gill; in particular, the fishery of Winter Creek 

 consisted entirely of this species. 



Table 13 gives the same kind of informa- 

 tion for some of the localities for the winter 

 fishing, 1945-46. Here again the various local- 

 ities showed a tendency toward a more special- 

 ized fishery than in the summer fishing. 



Several abrupt shifts are to be noted. 

 For instance, French Lake produced almost 

 nothing but crappie in 1944-45, but showed up as 

 a bluegill water in 1945-46. On the other hand, 

 Slough "22 " produced more crappie in proportion 

 to bluegill in 1945-46 than it did in 1944-45. 

 Changes such as these likely are due to changes 

 in the method of attack. A few good catches of 

 bluegill at the beginning of the winter may in- 

 still the idea in the fishermen's minds that good 

 bluegill fishing is to be had in that particular 

 water; and the fishermen in that locality will use 

 worms rather than minnows for bait throughout 

 the remainder of the season; and hence the sea- 

 son's catch will be predominantly bluegill rather 

 than crappie . 



Presumably then, the species make-up of 

 the catch, especially in the winter fishing, is a 

 product of the species abundance in a given 

 locality and the type of fishing (i.e., kind of 

 bait) employed. However, in some areas there 

 actually is a comparative scarcity of some kinds 

 of fish. For instance, in Lake Pepin the game 

 fish population runs largely to walleye and sauger; 

 and comparatively few bluegills would be caught 

 even if worms were used for bait. The fishermen 

 through years of experience are fairly well aware 

 of these catch potentialities of the various waters 

 and use fishing methods which are most likely to 

 produce results. 



Fishing success 



Definition and terms. All discussion of fishing 

 success in this report is in terms of number of 

 fish caught per fisherman-hour of fishing, ex- 

 pressed as decimal fractions. They are averages 

 obtained by dividing a sum of fish by a sum of 

 fisherman -hour s . 



These figures for fishing success are 

 stated in terms of the total catch of all species 



regardless of the number of species involved or 

 the predominance of any one or more species. 

 This procedure is necessary since there is no 

 way of breaking down the field data into the 

 amount of fishing effort expended toward the 

 capture of the separate species. In a way, this 

 produces some inequitable and misleading figures. 

 As measured by return in the thrill of capture or 

 in meat for the table, one fish does not always 

 equal another. A 3 -pound bass puts up a better 

 fight than a 2 -ounce bluegill; and a 35 -inch 

 northern pike furnishes more eating than a 10- 

 inch bullhead. However, it must be borne in 

 mind that a good share of the fishing here re- 

 ported produced a mixed catch, or one running 

 mostly to panfish (bluegill and crappie) . There- 

 fore, it is the exceptional rather than the 

 average catch which is composed of unusually 

 large and desirable fish, or of unusually small 

 and undesirable fish. Therefore, the simple ex- 

 pression of fish per hour can be used with a great 

 deal of justification for making various estimates 

 and comparisons of fishing success. 



Success by seasons. Table 14 presents a sum- 

 mary of the total numbers of fish caught, the 

 person-hours of fishing, and the average fish 

 per hour, for each of the 4 seasons, pool by 

 pool. The figures for fishing success (average 

 fish per hour) are recapitulated in table 15. 



The all-over totals were 0.71 fish per 

 hour for the summer of 1944; 0.50 for the sum- 

 mer of 1945; 0.54 for the winter of 1944-45; and 

 0.46 for the winter of 1945-46. Although these 

 figures give a rough indication of the general 

 fishing success for these 4 seasons, they are not 

 strictly comparable since each average covers a 

 different combination of pools and localities. The 

 seasonal averages for individual pools varied 

 from 0.24 fish per hour for pool 4-L in the sum- 

 mer of 1945, to 1.10 fish per hour for pool 10 in 

 the winter of 1945-46. Only for one pool for one 

 season was a seasonal average of more than one 

 fish per hour produced; about half of all the in- 

 dividual seasonal averages by pools ran less than 

 0.50 fish per hour. 



Success by localities. The average fishing suc- 

 cess by seasons for several selected localities 

 is given in table 16. These figures are of the 

 same general order as the corresponding figures 



22 



