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Common Whitefish — Part 4
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The artificial propagation of whitefish has long since passed the experimental stage and has attained a high degree of perfection. The work can be carried on with great facility, and its value is especially apparent when it is considered that under natural conditions only a very small percentage of the eggs hatch, while through artificial propagation from 75 to 95 per cent are productive. Practically all the eggs taken for hatching purposes are obtained from fish caught by the commercial fishermen, which would otherwise be lost.
In the fiscal year 1897-98 the United States Fish Commission hatched and planted 88,488,000 whitefish fry, and in 1898-99 152,755,000 fry were hatched and liberated in suitable waters.
The whitefishes are by far the most important group of fresh-water fishes of North America, and probably of the world. The common whitefish is the best of the tribe, but some of the others nearly equal it in merit, and all are more or less esteemed as food. Among the fishes of the Great Lakes the common whitefish ranks next in value to the lake herring, lake trout, and wall-eyed pike. In 1897 the catch in the United States amounted to about 8,000,000 pounds, having a value of nearly $300,000. If to this is added the yield of lake herring and other species of whitefish, the aggregate is over 57,000,000 pounds, having a value of nearly $800,000. The market value of the whitefishes taken in 1898 in the British Provinces was reported as $877,000, a sum representing about 18,400,000 pounds.
The common whitefish reaches a larger size than any other species of whitefish in the United States. Examples weighing over 20 pounds have been taken, but the average weight is under 4 pounds.
Whitefish fishing is done chiefly with gillnets set at or near the bottom in comparatively deep water, although considerable quantities are also taken in pound-nets, trap-nets, and seines. A very large part of the catch reaches the market in a fresh condition, although formerly considerable quantities were salted. The leading centres of the trade are Chicago, Detroit, Sandusky, Cleveland, Erie, and Buffalo, whence the fish are shipped frozen or in ice to all parts of the country.
Head 5; depth 3; eye 4 to 5; D. 11; A. 11; scales 8-74; vertebrae 59; gillrakers usually 10+17 to 19; maxillary 4. Body oblong, compressed, always more or less elevated, becoming notably so in the adult; head small and short, the snout bluntish and obliquely truncated, the tip on the level or lower edge of pupil; width of pretrial less than half that of pupil; maxillary reaching past front of orbit; gillrakers moderate, about 2 in eye. Colour, olivaceous above, the sides white, but not silvery; lower fins sometimes dusky.