398 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



years included a good number of very large fish 

 (p. 403). 



Anglers have also come to realize recently that 

 bass are to be caught in various bays and river 

 mouths along the western shoreline of Nova 

 Scotia. But no definite information has reached 

 us as to how plentiful they are there, or how large. 



The regional contrasts in the abundance of bass 

 along different sectors of the coastline of our 

 Gulf may be illustrated more concretely by the 

 commercial landings for 1945. 78 



Outer Cape Cod and Cape Cod Bay 7 ' — 



perhaps about 57,000 lbs. 



Cape Cod Canal to New Hampshire line 51, 100 lbs. 80 



New Hampshire 9,000 lbs. 



Maine None reported. 



St. John River system, New Brunswick 2,400 lbs. 



Minas Basin, Cobequid Bay and Shubena- 



cadie River region, Nova Scotia 13,800 lbs. 



Annapolis County, Nova Scotia 3,100 lbs. 



West coast of Nova Scotia 



800 pounds in 1944; none reported in 1946. 



A regional contrast of another sort, of interest 

 to anglers, is that really large bass of (say) 30 

 pounds and upwards, are far more plentiful along 

 the Massacbusetts coast (especially in Cape Cod 

 waters) than they are anywhere farther north and 

 east in our Gulf. 



Localities along the outer coast of Nova Scotia 

 where we have heard (or read) of stripers are the 

 head of Mahone Bay; head of Chedabucto Bay; 

 and Mira Bay and other harbors of Cape Breton. 

 The numbers caught there are so small that they 

 are not included in the published statistics of the 

 commercial catches for the counties in question. 

 The shoal estuaries, however, of the Richibucto 

 Bay region and also the estuary of the Miramichi 

 River (on the southern shore of the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence) harbor isolated populations of bass 

 plentiful enough to have yielded commercial 

 catches of about 3,800 pounds and 9,000 pounds, 

 respectively, in 1929, 4,100 and 3,000 pounds in 

 1931. 81 And there is also a population (or popu- 

 lations) below Quebec in the lower St. Lawrence 

 River, of bass that winter in that same general 

 region, as proved by marking experiments recently 



" The most recent year for which detailed statistics are readily available- 



n Assuming that about $i of the Barnstable County catch of 86,200 pounds 

 was taken along the outer shore of Cape Cod and in Cape Cod Bay (prob- 

 ably an underestimate). 



u Assuming that about H of the Plymouth County catch of 75,000 pounds 

 was taken on the Massachusetts Bay side. 



" This is the most recent year for which information is available for North- 

 umberland and Kent Counties. 



carried out by Vladykov. 82 There are enough of 

 them, in fact, around Isle d'Orleans for bass fishing 

 to be a favorite sport there. But the commercial 

 catches are so small as to suggest that the stock of 

 bass is not very large. 83 



It has been known for many years that bass 

 spawn in the St. John River, 84 and it is probable 

 that they also spawn in the small streams trib- 

 utary to Minas Basin and Cobequid Bay at the 

 head of the Bay of Fundy; in Grand Lake at the 

 head of the Shubenacadie River, and probably in 

 the Annapolis River. It is generally believed, 

 also, that some bass spawned of old in all the 

 larger rivers from the Penobscot westward. 

 Great numbers, so small (2-3 inches) as evidently 

 to be fry of the year, were caught, for example, 

 in winter in the 1880's in the Kennebec, where 

 ripe fish also have been reported 85 from the end 

 of June into July. But the only Maine or Mas- 

 sachusetts streams where we find evidence of 

 spawning bass in recent years are the Mousam, 

 in Maine, where fishermen have reported taking 

 females with ripe eggs on several occasions; 89 

 and the Parker, in Massachusetts, where Merri- 

 man 87 took three fry of the year 2% to 3% inches 

 (7.1-8.5 cm. long) on August 4, 1937. Thus it 

 seems sufficiently established that a great majority 

 of the bass that summer in the western side of 

 our Gulf come from spawning grounds to the west 

 and south. 



Merriman's 88 painstaking investigations show 

 beyond reasonable doubt that most of the little 

 bass of 2 to 5 pounds that appeared in great num- 

 bers along southern New England and to the 

 northward in 1936 (p. 402), following a period 

 of great scarcity of bass there, had been hatched 

 two years previously (1934) in the region of 

 Chesapeake Bay, perhaps some of them in the 

 Delaware Bay region. Some of the abundant 

 year classes of 1940 and 1942, which appeared in 

 our Gulf in 1942, and 1944, also may have come 



" Rapp. Gen. Minlstr. Chasse et Pecb., Quebec, Pecheries (1945-1947) 

 1947, p. 50. 



M The reported catch for 1948-1949 was only about 1,800 -1,900 pounds (17 

 quintals; See Rapp. Gen. Ministr. Chasse et Pech., Quebec, Pecheries 

 (1948-1949) 1949, p. 94). 



•« Adams, Field and Forest Rambles. 1873, Pt. 3, Fishes, p. 248. 



" Atkins, Fish. Ind. U. S., vol. 5, Sect. 1, 1887, p. 693. 



w Towne, State of Maine Striped Bass Survey, Maine Devel. Comm. and 

 Dept. Sea and Shore Fisheries, 1941 [appro*, date), p. 14. 



" Fishery Bulletin No. 35, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1941, vol. 50, 

 p. 17. 



" Fish. Bull. No. 35, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1941, pp. 46-52 



