204 American Fisheries Society 



of the Erie and Champlain Canals, state property otherwise un- 

 productive and having Httle or no promise of future value. 



When we attempted to drain these sections we were surprised 

 to find that what apparently had been nothing but an accumula- 

 tion of slime had many depressions below the normal canal 

 bottom, and that complete drainage was difficult. The canal 

 contained innumerable fish, carp, suckers, sunfish, rock bass and 

 several species of minnows. This work was undertaken just at 

 the beginning of the war, but aside from some parts has not 

 been completed on account of labor conditions and the high cost 

 of material. In some places we have been obliged to construct 

 side outlets in order to effect complete drainage. In the mean- 

 time we have been breeding large and small mouth black bass 

 and bullheads in the sections worked. We have seined out as 

 much of the foreign materials as possible, and the results have 

 been favorable, though not as good as we expect when it has all 

 been cleaned up. 



I have been rather surprised to find that bass held as brood 

 fish do not find nearly enough to eat ; in other words, they do 

 not catch and feed upon the numerous minnows. The suckers 

 breed there. The young bass come on all right but the parent 

 bass are thin and it appears necessary to resort to feeding, just 

 as we do in the artificial breeding ponds at the hatcheries. The 

 same is true of the parent bullheads. We have stocked a canal 

 section with bullheads from Chautauqua Lake ranging from one 

 to three pounds in weight. They reproduce and the young de- 

 velop into fine, healthy fish; but the adults are very emaciated 

 and it is evident that they must be fed. Strange to say, some 

 bullheads native to the canal are able to thrive and develop into 

 nice plump adult fish. They are not as large as the Chautauqua 

 bullheads; this suggests that we may have to acclimatize these 

 fish of larger growth imported from other places, before we can 

 get satisfactory results without artificial feeding. The canal 

 sections range from a mile to a mile and a half in length, so 

 that everything looks favorable for the fish to thrive there, just 

 as in natural ponds. 



