FISHERIES OF THE GREAT LAKES IN 1885. 263 



Description of fykes. — The fyke-nets of the islaud region are mostly 

 made of second-hand twine. The fyke proper, or pot, is 20 feet long, 

 the hearts are 48 feet long, and the leaders, from 150 to 300 feet long. 

 The size of the mesh is 4J inches in the leader, 4 inches in the hearts, 

 and 2J inches in the pot. 



Catfish hooking around the islands. — A large number of men and boys 

 on the islands take catfish with set-lines in 15 to 30 feet of water, be- 

 tween June 1 and September 1, or, in some localities, from May 15 till 

 late in October. Some of them are professional fishermen, while others 

 are farmers living along the coast. There are two varieties of catfish 

 caught, known to the fishermen as blue or black catfish and yellow cat- 

 fish. The blue species varies in weight from half a pound to 40 pounds, * 

 but generally weighs between 5 and 15 pounds. The yellow fish weigh 

 from 4 to 6 pounds, or, in occasional instances, 8 or 10 pounds. The fisher- 

 men consider the yellow variety more palatable than the blue, though they 

 bring the same price in market. The catfish caught in the pound-nets 

 in the spring and fall are shipped in the " rough' 7 or undressed state 

 to the dealers, who have them dressed before supplying them to the 

 retail trade; but those taken in summer with hook and line are dressed 

 by the fishermen, losing about half of their weight in the process. This 

 species is always in demand and brings a good price. 



Species taken in island region. — Herring are much more abundant now 

 than in the early days of the fisheries, but all other kinds of fish have 

 gradually decreased in numbers. Mr. Rehburg says that before 1860 

 he has sometimes taken three thousand six hundred black bass in one 

 pound-net in a day, and 4 tons of whitefishinonenet in a single night. 

 Sturgeon were little esteemed, and in 1858 were sold for 10 cents apiece. 

 In 1862 herring sold for 25 cents per hundred weight. White bass were 

 at one time very abundant around the islands, appearing, as the old 

 fishermen say, in enormous schools. In fact they were the most abun- 

 dant species fifty or sixty years ago, and Mr. J. H. Klippart says they 

 were caught in immense quantities between 1853 and 1860, when they 

 were sold for 6^ cents a hundred pounds. As many as 10 tons of them 

 have been thrown overboard at one time for lack of a purchaser. Since 

 1860 they have been growing scarcer every year, and only a few are now 

 takeu. This species and the muskellunge have decreased more rapidly 

 than any others. Professor Kirtland stated in 1838, in a report on the 

 zoology of Ohio, that at that time whitefish were not sufficiently abun- 

 dant in this part of Lake Erie to be of commercial importance. Accord- 

 ing to Mr. Klippart they were so exceedingly abundant in 1849 as 

 to sell in the Cleveland market for $5.50 per barrel of 200 pounds, 

 including barrel. At that date 8 tons of them were sometimes taken 

 from a pound net at a single drawing. It is probable that they really 

 have been abundant in the lake from a remote period, for there is a tra- 

 dition that even about the middle of the last century the Wyandotte 

 and other Indians made a practice of resorting to the shore in the 



