The Bass-Bluegill Combination in a Small Artificial Lake

Ten years ago, Fork Lake, a pond of 1.38 acres on the farm of Paul S. Smith near Mount Zion, Illinois, Has probably typical of many of the older man-made ponds in central Illinois. When this pond was assigned for study to aquatic biologists of the Illinois Natural History Survey in 1938, it was 18 years old and had been used extensively for fishing, waterfowl shooting, and general outdoor recreation. A brief history of the recreational benefits derived from the pond has been published elsewhere (Thompson & Bennett 1939a). The Fork Lake experiment was terminated by run-off water from a 4-inch rain that washed out the dam on July 8, 1942. As no Natural History Survey personnel were present at the time the actual break occurred, fish collected were those that remained in the pond after about two thirds of the water had flowed out through the break, carrying with it a part of the fish population. In spite of this unfortunate circumstance, which eliminated the possibility of a final complete census of the fish, the partial census and the collections of previous years gave interesting and significant information on the bass-bluegill combination.