6o AMKKICAN FISHERIES SOtMETY. 



MIGRATION OF LAKE SUPERIOR FISH. 



Till': wliitefish of Lake Superior waters is prized for its edible 

 qualities, and the increasing- scarceness is causing- much concern 

 among" those whose tastes incline toward this really fine fish for 

 table use; already the supply is being drawn largely from Can- 

 adian waters and from Lake Winipeg; year by year men en- 

 gaged in fishing have seen their feeding grounds almost deserted 

 and the numbers still deminishin.g, until at last to find a large 

 whitefish in their nets is indeed a curiosity. The present season's 

 fishing finds scarce any body of fish north o( Ontonagan, Mich- 

 igan. 



The fishermen of Wisconsin and Minnesota are thus deprived 

 (jf any chance of obtaining this fish, by the gradual desertion (jf 

 the old spawning grounds. I have said gradual because the dis- 

 appearance has been fluctuating; some years the catches were 

 prolific, then growing scarcer. 



In the memory of men living in Duluth to-dav, whitefish ccjuld 

 be seen in Sucker Bay, twenty years ago, so thickly crowding 

 (jiie another that the water seemed alive with them. A thousand 

 barrels of whitefish could have been put up from this single 

 spawning (jr feeding ground. 



Cai)tain X'ose Paliner, an old fisherman who owns property 

 on this Bay, states that twenty-five years ago, it was enough to 

 send an enthusiast wild to see the immense (piantities (jf fish 

 come in on the swells until the waters were apparently a com- 

 pact mass ol lish. 



Captain R. II. Palmer, a brother of \'ose PaluKM", who has 

 fished Superior waters nearly thirty years, says that beginning 

 at Sucker i>ay or Stony Point, and following the north sht)re 

 line eastward up to Thunder Bay, near the mouth of the many 

 riveis and streams that come tumbling into Lake Superior, vou 

 could find the feeding grounds of the whitefish, and in the bays 

 near to them millions of young whitefish could be seen in their 

 season. 



Caplaiii Alex. Mel )()ugall, a take captain, whose earlier years 



