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THE GAME BREEDER 



FrSH-BREEDING WATERS. 



By George H. Graham, 

 Massachusetts Commissioner of Fish and Game. 



I believie that all of our eastern 

 states, like Massachusetts, have hun- 

 dreds of sWamps that are worthless and 

 with a sniall outlay they can be trans- 

 formed into beautiful lakes and made 

 to produce large quantities of fish 

 which will not only afford food but sport 

 as well. Very few people realize what 

 can be done with an old bog or swamp 

 and all they need is to be told how to do 

 it and what kind of fish to plant. I am 

 in hopes to issue a bulletin during the 

 next few months which will give all the 

 necessary information that may be re- 

 quired to do this work. Just imagine a 

 pond of ten acres, well stocked with 

 brook trout or small mouth black bass, 

 see what an income it would be for the 

 owner to let people catch the trout or 

 bass at 50 cents per pound. Such a pond 

 ought to take care of 5,000 trout from 

 5^ to 1 lb. each. Let the owner sell these 

 fish at 50 cents per pound and he will 

 reaHze much more profit from the 10 

 acres of the old swamp land than from 

 any other part of his farm. The same 

 will be equally true of the small mouth 

 black bass. Another thing the land 

 owner will do at the same time he makes 

 his lake for fish, is to create a nurnber 

 of beautiful building sites for camps and 

 bungalows, which, when sold, will net 

 him a tidy sum. 



All artificial ponds are under the con- 

 trol of the riparian owner and he has 

 the absolute control of all the fishes in 

 these ponds, no matter how large the 

 body of water may be. I have urged 

 every man who has an old swamp that 

 contains springs and where he has a 

 stream of water running all the year 

 round, to clean out the swamp and make 

 a fish pond. Quite a number of people 

 are doing this today. Here in Massa- 

 chusetts we have over 1,100 great ponds 

 and our commission has undertaken to 

 stock these ponds every year. We realize 

 that the public will always have the right 

 to fish in any of these great pOnds and 



during the past three years our com- 

 mission has established a new oolicy of 

 stocking our ponds with food fish, such 

 as oike, perch and bass. 



We have had an experimental station 

 at Palmer, where we hatched about 

 25,000,000 fish this year and where we 

 are now at work building a large hatch- 

 ing building, which will have a capacity 

 of 200,000,000 of fish every year. 



In our trout and salmon hatcheries 

 we are now producing nearly 6,000,000 

 a year and with intended improvements 

 we will soon be able to produce 10,000,- 

 000. It is the aim of the present com- 

 mission to put Massachusetts in the 

 front rank of all the states with regard 

 to fish and game. I wish you could run 

 up here and go with me out to our 

 Wilbraham game farm, where we now 

 have 1,600 young pheasants, 1,200 young 

 Mallard ducks, 75 young wild turkeys 

 and a lot of quail and white hares. We 

 have three other farms besides this one 

 and hope to liberate a large number 

 of birds this year. We are trying to 

 interest farmers and clubs all over the 

 state to raise game and fish and I be- 

 lieve, in spite of our large and increasing 

 army of sportsmen, that we will be able 

 to have better fishing in Massachusetts 

 ten years from now than we ever had. 



I am sending you an item from the 

 printed report of a talk I gave at the 

 annual meeting of the Greenfield Sports- 

 man's Club. 



Our readers will observe that we have 

 enlarged The Game Breeder, adding 

 more pages of reading matter and sev- 

 eral pages of advertising, the last named 

 are interesting and valuable to those who 

 wish to procure good eggs, birds, etc. 

 There is a call also for rabbits and quail 

 from an Ohio game farm which some 

 of our readers should answer. We are 

 glad to observe that our readers are re- 

 sponding to our call for an increased 

 membership. See that the cards come in. 



