Aiiicricaii I'lslicrics Socich\ 39 



hand. Tlic sain^- ihing exists with all species of fish from all over 

 our State. So it is impossible to please or hurt all by a closed 

 season for one month. But when a man, a fisherman 1 mean, ap- 

 proves of a closed season, you just investigate and you will find 

 that the law does not affect him in his locality, but puts money 

 into his pocket. 



The only species of fish that a closed season would help is the 

 black bass, because they fertilise nearly all their eggs, and if not 

 disturbed while on their beds, they will hatch nearly all the eggs 

 and then protect their young until they are able to care for them- 

 selves. 



If a closed season for the bass, which fertilizes nearly every 

 egg, will not keej) up our supply, what can we expect from other 

 species that probably don't fertilize one egg in a hundred, and 

 spawn promiscuously over a considerable area of ground, then 

 pass on and leave the eggs to their fate, to be destroyed by all 

 kinds of enemies? Why did not we the spring we dredged in the 

 Detroit River right over the spawning grounds every day for two 

 weeks, get some good whitefish eggs? We got some poor ones. 

 This work was done long before the time for hatching. If there 

 were any good ones there to start with, they must have died from 

 some cause or other. 



I think I could take one pair of whitefish and artificially pro- 

 pagate their eggs and plant the fry in one lake, and you could take 

 five hundred pairs with a closed season in the spawning season in 

 another lake of the same size, and take out 200 adults each year 

 from each lake, and I would have whitefish in my lake when 

 you had forgotten how fish smell. 



Then what is the sense of having a closed season for white- 

 fish and lake trout, when every fishing ground in Michigan of 

 any importance is covered with spawn-takers, at the spawning 

 season? Sixty to ninety per cent, of the eggs taken by the Com- 

 missioners are fertilized and hatched and returned to the waters 

 in a good, healthy state; when, if left to spawn naturally, they 

 would fertilize only a small per cent, saying nothing about the 

 chances that small per cent, takes of ever hatching. 



I think the sooner a fish is taken from the water after it ma- 

 tures the better it is for the young generation, provided you take 

 the adults at the time when you can return a young generation 

 from them ; for what food it takes to provide for one adult one 

 da\- would sustain a number of small ones for a week. And as 

 for catching the whitefish or any other fish, excepting those that 

 make a spawning nest and guard it. like the bass, I say the time 



