40 Conservation Department 



II. THE FINGER LAKES FISH PROBLEM 



By E. H. Eaton, 

 Professor of Biology, Hobart College 



Our problem was to discover some means of conserving the fish 

 supply of these beautiful Finger lakes and increasing it, if possible. 

 A hundred and fifty years ago there was a plentiful supply of 

 fish for the 20,000 or more Senecas and Cayugas who in- 

 habited this region, but now that there are more than 

 half a million of inhabitants of the counties which border 

 on these lakes there is no reason to wonder that the supply 

 is not adequate to the demands of sportsmen. However, when 

 we consider that the seven lakes from Canandaigua to Otisco cover 

 a combined area of 195.6 square miles and that their combined 

 volume equals 1,078,606,000,000 cubic feet, with a plentiful 

 supply of plankton and bottom fauna, there is reason to believe 

 that they could be made to support more fish under scientific man- 

 agement. With only three months at our disposal, it was deemed 

 best to concentrate attention on the distribution of fish which now 

 inhabit the lakes, the food which they utilize as revealed by exami- 

 nation of stomach contents, the amount of the available food sup- 

 ply, both plankton and bottom-fauna and food fishes for the larger 

 species, together with an examination of the temperature, oxygen 

 content and other chemical characters of the water. Data already 

 at hand on the plankton and the character of the water as shown 

 in the investigations of these lakes by Birge and Juday* helped in 

 arriving at conclusions. 



The Fish Catch. — The object of taking fish in the various 

 lakes was to determine what species inhabit each lake, their rela- 

 tive abundance, their distribution as to depth, temperature and 

 other conditions, to observe the stomach contents and so find out 

 the food preferred by each species. Gill-nets were use:l at va- 

 rious depths and localities, the size of meshes ranging from %" to 

 4". These nets were efficient in taking lake trout, whitefish, ciscoes, 

 alewives, suckers, perch, wall-eye or pike-perch, bass, bullhead, 

 pike and pickerel. Wall-eye and bass did not gill as readily as 

 might be expected. In fact the bass was difficult to take by almost 

 all of our methods. Undoubtedly the bass and whitefish could be 

 taken more readily in nets strung with greater "take-up" in such 

 a way that the perpendicular opening is longer than the horizontal. 

 We found the nets much more effective if made of fine thread, that 

 is 20/3 for the larger nets and 50/2 for the smallest. Fykes and 

 the trap-net were effective in taking almost all of the shallow 

 water fishes such as bass, pike, bullheads, suckers and sunfish. 



*Birge, E. A. and Juday, C. A. limnological study of the Finger lakes of 

 N. Y., Bull. U. S. Bur. Fisheries, vol. 32, 1912. 



See also Plankton Studies of Seneca, Cayuga and Oneida lakes by W. C. 

 Muenscher, in this report, page 140. 



