FISH AND FISHING IN LAKE CHAUTAUQUA, N. Y. 



BY F. W. CHENEY. 



It has been some time since anything 

 pertaining to the fish and fishing in 

 Chantauqua Lake has appeared in The 

 Angler. It always interests me to 

 read of the fishing in other localities 

 than our own, and it may interest some 

 reader of The Angler to hear once 

 more from Chautauqua. The fish 

 hatchery here was carried on by the 

 commission again this Spring, but what 

 success they have had the newspaper 

 correspondents have been unable to get 

 any definite idea of, as the men in 

 charge are silent in regard to the work. 



The bass fishing did not open up 

 very favorably. The 30th and 31st 

 days of May thiere Was a gale on the 

 lake, and fishing was almost impossible. 

 However, there were a few bass taken 

 on those days. Since then, there has 

 been less caught than in former years, 

 on account of the weather being so 

 warm that the bass have left the bars ; 

 that is, most of the large ones. There 

 have been more one-pound fish taken 

 this season than I have ever seen caught 

 in the same length of time. 



I was out three days, and caught 

 thirty-nine fish, most of them running 

 from one and a half to two pounds. I 

 captured two that weighed five and a 

 half, and one five pounds respectively. 

 Quite a number of muscalonge have 

 been caught trolling with spoon, but 

 not as many large ones as last June. 

 One was brought into this city yester- 

 day from the lake, and weighed thirty- 

 five pounds, and another of twenty-nine 

 pounds. 



There is something strange this Spring 

 about the large mascalonge that have 



been washed up on the beach, dead. 

 One day, while I was bass fishing, I 

 counted fifteen that were strewn along 

 the shore a distance of about a mile, 

 and not one of them would weigh less 

 than twenty pounds and on up to thirty- 

 five pounds. I measured one that was 

 four feet seven inches. There were no 

 marks on them, no fungus in their gills. 

 They had lain on the shore for some 

 days, in the hot sun, before I saw them. 

 A farmer, who lived near by, saw some 

 of them when they were first washed 

 up, and he informed me that the skin 

 was worn off their noses, and their fins 

 and tails split. This would indicate 

 that they had been in the nets at the 

 hatchery, and had been confined too 

 long. What surprises me is that, after 

 the experience the parties in charge of 

 the hatchery have had in trying to keep 

 muscalonge till they ripened, would not 

 teach them that it can't be done. If 

 you can't get the eggs as soon as you 

 get the fish, you might as well let them 

 go, for they can't be kept in the net 

 over one day without injuring them, for 

 they are not quiet a moment after they 

 are in the pound, but swim around and 

 around the pound, with their noses 

 against the netting, and inside of 

 twenty-four hours they are a raw sore. 

 I learned this by experience the first 

 year the experiment of hatching these 

 fish was tried. 



A number were found that Spring on 

 the shore in the same condition as those 

 this Spring, but not near as many, as 

 there was not the number caught. I 

 know it to be a fact that those that were 

 on the shore the first Spring I speak of, 



