other useful forms of wildlife from the lake and the area around it were taken during 

 the year. Eight snapping turtles weighing 69.4 pounds and 31 painted turtles weighing 

 29.2 pounds, were removed as well as five bullfrogs, Sana cai^sbiana. weighing 1.6 pounds. 

 During the trapping season, 14 nmskrats were caught in steel traps set around the edge of 

 the lake. 



Mr. Smith ovms 60 acres of land surrounding Fork Lake. Part of this land is planted 

 as an apple and nut orchard and grape arbor. Other parts are in sweet clover and blue 

 grass. A woodlot of 30 acres lies east of the lake. Cover is good over most of the area. 

 A wildlife food patch of small grains is planted each spring. During the 1939 hunting 

 season, 49 quail and 134 rabbits were killed on this area by huntere. 



FISH OF DESIRABLE SIZE 



Legal lengths of fishes, as listed in the Illinois fish code, are set to improve 

 hook-and-llne fishing. Where there is little danger of exterminating a species, these 

 lengths should be smell to enable sportsmen to control large, stunted populations by hook- 

 and-llne fishing. Our term "desirable size" relates to sport and table use and in a 

 number of instances is larger than the legal size. 



Among the pan, or fine, fishes the minimum size for sport or table use should be at 

 least 0.2 pound. Converted into total lengths, this weight Is about 6 Inches for blue- 

 gills and other sunflsh, 7 inches for bullheads, 7 or 8 Inches for crappies and 10 Inches 

 for channel cat. The minlrman legal length for the largemouth bass is 10 inches, and a 

 fish of this size weighs a little over one-half pound. 



When poison was applied to Fork Lake in June, 1938, there were onlv 97 hook-and-llne 

 fish of desirable sizes, with a total weight of 32.4 pounds. These amounted to 1.8 per 

 cent of the total number and 4.3 per cent of the total weight of fish in the lake. Table 

 2 itemizes the desirable fish population at the time of poisoning, which is in contrast to 

 the population of the lake In 1939 when late in the season all of the bluegills, except 

 the newly spawned 1939 brood, were large enough to offer sport (0.2 pound or larger). Of 

 all fish taken in 1939, 39.2 per cent were of desirable sizes. 



TABLE 2.~K00K-AND-LINE FISH OF DESIRABLE SIZES IN FORK LAKE, 

 JUNE 7, 1938, AT THE TIME OF POISONING. 



♦Legal length. 



FISH LENGTHS IN 1939 



The largemouth bass taken in 1939 were of widely different sizes. According to 

 Cooper (1936) and others, this variability is the result of cannibalism in some of the 

 population; a irapid Increase in size takes place among a few individuals which begin a 

 fish diet at an early age. These larger individuals were caught more readily than the 

 smaller fish and made up the greater part of the early collections. Table 3 shows the 

 numbers of bass of different lengths, by months. 



3 



