284 BULLETIN OF THE BUKEAU OF FISHERIES 



attracted by the same morsels. They are also said to eat fish eggs, and no doubt 

 they do feed to some extent on herring spawn. Our own belief, from long experience, 

 is that cunners are always hungry, no matter what the stage of the tide. Probably 

 more are caught on clams than on any other bait. The little ones are a great 

 nuisance, often stealing the bait as fast as it is offered, and, being a small-mouthed 

 fish, very small hooks are best. 



Habits. — Cunners are resident the year round wherever found. The fact that 

 on several occasions great numbers have been found dead on the surface during 

 spells of unusually cold weather is positive evidence that they do not move offshore 

 in winter, as do many species of fish, but at most descend into slightly deeper water 

 to pass the cold season. Most authors have described them as hibernating in the 

 mud, or at least as lying among eelgrass or rocks in a more or less torpid state during 

 the winter, but we find no positive evidence to this effect; on the contrary 

 practical fishermen, among them Capt. L. B. Goodspeed, to whom we are indebted for 

 many notes, inform us that cunners are to be caught in abundance on precisely 

 the same spots in winter as in summer. In fact a few are landed in Boston during 

 the cold months, and the only reason more are not brought in then is that there is 

 little demand for them. 



Although its geographic range is so wide in latitude, the cunner is vulnerable 

 both to very low and to very high temperatures. Hazards of the first sort, such as 

 we have just mentioned, are more frequent south of Cape Cod, where the fish are 

 apt to be caught in very shoal water in a sudden freeze, than in the Gulf of Maine, 

 where the constant and active mingling of offshore with coastwise water usually 

 prevents the latter from chilling to the danger point. However, an event of this 

 sort took place in Massachusetts Bay in the winter of 1835, when cunners came 

 ashore in quantities between Marblehead and Gloucester. It is likewise probable 

 that low temperatures limit the breeding range of the cunner, with 55° as about 

 the lower limit to successful reproduction, and that it is owing to the cool water 

 of the Bay of Fundy that none breed there (p. 285) . On the other hand it is probably 

 the very high temperature produced by the solar heating of the flats at low tide in 

 some bays that drives the cunners out of certain inclosed ones — Duxbury Bay, for 

 example — in summer. 



Breeding habits. — Cunners spawn in June, July, and August in the Gulf of 

 Maine, always close along the coast or over such shoal offshore ledges as Cashes. 

 Whether the few that live on Georges Bank succeed in breeding in such deep water 

 is yet to be learned, but this is not unlikely since the Canadian Fisheries Expedition 

 found cunner eggs over Sable Island Bank. With the fish so common, it is no 

 wonder that its eggs have often been taken in great numbers at our tow-net stations 

 near land in July and August — for example near Race Point, Cape Cod; in Massa- 

 chusetts Bay (where I have often skimmed them in great numbers in the tideways 

 between the off-lying ledges) ; and at the mouth of Penobscot Bay, as well as in 

 sundry harbors. We have also towed cunner eggs off the outer shores of Cape 

 Cod, but most of our stations have been located too far out from the land to show 

 the abundance in which the eggs occur in the coastal zone. 



