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THE FISH-CULTURIST NEWS 

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Nquatic Plants in Relation to Gatne Fish” 
Naturalist Points Out the Necessity of Plants in the Water, if Fish Are to Have Food ee RK 
By WILLIAM O. COON, Naturalist 
7 eae number of game fish that can live in any body of water 
is dependent upon the nature of the living conditions that 
exist within those waters. Also the size of those game fish is 
governed by those water conditions, 
Aquatic Plant Life in a body of water is equally as impor- 
tant to fish life as the vegetation that grows upon the upland 
is to the animal life that lives in the woods or fields. 
The basis of all food for every living creature is plant life. 
From the human being to the lowest form of animal life are 
dependent upon vegetation for their existence. Even though 
one species is carnivorous and may feed upon another carniv- 
orous creature, somewhere down the line there are those that 
are dependent upon vegetation. 
Game fish within most lakes are imprisoned within those 
waters. It is the plant life that grows within those waters that 
create the proper balance for their living condition. The ad- 
vantages of that vegetaton are many. A sportsman may curse 
and condemn the weeds—that entangle his fish line or snag 
‘his lure, but without those weeds the fish cannot grow toa 
healthy pan size for eating or give et sportsman the thrill 
he gets in catching him. 
Whether it be fish life, bird or animal life—there are but 
three fundamentals that concern them. First is to obtain food; 
the second is protection from their natural enemies; and the 
third to reproduce. Let’s just touch on the basic facts concern- 
ing each of these. 
FOOD FOR GAME FISH.—AII fishes classified as game 
fish are carnivorous creatures (meat eaters), some of them 
are cannibalistic and feed upon the smaller of their own kind. 
Many game fishes feed upon other species of game fishes, 
rough fish and otherwise. There are certain species of small 
fishes that never grow large and which multiply rapidly that 
are known as forage fish. It takes an abundance of small fish 
to provide food for large numbers of larger fish, and, there- 
fore, to have an abundance of small fish they hts must 
have a greater abundance of food. f 
These smaller species of fish are dependent for their food 
upon the microscopic animal life that lives in the waters. One 
drop of water may contain numbers of small cfeatures visible 
only when placed under a microscope. They are not harmful 
to man or beast, but are important to those fish. This small 
animal life may, depending upon the species, be dependent | 
upon the living plants that grow in those waters or the decay- 
ing foliage and roots of old dead vegetation. Perhaps this 
small microscopic creature may also be carnivorous and feed | 
upon other smaller species of tiny creatures, but somewhere 
down this line if traced to its source, the plant life provides . 
that food that enables one to live upon the other. 
Here we will consider protection for these fishes from 

scope or if you knew exactly what to look for. 
While game fish have no lungs, they do have blood and 
require oxygen. They take the oxygen directly into the blood 
stream through the tender tissues of the gills. This oxygen is 
most abundant among the vegetation, that is a second reason 
why that the adult fish takes its young there to live. 
pest LIFE aids in the purification of the waters. It takes 
up -the poisonous carbon dioxide gases given off by the 
decomposing bottom soils. At the same time this aquatic ve- 
tation aids in the clarification of the waters. It collects the 
floating particles of sediment washed from the surrounding 
highlands. One seldom ever sees a weedy lake with other 
than clear waters which are best for fish life. Lakes barren of 
vegetation are often roiled by turbid waters. Game fish in 
muddy waters often acquire a muddy taste. 
Time and space will not permit us to go further into this 
subject. Let us now consider the third and last fundamental 
concern of these wild creatures— 
REPROD U'C T1:0 N. ae 
Provide a suitable living quarters with plenty of food, 
and they alone will take care of the reproduction. 
Game fish do select a mate each year, some make a bed 
_and lay their spawn. Let’s consider the Large Mouth Black 
Bass, a hardy and game fellow. After mating, the female will 
fan the bottom, either to firm clean soil or a net-work of 
aquatic roots. Here she deposits her eggs and in the mean- 
time, the male guards and protects her. Now the male takes 
charge of the bed and fertilizes the eggs and guards them un- 
til the small fry are hatched. Each bed may contain from 
2,000 to 200,000 eggs. When the fry are hatched, the male pro- 
tects them and takes them into a weed bed where food is 
plentiful, hiding places abundant, and oxygen sufficient. After 
caring for them a few days, he again is over-come with that 
cannibalistic instinct and may turn on the very fish he has 
been protecting. The fear of fish then causes him to leave the 
shallow water weed bed and move to the outer edges near 
open water where he can more readily observe the approach 
of his enemy. Here he lives on through the summer and fall 
awaiting for the smaller fish that venture into the open that 
he may feed upon them, but still near cover where he may 
hide as well as find the shade protecting him from the sun. 
That’s the place to drop your lure for the big fellows at 
the edge of the weed bed. Lay that plug on a lily pad and 
with a little flip of the rod, make it jump into the water and 
keep it moving with a life-Ike action. You will get him and 
“he will give you a thrill. Each big one you take gives more 
their natural enemies. The parent fish takes its young’ 
into the weed bed, not only because food is more abundant | 
there, but because it affords hiding places among the dense | 
growth. A bird takes its young into the brush, vines or trees; 
a deer seeks the dense forest; a mountain creature a cave be- 
neath a lofty clift; the ground creature in its burrow. Fishes 
depend upon aquatic vegetation, dead branches or tree trunks, 
over-hanking banks and beneath the edges of rocks, depend- 
ing largely upon the species, but plant, life affords the most 
deal place. 
There are many other advantages to a proper balance of 
aquatic vegetation in those waters aside from food and cover 
for game fish. These are‘truly important but too numerous to 
explain about all of them. However, may we touch on a few 
of those which are most important. 
You have heard of people being locked in a vault and 
dying from suffocation, due to using all of the oxygen from 
the small space of air therein. You know that people cannot 
exist in the absence of oxygen, neither can any creature with 
blood in its veins. Surely you know that when your lungs 
take the oxygen from the air, that it’s the vegetation upon 
the earth that lives upon this used air and puts back into it 
that oxygen so essential.to our existence. Plant life in the 
water does exactly the same for those game fish imprisoned 
therein. Should there exist a shortage’ of oxygen, the tiny 
fish will perish first, the same as a babe could not exist as 
long as a healthy adult. Should a million of these fish die in 
your lake, you would be unaware of it. The tiny creatures 
would be consumed by the bird life along the shores, and 
were they not, you could not locate them without a micro- 
smaller fish a chance to grow to maturity. 
Editor’s Note: The writer of this article is a nationally 
recognized authority on the development of better hunting 
and fishing grounds. Mr. Coon, a naturalist by profession, is 
the owner of the GAME FOOD NURSERIES, P. O. Box 371X, 
Oshkosh, Wisconsin, one of the originators of a business most 
important to conservation activities by supplying the neces- 
sary aquatic plants to provde food and cover for planting in 
lakes. He offers a very helpful booklet free of charge. (Thank 
you, Mr. Coon, for the foregoing article, and we hope you can 
find time in the future to write more rcies for The Fish- 
ee News.) 
mow = Gon 
Raise Bullfrogs 
Hd.’s Note: Vol Brashears, over 
at Berryville, Ark., is the kind of 
fellow most sportsmen admire. He 

demand for frogs for several years 
that I usually eat the fish and sell 
the frogs for restocking and sci- 
entific purposes, also because. the 
frogs show a nice profit each year 
with very little expense or trouble 
to me. I now offer frogs for sale so 
other people can get started in this 
hunts and fishes, saws lumber, sells 
hardware ...and.. . raises bull- 
frogs. He knows his frogs and how 
to raise them, and if you were to 
write him a letter, you probably 
would get something about like 
the following: 
Iam always glad to give infor- 
mation on anything I can. We op- 
erate a hardwood lumber manu- 
facturing plant, producing and 
shipping wagon, truck and farm 
machinery wood repair parts to 16 
states. Helping the farmers to pro- 
duce more food now during this 
war, pleases me very much. 
I raise frogs and fish as a side- 
line or hobby, for our use, pleasure 
and profit. There has been such a 

interesting business of producing 
more food. 
The other things I raise are rab- 
bits, bees, chickens, fruit, garden, 
everbearing strawberries, ete. I 
believe in producing more than I 
use so I will be a help to my coun- 
try and friends. 
To raise giant jumbo bullfrogs 
is no tdifficult if you understand 
all they require is proper food and 
protection. They are helpless, have 
no way of defending themselves 
and their life from beginning to 
end depends upon their ability to 
hide and stay hidden until all dan- 
ger is over. For this reason, they 
prefer to sit on the bank near the 
deep water edge with something 
The Publisher 

THOMAS J. (Chick) RENICK 
Just in case some of you fellows 
wonder what the publisher of this 
little sheet looks like, well here he ~ 
is... classification 2B... Lino- 
type operator by trade... fisher- — 
man by choice . . . conservationist 
by instinct. 

like a tree or log to make shade — 
and protection for them, jumping 
in when they sense danger. 
Frogs feed at night in shallow — 
water usually one to three inches 
deep. Their principal food is cray- — 
fish, which must be alive. Frogs 
eat what insects they can catch 
such as millers, gnats, mosquitoes, 
grasshoppers, etc.; but no, dead 
food of any kind. Like gamete h 
they eat small frogs so they must | 
have either sufficient room to give - 
protection or fences to separate 
large frogs from small ones. 
Everything from birds to man 
is their enemy. It seems that their 
choice,-white delicate meat is de-— 
sired by fish, ducks, geese, mink, — 
coon, foxes, and man. So the Cre- 
ator of all good things, knowing 
this, made it possible for one large ~ 
female frog to lay 5,000 to 20,000 : 
eggs per season usually between 
‘May and July. So, you see, two — 
pairs to one dozen gives you the 
necessary breeding stock for a 
pond, creek, river or lake. Eggs or 
spawn hatch in six to 21 days, ac- 
cording to the temperature of the _ 
water. Every sportsman in Amer- — 
ica should do himself, his country, 
his children or grandchildren | ae 
favor by releasing at least one pair 
of Jumbo bullfrogs in his favorite — 
fishing water. We all know that 
to grow a crop, we must plant the 
seed. 
Frogs hibernate in holes in the 
ground or in the mud in the bot- 
tom of ponds in late fall and do 
not eat or come out until spring— 
usually March or April. You can 
rasie fish and frogs in the same 
pond, if you partition off water so 
large frogs and large fish are to- 
gether and small frogs and small 
fish are together. 
To raise large numbers of frogs, 
build your fence at least five feet 
high—not at water’s edge. Back 
up whatever distance you think 
best to give them plenty of bank 
room. Plant watercress and water 
moss in the water so it will grow. 
This gives’ protection to frogs, 
tadpoles, crayfish, fish, etc., gives 
off oxygen, and makes food for 
fish, crayfish, tadpoles. Next, stock 
well with crayfish which will eat 
anything. Multiplying rapidly, 
they supply the frog food. 
Any kind of fencing will do that 
will keep them in and their ene- 
mise out. If you should use wire, 
put something on the wire so they 
can see it and not jump into it and 
hurt themselves. Shade is essen- 
tial. 
(See Fertilization story concern- 
ing feed for tadpoles). 

