34 THE PIKES: DISTRIBUTION AND COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE. 



be able to take care of itself. Nevertheless, the present writer has 

 observed chubs feeding upon young pickerel and has caught a dozen 

 or so of these fish, of about one-half to 1 pound weight each, and 

 found them gorged with pickerel 2 or 3 inches long. He has also 

 seen a young pickerel chased and driven high and dry on a sand bar 

 by a trout. The pickerel, a fish about 4 inches long, was secured 

 and used as a bait by which the trout, which was about 10 inches 

 long, was caught. The foregoing is sufficient to suggest that if the 

 pickerel is to be saved several things are necessary. Constant 

 increase or maintenance of numbers is possible only when adverse 

 conditions are less or exactly equal to the favorable conditions. 

 Maximum size is attained by any fish only when it is provided with 

 sufficient food and room in which to grow and when it meets no 

 check in its career. In other words, that means when favorable con- 

 ditions preponderate over unfavorable. 



One of the most potent of unfavorable conditions is that of unre- 

 stricted fishing. The fish must be protected sufficiently to permit 

 enough to breed to maintain the stock, and the eggs and young 

 should also receive protection so far as possible. It doubtless has 

 become evident that the writer's views regarding the pickerel are 

 more favorable to it than are those of many. Yet he would not 

 advise introducing the fish into waters which contain other desirable 

 fishes, particularly if those waters are small. In fact, he would not 

 recommend it for pond culture at all, owing to the fact that for it to 

 reach the desired perfection in size and quahty and in sufficient num- 

 bers to make it worth while a large body of water well supphed with 

 natural food is necessary. 



It is advised that good natural pickerel waters should be kept in 

 that condition or, if deteriorated, restored to the normal state, for 

 having been naturally favorable for pickerel they are better for that 

 fish than for any other that could be introduced. In order, however, 

 to meet these requirements, the waters must be more than little 

 ponds. They must be good-sized lakes or streams unless the stock 

 is to be kept up by artificial propagation of both the pickerel and its 

 food. 



This article would be incomplete without a reference to the alleged 

 usurpation of trout waters by pickerel. The present writer has pre- 

 viously had occasion to comment on this matter. He wrote (1913) 

 that there is scarcely a body of water in which trout once lived and 

 where pickerel now occur that the depletion of the trout has not 

 been ascribed to the pickerel. It undoubtedly eats other fishes, and 

 there are few fishes that do not. But the habits of the pickerel are 

 such that it is not nearly so detrimental to other fish life as some 

 other species held in higher regard, and the pickerel in large bodies 

 of water become stiU less harmful. It is not much of a wanderer. 



