252 REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 



Of course, the immense increase in the number of fishermen — legitimate 

 sportsmen in large part, perhaps — accounts for a part of the decrease of the 

 trout. For a long time, pot fishermen from the "border" have entered 

 the Adirondacks in the early spring and "fished to death" the lakes and 

 streams they infest. 



Fishing the small streams where the young trout betake themselves — their 

 nurseries — is one of the most destructive agencies for depleting the larger 

 streams and lakes, to which these trout if allowed to live would return grown to 

 a size enabling them to maintain themselves with the enemies of their babyhood. 

 The slaughter of these innocents out-Herods Herod. If a man claiming to be a 

 sportsman is guilty of this murderous business, he is somewhat paid for it in the loss 

 of legitimate sport in the larger waters. He ought to be prohibited from the 

 act by law and punished vigorously for doing it. The writer remembers still, with 

 a share of his old rage yet in his blood, seeing the catch in the northern wilderness 

 of two fish murderers from his own city some years ago, who returned at night 

 after one day's fishing a small stream, showing with great glee their catch of about 

 four hundred baby trout! And at that time and place there was no law to 

 prevent their cruel and wasteful work. Between the pot fishers who in spring 

 "clean out" the lakes and these July baby killers the trout have a hard time. 

 State and Preserve hatcheries wage a doubtful warfare against such enemies, but 

 with the help of legal restraints and rigid enforcement of law they may yet win the 

 battle. 



The first remedy for this state of affairs is to bring the wild lands of the 

 Adirondacks into the State Park as rapidly as possible, and then guard it from 

 abuses such as have been described. It will take money to do this, of course, 

 but it is money well spent. This wilderness ought to belong to the people of the 

 State. It is unique, like Niagara Falls; of value as the sanitarium of the people; 

 the great vacation park, and "play ground" of grown up men and women; and 

 now that the sportsman is no longer in popular estimate "an idle fellow," 

 and his name has become legion, it would seem as if he might be considered 

 just a little in this matter. 



First and foremost, the denuding of the forest should be stopped where it is; 

 or, if valuable lumber is to be removed, it should be by selection and care and 

 under stringent regulations, by which a sufficient proportion and quality of trees 

 to really preserve the forest should be left standing, and by which — and this is 

 all important — the material for forest fires shall be removed or carefully destroyed. 

 Where the State acquires the whole title to a tract, this, by proper means, can 

 readily be accomplished. Where the State acquires title subject to the right of 



