SPAWNING OF THE BLACK BASSES. 403 



The oldest fish, we are told, sometimes anticipate the ordinary season, while many late spawners 

 are occupied with family cares until the last of July, and some young fish are not ready until 

 October and November. 1 After the spawning is over the Bass are "in season." They take the 

 hook eagerly from July till November. In the winter they are lank and black, though in season 

 till the ice comes. 



Concerning their spawning habits, Mr. Hallock, of the Blooming Grove Association, wrote in 

 1875: "Pour years ago one hundred and thirteen Black Bass from Lake Erie were placed in 

 Lake Giles, and their progeny has increased so fast as to insure good sport to the angler at 

 any time. The late spawners are now (early July) in their gravel beds, in the shallow waters 

 along shore, protecting either their spawn or their newly-hatched fry, as the case may be. 

 It is interesting to note the pertinacity with which they guard their precious charges, and the 

 vigor with which they drive away depredators and intruders of all kinds. They will frequently 

 allow a boat to pass over them, scarcely six inches above their backs, and obstinately keep their 

 ground. Suufish and such are impelled to keep their distance. There are hundreds of these 

 bowl-shaped excavations, eighteen inches or so in diameter, all along the sandy shallow shores of 

 this lake, which is very clear, and in the center some seventy feet deep, fed by bottom springs."' 



The eggs are much smaller than those of a trout, and, being heavier than the water, rest on 

 the bottom within the limits of the nest. The only estimate of their number with which I am 

 familiar is that made by Mr. E. L. Sturtevaut, who found about seventeen thousand in a Large- 

 mouth weighing two and one-half pounds. The rate of growth is easily determined by experience 

 in artificial ponds. In Granby, Connecticut, four-pound fish were taken in 1874, the progeny of 

 two hundred and fifty fish placed in the pond in 1868. The eggs require two or three weeks to 

 hatch. The parents watch them. In September the young are about two inches long; when well 

 fed they grow to four inches the first season. At two years of age they weigh about a pound, few 

 caught in the North weighing more than four pounds. Leaving the egg in June, they grow to two or 

 three inches before cold weather begins trim, sprightly little darters, with black bands across the 

 bases of their tails. Another twelvemonth finds them in the garb of maturity, eight or nine inches 

 long, and with their organs swelling in preparation for the act of spawning, which they are said to 

 undertake at the age of two years, and when less than a foot long. The ordinary size of the adult 

 fish is two and one-half to three pounds, though they are sometimes taken in the North weighing 

 six or seven pounds. In Florida the Large-mouths grow larger. A seven or eight pounder is not 

 unusual in the Saint John's; and I was told that in March, 1875, a fish weighing nineteen and one- 

 half pounds was caught in the lake at Gainesville, Florida. 



Fish-culturists have made many efforts to hatch the eggs of the Black Bass, and have never 

 succeeded. One reason for their failure, perhaps, lies in the fact that while in the shad and 

 salmon the eggs fall from the ovaries into an abdominal cavity, whence they are easily expressed, 

 in the Bass and other spiny-rayed fishes they are retained until the parent fish are ready to deposit 

 them. This failure is the less to be regretted since the young Bass niay easily be transported 

 from place to place in barrels of cool water, and, when once introduced, they soon multiply, it: 

 protected, to any desired number. 



Black Bass are very tenacious of life. The "Germantown Telegraph" mentions some taken at 



1 Mr. Small records the capture of Black Bass containing milt and spawn in November, in the Potomac (Forest 

 and Stream, iii, p. 212). "Sculls," in the same paper, October 30, states that there are in the Schuylkill Bass with 

 unripe spawn; others in July. "R. M. T." speaks of having seen a Bass of half a pound guarding a nest July 10, in. 

 the Housatonic (Forest and Stream, iii, p. 292). 

 3 Forest and Stream, iv, 357. 



