14:2 REPORT OF THE FISH AND GAJfE COMMISSION. 



REPORT OF THE LOS ANGELES DISTRICT OFFICE. 



The Honorahh Board of FisJi and Game Commissioners 

 of the State of California. 



Gentlemen : Fish and game work bore better fruit in southern Cali- 

 fornia during the last two years than in all previous experience of the 

 organized efforts whose prime object has been to proA^ide better sport 

 for the licensees whose dollai-s finance the commission charged with this 

 great public sei-vice. 



*• Nothing succeeds like success"; and sentiment today stands just 

 as squarely behind conservation in southern California as it does in the 

 eastern centers of radicalism, where some have weaned themselves away 

 from the practical aspects of the problem to chase the chimera of senti- 

 ment. In this state, the close relation between their Fish and Game 

 Commission and the sportsmen has made the work one of providing 

 more fish to catch and more game to shoot. The most valuable senti- 

 ment revolves around sporting rather than around the ultra-gesthetic, 

 the end and aim of which is to set the gun in its rack and the rod in its 

 comer for all time. Too vast an ' ' allied industry ' ' has developed about 

 California fish and game to suffer such a loss, not to mention the plain 

 and direct attraction value it has demonstrated in encouraging men of 

 means to make this commonwealth their home. 



The sportsmen of southern California under the present administra- 

 tion of their affairs have seen their fish and game grow with the increases 

 of the field-patrol force. In 1915. they enjoyed the best fishing and the 

 most diversified sport with the rod that has ever been their good fortune. 

 Rainbow trout of large size had grown from Fish and Game Commission 

 plantings in the artificially created mountain reservoir lakes until an 

 entirely new sport had been developed. So likewise with the gamj^ 

 and toothsome importation from the East, the black bass. ]\Ieanwhile, 

 every native form of fishing showed marked improvement. Stream 

 fishing was phenomenally good when the increased number of angling 

 licensees is considered. Hunters enjoyed the best quail shooting in a 

 decade during the extended season wherein the commission vindicated 

 its promise to recommend a longer shooting period as soon as quail 

 increased sufficiently to permit it. Duck-shooting on the clubs was 

 good all through the winter; doves gave excellent sport in September, 

 and the deer crop in some of the counties was the heaviest in several 

 years, Santa Barbara notably reporting a killing double that of the 

 year before. 



All these good things came in conjunction with the most business-like 

 and vigorous campaign in behalf of fish and game conservation that it 

 ever has been financially possible to make in southern California. Com- 

 missioner Connell having announced that the income of the work 



