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make nice bait for the larger fish—and in nine cases 
out of ten, his fingerlings are dumped out at some bridge, 
and the consequence is the little fellows, having been 
confined for so long a period and not knowing what 
it is to have an enemy, become an easy prey to the 
other fish. In case the fry, which has not lost the 
natural instinct of evading enemies, is planted near a 
bridge, they at once dart off to some stone or other 
convenient and suitable hiding place for cover, and I 
am firmly of the belief that fry planted in a pool with 
larger fish will have a much better chance of living to 
try the skill of some clever manipulator of the rod and 
line, than fingerlings would have under the same circum- 
stances. 
Some five years ago we planted 400 two-pound lake 
trout in one of our lakes at Madison. The following 
morning after the fish were planted, four of those same 
fish were brought to Mr. Dunning, the President of our 
Board, having been taken from the mouths of pickerel 
speared during the night; and I am of the opinion that 
not one of those fish lived twenty-four hours after they 
were set at liberty in the lake, and that they all became 
the prey of other fish. It was like placing a lamb in 
a lion’s den for safekeeping. 
The success of the Commissioners of Fisheries of the 
Badger State in stocking the streams of the common- 
wealth with brook trout fry, has been fully demons- 
trated. Brook trout were not known to exist in the 
streams in the central portion of the State until the Fish 
Commission was inaugurated, and the commissioners 
began planting fry; and it is in this section of the State 
that the commission receives the most credit. Here are 
some of the finest stocked trout streams there are in any 
State in the Union, and in a section of country where 
the streams are fished by thousands during the fishing 
season. I see by the Mz/waukee Sentinel of May 11th, 
that one man took 7,000 brook trout out of one of these 
