GREAT LAKES COREGONIDS 



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(often as much as 25 feet deep) and in that case are called bull nets. There is a growing 

 sentiment against their use, and most of the States already have enacted laws limiting 

 the depth of gill nets. Whether bull nets or narrower nets are used, it has been the 

 universal practice for more than 10 years to float them at certain seasons at least. 

 They are buoyed off the bottom by the-use of air cans and may be set in any stratum, 

 the distance off the bottom varying with the ascertained location of the schools of 

 fish. When the fish are spawning in the fall the nets usually are sunk to the bottom. 

 Westward of Port Stanley to Point Pelee, on the Canadian shore only, some herring 

 are produced by pound nets. Some are taken in pound and crib nets elsewhere on 

 the lake, but the quantity is relatively small. 



It appears, thus, that originally herring were so numerous that they occupied 

 every situation in the lake and could be captured at any season. The pound nets 

 took them on shore often throughout the season but usually most abundantly during 

 June and July. In the last decades they have been obtainable in gill nets in certain 

 sections of the lake in the spring, but the best fishing outside the spawning run was 

 to be had by floating the nets in the summer. In the fall when the fish collected to 

 spawn they were taken more or less abundantly over most of the lake, especially the 

 eastern half. 



SEASONAL MOVEMENTS 



Originally herring were so abundant that in parts of the lake, at least, they could 

 be taken in commercial quantities at any time of the year by nets set on the bottom. 

 In later years the schools became decimated, some of them even exterminated, and 

 the fish could be captured only on the bottom at certain seasons and out of certain 

 ports. The time finally came when the supply of the fish on the bottom became so 

 uncertain as to make necessary the floating of nets off the bottom in order to supply 

 the demand. Out of the practice of floating developed the bull net, a net four or five 

 times deeper than the gill net formerly in use. This apparatus was floated also, and 

 on account of the shallowness of the lake and the immensity of the netting employed 

 the remaining schools were subject to capture virtually at the pleasure of the producers. 



Data from the -pound nets. — At present very few herring are taken in pounds 

 anywhere on the lake. Occasionally a producer may make a total catch of a few 

 thousand pounds in these nets, usually in June or November, but the species is no 

 longer counted on as a mainstay of these fisheries. The testimony of the pound 

 netters of the north shore indicates that June and July were usually the best months, 

 with August usually poorest; but an examination of the records of the pound nets of 

 W. D. Bates, at Ridgetown, and A. Crewe, at Merlin, shows that while the lifts 

 usually were heaviest during these months, there have been years when good lifts 

 of herring were made in every month from April to December. The presence of 

 the fish on the shoals during these summers probably would be found to be due to 

 unusually low summer temperatures. 



Data from the gill nets. — In late years nets have been set for herring in the spring, 

 when the fishing season opened on March 15 in the area between Port Stanley, 

 Ontario, and Ashtabula, Ohio. The fish scattered about the 1st of June and reap- 

 peared about July 1 farther west, between Erieau, Ontario, and Cleveland, Ohio, 

 and east in the deep water off Erie, Pa. The schools began to thin out toward the 

 west on the central flat as summer advanced and to appear farther east, so that by 



