American Fisheries Society. 109 



The decrease in lake trout has been steadily going on during the 

 sane period. In 1891 there were 9,132,770 ))ounds; in 1892 it 

 was 8.859,000 pounds: in 1893, 8,859,500 pounds; an increase pf 

 al)out a luuidred thousand younds that year, less than that a little, 

 but aljout that. In 1894 it went down to 7,291,295 pounds; in 1895 

 it went down to 6,293,543 pounds. Now, let us take the quantity 

 of twine fished and see how that increased during the same period. 

 Let us see the devices by which they were captured. If the fish 

 were more plentiful the quantity taken ought to have shown up 

 a little better. Here is a table showing the number of nets in use 

 for the same period. In 1885 there were 25,859 nets of all kinds 

 ii. ihis state. In 1891 there were 36,000. (I will leave ofif the 

 odd figures). In 1892, 38,514; in 1893, 42,075; in 1894, 40,452, 

 a decrease of about 2,000 lbs. 



What we say to you is this, as Prof. Reighard said in his 

 paper this morning, it is not as though these fish were evenly 

 distributed over the lakes. They are at one season of the year on 

 feeding grounds and at another period on spawning grounds. 

 These nets are not set evenly over the lakes, and you can com- 

 prehend their enormous length when I tell you if they were 

 put end to end they would reach from Detroit to San Francisco 

 and 250 miles into the Pacific ( )cean. What chance is 

 there for a single guilty fish to escape? It is all right enough if 

 they would fish with the legal size of net and catch merchantable 

 fish. Nobody would complain. In this connection I would like 

 to read from a letter from a seller of twine, showing how the 

 meshes have been contracted in the last few years. I am not 

 at lil)ertv to disclose his name but he knows what he is talking 

 about; he sold these nets and that is why he knows. 



My informant says that the contraction in size of meshes of 

 nets since 1870 or thereabouts, when they were fishing twine in 

 gill-nets of 4J inches, has diminished as follows: 4I, 4^, 4, 3I, 

 3^> 34» 3h 3' 2|, 2f , 2^-, 2|, 2f, until now they are down to 2^ 

 inches. 



If the fishermen would come to the front and acknowledge 

 what they know to be the fact, that the fisheries are bound to 

 go unless present methods are changed, if they would extend a 

 liand half way in this w'ork, we could succeed. We were pun- 

 ished bv the commercial fishermen this winter, and our appro- 

 priation v/as badly cut simply because we did our duty. I want 

 .to say that we will not be deterred from doing our duty, how- 

 ever, because of that. This thing has not significance alone for 

 Michigan. Every state represented here upon the great lakes is 



