124 KEPORT OF ONTARIO GAME No. 52 



were killed, even if by so doing sport had to be abandoned for the day. 



It cannot be denied, ho\yever, that when angling is carried on with 

 gangs of hooks, the probabilitj' of seriously injuring the fish is very 

 much greater than when single hooks are used, and it would seem, tnere- 

 fore, that while in general there is no likelihood of material injury to 

 the black bass fisheries occurring through the capture of numbers of 

 fish by individual anglers, so be that the uninjured fish are carefully 

 returned to the water and the total kill is not in excess of the legal 

 number, it might be advisable to continue the present presumptive re- 

 striction against " fishing for " more than the legal limit that may be 

 killed when this class of bait is used. 



An interesting feature of the present regulations is that while 

 " fishing for " more than eight bass of legal size can be construed as 

 illegal, this provision cannot apparently apply to fish of less than legal 

 size, for, as shown by the clauses previously quoted, special provision 

 is made in regard to these, not only that they are to be returned to the 

 water alive and uninjured, but also that it is illegal to keep or retain 

 them out of the water or to have them in possession. Consequently, it 

 would seem that no matter how many undersized fish an angler might 

 take, nor how many of them he might seriously or mortally injure, he 

 could not under the law retain them out of the water, much less count 

 them as part of his legal kill. This, it must be allowed, is somewhat of 

 an anomaly, for the young fish are, potentially at least, as valuable as 

 the older, and, moreover, the young fish are also likeh^ to be the most 

 delicate and, therefore, the most easily injured. So voracious is the 

 bass that the size of the bait in general use for the larger fish will not 

 deter the smaller fish from taking it, provided that it can get it into its 

 mouth, or in many cases of striking at it even if it cannot, so that espe- 

 cially in trolling with a spoon in localities where basis abound, it is 

 evident what destruction of young bass may easily occur. It is, of 

 course, a wise precaution to limit the size at which fish may be legally 

 taken, but it is obviously of little avail to return fishes of less than legal 

 dimensions to the water only to suffer and die. Rather would it appear 

 that where little bass are injured the law should compel their retention 

 as part of the legal count. Objection might be taken to such a regula- 

 tion as opening the way to the destruction of uninjured, undersized fish 

 by anglers who were unable to secure larger ones, and unquestionably 

 the present regulations were devised to meet this contingency. Doubt- 

 less under the present regulations some undersized fish are illegally 

 killed and retained, and doubtless, also, this would be the case if the 

 regulations were amended as suggested, but the majority of anglers are 

 sportsmen, anxious to abide by the law, and this fact, together with the 

 prevalence of the licensed guide in the districts in which the best fish- 

 ing is to be secured, would seem to afford a guarantee against any such 

 eventuality on a large scale. It might again be argued that it would be 

 a hardship to the angler to compel him to count in his day's limit such 



