288 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 



all waters, whether inhabited by trout or not, for it is in trout waters particularly that 

 eels are proving destructive of young fish.' " 



The Commissions made the same recommendation in their report for 1895, but 

 the law has not been changed to give them the discretion in the matter which they 

 should have, for it is in waters inhabited by trout that eels are doing the greatest 

 damage. Eel pots would not take trout in any event, and so far as possible the eels 

 should be removed from trout waters. 



THE EEL COMMERCIALLY. 



It is a most difficult matter to obtain complete statistics in regard to the number, 

 weight, and value of fish taken in internal waters. From men engaged in commercial 

 fisheries it is possible to secure figures upon which to base the value of the catch; but 

 of the thousands of individual fishermen who fish only for home consumption, their 

 catch never finds its way, either in pounds or dollars and cents, into a statistical report 

 of State fisheries. One has only to look along the banks of our rivers and canals to 

 see that a great number of men are daily engaged fishing for eels, not for market, but 

 for the home pot. V/hile visiting the shad nets in the upper Hudson I one day 

 counted twenty-three men and boys on the docks fishing for eels, and every dock had 

 its quota of eel fishermen. Only a few days ago I counted seven men on one pier of 

 the railroad bridge at Albany as I crossed on a railroad train. Their lines showed 

 that they were fishing on the bottom, and for eels. Statistics gathered by the United 

 States Fish Commission of fisheries of the interior lakes of New York show that 

 seventeen thousand pounds of eels were taken in each of the two years during which 

 the investigation was conducted, and that part of Lake Ontario touched by counties 

 of New York furnished sixty-six thousand pounds in addition. It is scarcely necessary 

 to tabulate returns from the Hudson or waters adjacent to the sea to show that many 

 eels are taken in the waters of the State annually, and I think it is not pretended that 

 the most accurate statistics on the subject of the eel fisheries show anything like the 

 number caught. Here is a fish considered an excellent food fish that does not breed 

 in fresh water, but simply comes into fresh water for development and returns to the 

 sea, probably to perish after spawning. While in fresh water it is a notorious spawn- 

 eater, and it has no fasting season, like fishes that spawn in our lakes, ponds, and 

 streams; and all that can be caught add to the food supply; so why is it not best to 

 use every legitimate means to catch eels while in our fresh waters, and thereby rescue 

 the spawn of what many consider better fishes ? 



A. N. CHENEY, 



State Fish Culturist. 



