FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 



205 



of the town of Wallkill, two and one-half acres, and full of shiners and chubs ; also 

 the pond of William McGinnis, about the same size ; and the pond of Thomas Watts, 

 a brother lawyer, of about five acres, having made the arrangement with each one that 

 in October I am to take the fish out and plant them in the Wallkill River. 



" A friend, Charles Bennett, caught, last Thursday, a pike-perch twelve and one-half 

 inches long, from last year's planting. He had previously told me that the fish were 

 big enough to catch, and he caught his on a worm while fishing for bullheads for 

 breakfast, the pike-perch probably taking the big worm for a lamprey-eel. 



" A friend from Port Jervis has told me that in the Delaware River he caught 

 twenty-one pike-perch which weighed seventy-two pounds, and he says they were only 

 planted three years before. I believe it, judging from the way the same kind of fish 

 have grown here in one year." 



The pike-perch is a bottom feeder, and the only fish caught with hook and line 

 that seems to have no fixed abiding place in some lakes. The angler can, from expe- 

 rience, tell in advance, with reason- 

 able certainty, where in a lake to 

 look for black bass, perch or pike, 

 but the pike-perch may be in deep 

 or shallow water, off shore or in 

 shore. I have trolled in deep water 

 where they were supposed to be 

 one day unsuccessfully, and the 

 next day caught them alternately 

 with black bass on a shallow sand- 

 bar. They are more consistent in tools of the hatchery. 



rivers or streams, and can be located with greater certainty, for tlie)- inhabit such 

 waters as an angler would seek trout in if it were a trout stream, and in such 

 waters the pike-perch will take a fly. They are a voracious fish, as their big teeth 

 will indicate, and their food is small fish of all kinds, including their own species, 

 Crustacea and larvae of insects. At spawning time the only fish they seem to fear is 

 the real pike, Lucius lucius, which we are given to calling pickerel, for this fish will 

 drive them from their bed when the black bass will not, although at other times the 

 pike-perch will not stand before the black bass. 



The pike-perch hatched by this Commission are from fish that run up a stream to 

 spawn, and it is my belief that in trying to establish the fish in new waters, natural 

 conditions should be followed as closely as possible. Two attempts have been made to 

 stock the upper Hudson River with pike-perch by private enterprise. The fish were 

 obtained from Lake Champlain, put in the well of a boat constructed for that purpose. 



