256 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Habits. — Striped bass are resident throughout the year wherever found except 

 for the spawning migration touched on hereafter. They chiefly frequent shoal 

 estuaries, particularly on weedy bottom, though some — especially the large fish — lie 

 in the surf along sandy beaches or about rocky headlands, islets, and ledges, while 

 others again may run up rivers for long distances. 



Bass do not move out to sea in winter as do herring and various other fishes, 

 but remain in the river mouths and estuaries, merely retreating to the deeper 

 reaches, bays, and coves where they are often speared through the ice and netted 

 beneath it, or, if on open coasts, to slightly deeper water. But though more or 

 less sluggish during the cold^season, it seems that they do not hibernate but feed 

 when opportunity offers. 



Bass of old gathered about our river mouths in June for spawning, though 

 there is no regular run of them comparable to the runs of salmon, alewives, or 

 shad. They are usually described as anadromous — that is, running up fresh 

 rivers to breed — which is true in the sense that they always enter some stream 

 and never spawn in the open sea. Bass often spawn in brackish water, however, 

 and most of them do so in the lower reaches. According to latitude bass spawn late 

 in spring and early in summer, the available evidence pointing to June as the height 

 of the season in the Gulf of Maine. 



The eggs (about 3.6 mm. in diameter) are semibuoyant — that is, they sink 

 but are swept up from the bottom by the slightest disturbance of the water— 

 and this is so prolific a fish that a female of only 12 pounds weight has been known 

 to yield 1,280,000 eggs, while a 75-pound fish probably would produce as many as 

 10,000,000. The eggs hatch in about 74 hours at a temperature of 58°; in about 

 48 hours at 67°. By autumn the young fry produced in Gulf of Maine waters are 

 2 to 3 inches long, and of old when bass were still plentiful many of these little 

 ones were netted in winter with smelt and tomcod in the Kennebec and other streams 

 of Maine. 19 In more southern waters where bass commence spawning earlier the 

 fry may be an inch long in June and grow to a length of 4J/£ inches by October. 

 In captivity they have been known to grow from 6 inches long to 20 inches in the 

 space of 11 months, and while nothing is definitely known of the rate of growth of 

 the older fish in the sea, the fact that bass 20 in a certain pond in Rhode Island have 

 been described as gaining weight from 1 pound in June to 6 pounds in October 

 suggests that they increase very rapidly in size when food is plentiful. 



The age at which the bass matures is not known, but they are certainly long 

 lived, for one kept in the New York Aquarium lived to an age of about 23 years. 21 



Commercial importance. — Bass are so rare in the Gulf of Maine that they are 

 no longer of importance there either to commercial fishermen or to anglers. West 

 and south of Cape Cod, where they are more plentiful, their excellence as a food 

 and game fish is proverbial. Bass are taken in gill nets, stop nets, seines, traps, 

 and pounds, and are caught about rocks, in the surf, and in estuarine waters on hand 

 lines and with rod and reel. 



» Atkins (1887) gives much information as to the former status of bass in the rivers of Maine. 



» Bean, 1903. 



»' Bulletin, New York Zoological Society, Vol. XVI, No. 60, November, 1913, p. 1049. 



