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REPORT, 



To His Ercellency, Governor Richard J. Oglesby: 



We beg leave to submit herewith our report as Board of State 

 Fish Commissioners, from October 1,. 1884, to September 30, 1886. 



In former reports we have detailed at length our methods of taking 

 and distributing the young native tish, and as they differ but shgbtly 

 from season to season, it is hardly necessary to again go over 

 them. 



As a matter of course, the season has much to do with a suc- 

 cessful showing. The season of 1885 was a very fortunate one for 

 our work, the water rising quite early, enabling us to get at work 

 thirty to forty days earlier than ordinarily. The catch of tish was 

 very satisfactory, and the character of the tish taken, as to quality, 

 far above the average. The young black bass were, perhaps, never 

 so plenty, showing an increase of from twenty-tive to tifty per cent, 

 over any former season during our work. Einged-perch showed a 

 wonderful increase and demonstrated their remarkable reproductive- 

 ness. Five years ago we placed in the Mississippi river, at several 

 points, the young fry of perch taken from Lake Michigan. In the 

 season of 1885 the product of such planting numbered hundreds of 

 thousands. These, in the progress of our work, were placed in our 

 interior streams and lakes, and will doubtless soon populate these 

 waters with a comparatively new and desurable game fish. 



As before stated, that season was all we could ask for in our 

 work, and we pushed it to the utmost limit permitted by our ap- 

 propriation. 



Pickerel began making their appearance in liberal numbers along 

 the Mississippi river, and were quite welcome, too, as for tifteen 

 years previous but few, if any, had been taken, either with hook 

 and line or nets. These were largely the product of a planting 

 made in 1880-1881 from the spawn taken from the lakes of Northern 

 Illinois and Wisconsin. 



They differ in character somewhat from those formerly native to 

 our waters. They have afforded, since their planting, an addition 

 to the sport of the hook and line fishermen, and have added mate- 

 rially to the revenue of the market fisherman; this season (1886) 

 a number having been caught weighing as high as six pounds, nnd 

 numberless strings of ten to fifteen have been reported weighing 

 from one to three pounds. They have naturally found their way 

 into all our lakes and streams tributary to the Mississippi river, 

 and have added, we think, permanently a valuable acquisition to 



L!L;<rtKY 

 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 

 KI URBANA CHAMPAIGN 



