Conservation Commission. 105 



artificial culture we are gradually obtaining an increased supply. 

 An examination of the Hudson river this spring, however, showed 

 astonishing conditions. The up-State Hudson river fishermen, 

 whose boats and nets were paying a license to the State, were by 

 law compelled to fish only with drift gill nets which means that 

 they could fish two, or at the outside, three hours on each tide, 

 while below Newburgh, where no fishermen paid a tax, the river 

 was blocked with stake gill nets in which fish were caught twenty- 

 four hours out of the day, and this fishing only ceased from 

 Thursday, until Monday morning, as required by law, if the 

 fishermen were not discovered with their nets down during that 

 time. It is astonishing to note the number of fish that have been 

 able to circumvent these hundreds of stake gill nets, placed in the 

 lower reaches of the river, in an attempt to reach their spawning 

 ground. 



An examination of some of these stake gill nets shows that, 

 while 100 shad were held in the nets by their gills, from 10 to 120 

 fish which had been caught and fatally injured were either re- 

 leased during their struggles or by the turn of the tide and were 

 lying dead on the bottom of the river, showing that more fish 

 were destroyed than were caught and delivered to our markets. 



The placing of stake gill nets in any of our waters should be 

 prohibited as injurious and destructive to the fisheries. 



On the shores of Long Island numerous pound nets with their 

 leaders, some of them over a mile long, dot the shores, and tons 

 upon tons of fish are taken from these pounds, and either placed 

 directly upon the market or in cold storage to he held for higher 

 prices. Several parties have within the last few years estab- 

 lished large pens, especially on the south shore of Long Island, 

 to which the fish caught in the pounds are taken, held alive and 

 fed until market conditions are such that they can be sold at a 

 large profit. This class of fisheries should pay its fair propor- 

 tion of the expenses of our hatcheries. 



The schools of bluefish, sea bass, Spanish mackerel and mack- 

 erel in the waters of Long Island are this year greater and larger 

 than have been observed in a decade, and our unlicensed and 

 unrestricted fishermen are now drawing purse seines of very small 

 mesh on the very shores of the island and taking tons of small 

 fish ranging in size from two to seven inches and selling them 



