68 



FOREST AND STREAM, 



[Aug. 19, 1886. 



MMrm aa ewnmunicaMona to the Fm^est and SU'ecm Puh. Co. 



THE AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY. 



EEMAEKS AND DISCUSSION. 



MR. FAIRBANK— Mr. President and geatlemen, I 

 thought it mip;ht be of interest to say a word or two to 

 the gentlemen here m relation to the matter of jjlauting fish 

 in waters where the^ are not indigenous. We have made very 

 great strides in artificial propagation of fish, and have mas- 

 tered all the difficulties of hatching fish, procuring the eggs, 

 hatching and obtaining the young fi-y, and a great deal of 

 work and a great deal of money has been expended in planting 

 fish in various waters in all of the States. We started ofi 

 with a degree of enthusiasm eight or ten years ago that was 

 worthy of a better oiitcome than we have had. but it was 

 done \^-ith more zeal than wisdom, Ithink. We have planted 

 shad, for instance, in the Calumet River here, which emjjties 

 into Lake Michican, and we have planted trout in the Kan- 

 kakee River and brook troiit in the streams of Iowa, and 

 lake salmon in all the little lakes in Michigan and Illinois, 

 and wherever there was a little stream we thought at that 

 time all we had to do was to hatch the fish and put the young 

 try in there and we would have an abundance of fish. It is 

 needless to say, at least I have not heard of any instance 

 where any of these efforts have been successful. I was 

 anxious to demonstrate the fact, and I decided to make an 

 experiment in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, which I did on a 

 large enough scale to demonstrate thoroughly whether it was 

 practicable. Lake Geneva is a lake about eight miles long 

 and h 'om half a mile to three miles wide. It is a very pure 

 body of water, as blue as Lake Michigan. It is 185ft. 

 dee]), I have found in some place, but 'it averages 100ft. 

 deep all over it, bold shores and veiy clean. There is 

 not a bulrush or a lily-pad in it. and in every way is 

 particularly adapted to the salmon-trout, because it seemed 

 in all its characteristics just like the small lakes of New 

 York State in which the salmon trout are indigenou.s — 

 Onondago Lake, Cayuga Lake, and several of the lakes there. 

 Not feeling sure about it, I wrote to Mr. Seth Green, who was 

 an old friend of mine, to come out and spend a week with me, 

 which he did, because I wanted his judgment in the matter; 

 and we soiinded the lake and found the depth of the water 

 and we dredged the bottom. W e caught all the small vari- 

 eties of fish to see what food there was for the salmon trout. 

 Lake Geneva is somewhat celebrated for abounding in the 

 small fish known as the cisco. They are in that lake and one 

 or two other small lakes of Wisconsin, and they are there in 

 great abundance, li\'ing in deep water. The" cisco is the 

 natural food of the lake trout, an d we therefore very natur- 

 ally came to the conclusion that Lake Geneva vras particu- 

 larly adapted, if any lake on the face of the earth was, for 

 planting and growing the Mackinaw trout, or lake trout. 

 So I built a hatching house and I employed one of Mr, 

 Green's men, Mr. Welcher, who was afterward superintend- 

 ent of the Wiscon.sin fish hatching establishment, and went 

 to work. The fii'st year I bought the eggs from the New 

 York State Commission, 250,000, and after that Mr. Welcher 

 went every fall to Lake Michigan and took the supply of 

 eggs. I have laid in about 500,000 each winter, and I pur- 

 sued that faithfully and put in about 500,000 good, healthy 

 fry in the lake every spring for five years; but I have never- 

 seen, and no one else, as near as I can find out, has ever 

 seen the shadow or sign of a salmon trout in Lake Geneva, 

 large or small. 

 A Member— How deep is the water? 

 Mk. Fa) KB a_xk— About 150ft. or an average of 100ft. 

 QuESTiox— And what is the temperature? 

 Mk, Fairbaxk— It is a cold lake. I don't know. 

 The Secretary— They ought to be there, Mr. Fairbank. 

 Mb. Fairbaxk— Well, they are not there! Mr. Green said 

 "They are there, but you don't know how to fish for them. 

 They are in deep water." "Well," I said, "j^ou come out 

 and spend another week with me and we will fish for them." 

 He said he was not able to come, but replied, "I v^dll send 

 my son out, I offered to pay all his expenses, and his son 

 came out. I think that was two years ago, and he .spent a 

 week with me, and we spent the week fishing faithfully in 

 the deep water with Mr. Green's methods, mth a heavy 

 sinker and leaders, and we fished the lake thoroughly and 

 Mr. Welcher came^owTi vnth some gill nets— that was three 

 years ago. We set gill nets across the lake in four or five 

 different places, and followed that up for a week, and we 

 never took or saw one sign of a salmon trout. Now, the rea- 

 son of it is this, and that is the reason I call the attention of 

 you gentlemen to it. It is a subject we have got to look at 

 fairly, and it is the main thing in planting fish, and that is. 

 what food is there in the waters where you propose to plant 

 the fish for the young fish or fry? Salmon trout would live 

 in Lake Geneva if they could come to maturity. The cisco 

 is there in great abundance, and would furnish a most ex- 

 cellent and natural food — the fish that they live on in Lake 

 Michigan, but in looking at it I was satisfied that was the 

 trouble, that all the young fish died. The fry starved 

 to death because their food was not there. Now, in 

 looking at it you will see what the trouble is. The salmon 

 trout breed in the Great Lakes wherever there is a reef, and 

 there you catch them in three, four, or five hundred feet of 

 water^ or less, wherever there are extensive reefs of rock 

 there the gill nets are set and there the salmon trout are 

 taken. Here are the Racine reefs, you sail over those reefs 

 any time in the summer and throw out a trolling line and 

 von take salmon trout. My theory of it is that on the face 

 of that rock there is some animal life, animal cul a? that the 

 young fish stick their noses in and feed on until they are old 

 enough to eat other fish. Lake Geneva has no reefs of rock. 

 Where there are stones at all it is a boulder bottom, or it is 

 a jnud bottom, earth and clay, covered largely with leaves. 

 It i,s .surrounded to a great extent mth timber and the leaves 

 blow in every year. You try it and you will find on the bot- 

 tom of Lake Geneva to be a layer of dead leaves, so there is 

 evidently nothing there for the young fry to feed upon and 

 the fry have all died, and that has been the case in hundreds 

 of other instances. I have sent them to Crystal Lake. Mi-. 

 Dole who lives there is a fx-iend of mine, and I have sent 

 several hundred thousand for two or three years. I always 

 gave him a lot to put in there. That is a small deep lake of 

 perhaps three or four hundred acres, very pure water, and 

 very clear, but there never has been a young fish seen and I 

 think it is money and work thrown away and that it is ut- 

 terly useless to hatch fish and put them in waters imlcss we 

 know to a certainty that the food for the young fry is 

 there. I made still another experiment in the same line 

 by going into one of the neighboring lakes near by in 

 Wisconsin, and taking a large amount of the spawn of 

 the wall-eyed pike and I brought those down and hatched 

 millions of them, and put them into Lake Geneva, and there 

 never has been a wall-eyed pike seen there. Evidently there 

 is nothing for those young fish to live upon. They breed 

 and live and thrive where all the conditions are right for 

 them, or in trout lakes where they are indigenous and there 

 is something for the young fish to live upon. You may take 

 the fry and piit them into waters where there is no food for 

 the young fish and you will never have any result. This is a 

 thing we might as well look in the face and understand 

 that that is useless work. Now, see the work of the Iowa 

 Commission, and they did a great deal, they took a great 

 deal of spa-wn, salmon trout, I don't Imow where they de- 

 pcgited them— all over Iowa— but I have yet to learn that 

 one has appeared. The sftme way I did with whitefjsh. 1 1 



took about an equal number of whltefish as lake-trout, 

 taking the spawn the same time of year and hatched about 

 as many, I suppose I put into Lake Geneva 2,500,000, 

 both of whitefish and lake troutv I was determined to make 

 the experiment thorough enough to demonstrate that one 

 question, whether these .small lakes could be stocked with. 

 the better classes of food fi.shes where they were not indi- 

 genous to the waters. I knew that of course by putting a 

 few thousand in a lake occa.sionally, or every year, five to ten 

 or twenty thousand, was not enough to d.emonstrate it. 

 They could easily be destroyed: but by putting enough in, 

 piling them in year after yeair, it would demonstrate it, 

 and I spent ten or twelve thousand dollars in the experiment. 

 1 think this is a question that is very vital for us to consider 

 in our work hereafter— what there is in the waters where we 

 propose to put fish for the young to live upon, and I apprehend 

 there is not much to be gained in trying to plant fish in 

 waters where they are not indigenous, or where they have 

 not been some time. I also procured from Professor Baird 

 and hatched perhaps half a million of California sahnon the 

 same seasons that I was hatching the others, which 1 de- 

 posited in the lake; but there is a little stream entering Lake 

 Geneva— the lake is fed by streams. There is really no inlet 

 to it except the springs around it, but at the upper end of 

 the lake there is about a mile of low land, and the springs 

 running down through make a little creek. I deposited the 

 young California salmon in those little streams, little .springs, 

 and they ran down into this creek. Some of them I kept^ 

 perhaps fifty to one hundred thousand, about half of the 

 amoiint I hatched, I kept from the streams until they were 

 yearlings, and then turned them out, and we have taken 

 occasionally a California salmon, but they are not at all 

 plenty. For the last two years there has not been any taken. 

 Three years ago a boy took one, a very fine fish, which 

 weighed twelve and three quarter pounds, as handsome a 

 salmon as I ever saw anjTvhere— .showing that salt doesn't 

 enter into the ciuestion at all as to the life of the salmon ; 

 that they will grow just as well in fresh water as in salt 

 if they have enough to eat. There is an abundance of food 

 there, and the California salmon are a verj- hardy fish. I 

 have no doubt if I had put as many California salmon into 

 Lake Gene^^a as I did salmon trout that we would had more 

 of a result from it, still I don't apprehend that they would 

 do much. I think a lake of that size and purity of water, 

 and with all the food there for the maturing of fish, the 

 California salmon might be made to flouri,sh there if we had 

 two or three miles of good gravel bottom stream in which 

 they could spawn. 1 found in this little stream which rmis 

 up through the marshy meadow, very low ground— it is only 

 a small stream, and the bottom is mud and the water is very 

 cold but sluggish— I found in there one day four or five large 

 salmon that would run 8 to lOlbs. , splashing around up m 

 there— It was evidently their spawnin]s; season— looking for a 

 place to spawn; but if they did lay their eggs they sank'down 

 in the mud and were lost. There is no ifiace there for them 

 to hatch. I couldn't get any spawning ground for them. I 

 also made an experiment in brook trout in these little 

 streams, springs aromid those hills, and in this creek laiuning 

 down there, and established a fish farm up there, quite a 

 trout pond, and stocked this little stream. That is eminently 

 successful, because in the .stream, in the weeds and gro\vth in 

 the bottom they are alive with the natural food of the brook 

 trout, the little fresh-Avater shrimp, and now that mile and 

 a half of stream running through this marsh is full of brook 

 trout, as fine trout as I ever saw. In fact, I never saw fatter 

 and finer brook ti-out than I find in there. I can go in there 

 any time and take twenty-five or thirty trout in an hour or 

 two. That exjieriment has been eminently .successful, be- 

 cause the food is there for the fish. I thought I would give 

 you gentlemen the benefit of my experience. I have never 

 written anything about it, because it was a good deal of a 

 question in my uaind whether 1 ought to do it and whether T 

 ought to discourage the attempts that might be made; but I 

 am so thoroughly satisfied that it is utterly useless that I 

 think it should be made public. 



Mr. Dunning — Mr. Chaii-man, I would agxee with Mr. 

 Fairbank in regard to Geneva Lake. He has taken a ^eat 

 deal of pains in stocking this lake, and it is as beautiful a 

 lake as you ever saw in your life, and it is true, as he says— 

 I have been there — that it has bold .shores, deep water, and it 

 would seem as though it Avas the most perfect place that ever 

 was made for lake trout, but it is also true that they are not 

 there. I am intimate with Mr. Fairbank and know about this 

 matter, and there was no success whatever in the experi- 

 ment, and it was very discouraging. Mr. Fairbank has done 

 more to stock the inland lakes than any man I know of in 

 the country, but I am satisfied, and I think Mr. Fairbank is, 

 that it is not the fault of the water, but it is the want of fish 

 food. Now, Mr. Forbes in this State, Professor Forbes, told 

 me, in a conversation with him at our place in Madison, we 

 had a great epidemic among our fish there the summer he 

 was there and he came there to investigate it, the perch died 

 by the hundreds of thousands, and when he was there we 

 were talking about this same thing, and he dredged in 

 our lakes to find the fish food, to see of what it Avas coniposed, 

 to see if that was the cause of the epidemic in the fish. In 

 the conversation he said to me, '^Mr. Dunning, I find in 

 dredging in one haul more fish food than I would in Lake 

 Geneva." It is mere nothing there, and the cause of the fi.sh 

 not doing any better I think is for the want of the food. 

 Now, Mr. Fairbank, in the lake you speak of, you will find 

 your fishing is rather crude for a body of water as large as 

 that. 



Me. Fairbank — There is good black bass fishing there. 



Me. Dunninc. — They are not as plenty as they should be 

 and they lack food, and it is a lack of the food more than 

 anything else. 



Mr. Fairbank— Oh, there is an abundance of food for the 

 black bass and for the other fish that are indigenous to the 

 lilace. 



Me. Dunning — ^Now, in our lakes, Madison, we are sur- 

 rounded by lakes there, we have had the lake trout annually 

 and they were put in. We got discouraged because they 

 were put in in unlimited quantities and we didn't see any 

 result, but we continued to put them in and they began to 

 show themselves. A year ago last season, and this last sea- 

 son, and this Avinter they have been caught in quite good 

 numbers because j)eople have learned to know how to fish 

 for them. There have been a great many of these fish caught 

 by people who didn't know vmat they were and they put 

 them back, supposing they were dogfish, not being a fish 

 they had been m the habit of seeing in our waters. Last fall 

 during the spawning season of the trout I took as many as 

 five that were partially digested from the stomach of a pick- 

 erel from half a pound to nearly a pound. I took five. Now 

 I account for that in this way. The trout were .spaAraing 

 at the time and the fish took advantage of it and took them. 



Mr. Fairbj\_nk— Have the fishermen taken any salmon 

 trout of ajiv .size in your lakes? 



Mr. Dunning— Oh, yes, weighing Slbs. to 3>^bs. 



Me. Fairbank— That is very encouraging, but your lakes 

 there bear out what 1 said. I think you have some lime for- 

 niation and rocks. 



Me. Dunning — Yes, and some sandbanks. So I want the 

 convention, as well as Mr. Fairbank, to think that Wisconsin 

 inland lakes will produce fish— that is, the trout. There is 

 no question about it. 



Mr. Fairbank— I have no doubt there are lakes where the 

 food will be found. As I sav, you find a lake where the proper 

 stone formation exists and yoiiwill luidoubtedly find food for 

 them; but I think in thema'joritvof the small lakes it would 

 be utterly usele.ss to put lake trout in them. I have never 

 heard what the success was there at the Madison lakes. I 

 knew somethifig had bee© done there, but not the result. So^ 



if you have succeeded there you ought to go on and put in a 

 very large amount of them every year. 



Me. Dunning— As remarked, it requires different fishing 

 to fish for the lake trout than for the salmon. 



Mr, I'AIEBANK— Yes, you have got to fish for them in deep 

 water, 



Mr. Mather— Mr, President, there is one thing that 

 strikes me that is a little singular about Geneva Lake, and 

 that is this, as I understand it, the food of all these young 

 fishes belonging to the salmon family, including the brook 

 trout, the lake trout, etc., which are all grouped in one 

 family, there are only three classes of food viiich they feed 

 upon; one is the small crustaceans, another is the insects 

 and flies on the surface, and the third is the larva) of those 

 flies and woi-ms in the water, and they all feed upon that 

 class of food, and if there is food in Geneva Lake for the 

 brook trout and for the California salmon. I do not know 

 why the lake trout should not be found there also. 



Mr. FAIRBANK— The .brook trout and the California sal- 

 mon were put into this little .stream up above, and there is 

 where they found their food. There is insect life of conrse 

 that the cisco feeds on. The young of the cisco find their 

 food there. I don't know Avhat it is. 



Me. Mather— It rather surprises me that there is food for 

 all these and none for the lake trout. 



Me. Tomlin— Up within a few miles of Duluth some years 

 ago some very -wise men petitioned for the deposit of two 

 Imndred of these salmon trout, just as Mr. Fairbank speaks 

 of— seven years ago. Now, I have been up to the lake several 

 times and fished there, especially to see if there was any 

 chance of getting these fish, and' I was puzzled beyond my 

 comprehension to under.stand why in seveTi ^rears there had 

 not any of them turned up. I thought surely in Uiab seven 

 years there M^ould have oeen some young ones taken. Aa 

 Mr. Mather said, I think the salmon family live all the way 

 through on the same kind of food, and if there was food for 

 the brook trout there would be for the salmon trout. Now, 

 after the first plant of two hundred and fifty thousand was 

 put in, the next year they put in another plant of two 

 hundred and fifty thousand, so there has been five hundred 

 thou.sand put in there. This lake I speak of has all the 

 properties of agood lake for fish, except the limestone forma- 

 tion. It is boulders there, but any quantitv of lily-pads and 

 what are called fresh water plantain, and'in addition there 

 are millions of chubs or shiners, and just as soon as you get 

 the small fish over the preliminary stage of their existence 

 there is plenty for them to live upon. But in that seven 

 years I have yet to hear of one salmon trout being caught, I 

 have Avondered a great many times why it is so. 



Mr. Fairbank— 1 think you have got to have the rock for- 

 mation. 



Me. Clark — I think there is one point that they all ovei^ 

 look— something I have been working on two or three years, 

 and perhaps other fishculturists, and that is we are planting 

 our brook trout, salmon trout, young salmon and all of that 

 class of fish in new waters too young. They shouhl be gTown 

 or partially gi-own before we plant them. Am jtlur point 

 which goes to prove that you get results quicker is. that 

 wherever you have a hatching house on a stream that trout 

 will liv(' hi it at all, you wili get that .stream stocked ten 

 times ([uicker than auy that you plant \nth fry, because your 

 partially grown lish are always getting away.' Now, to stock 

 neAV waters which are not trout streams prui^er, 1 think the 

 way is to put the fish in from from four months to six 

 mouths, up to a year old ; then you have a good stout healthy 

 fish that has got something to live upoh until it can accustom 

 itself to the new class of food. 



Me. Towuin— I would like to a.sk Mr. Clark to come back 

 to the subject which Mr. Fairbank started on- is it possible 

 to stock waters which are not indigenous to salmon or trout 

 with trout or salmon, and make it a success ? 



Me. Clark— Certainly it is possible, because it has been 

 done. 



Me. Mathee — In regard to this matter which Mr. Tomlin 

 has just brought up and the question which he asks Mr. 

 Clai-k, about stocking with fish which a re not indigenous to 

 the water, I vdll say that within the past few years this lake 

 trout, whose natural habitat is the great lakes and the small 

 lakes of New York, has lieen introduced into Virginia. Col, 

 McDonald has had success with them at WytheviUe, and all 

 of us who know anything about the distribution of this fish, 

 kuow that our lake, or salmon trout, never existed in 

 A'^irginia in a state of nature. I am now hatching for Pro- 

 fe.s.sor Baird one hundred and fifty thousand of these lake 

 trout, Avluch he has reciuested me to keep on Long Island 

 for four or five months, in accordance Avith Mr, Clark'.s 

 theory, and then distribute according to his ojxler in the 

 fall, and he tells me that Col. McDonald says that these 

 lake trout will bear Avarmer waters than any of our salmon. 

 That is not my experience. I have always believed them to 

 be the most delicate in regard to temperature of any of our 

 fishes, and have believed they require colder water; at the 

 same time I am trying it, I am anxious to see if they will 

 live in our AA^arm AA'aters on Long Island. Col. McDonald 

 has raised them in Virginia, where there is not much diller- 

 ence in temperature. 



Mr. Claek— I have one hundred and fifty thousand that 

 we are keeping for the United States Commission to-day 

 from the same lot that Mr. Mather speaks about. Mr. 

 Mather's one hundred and fifty thousand came from North- 

 ville. That is the purpose of the United States Fish Com- 

 mission from noAV on. Now, one remark that Mr. Dunning 

 just .spoke to me about — he thought that if you keep them in 

 the troughs too long they become too much domesticated. 

 NoAV, there is the point— you want to keep them long enough 

 until they groAv so that you have a good healthy fish. I mean 

 a fish of tAVo or three months about. Keep them there as 

 long as you see fit and put them in your pond and feed them. 

 That is my idea of it, keep them until you get a good healthy 

 fish. We'have had at Northville probably twenty-five thou- 

 sand trout from a year old and upward, and next TV(:ck .shall 

 probably plant one half of tho.se fish. Some of them are 

 probably at least a foot long. 



Me. F'airbank— I have no doubt that these fi.sh, kept until 

 they become a mature fish, say a year old, will liA'e in Lake 

 Geneva, because there is enough food for them there, min- 

 noAvs and young fish that they can eat; but I don't believe 

 that if they spaAvn there that the young fiw Avhich they 

 hatch would ever come to maturity, because I don't think 

 there is any food in that lake for them. The object of my 

 making these remarks is that gentlemen when selecting a 

 lake to put trout in should look to the matter of the food for 

 the fry, the young fish, and look particularly to the rock 

 formation, the stone formation al^oiit it. I think that is the 

 secret of if, and if you put your young fish in, keeping them 

 until they are six months or a year old and then put them 

 in a lake where there is no foo'd for the fi-y, it will never 

 amount to anything, These mature fish avIU grow, but there 

 never Avill be a second generation. 



Me. Mather— What Mr. Fairbank has said about planting 

 fish in suitable waters is no doubt true, and what Mr, Clark 

 says about raising these young fish is also true, butitha.s 

 been my experiimce tliat a young lake trout would prefer 

 to have "the tail of his brother or a fin from his brothei' to any- 

 thing you can offer him . These little dcAdl.s eat each other up. 



Dr. "Hudson— I would inquire if there are any more papers 

 to be read? if there are not, of course the more discussion we 

 have, the better . 



Forest and Stream Fables have hecn reprinted with 

 UlustraMon.^ hy the author, "Awahsoose," wJtose shetchcs 

 are as felicitous as the text of the fahles themselves. There 

 are seven of the Fables, each loith a full ixige picture, and 

 spe-cktUy designed cov&r aiul tiUe page. Postpaid, 10 cents. 



