AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY. 46 



natuial spawniiij; lliat is spoken of would be saved, and that 

 would be an advanlajic of a close season, but as the United 

 States exix'it said in that lejjoi't I referred to we must make 

 some rejiulation, you must re}i;ulate the fisheries in some way, 

 and you !uust restrict the catch. They say it in those plain 

 words. If you are j^oing- to do that I do not know of any better 

 season to establish those restrictions than during the spawn- 

 ing season. Put the OAa into your hatcheries, hatch all you 

 can, but do not let a man take those fish that will sjjawn in 

 the natural way, even though only a small per cent are hatched, 

 and destroy them and market them. 



Mr. Preston: What dilTerence will it make whether those 

 fish are protected in November? Suppose those same fish are 

 caught during the month of October. They have all those 

 germs in them and they are killed just the same, and what 

 difference is it going to make if you have a closed season in 

 November, but have allowed these wealthy fishermen to catch 

 these same fish in October and put them in freezers and sell 

 them to us in November when they are not quite so fresh and 

 when they can make a little more money out of us. They have 

 killed the spawn to just the same extent. 



Mr. Whitaker: There has never been a proposition to make 

 a closed season at any other time in the year, and no state 

 would pass such a law. 



Mr. Preston: But, as a matter of fact, it is true that we 

 have made a closed season in the month of November in Mich- 

 igan and the fish are caught and put in freezers in October, and 

 the fish are filled with spawn at the time they are caught. 



Mr. Dickerson: I want to explain why the trust fought so 

 strenuously on the question of the closed season this year. 

 They control the whitefishing of Lake Winnipeg. Twelve 

 hundred tons of whitefish were caught in Winnipeg last year. 

 Nature makes a closed season there in November. They can 

 not catch any fish then and do not want anybody else to. Now, 

 if we have a closed season they have no competition with the 

 smaller fishermen down in our lakes where nature has not 

 made a closed season, and for that reason our fish are put into 

 the market and the product diminished. If we have an open 

 season they would have the competition of all the small fisher- 

 men. With the closed season the trust could absolutely con- 

 trol everything. But that is the reason Booth & Company 

 always favored an open season (until the trust was organized), 

 and the Michigan Fish Commission's office is full of letters 

 •from Booth «& Company on that subject. They now come in 

 and say: "Gentlemen, we have all the whitefish in Lake 

 Winnipeg; nature makes it so that we can not catch them in 

 the spawning season, and we do not want you to catch fish in 



