Fishery bulletin of the Fish and Wildlife Service - NOAA

WHITEFISH FISHERY OF LAKES HUBON AND MICHIGAN 381
the error involved is small, as the following catches for the years in which the production
in these two States is known will show:
Yea, Pound» Year Pounds Year Pound!
1885 '247,086
1889 37,375
1890 '94,736
1897 '39,760
1899 10,558
1903 : 2,905
1908 65,000
1917 37,750
1922 20,800
1926 .'. 12,094
1927 22,436
1928 15,454
1929 36,375
1930 10,695
1931 9,755
1932 12,450
1933 6,600
1934 4,600
1935 : 1,500
1936 6,500
1937 3,800
1938 No catch
1939 do.
1 Includes longjaws, blackfins, and Menominee whitefish.
1 Includes longjaws, blackfins, and Menominee whitefish—the total listed for the lake does not, however, include these species.
1 Fiscal year.
The tabulation of the statistics of the production of whitefish in the Canadian
waters of Lake Huron has been started with 1879, the first year for which statistics
are available for United States waters. Available statistics on the production of whitefish
in the Canadian waters of Lake Huron for the earlier years, 1867-1878, have been
omitted from table 1 because of the lack of comparative data for United States waters.
These earlier Canadian records also are open to the criticism that in a number of years
the production reported for Huron proper included the catch in the St. Glair River and
in Lake St. Glair to the point of inflow of the Thames River. The catches listed under
"Huron proper" for the years, 1879-1921, were taken between the tip of the Saugeen
Peninsula at Cape Hurd, Ontario, and the extreme southern end of Lake Huron.
Beginning in 1922 the islands of the open lake and the westerly shore of Manitoulin
Island to the north of the Saugeen Peninsula were included in "Huron proper."
As stated in footnote 8, the catches listed under the heading, "Georgian Bay," represent
a combination of the take in the Bay and in the North Channel and Manitoulin
Island regions to the north and west except in 1922 and later years as explained
above. This combination was made partly in an attempt to reduce the size and complexity
of table 1 and partly because of variation in the extent of the waters included
in the two areas. For example, reports for certain of the earlier years listed
the catches along the east shore of Georgian Bay as far south as Penetanguishene as
part of the production in the Manitoulin Island and North Channel area.
Reference should be made here to the Canadian records compiled for the International
Board of Inquiry for the Great Lakes Fisheries and published after this
manuscript was completed. 41 The districts employed by Ford are not always the
same as those used in this report and her statistics for these areas are therefore not
always comparable with ours. However, both records of the total Canadian catch of
Lake Huron should be the same. Minor discrepancies occur for some years because,
in contrast to our records, Ford's figures were rounded to the nearest hundredweight.
In other years the discrepancies are larger, though still insignificant. The reason for
these differences is not known. A check with the published records of the Game and
Fisheries Department of Ontario reveals that our figures agree with theirs. At any
rate our conclusions would remain the same whether we utilized Ford's data or our own.
The accuracy of the catches recorded for the Ontario waters of Huron proper in
1908 and 1909 has been considered so questionable that the values were not plotted
in figure 2 and were omitted in the computation of averages for periods that included
these 2 years. The contrast between the catches for 1908 and 1909 and the production
in the years immediately preceding and immediately following is in itself sufficiently
great to give just grounds for suspicion. This suspicion is heightened by the
observation that the large 1908 and 1909 catches are to be traced to reports of excessive
quantities of whitefish as barrels of salt whitefish. In 1908 3,515 barrels (703,000
pounds) and in 1909 550 barrels (110,000 pounds) of salt whitefish were reported.
In other years of the period, 1900-1917, the number of barrels of salt whitefish reported
for Huron proper did not exceed 82, and averaged only 12 barrels.
Barrels of salt fish have been converted to fresh fish at the rate of 200 pounds
per barrel. Catches given as numbers of fish have been converted to pounds at the
rate of 2 pounds per fish.
41 International Board of Inquiry for the Great Lakes Fisheries. Report and Supplement. Washington, 1943.
Ford, Marjory A. Annual Landings of Fish on the Canadian Side of the Great Lakes from 1807 to 1939 au Officially Recorded. Ottawa, 1943