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BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
HOW THE FISHERIES OF LAKE ONTARIO MAY BE IMPROVED. 
The State of New York at the present time is expending considerable money in 
carrying out the provisions of restrictive fishery laws applicable to Lake Ontario. 
The State has valuable interests dependent on the preservation of its fishes, more 
especially the game species; and it is chiefly with a view to protect these interests 
that a fishery code has been enacted particularly favorable to angling and inimical to 
commercial fishing. As a result, there is much discontent among those citizens who 
live chiefly by fishing, and a more liberal policy is much desired by them. The scarcity 
of fish, however, seems to the legislature a sufficient cause for restrictive laws, and 
under the present conditions it is not probable that material changes will be made in 
the statutes. This being the case, it seems that the only hope which may be enter- 
tained by the professional fisherman for obtaining greater freedom in his pursuit 
depends on an increase, either naturally or artificially secured, in the abundance of 
fish in the lake. 
The entire history of the fisheries of Lake Ontario tends to prove that even under 
the radically restrictive laws which have been in force for a sufficient length of time to 
test their effects, some of the most valuable fishes have not been competent to replen- 
ish the lake to such an extent as to warrant the abrogation of a legal check on their 
capture, and the intervention of man seems to be urgently demanded. The agitation 
by the fishermen of this phase of the subject seems more rational and more likely to 
accomplish the desired results than direct efforts to obtain a less rigorous fishery code. 
It has always been the policy of the U. S. Fish Commission, whenever the occasion 
arose, to advocate the maximum expense for and attention to the increase of fish by 
recourse to positive methods, in order that there may be necessity for resort to the mini- 
mum amount of prohibitive legislation. 
A study of fish-culture, as practiced in the waters of Lake Ontario, leads to the 
conclusion that none of the Great Lakes has received less attention. While in other 
lakes the natural decline in the abundance of food-fishes incident to the prosecution 
of important commercial fisheries has been mitigated and in many instances com- 
pletely reversed by the rational resort to artificial propagation, in Lake Ontario fish- 
culture has been a secondary consideration in the attempts to increase the supply of 
fish, and restrictive and prohibitory measures have been the remedies most persist- 
ently advocated and resorted to. This policy has not led to any increase in the fishes 
sought to be protected, but, on the contrary, has, in the case of the two most important 
species, resulted in the most alarming and phenomenal decrease which has probably 
ever occurred in a body of water of similar size and with like natural advantages. 
The decrease of 915,229 pounds in the catch of whitefish in the waters of Lake Ontario 
tributary to New York, between 1880 and 1890, was met by the planting by the State 
of New York of 6,888,000 whitefish fry in the same lake during the same period. 
Since 1880 the quantity of lake trout taken in the lake by citizens of New York has 
been reduced 528,690 pounds, during which time the State has not deposited a single 
young trout in the waters of the lake, but has planted 35,444,800 fry in inland waters 
having no commercial fisheries. These subjects are referred to at greater length in 
the special chapters relating to the individual species, and need be only incidentally 
mentioned in this place. 
