THE GERMAN CARP IN THE UNITED STATES. aL 
would give, and as the evidence gathered in this way was rather meager 
the question is still far from settled. Some of the observations are 
of much interest, however, and may serve to throw a little light on 
the subject. 
A large proportion of the carp shipped from northwestern Ohio 
and southeastern Michigan are taken directly from Lake Erie. Many 
fishermen are engaged in the business, and they, for practical pur- 
poses, have had to learn much about the habits of the fish which 
furnishes them their livelihood. They go to the fishing grounds 
usually in open sail boats, returning to market when they have 
secured a good haul of fish. This means only a day’s, or possibly two 
days’, fishing when the carp are ‘‘on,” but under unfavorable condi- 
tions the boats are often gone a weck or more. The fish are taken 
for the most part by means of seines in shallow waters along shores. 
The methods of seining will be described more fully later (p. 611). 
It is not surpising, in a body of water the size of Lake Erie, that 
storms should affect very largely, in fact we might almost say control 
entirely, the abundance of carp along the shore. According to the 
government chart, there is nowhere in the upper end of the lake more 
than six fathoms of water, while along the southern side water less 
than three fathoms deep extends to a distance of two to five miles off 
shore. Strong northwesterly winds are not infrequent during the 
summer months, and in the winter the principal storms are from the 
‘north and northeast. It does not take very high winds to stir such 
shallow waters to their depths, as is shown by the fact that even in 
moderate storms the water is made roily to a long distance off shore. 
At such times the carp apparently go out to the deeper waters, 
and the fisherman say they do not come in again until a day or two 
after the storm. Unfortunately the only data we have for determining 
the extent and character of these movements are the occurrences in 
the shallow shore water; we have little or no data for telling where 
the fish go when they leave. Pound nets in the vicinity of Niagara 
Reef, which is seven miles from the nearest land, and which were kept 
in operation all summer by a Port Clinton firm, did not help to throw 
any light on this question, since few carp were taken in them at any 
time. It is possible that during storms some of the carp leave 
the lake and run up the bays and rivers, and [am not convinced that 
such is not the case, at least with easterly storms, which raise the 
water level very appreciably at the western end of the lake. This 
produces a backward current up the bays and rivers, and evidence will 
be brought forward to show that carp run up the rivers with this back 
_set. But storms from the north do not bave this effect, while westerly 
winds lower the water rather than raise it. So while I think it not 
unlikely that many of the carp in the lake may enter the bays and 
rivers when there is an easterly wind, it seems that if this were 
