AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY. 41 



our of the water, you leave the food for the growin^^ fi;enera- 

 tions tluit are coming- on. The other day I cauj^ht a rainbow 

 trout. I hooked the fish for a I'resbyterian minister and let 

 him land it; he was so anxious to catch one. It was just be- 

 low the hatchery in a little stream. It wei«;hed at least a 

 pound an<l a (piarter. or a pound ami a half, and was a nice 

 larg'e rainbow trout. 1 opened the trout and took out its 

 stomach and carefully examined it. I took eleven little fish 

 out of that rainbow trout's stomach, those being- a portion of 

 the undigested contents, and everyone of them was either a 

 brook trout or a rainbow trout, and there was a mass there 

 that looked as if they were fish that might liave been hun- 

 dreds in number. Now, that rainbow trout should have been 

 out of the way. because it was destroying the generations that 

 were coming on. That is the idea, to get the larger fish out of 

 the way. We want them to catch and to eat and to have them 

 out of the way. A great nmny other things Mr. Whitaker 

 said, I might discuss, but I shall not do so at this time. 



Mr. Preston : There were some of the matters in Mr. Whit- 

 aker's address I desire to reply to briefly. Two years ago 

 when this question of a closed season came up I as a 

 member of that Legislature used my best efforts to help 

 get the measure enacted, for a closed season for Michigan, for 

 whitefish and trout in the Great Lakes. That measure was 

 enacted into law and the result was that the wealthier fisher- 

 men, the large fishermen, formed themselves into a trust. They 

 had ca])ital enough to buy and use the ai)pliances for freezing. 

 They caught just as many fish only they caught them earlier 

 They closed up during the closed season and the consumers of 

 fish, we who bought them^ ate just the same fish as we would 

 have eaten only the fish were not quite so fresh and we had to 

 pay more for them. That was all that was accomplished by 

 that closed season legislation. As a matter of fact the smaller 

 fishermen became practically a class of law breakers or at- 

 tempted law^ breakers. The State of Michigan, by spending a 

 large amount of money for game wardens and deputy game 

 wardens to control the waters, succeeded in a reasonable meas- 

 ure in keeping the fishermen within the bounds of the law% but 

 it was only by the expenditure of much money for salaries and 

 expenses for the game wardens. If the same amount of money 

 that had been spent for this ])urpose had been devoted to the 

 Fish Commission for re-establishi-ng the whitefish a great deal 

 more could have been accomplished than was done by creating 

 the closed season. I am of the opinion that the true policy for 

 any state or for the Government is to make liberal appropria- 

 tion in the way of propagating fish and raising the young fry 

 doing everything to keep them from being killed off, stud^-ing 

 G 



