Blue Pike Sprenger Part II
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PART TWO Ken Sprenger's
Blue Pike History
In
part one I
ended the blue pike history
lesson by asking who took more, the hook and line anglers or the commercial
netters.
During
the day with good weekend weather, the waters off Youngstown might have had 500
boats. Lake Erie anglers, on the other hand, fished nights. Yes, I remember the
glow of lanterns resembling a city off Silver Creek and other places.
In
either lake, it was not unusual
to boat up to a hundred blues per outing in their heyday. Family and friends
were supplied with fresh fish.
According
to the 1947 figures, Lake Ontario blue pike yield for the year was a little
over, 300,000 fish by commercial netters. This was four years prior to the year
1951, which many said was the best.
With
my camcorder running, Elton Jeffords put to rest the misconception that the
commercial netters were the villains in
the blue pike demise. He also
put into print the early days as a commercial fisherman. It is in the Youngstown
museum.
Elton
recalls, "After the spring run, many factory workers would camp on the
riverbank and spear fish.” The Jeffords family bought, at times, as many as a
half ton to a ton of fish from them and hook and line fishermen during the
summer months.
They
rented out at one time 32 boats, took fishing parties out in two boats and
stored another 40. Others rented boats also. The three inch mesh graded
the blue pike, which averaged one pound. 100 blues, = 100 pounds. The mesh
allowed the small ones to pass through and spawn two or three times. Anglers
with rod and reel lines took fish of every size, pre-spawners and more fish than
the netters.
I
should put Lake Ontario into a historical perspective on man’s impact. Going
back, way back, the Native Americans netted the streams. Net weights used by
them at one time were numerous at Oak Orchard Creek. I'm sure the Atlantic
salmon was spawning there as in the Salmon River, which by its name would
indicate a spawning run.
Elton
recalled as a boy a picture of Jack Wagner holding all Atlantic salmon during
Jack's younger days. Jack was 90 when Elton knew him. That puts the
time back before the turn of the century.
Why
is this Important? Back then, most of the streams had sawmills or wool mills
erected, which prevented the salmon from spawning. Homes were built to protect
one's family from blizzards, like 1993's. Also it was vital for clothing to ward
off a chill factor of below zero.
Many,
many years later, mankind found it needed other things to replace the native
metals because of cost or weight and also to mold more easily. Plastics came and
then there were chemicals, alloys, etc. that provided jobs needed to raise and
educate families. The Niagara Frontier was the hub of that industry and, in the
wake, pollution.
Where
the earlier settlers put an end to the salmon, modern man dumped waste into the
water until the blue pike was completely gone. Toward the end of the blues,
1,000 gallons of cyanide was dumped in the Niagara River daily, according to
notes I took at a meeting in 1953.
At
first, in the mid 1950s, Elton said that at times the nets were full of dead
fish and then less and less full.
In part three will be interviews with some more people who were there when the blue pike became extinct.
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