NATURAL HISTORY OF REDFISH, ETC., OF TEXAS 137 



the intercoastal bays and lagoons. Incidental but important collecting also was 

 conducted in the waters of Baffin, Alazan, Mesquite, Espiritu Santo, Lavaca, and 

 Matagorda Bays, as well as about Cedar Bayou and Cavallo Passes and along the 

 shores of the Gulf of Mexico from Cedar Bayou Pass to Corpus Christi Pass. Much 

 of the territory fished was closed to all forms of net fishing and consequently provided 

 ideal conditions for an examination of the natural fish populations. 



SAMPLING OF FISH POPULATION 



A perfect method of sampling an unknown fish population requires in the 

 beginning a perfect knowledge of tliis population. No detailed observations on the 

 natural abundance and distribution of the redfish, black drum, or spotted sea trout 

 in any particular locahties along the Texas coast had ever been recorded, and what 

 information was available was extremely fragmentary and unreliable. The field 

 operations, as a matter of sheer necessity, had to be devoted largely to an effort to 

 secure at definite intervals adequate samples of young and adult fish for data on 

 maturity, time and place of spawning, age, rate of growth, and seasonal distribution 

 and movements. Where and how these fish were to be captured constituted one of 

 the first problems for the investigator to solve. 



All catches made by any type of gear were supervised individually by the 

 writer, and the results were tabulated and filed for future compilation and study. 

 Since the investigator was in touch with the collecting operations, he was able to 

 sense, by the changing composition and character of the catch in various localities, 

 any unusual movements of the fish. As a rule, all food fishes captured were measured 

 by the writer for total length from the tip of the snout to the end of the mid-caudal 

 (tail) fin ray, and the sex was determined if the sexual elements were in evidence. 

 All fish above 5 centimeters were measured in centimeters, while those under this 

 length generally were measured in millimeters. Due to the great abundance of 

 larval and young fishes of most species, but a small percentage of the total number 

 secured was measured for consideration in this paper. 



Several explanations may be ofl'ered forihe lack of egg collections, which appar- 

 ently are the first things to be sought in an attempt to understand the life history of 

 any marine fish. Physical difficulties in employing the typical egg-collecting gear 

 (the fine silk tow nets) were very serious throughout the investigation, owing to the 

 shallow water and to the hordes of Medusse, or jellyfish, that filled and broke the 

 nets during the warm months of the year. So abundant are these Medusae that 

 bathing beaches on Corpus Christi Bay must be screened to prevent the bathers 

 from becoming severely poisoned by contact with the pests. Furthermore, the heavy 

 seas, often prevalent at the mouths of the passes in the Gulf of Mexico, prevented the 

 small boat needed for navigation within the shallow bays from operating in the Gulf, 

 where the majority of the marine fishes are believed to spawn. 



With the securing of larval and young fish of the species desired, and with the 

 definite indication of the general spawning areas through the nature and distribution 

 of the newly hatched fish as well as the spawning adults, it was not thought ]jractical 

 to seek the fish eggs with the time and resources at hand. In future research, how- 

 ever, an attempt can well be made to collect the eggs of the redfish, black drum, and 

 spotted trout on the basis of the information presented in this paper. 



