St. Clair to the point of inflow of the Thames River. The catches listed under 

 "Huron proper" for the years, 1879-1921, were taken between the tip of the Saugeen 

 Peninsula at Cape Hurd, Ontario, and the extreme southern end of Lake Huron. 

 Beginning in 1922 the islands of the open lake and the westerly shore of Manitoulin 

 Island to the north of the Saugeen Peninsula were included in "Huron proper." 



As stated in footnote 8, the catches listed under the heading, "Georgian Bay," rep- 

 resent a combination of the take in the Bay and in the North Channel and Manitoulin 

 Island regions to the north and west except in 1922 and later years as explained 

 above. This combination was made partly in an attempt to reduce the size and com- 

 plexity of table 1 and partly because of variation in the extent of the waters in- 

 cluded in the two areas. For example, reports for certain of the earlier years listed 

 the catches along the east shore of Georgian Bay as far south as Penetanguishene as 

 part of the production in the Manitoulin Island and North Channel area. 



Reference should be made here to the Canadian records compiled for the Inter- 

 national Board of Inquiry for the Great Lakes Fisheries and published after this 

 manuscript was completed. 41 The districts employed by Ford are not always the 

 same as those used in this report and her statistics for these areas are therefore not 

 always comparable with ours. However, both records of the total Canadian catch of 

 Lake Huron should be the same. Minor discrepancies occur for some years because, 

 in contrast to our records, Ford's figures were rounded to the nearest hundredweight. 

 In other years the discrepancies are larger, though still insignificant. The reason for 

 these differences is not known. A check with the published records of the Game and 

 Fisheries Department of Ontario reveals that our figures agree with theirs. At any 

 rate our conclusions would remain the same whether we utilized Ford's data or our own. 



The accuracy of the catches recorded for the Ontario waters of Huron proper in 

 1908 and 1909 has been considered so questionable that the values were not plotted 

 in figure 2 and were omitted in the computation of averages for periods that included 

 these 2 years. The contrast between the catches for 1908 and 1909 and the produc- 

 tion in the years immediately preceding and immediately following is in itself suffici- 

 ently great to give just grounds for suspicion. This suspicion is heightened by the 

 observation that the large 1908 and 1909 catches are to be traced to reports of excessive 

 quantities of whitefish as barrels of salt whitefish. In 1908 3,515 barrels (703,000 

 pounds) and in 1909 550 barrels (110,000 pounds) of salt whitefish were reported. 

 In other years of the period, 1900-1917, the number of barrels of salt whitefish reported 

 for Huron proper did not exceed 82, and averaged only 12 barrels. 



Barrels of salt fish have been converted to fresh fish at the rate of 200 pounds 

 per barrel. Catches given as numbers of fish have been converted to pounds at the 

 rate of 2 pounds per fish. 



41 International Board ol Inquiry f () r the Great Lakes Fisheries. Report and Supplement. Washington. 1943. 



Ford, Marjory A. Annual Landings of Fish on the Canadian Side of the Great Lakes from 1867 to 1939 a- Officially Recorded. Ottawa, 1943 



