62 REPORT OF ONTARIO GAME No. 52 



known as the Armstrong Trading Company. It is evident that in the 

 narrow channels and waterways of this area, once the general movements 

 of the fish have been ascertained, the operation of any commercial nets 

 is liable to prove peculiarly deadly. On the other hand the number of 

 licenses issued for pound nets in these waters is limited by the Depart- 

 ment of Game and Fisheries to 14, and this fact, together with the in- 

 numerable diverse routes open to the fish as they move about on their 

 feeding grounds, has undoubtedly tended towards the maintenance of 

 the supply in Canadian waters. Indeed, in regard to whitefish, which 

 are to-day the most valuable commercial fish of the lake, it must be noted 

 that under the direction of the Armstrong Trading Company the fisher- 

 men use a mesh of net for the gill net fishing considerably greater than 

 the minimum at present allowed by law, thus confining their catch 

 voluntarily to the larger fish, so that, although tliere has, in all proba- 

 bility, been a marked decrease in the weight of fish caught as compared 

 with the initial years of fishing, when the waters were practically virgin, 

 the Northern Zone at least cannot be held to be in any danger of imme- 

 diate exhaustion under the existing measure of fishing. 



The town of Kenora and surrounding country do not as yet afford 

 a market sufficiently great to consume the present commercial catch of 

 the Canadian waters of Lake of the Woods, so that if commercial fishing 

 is prosecuted on its present scale the fish obviously have to be shipped 

 to other markets. To the East the markets of Port Arthur and Fort 

 William should not, apparently, be in need of any outside shipments, 

 seeing that they should be able to avail themselves of the fisheries of 

 Lake Superior, so that the natural and logical market for the product of 

 these waters would appear to be Winnipeg, and it is, in fact, to Winni- 

 peg that the bulk of the fish is at present despatched. Whether or not 

 Winnipeg is the ultimate market of these fish is more than questionable, 

 the probabilities appearing to be that the major portion finds its way to 

 the south of the international boundary line. 



In view, then, of the general measures for the conservation of the 

 commercial fisheries, and of whitefish and lake trout in particular, dis- 

 cussed in previous sections of this report, and especially in regard to the 

 recommendation in favor of the prohibition of export of these two varie- 

 ties, it remains to be examined what effect these measures would have 

 on the waters under discussion. 



Under the proposed international regulations the capture of stur- 

 geon is strictly forbidden for a term of four years, so that in expectation 

 of their speedy promulgation this fish need not further be considered. 



The species of lake trout inhabiting these watei-s would appear 

 from the testimony of the manager of the Armstrong Trading Company 

 not to be of great value for export commercial purposes, as the fish, ap- 

 parently, softens rapidly on ice and loses its color, thus considerably 

 depreciating its market value. The variety of whitefish, on the other 

 hand, is commercially second to none, and, consequently, the whitefish 

 fisheries must be considered a valuable Provincial asset. 



