one, 
Fig. 15. -- Bluegill fishing tackle and method of baiting a hook, as used by Robert Doren of Pekin. 
A, the bluegill tackle includes a silk or nylon line, No. 8 or No. 10 hook, small double-blade spinner, 
small swivel, lead sinker, and cork bobber. 
B, a red wom is hooked through the middle of the body so 
as to leave two ends free to wriggle in the water. C, two additional worms are placed on the hook in the 
manner shown in B. A cane pole is used with this tackle. 
were caught occasionally by anglers at Lake 
Chautauqua in 1950 and 1951. These were the war- 
mouth, the pumpkinseed, and the green sunfish. 
None of these was abundant enough to be of much 
importance to the sport fishery. 
Warmouths are often called rock bass by Lake 
Chautauqua anglers; to date we have not found any 
tock bass in the lake. More warmouths were caught 
in the spring and fall than in any other seasons. 
During the spring and fall warmouths were caught 
in the buckbrush by anglers who were fishing with 
minnows for crappies. 
A few pumpkinseeds and green sunfish were 
caught on worms in late spring and summer. 
Yellow Perch 
Many anglers have stated that 10 years ago 
they caught large numbers of yellow perch (ring 
perch) at Lake Chautauqua and that now they 
seldom catch a fish of this kind. Hansen’s (1942) 
study of sport fishing at Lake Chautauqua verifies 
the anglers’ reports of good perch fishing in 1941 
and 1942, table 2. In those years, yellow perch 
averaged 17.8 per cent of the anglers’ catches at 
one of the Lake Chautauqua boat yards, whereas in 
1950 and 1951 this species averaged only 1.0 per 
cent of the catch. 
James Bridgeman, a boat-yard operator at Lake 
Chautauqua, told us that the last good catches of 
yellow perch he remembers were taken from the 
lake by ice fishermen during the winter of 1944-45. 
According to Greene (1935), aquatic vegetation 
is usually necessary for the successful spawning 
of yellow perch. The decline of the yellow perch 
in the lake after the winter of 1944-45 roughly co- 
incides with the virtual disappearance of aquatic 
vegetation in 1943. While the decline in the perch 
21 
