FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 75 



The same improvement is noted in Delaware and Ulster county streams. 

 Amsterdam, Johnstown and Gloversville fishermen inform me that the fishing 

 during the past year in Fulton and Saratoga county streams has been beyond their 

 expectations, and that from waters stocked by them with yearling brown trout 

 three years ago, they caught the same the past summer weighing from one to two 

 and one-half pounds each, and that previous to three years ago the waters did not 

 contain a single brown trout. 



Many brooks and good-sized streams in Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess and 

 Columbia counties, that for the past three years have been granted a few hundred 

 brook, brown and rainbow trout in addition to the grant of young fry, have during 

 the past season furnished a surprisingly large number of good catches. 



Ask the trainmen on railroads running through a fishing or shooting section in 

 regard to the sport, and you will always find at least one on every train that is 

 authority in regard to the condition of the streams, and the luck the fishermen and 

 shooters are having. This past season these men report trout as very plentiful in 

 almost all the trout regions. 



People in the northern counties, or Adirondack region, write that if it was not 

 for the planting of trout by the State, they are satisfied their waters would be desti- 

 tute of trout to-day. 



Two years ago, as an experiment, several small lakes in Lewis and Franklin 

 counties were stocked for the first time with yearling, brown and rainbow trout, and 

 during the past summer I had the pleasure of seeing many specimens of the same 

 weighing from one-half to one and one-half pounds each. 



Mr. F. W. Chase, of the Loon Lake Hotel Company, located at Loon Lake, 

 Franklin county, writes me that Loon lake did not contain lake trout prior to 1879, 

 when he obtained from the State an allotment of lake trout fry for that lake, and 

 that plants have been continued nearly every year since, and that at the present 

 time lake trout are very plentiful in Loon lake. He also says " that brook trout 

 were very scarce in that section years ago, but by liberal planting of fry and finger- 

 lings the fishing has been greatly improved." He says that " lake trout of eleven 

 and three-quarters pounds weight and brook trout of four and three-quarters pounds 

 have been caught, all due to the planting of State fish." 



For another example of what the artificial propagation of fish can accomplish, I 

 must cite a small lake in Franklin county, about one and one-half miles in length, 

 that did not contain a whitefish in 1894, but during the winter of 1894-95 about 

 500,000 whitefish eggs were hatched at the Adirondack hatchery and planted in this 

 lake. The matter was almost forgotten until the fall of 1897, when a few small 



