Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 415 
terest is manifested by these bodies in the matter of preserving and 
propagating fish, and in enforcing the laws for their preservation. 
We have not been able to gather much specific information in 
respect to the fisheries of the state. By another year, in case the 
commission is continued, we shall be able to collect much useful in¬ 
formation. We may assume as a safe proposition, that no state in 
the Union, disconnected from the sea-board, is better suited for fish- 
culture than Wisconsin. 
There are two hundred and twenty-five lakes in the following 
sixteen counties: Kenosha, Racine, Walworth, Waukesha, Jeffer¬ 
son, Dane, Washington, Dodge, Columbia, Sheboygan, Fond du 
Lac, Green Lake, Marquette, Waushara, Waupaca, and Winnebago. 
These lakes cover 388 square miles, or 248,320 acres of water, which 
large surface is now comparatively unproductive. These beautiful 
lakes that adorn our state, could and ought to produce as much 
food for man as an equal amount of rich land. In most of these 
lakes valuable fish would thrive. Not until the inhabitants of 
these counties can catch trout, carp, grayling, &c., will they fully 
appreciate the importance of fish-culture. Thus they will be more 
sensible of the great good that will surely flow from the judicious use of 
a few thousand dollars annually. These benefits should not be con¬ 
fined to the lesser lakes, for it is in the larger ones—Michigan and Su¬ 
perior—where the greatest interest should concentrate. The white- 
fish and trout are, by the use of improved (?) modes of taking fish, 
becoming rapidly diminished in number. 
We have taken pains to ascertain how fast the supply of fish is 
becoming exhausted by the use of pound and gill nets as now ex- 
tensively used. 
At Racine alone there are four boats in constant use putting out 
and faking up not less than twenty-five miles of gill nets. During 
the summer their nets are set from eighteen to twenty miles from 
shore, where the water is-from sixty-five to seventy fathoms deep. 
We are told by Jacob Schenkenbarger, one of our oldest and most 
intelligent fishermen, that “with an equal number of nets only one- 
fourth as many fish are caught now as were taken four years ago.' 1 
He further says: “We always have the best success late in the 
fall, by placing our nets over the spawning-grounds of the white- 
fish and trout. Late in October, in 1870, I took with a set of thirty 
nets, atone time, 1,980 pounds of dressed trout by putting the gang 
