THE WHITEFISH PRODUCTION OF THE GREAT LAKES. 633 
As a further part of the plan we would have a law enacted prohibiting the 
taking or the offering for sale of any undersized whitefish, making the size 
limit large enough so that every fish before being placed upon the market 
would have had a chance to have spawned at least once and thereby contributed 
toward increasing the production. 
This plan should not only be universal with the states bordering upon the 
Great Lakes, but should be international, making the same conditions on 
the Canadian side as in the states and preventing any loophole through which 
the regulations could be evaded. 
This plan would be strengthened by making a closed season during the 
summer months when it is so nearly impossible to get the fish to market in an 
edible condition on account of the warm weather and the high temperature 
of the water from which they must of a necessity be taken. All the fish so taken 
are a total loss to reproduction, as they go to market with all their unripe eggs 
still in the ovaries, and for every female whitefish taken at this period there 
is a loss to reproduction of 11 to 350 fry if left to spawn naturally, or of approx- 
imately 26,000 if the eggs were allowed to ripen and hatch at a hatchery. 
If this plan is adopted, the writer will cheerfully stake his reputation as 
a fish culturist that at the end of ten years it will have been proved the best 
offered up to date. 
