THE FISHERIES OF ILLINOIS 



The Fisheries of Illinois 



Since the state and the nation maintain, in their commissions of 

 fish and fisheries, special agencies for the investigation and promo- 

 tion of economic ichthyology, the Natural History Survey is not con- 

 structively responsible for work in this field. The subject of our 

 fisheries is, however, an essential part of the science of ichthyology 

 broadly considered — a division, indeed, of ichthyological ecology, of 

 which the reciprocal relations and interactions of fishes and men are 

 as legitimate and necessary a part as those of fishes and any other 

 factor of their ecological environment. The economic element has, 

 consequently, been taken into account in our discussion of species 

 and the larger groups, and a brief resume of its principal features is 

 evidently appropriate to this introduction. 



The distinction of Illinois as a fish-producing state is to be found 

 in its relation to the Mississippi River and some of the most impor- 

 tant branches of that stream. Bordered by the main river for the 

 whole length of its longest side, by the second largest tributary of the 

 Mississippi for 130 miles of its southeastern boundary, and by the Wa- 

 bash for 198 miles on the east, the state is also traversed diagonally by 

 the Illinois River, admirably adapted, by its sluggish current, by the 

 many bottom-land lakes connected with it at low water, by the ex- 

 tensive breeding-grounds afforded to fishes during the period of the 

 spring overflow, and by the vast abundance of fish food in its waters 

 at all seasons of the year, to support an unusually large and varied 

 fish population. Illinois is consequently fair in the lead of all the 

 states of the Mississippi Valley in respect to river-fishery products. 

 It markets a larger value per annum in fishes taken from flowing 

 streams than all the states immediately surrounding it taken to- 

 gether. The total for this state in 1899 was $517,420, and that for 

 Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, and Wisconsin combined was 

 $435,137. Illinois furnishes, indeed, more than one third of the 

 fishes sent to market from all the streams of the Mississippi Valley, — 

 valued in 1899 at $1,473,040. Furthermore, the Illinois River and 

 its tributaries produced in 1899, 72 per cent, of all the fishes taken 

 from the streams of the state, and a fourth of the entire fish product 

 of the Mississippi Valley came in that year from this one stream. 

 The totals for the different Illinois stream systems were as follows : 



