Part II.] Pond Fish. 79 



A Good Fish for Kansas Streams. 



The Channel cat is one of our very best fish and an unusual 

 effort should be made to propagate and protect it in Kansas 

 streams. This would mean, among other things, that the 

 young fish should not be removed from the streams, at least 

 in any great numbers, until after they attain a weight of 

 three or four pounds. This would give them a chance to 

 spawn at least once before being caught, which would be a 

 safeguard against their rapid diminution. 



Save the Young and Eat the Old Fish. 



The present Fish and Game Warden believes that it would 

 be an advantage to the streams possessing thousands of young 

 fish to have the larger fish of all kinds removed and used 

 for food purposes, and will in the future favor methods and 

 laws best suited to all the people of Kansas that will tend to 

 carry out the above ideas. 



The best way to propagate and thoroughly stock any body 

 of water with fish is to protect the young or baby fish. If 

 the young of any species can be protected until they are large 

 enough to spawn even once, the chances for propagating and 

 developing that species of fish are good. We want to em- 

 phasize the idea that methods of taking fish by seining, netting, 

 trapping or any other method that will remove any kind of 

 fish from the water before it has had an opportunity to spawn 

 at least once should not be tolerated. Large-meshed nets 

 and seines for taking the large fish that have attained a good 

 part of their growth might be used to the advantage of both 

 man and the growing crop of fish. Small-meshed nets have 

 been used in many of our streams to such an extent that 

 their supply of fish has become almost exhausted. The De- 

 partment of Fish and Game will, in the future, make an effort 

 to restock these streams with good varieties of fish if the 

 people living along these streams will protect them and not 

 catch and destroy them by unlawful methods. 



THE SPOTTED CHANNEL CAT AS A GAME FISH. 



After the Black bass, the Spotted Channel catfish is perhaps 

 the most satisfactory game fish in the state. The writer has 

 fished with rod and line in a good many waters in various 

 parts of the North American Continent and has caught a 

 good many kinds of fish, and yet he feels safe in saying that 

 no fish has ever given him more satisfaction and pleasure 

 (aside from the Black bass), in the catching and handling 

 on the line, than the Channel cats caught in the streams and 

 lakes of Kansas. 



At various times from 15 to 65 pounds of fish have been 

 taken with hook-and-line in a single day or night, or in a day 

 and night, for we have fished many times all night. How a 

 five- or ten-pounder does surge and pull on a line ! He plunges 



