428 REPORT OF THE COMMISSTOXER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



and rooijjrocal iiica.suros as are essential to the common welfare. Numerous laws, 

 narrow and sectional in their inspiration and necessarily so in their api)lication, 

 have heen enacted by the Commonwealths having or assuming jurisdiction ; but the 

 fitful and erratic movements to enforce such laws have generally met with defeat. 

 It is true that the pound-net interests of Ohio have respected the closed season in 

 enmmer, bnt there is little merit in this, as the season is unprofitable anyway, owing 

 to the fact that the fish do not run inshore then in paying nnmbers, and the nets 

 Boon rot in the warm water. Very few pound nets would be set in summer in the 

 territory available for that form of apparatus, even if there were no law to prevent. 

 Gill nets, however, are inexpensive, and Canada and Pennsylvania have no closed 

 season in summer, so the gill-net tugs from Cleveland and other Ohio ports fish all 

 summer ostensibly in provincial and Pennsylvania waters. So it is true in the main 

 that State legislation, so far as it applies to Lake Erie, with its five conflicting juris- 

 dictions, has accomplished but little in j)reventing the capture of fish whenever, 

 wherever, and howsoever it has been profitable to <lo so. 



Under existing conditions I do not look for any iuiprovement, but, on the con- 

 trary, a still further decline. If one fact is more conspicuous than another, it is that 

 the arbitrary and intangible lines dividing the lake into several jurisdictions should 

 be obliterated. Rational and eifective measures must be based on the fact that ia its 

 water life the lake is a unit. 



Of tlie remaininc: fishe.s of prominence the sturgeon is tbe most val- 

 uable. It is most abundant in tlie extreme eastern end of the lake, 

 where more than seven-eighths of the catch is made, and least so along 

 the Michigan shore at the western end. The decreased yield since 1885 

 has been marked in every region, and has aggregated 2,649,000 pounds, 

 or over 50 per cent. Perch have nearly doubled in quantity, catfish 

 have decreased, and trout, taken only in Pennsylvania and IS^ew York, 

 have undergone a slight decrease. 



As bearing on the relative abundance of certain fish during a series 

 of years, the following figures showing the average catch during the 

 fall season of some pound nets set at Huron, Ohio, may be presented: 



Table showing the axeraije fall catch offish per net in the pound nets of Messrs. Wickham 

 4- Co., of Huron, Ohio, from 1872 to ISDO. 



* Nets destroyed by a storm October 15. 



fWarra season. 



♦Until 1887 the whitefish and other hard fish were combined under the name hard fish, which 

 inchides, besides whitefish. black bass, nmskellnngo, wall-eyed pike, large blue pike, large rock bass, 

 and grass jiikc. Since 1880 the wliit<tisli have l>eeii se]>arately designated. 



^Includes saugurs, small blue pike, small wall-eyed pike, suufisb, and small rock bass. 



