402 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Sandwich, near the Cape Cod Canal, through 

 which they may have come, while some, that did 

 not find their way into the official returns were 

 taken in the inlets along the outer shore of Cape 

 Cod during that summer or the summer before. 

 And the commercial catches for Barnstable County 

 rose to 8,060 pounds for 1928, to 18,665 pounds for 

 1929, and ran between about 27,000 pounds and 

 about 34,000 pounds 9 for 1930, 1931 and 1932. 



Surf fishermen, too, did better along the outer 

 Cape shore from 1930 through the next couple of 

 summers than they had for many years; (a 33- 

 pounder was taken in the surf on Cape Cod, and 

 one of 44% pounds on the south shore of Massa- 

 chusetts Bay, p. 401). And it appears that the 

 bass spread northward to the estuaries north of 

 Cape Ann during these years (unless a small stock 

 had persisted there through the poor period), for 

 some were taken in the Parker River in the late 

 1920's while 8,700 pounds were reported thence 

 in the winter of 1930, when net-fishing was al- 

 lowed, temporarily. 



This upswing was brief (the reported catches for 

 the entire coastline of Massachusetts were only 

 4,500 and 5,100 pounds, respectively, for 1933 and 

 for 1935). 10 But at least it gave a foretaste of 

 what was to come, for the waters around Cape Cod 

 were invaded during the summer of 1936 by count- 

 less schools of little bass, weighing about 2 to 3 

 pounds. These (as is now known) had been hatched 

 in 1934 (i. e., 2 years previous) in the Chesapeake 

 Bay-Delaware Bay region (p. 393), and it is inter- 

 esting, not only that they came from so far away, 

 but that this was the largest year's brood that has 

 been produced in Chesapeake Bay for as far back 

 as any record is available. 11 Unfortunately, there 

 is no knowing in what numbers they reached the 

 outer shore of Cape Cod and Cape Cod Bay in 

 1936, for no record seems to have been kept of 

 commercial catches of them there in that year. 



But they (chiefly) comprised the catches which 

 were some 5 to 16 times as great in 1936 as in any 

 of the 8 previous years 12 along the coast of Rhode 

 Island. And considerable numbers of them were 

 reported from as far north as the harbors and 

 rivers along the southern part of the coast of 



Maine, where very few bass, large or small, had 

 been caught for many years previous. 



In 1937, having now grown to an average weight 

 of about 3 to 5 pounds, they not only reappeared 

 in such numbers that a commercial catch of some- 

 thing like 80,000 pounds was reported from the 

 Gulf of Maine coast of Massachusetts, 13 but so 

 many of them spread north past Cape Ann that 

 the catch from the inner part of Massachusetts 

 Bay to the New Hampshire line (about 55,000 

 pounds) was perhaps three times as great as that 

 for the Cape Cod Bay-outer Cape region (in the 

 neighborhood of 19,000 pounds). And more of 

 these little bass were caught by anglers in the river 

 mouths and estuaries of New Hampshire that sum- 

 mer, and of Maine as far as the Penobscot region, 

 than had been the case the year before, but not 

 enough to figure in the official statistics. 



The fish of the 1934 year class averaged around 

 6 pounds by 1939 (many had reached 7-9 pounds) ; 

 and the bass seemed so well established all along 

 from Cape Cod to southern Maine that anglers 

 had largely forgotten the preceding lean years. 

 And the growth of the individual fish as they ad- 

 vanced in age, combined with fresh increments 

 from the south seem to have more than balanced 

 the death rate (natural or from fishing) for the 

 next 5 or 6 years, for the coast of Massachusetts 

 as a whole. 14 And a good part of the fish of the 

 1934 year class (still swimming in good numbers) 

 grew meantime to 18 to 25 pounds, to the delight 

 of the anglers. 



Bass fishing improved so much in the Hampton 

 region also, and in the Piscataqua River system 

 that about 19,000 pounds were reported for 1943 

 in the commercial statistics for New Hampshire, 

 where bass had not been mentioned in the fishery 

 statistics for many years. But it is evident that 

 depletion in numbers outran renewal along the 

 coast of Maine during this same period, for there 

 were many fewer fish there in the season 1940 

 then there had been in 1939 or 1938, though they 

 ran larger, averaging about 8-10 pounds according 

 to local reports. 



• To the nearest 1,000 pounds. 

 >« No data for 1934. 



" Tiller, PuW. 85, Chesapeake Biol. Lab., 1950, p. 24. 

 ■» For details, see Merriman, Fish. Bull. No. 35, V. 9. Fish and Wildlife 

 Service, vol. 50, 1941, p. 10, fig. 4; p. 13, fig. 8. 



" Assuming that about two-thirds of the catch of 28,700 pounds for Barn- 

 stable County came from the outer shore of Cape Cod and from Cape Cod 

 Bay, probably an under estimate 



1' Reported catches for Massachusetts as a whole were about 62,500 pounds 

 for 1939, about 75,700 pounds for 1940, about 99.500 pounds for 1943. no data 

 available for 1941 or 1942. 



