COMMERCIAL FISHERY FOR CHUBS (CISCOES) 

 IN LAKE MICHIGAN THROUGH 1953 



An historical account of the commercial 

 fishery for chubs is beset with numerous diffi- 

 culties, many of which stem from the composite 

 nature of the fishery. In Lake Michigan the pro- 

 duction of chubs has included catches of seven 

 different species of the sub-genus Leucichthys 

 of the genus Coregonus as follows 1/: 



Deepwater Cisco C . johannae 



Longjaw cisco C . alpenae 



Shortjaw cisco C . zenithicus 



Shortnose cisco C. reighardi 



Blackfin cisco C . nigripinnis 



Kiyi C. kiyi 



Bloater C. hoyi 



The resemblances of these species to 

 each other, of all of them to the closely related 

 lake herring (C. ( Leucichthys ) artedii) , and the 

 superficial similarities of large chubs to lake 

 whitefish (C. ( Coregonus ) clupeaformis) and 

 round whitefish (C . ( Prosopium) cylindraceus ) 

 led to much confusion in the earlier statistics . 

 In a number of years part or all of the catch of 

 chubs was combined with lake whitefish and round 

 whitefish or with lake herring. (See later sec- 

 tion on production in 1890-1926 for details on 

 problems of chub statistics.) Usable statistics 

 on the production of chubs in Lake Michigan 

 start with 1926, in which year the U.S. Bureau 

 of Fisheries (now part of the Fish and Wildlife 

 Service) introduced the category "chubs" (all 

 species of the subgenus Leucichthys except lake 

 herring) and published the first records of take 

 ever issued for Indiana and Illinois . 



Even if we had complete records of chub 

 production from the earliest days of the fishery, 

 their value would be limited by the long-term 



1/ Many North American workers recognize the 

 three types of coregonines present in the Great 

 Lakes as belonging to toe separate genera, 

 Coregonus , Leucichthys, and Prosopium . The 

 common names given here are those approved 

 by the American Fisheries Society. Later in 

 this paper, however, we shall use "chub" rather 

 than "cisco" since the former term is employed 

 uniformly throughout the fishing industry of 

 Lake Michigan. 



changes in the species composition of the 

 catch- -changes that we know to have taken 

 place, and to be continuing now, even though 

 we are largely without data to describe them 

 quantitatively. Much of the uncertainty as to 

 the species in the catch arose from the lack 

 of adequate taxonomic descriptions of the 

 species 2/ a s well as from a great local diver- 

 sity of common names. 



The early fishery for chubs was based 

 principally on blackfins and longjaws and was 

 carried on with gill nets of mesh sizes mostly 

 greater than 3 inches, extension measure . As 

 to the identity of the blackfin of this early fish- 

 ery, there is little question. Smith and Snell 

 (1891) were doubtless correct when they termed 

 it C . nigripinnis . 2/ Their designation of 

 longjaws as C. tullibee, on the contrary, leaves 

 room for question as to the identity of the fish. 

 (Koelz, 1929, considered tullibee a synonym of 

 arte dii; in 1931 he listed tullibee as a sub- 

 species of artedii.) The longjaw of current 

 systematics (alpenae) was not described by 

 Koelz until 1924. Furthermore, this common 

 name may have been applied to different species 

 in different localities . In Lake Superior, for 

 example, fishermen today apply longjaw to 

 zenithicus ; a similar designation may have been 

 used by some fishermen on Lake Michigan. Al- 

 though the longjaws of the early fishery may have 

 included some alpenae and some zenithicus, it 

 is strongly probable that a good proportion of 

 them were johannae, a species that shares the 

 blackfin' s preference for deep water (mostly 

 below 50 fathoms) and one that attains consider- 

 able size. 



2/ A sound taxonomy of Lake Michigan chubs 

 was first established with the publication of 

 Koelz' (1929) monograph. 



3/ Smith and Snell apparently were deceived by 

 local usage when they mentioned the production 

 of large quantities of backfins in Green Bay near 

 Escanaba . The term bluefin, often used 

 synonymously with blackfin, also is commonly 

 applied to lake herring in Green Bay . 



