164 



Im.inois Naturai. History Survuy Bulletin 



Vol. 27, Art. 2 



ferent from those of similar bodies in 

 other states throuy;hout the country. They 

 were in tune with the times. In the re- 

 port of the Commissioners to the Gov- 

 ernor of Illinois for the period October 1, 

 1890, to September 30, 1892 (Bartlett 

 1893:3), is to be found the followin^^ 

 statement: 



The number of fish left to die in the shal- 

 low waters has been beyond computation, 

 and has seemed to be greater than ever 

 before, from the fact that the attention of 

 the people generally has been called to them 

 and the terrible waste ensuing. . . . 



We have been severely criticised because 

 so many fish are allowed to perish, but when 

 the fact is considered that the Mississippi 

 river has a meandering frontage of 450 miles 

 in this State, with bottoms varying in width 

 from a few hundred yards to several miles, 

 and the Illinois and other rivers adding per- 

 haps as much more, it can readily be seen 

 that, if the work were carried on to a suc- 

 cessful completion, it would require hundreds 

 of men and thousands of dollars of ex- 

 pense; in other words, it would be simply 

 impracticable. 



Fish rescue operations were done with 

 seines dragged through shallow waters by 

 crews of men. The fish were separated 

 from the mud and vegetation and carried 

 by boat to open water, or in tubs to tanks 

 on wagons when overland transportation 

 was necessary. The operations were car- 

 ried on in summer and early fall when 

 both the water and the air were very 

 warm. Toda\ fisheries biologists are 

 well aware of the fact that, even if the 

 fish had been released "alive" in open 

 water, their chance of survival w^as very 

 low. Few fishes are able to survive even 

 a short exposure to a lukewarm, mud- 

 and-water suspension, such as is created 

 when a seine is dragged through shallow 

 backwaters in August. This statement 

 applies particularly to the game and fine 

 fishes. 



We now suspect that the phenomenon 

 of fluctuating water levels, which cre- 

 ated a fish rescue problem along the Illi- 

 nois and Mississippi rivers for the Illinois 

 State Fish Commissioners, may have been 

 highly favorable to the well-being of the 

 population of fishes, particularlv large- 

 mouth bass, northern pike, walleyes, 

 crappies, and other pan fishes. A com- 

 bination of natural predation (largelv 

 b\ fish-eating birds) and water level fluc- 

 tuations prevented excessive competition 



among the coexisting species and allowed 

 for excellent survival of game fish. 1 he 

 report of the Fish Commissioners (Bart- 

 lett 1893:4) for the 2-year period ending 

 September 30, 1892, contains the follow- 

 ing statement : 



In the Quincy Bay [of the Mississippi River], 

 this season, the number of black bass has been 

 unprecedented, and a fair estimate of the 

 number taken with hook and line would 

 place it in the hundreds of thousands. Most 

 of them were too small to use on the table, 

 yet were as voracious as larger ones and fell 

 an easy prey to the angler, whether he of 

 the rod and reel or the small boy with a 

 willow switch and a tow line, all caught 

 bass. One man, who called himself a sports- 

 man, boasted of having caught 800 of them 

 in one day with hook and line, all too small 

 to eat, but he carried them away and threw 

 them on the ash heap. From my oHice win- 

 dow I saw 225 taken by two little boys in 

 one day, all of them wasted. 



The production of a dominant brood 

 of bass (undoubtedly largemouth) such 

 as this might be expected to follow a pe- 

 riod of very low water in the late sum- 

 mer and fall and a period of moderately 

 high water during the bass spawning sea- 

 son the following June. J 



The theory of the benefits of fiuctuat- ' 

 ing water levels is further substantiated 

 by a published record of the catch of four 

 commercial fishing firms operating in the 

 Illinois River near Havana between July 

 1 and December 1 (5 months) in 1895 

 (Roe & Schmidt 1897). Their catch was 

 358,843 pounds, mostly of carp and buf- 

 falo, which made up 85.7 per cent of the 

 total. An unusual part of the catch was 

 the proportion of "bass" (undoubtedly 

 largemouth), 7,852 pounds, and walleye 

 and "pike" (northern), each 200 pounds. 

 The last two species are seldom taken in 

 the Illinois River today. The catch of bass 

 (7,852 pounds) was larger than the catch 

 of crappies ( 7,405 pounds) . Crappies are 

 easily caught in hoop and fyke nets or 

 seines; bass do not enter hoop and fyke 

 nets readily and when surrounded with a 

 seine they show considerable aptitude for 

 jumping over. Inasmuch as more pounds 

 of bass than of crappies were caught, prob- 

 ably many more pounds of bass were 

 available. 



Today, with water levels of bottom- 

 land lakes in the Havana region much 

 more stabilized, it would be an impossi- 



