Excerpt from Report on the Lakes and Rivers: Water and Water-Powers of the Province of Ontario

By fishes I would be understood to mean predatory or carnivorous fishes, which live by devouring, for the most part, the other kinds of fish referred to above, namely, those which, while themselves good for food, consume nothing which man himself could or would eat.

Now, without having made a study of the subject, it appears to me that the aim of the fish culturist should be to keep such kinds and such numbers of fish as will utilize all the fish-food afforded by his pond or lake; preferring of course those kinds which will yield the largest return, in respect of quantity and quality of human food. On the other hand the predatory fishes, such as the pike, should, it seems to me, be entirely banished or excluded from the ponds or lakes, if possible. The result of allowing such fishes to remain being, that although they may in due time themselves become the food of man, they will probably have consumed more than twenty times their weight of better fish, which, but for them, might also have become human food. This would be any thing but true economy. We know pretty well how many pounds of corn it takes to make a pound of pork, or a pound of beef but we are entirely in the dark (at least I am) as to how many pounds of herring or white-fish are required to make a pound of pike, of dore or pickerel, or even of lake trout. It is difficult to form even a conjecture on the subject, but I am inclined to think that in putting it at twenty times their own weight, I am very much below the truth. If this is so, those smaller lakes, in respect of which an intelligent system of pisciculture can be adopted, will, as I have said, be more valuable and productive in proportion to their area, than the larger lakes. Fish-breeding can be carried on in the smaller lakes by private individuals. If favourably situated as regards drainage, inferior kinds of fish, such as the sucker, and the predatory fishes, such as the pike, can be weeded out, and only those which are in every respect desirable retained; or foreign stock might be imported and introduced, in some cases, with decided advantage. In the large lakes, where it is practically im possible to do this, there can be no scientific pisciculture in the proper sense ofthe term. Still, much can be done to increase the produce even of the largest, by wise fishery laws or regulations, the object of which should be to aid and encourage the multiplication and increase of such fish as the white-fish, and to reduce, as much as possible, the numbers of the predatory fishes, of which the pike may be taken as the type.

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