When to Get Them 



the remaining 20 per cent, repopulating the de- 

 pleted streams. A trout five or six inches long 

 caught in May, and returned to the water as under 

 legal size, if not again caught, would double its 

 length within a year; sometimes under favorable 

 conditions it will attain a length of fourteen inches. 

 Such are the fish we hope to capture, and they 

 are the direct result of the law compelling small 

 fish to be returned to the water. 



Each State makes its own laws regarding the 

 time and length of its closed season, guided no 

 doubt by the temperature and time of spawning, 

 so that it is quite possible for the ardent angler to 

 go from State to State and fish the entire year 

 through summer and fall in the North, winter and 

 spring in the South. Up to the present time 

 marine fishing by rod and reel is unprotected, and 

 it is not likely that laws will be needed to restrict 

 the catch or time of catching. So vast is the 

 ocean and its game so immense, that the small 



percentage caught by man by all the 

 LawT various devices known and practised 



plays but a small part in Nature's 

 adjustment of its creatures. A striking ex- 

 ample of the reverse is apparent in the lob- 

 ster and also the salmon of the Pacific, both 

 having been slaughtered by unreasonable tin- 

 can packers, overgreedy, who soon found an end 

 to their greed and are now propagating, or will 

 soon have to, at their own expense. Had these 

 same packers allowed but ten per cent, of the fish 

 to perform their natural functions at the spawning 

 233 



