428 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



and reciprocal measures as are essential to the common welfare. Numerous laws, 

 narrow and sectional in tlieir inspiration and necessarily so in their application, 

 have been enacted by the Commonwealths having or assuming jurisdiction; but the 

 fitful and erratic movements to enforce such laws have generally met with defeat. 

 It is true that the pound-net interests of Ohio have respected the closed season in 

 summer, but there is little merit in this, as the season is unprofitable anyway, owing 

 to the fact that the fish do not run inshore then in paying numbers, and the nets 

 soon rot in the warm water. Very few pound nets would be set in summer in the 

 territory available for that form of apparatus, even if there were no law to prevent. 

 Gill nets, however, are inexpensive, and Canada and Pennsylvania have no closed 

 season in summer, so the gill-net tugs from Cleveland and other Ohio ports fish all 

 summer ostensibly in provincial and Pennsylvania waters. So it is true in the main 

 that State legislation, so far as it applies to Lake Erie, with its five conflicting juris- 

 dictions, has accomplished but little in preventing the capture of fish whenever, 

 wherever, and howsoever it has been profitable to do so. 



Under existing conditions I do not look for any improvement, but, on the con- 

 trary, a still further decline. If one fact is more conspicuous than another, it is that 

 the arbitrary and intangible lines dividing the lake into several jurisdictions should 

 be obliterated. Rational and effective measures must be based on the fact that in its 

 water life the lake is a unit. 



Of the remaining fishes of prominence the stnrgeon is the most val- 

 uable. It is most abundant in the extreme eastern end of the lake, 

 where more than seven- eighths of the catch is made, and least so along 

 the Michigan shore at the western end. The decreased yield since 1885 

 has been marked in every region, and has aggregated 2,641),00U pounds, 

 or over 50 per cent. Perch have nearly doubled in quantity, catfish 

 have decreased, and trout, taken only in Pennsylvania and New York, 

 have undergone a slight decrease. 



As bearing on the relative abundance of certain fish during a series 

 of years, the following figures showing the average catch during the 

 fall season of some pound nets set at Huron, Ohio, may be presented: 



Table showing the average fall catch offish per net in the povnd nets of Messrs. TVickham 

 <^'- Co., of Huron, Ohio, from 1S72 to 1S90. 



*K"ets destroyed by a storm October 15. 



tWarm season. 



{Until 1887 the whitefish and other hard fish were combined under the name hard fish, which 

 includes, besides whitefish, black bass, muskellunge, wall-eyed pike, large blue pike, large rock bass, 

 and grass pike. Since 1886 the wliitefish have been separately designated. 



^ Includes saugers, small blue pike, small waU-eyed pike, sunfish, and small rock bass. 



