FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. IOI 



of errors and ever ready to correct them, confessed that the fish food question had 

 been entirely left out of the plan for restocking our waters ? In this country little 

 or no attention has been given to it, outside of a few fish culturers' establishments, 

 and the people are still asking for fish to be planted in public waters in numbers 

 that give one the impression that it is believed that the fish will live on water or 

 air. This Commission has received applications for fish, which, if granted, would 

 have been the means of turning a lot of fish out to starve, as the number of fish 

 sought was much greater than the waters mentioned in the application would support 

 if the fish had to depend upon the natural food supply. 



When this Commission was organized, one of the first things decided upon by the 

 Commissioners was to scrutinize all fish applications and furnish fish for such waters 

 only as were suitable for the fish asked for, and in such quantities as was reasonable 

 to suppose the natural food supply would support, and further to add to the 

 natural food supply of all planted waters as rapidly as the means at their com- 

 mand would permit. 



This policy of furnishing food for fishes in public waters is one in which the 

 Commission is greatly interested, and already substantial progress has been made 

 in this direction, and it will be prosecuted vigorously in the future; but the people 

 who apply for State fish can render valuable assistance to the Commission if they 

 will investigate for themselves what the waters they desire to stock may contain in the 

 way of fish food. In the application blanks for fish of all kinds is printed this 

 question: "What is the principal local food of the fish?" If an answer is given 

 to this question at all, it is generally " minnows," as if all fish feed upon minnows 

 at all times. Another question in the application blanks is " What is the tempera- 

 ture of the water in July at the surface and at a depth of twenty feet ? " 



The applicants rarely take the trouble to ascertain the temperature of the water 

 they wish to stock, and yet it is of vital importance to know the temperature if certain 

 species of fish are to be planted with a reasonable expectation of their surviving. 



There are scores of lakes and ponds in this State in which black bass have been 

 planted, and where they do not thrive because they have exhausted the natural food and 

 other food has not been supplied for them. The black bass is not a fish for small waters, 

 and nature understood this when the fish were originally established only in large waters 

 where an abundance of food could be found. Not a single one of the interior lakes, 

 ponds or rivers of New York contained black bass until they were brought to the Hud- 

 son by the building of the Erie canal, and then distributed broadcast by man and fish 

 cans. When transplanted to small ponds the bass do well for a few years until they 

 have eaten all the surplus food, and thereafter they are dwarfed and are forced to eat 

 their own young or starve. There is no fish to my knowledge that will so thoroughly 



