FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



391 



to 10 pounds or so, which are often spoken of as 

 "school fish." The larger ones often school, but 

 the very largest, of 30 to 40 pounds and upward, 

 are more often found single or a few together. 

 They are most likely to be in schools while mi- 

 grating, but more scattered while feeding in one 

 general locality. 



Small fish (2 and 3 years old) in particular, 

 tend to school densely; also they travel consider- 

 able distances without scattering but, as Merriman 

 emphasizes, 32 it is not likely that a given school 

 holds together for any long period, for fish of 

 various sizes (i. e., ages) up to the very large ones 

 often school together, showing that different ages 

 intermingle more or less. Mixed schools running 

 from 8 or 10 pounds to 30 or 40 pounds were 

 reported repeatedly in 1950, for example. 



The bass is very voracious, feeding on smaller 

 fishes of whatever kind may be available, and on a 

 wide variety of invertebrates. Lists of its stomach 

 contents for one locality or another include alewife, 

 anchovy, croakers, channel bass, eels, flounders, 

 herring, menhaden, mummichogs, mullet, rock 

 eels (Pholis gunnellus), launce, sculpins, shad, 

 silver hake, silversides, smelt, tomcod, weakfish, 

 white perch, lobsters, crabs of various kinds, 

 shrimps, isopods, gammarid crustaceans, various 

 worms, squid, soft clams (Myra) and small mussels. 

 In our Gulf the larger bass prey chiefly on herring, 

 smelt, sand launce, eels, and silver hake, on squid 

 (on which they gorge when they have the oppor- 

 tunity), on crabs large and small, on lobsters, and 

 on sea worms (Nereis) ; while small ones are said 

 to feed to a considerable extent on gammarid 

 crustaceans and on shrimps. 



When bass are gorging on any one particular 

 prey it is common knowledge among fishermen 

 that they are likely to ignore food of other sorts 

 for the tune being. It seems also that when prey 

 is plentiful, bass are likely to gorge, then cease 

 feeding to digest, then to gorge again; also that 

 all the members of a given school are likely to do 

 this in unison, with consequent annoyance to the 

 angler. 



Bass, too, seem on the whole to be more active, 

 and especially to feed more actively, between 

 sunset and sunrise than while the sun is high. 

 In estuarine situations this fits with the habits 

 of their prey, for it is by night that the sea worms 

 (Nereis) that are the chief item in their diet there 



» Fish. Bull. 35, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1941, vol. 50, p. 43. 



emerge from their burrows to swim about. And 

 bass fishing is often much more productive by 

 night than by day off the open coast also, though 

 schools of bait fish are seen at all hours (else the 

 terns would starve), while the time when crabs, 

 etc., are most likely to be stirred up by the surf, 

 and are most easily caught around the rocks, 

 depends on the stage of the tide, not on the hour 

 of the day. So most fishermen (ourselves in- 

 cluded) believe that it is inherent in the nature of 

 the larger sized bass to avoid strong sunlight by 

 sinking to the bottom. A familiar instance is 

 the regularity with which they desert the surface 

 soon after sunrise on bright summer days at 

 places where large numbers are caught by trolling 

 during the hour or two after daybreak; the 

 eastern side of Cape Cod Bay is a local example. 



It has been discovered recently that trolling 

 deep with wire lines is often productive, irrespec- 

 tive of the time of day, at times and places where 

 bass "show" only during the early morning hours. 

 This habit, however, is not so deeply engrained 

 but that schools of bass often rise to the surface 

 in pursuit of bait fish at any time of day, or come 

 within easy casting distance of the beach. We 

 recall seeing several schools of good-sized fish 

 (those that we landed ran up to 23 pounds) 

 suddenly splashing all around our boat about 

 midday, on one occasion off Wellfleet, in Cape Cod 

 Bay, though it was only for a few hours after 

 sunrise that the several boats fishing regularly 

 there had taken any by top-water trolling for 

 some time previous. 



The best advice we can give the surf-caster, in 

 this regard, is to go fishing whatever time of the 

 day he is free to do so. 



The striper is so strictly an inshore fish that we 

 have never heard of large catches being made, or 

 schools seen, more than 4 or 5 miles from the 

 nearest point of land, 33 though the migrating 

 schools doubtless pass much farther out in crossing 

 the mouths of the larger indentations of the coast, 

 such as Delaware Bay and Long Island Sound. 

 And a few fish may stray far offshore in winter, for 

 one about 18 inches long was taken in an otter 

 trawl about 60 miles south of Marthas Vineyard, 

 in 70 fathoms of water, in February 1949 (p. 400) . 34 



» Henry Lyman informs us that bass are caught in numbeis late in the 

 autumn in the rips east of Nantucket about 4 miles out, but that verbal 

 reports of some taken during the summer of 1950 on the offshore part of Georges 

 Bank were actually based on two weakfish (p. 419). 



" Reported to us by Capt. Henry W. Klimm of the dragger Eugene H. 



