1912 AND FISHERIES COMMISSION. 21 



erel, doubtless, had it been acted upon, it would have had a beneficial 

 effect, also, on the other classes of fish, for though the area selected 

 did not apparently include any of the recognized feeding grounds of 

 the commercial whitefish or great lake trout, on which these fish are to 

 be caught in commercially profitable numbers, undoubtedly many of 

 the immature fish of both varieties inhabit these waters, and would 

 consequently have had complete protection. It would seem, indeed, that 

 wherever considerable areas of water are known to sustain for the most 

 part only the small or immature of the leading commercial fishes, 

 whether or not sporting fish exist in them, such areas might all of them 

 be set aside with advantage, for there is nothing more certain than that, 

 if commercial fishing operatiouB are conducted in such areas, the small 

 or young fish, which predominate, will be destroyed in great numbers, 

 for they will inevitably get into the nets, and this, even in the event of 

 the enforcement of the size limit being sufficiently stringent as to prevent 

 the fishermen getting them to the markets, must mean a most prodigious 

 waste, whose effects cannot but be felt throughout the nearby fisheries 

 in after years. 



There are also certain other areas in which the fish are only to be 

 caught at those periods of the year when they are spawning, or proceed- 

 ing to the spawning beds. Unhappily, such areas, of which perhaps 

 the Bay of Quinte is the most prominent example, sooner or later 

 become the hunting grounds of a band of men who, appreciating the 

 ease with which money is to be made by removing the fish as they crowd 

 down the narrows, or arrive in schools on the spawning beds, undertake , 

 such operations regularly under the banner of legitimate commercial 

 fishing, although for the most part they would be both incapable of and 

 unwilling to pursue their normal calling on the open waters, and 

 remaining satisfied with the profits they thus speedily make at the 

 expense of the welfare of the whole fisheries are content to sit down for 

 a large part of the year in totally unprofitable idleness. That if a close 

 season is to be at all effective such areas should be definitely set aside 

 from all commercial fishing, must be very plain to any unbiassed mind, 

 for to allow fishing in them is at once to negative the results which are, 

 avowedly, being sought. 



It is, of course, absolutely certain that the so-called commercial 

 fishermen in these areas would protest against the introduction of any 

 such measures to the limits of their power, but it would seem that the 

 interests of the public at large, which suffer so terribly through their 

 operations, cannot but be held to outweigh the selfish interests of a com- 

 paratively small number of men, whose principal occupation is to profit 

 by the slaughter of easily caught fish, to which every citizen of the 

 Province has as much right as they, at the very season when those fish 

 are about to be, or are actually engaged in, reproduction for the per- 

 petuation of the fisheries. Moreover, the political significance of their 

 autcry could not be but momentary, for even if the public did not at 



