THE CHATAUOUA FISH HOGS AT WORK. 



Jamestown, X. V. 

 Editor Recreation: I send you here- 

 with a photo of a string of muskalonge, 

 speared through the ice in Chautauqua 

 lake. Xo less than 15 tons have been 

 speared within the past 8 days and every 

 one of these large ones are females, loaded 

 with spawn that they would have deposited 

 in April and May. I think the men in the 

 picture bought the string you see them 

 with. They are all good fellows. I know 

 all of them, but they are on the wrong 

 track. Mr. Odell, who runs the market 

 here, don't believe in spearing, but says as 

 long as the law allows it he will sell the 

 fish. He bought in 2 days 1,765 pounds. 

 He has furnished me with many facts and 

 figures and is helping me to stop this 

 slaughter. It is difficult to get photos, for 

 the fish hogs didn't want the thing shown 

 up. Our club will keep at them till we 

 knock out this spearing. At present they 

 are roasting me in the local papers, but I 

 hold my own. When they have all had 

 their say I shall sum up their remarks and 

 give them facts and figures that ought to 

 convince them. They are figuring now, 

 and you know figures don't lie, but liars 

 will figure. 



F. W. Cheney. 



ANOTHER LETTER. 



Jamestown, N. Y., February 24. 1899. 



I enclose you a clipping from the James- 

 town Evening Journal. Please note the 

 enormous amount of fish taken in the first 

 5 days of the legal spearing season and then 

 remember that the law gives the hogs 5 

 days more. 



The Chautauqua Fish and Game asso- 

 ciation has called a meeting for next Tues- 

 day evening, February 28th, for the pur- 

 pose of taking some action for the protec- 

 tion of the fish. A desperate effort will be 

 made to have the present law repealed. A 

 few L. A. S. circulars, at this meeting, 

 might do some good. If you will get them 

 to me in time, I shall be glad to make good 

 use of them. 



W. H. Knapp. 



In one of the clippings referred to a sar- 

 castic writer sums up the work of the 

 butchers thus: 



Five of the 10 days in which we are al- 

 lowed to slaughter muskalonge have passed 

 and what fun we have had and what havoc 

 we have wrought. We have killed every- 

 thing from one pound to 45 : we have sat 

 "for 5 days staring down into the depths of 

 old Chautauqua till the rubber in our necks 

 ached; but that has naught to do with the 



fun we have had or the good we think we 

 have done. 



Let us sum up the past 5 days' sport (if 

 we may call it by that name). On an aver- 

 age we have caught, all told, 50 a day of 

 those large ones, say from 20 to 42 pounds, 

 making a total of 250 fish, all females full 

 of eggs, each one of which would have pro- 

 duced in 2 l / 2 months an average of 500,000 

 eggs each, or all told 125,000.000. To this 

 we can add 3 times as many from fish under 

 20 pounds and the amount would be 490,- 

 000.000. This is a small estimate of the 

 eggs we have destroyed. But then think 

 of the dollars we have made, and of the 

 one and 2 pound fish our clubs have killed! 



15UTCHERED TO MAKE A CHAUTAUQUAN 

 HOLIDAY. 



Are we ashamed? Not yet. We view 



our work with the pride of a Holmes, a 

 Jesse James or a Jack the Ripper, only we 

 do our bloody work legally. It is as much 

 fun to spear a 'longe as it is to take a ball 

 club, sneak up on a cat that is asleep and 

 with one blow smash its brains out. 



But see what we have discovered — how 

 we are enlightening the people of the age! 

 We have discovered that fish eat fish, that 

 a 31 pound 'longe caught near Celoron had 

 a 3 pound bass in its stomach and that the 



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