FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 75 



are in deep water." " Well," I said, " you come out and spend 

 another week with me and we will fish for them." He said he 

 was not able to come, but replied, "I will send my son out." I 

 offered to pav all his expenses, and his son came out. I think 

 that was two years ago, and he spent a week with me, and we 

 spent the week fishing faithfully in the deep water with Mr. 

 Green's methods, with a heavy sinker and leaders, and we fished 

 the lake thoroughly, and Mr. Welcher (-ame down withsomegill 

 nets — that was three years ago. We set gill nets across the lake 

 in four or five different places, and followed that up for a week, 

 and we never took or saw one sign of a salmon trout. Now. 

 the reason of it is this, and that is the reason I call the attention 

 of you gentlemen to it. It is a subject we have got to look at 

 fairly, and it is the main thing in planting fish, and that •is, what 

 food is there in the waters where you propose to plant the fish 

 for the young fish or fry ? Salmon trout would live in Lake 

 Geneva if they could come to maturity. The cisco is tliere in 

 great abundance, and furnish a most excellent and natural 

 food — the fish that they live on in Lake Michigan, but in looking 

 at it, I was satisfied that all the young fish died. The fry 

 starved to death because their food was not there. 



Now, in looking at it you will see what the trouble is. The 

 salmon trout breed in the Great Lakes wherever there is a reef, 

 and there you catch them in three, four, or five hundred feet of 

 water, or less, wherever there are extensive reefs of rock, there 

 the gill nets are set and there the salmon trout are taken. Here 

 are the Racine reefs, you sail over those reefs anv time in the 

 summer and throw out a trolling line and you take salmon trout. 

 My theory of it is that on the face of that rock there is some 

 animal life, animalcuLne, that the young fish stick their noses in 

 and feed on until they are old enough to eat other fish. Lake 

 Geneva has no reefs of rock. Where there are stones at all it 

 is a boulder bottom, or it is a mud bottom, earth and clav cov- 

 ered largely with leaves. It is surrounded to a great extent 

 with timber and the leaves blow in every year. You trv it and 

 you will find on the bottom of Lake Geneva to be a layer of 

 dead leaves, so there is evidently nothing there for the young fry 

 to feed upon and the fry have all died, and that has been the 



