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SEINING BASS FRY 



The warmer the water, the sooner the eggs hatch. 

 For i^erhaps a week, the fry stay in the nests, feed- 

 ing on their yolk sacs. Wlien that food is gone, 

 the fry leave the nests and start feeding on small 

 plants and insects. 



If you had been here yesterday, you might have 

 watched us draw a seine or net through this pond 

 and take out a number of 1-inch fingerlings. We 

 do this often, since the bluegills keep on spawning 

 until the end of summer if they don't become too 

 crowded. In one season, eacli of these 1-acre ponds 

 ordinarily yields 1(}0,()00 or more fingerlings of 

 tlie size (1 to 11/2 inches long) for stocking. When 

 this pond is drained at the end of the season, the 

 bluegills for next year's brood fish are put into a 

 smallei', heavily fertilized \iond for the winter. 



Come on over to this rearing pond for large- 

 mouth bass, and look at a less sociable fish. This 

 pond is only 2 to 41,^ feet deep, and you can see 

 that it contains only bass fingerlings that are all 

 about the same size. A bass eats only living mov- 

 ing food — even if it's another bass. Since this 

 is so, a pond that is to be stocked with bass fry is 

 always heavily fertilized so that it will have a 

 good crop of small plants and insects for the fry 

 to eat ; and since a hungi-y young bass often tries 



to eat any smaller bass, we put only fry of uniform 

 size into a pond. We drain a pond as soon as we 

 see any unusually large fish. If we didn't do this 

 we should have a smaller number of larger finger- 

 lings instead of a large number of small bass finger- 

 lings to put into fi.shing waters. 



Early in the spring we put 80 or more bass into 

 a pond like the one in which the bluegills are now 

 spawning. As the water temperature nears 60° F., 

 the male bass pick out nesting sites at some dis- 

 tance from each otlier. A male may form a shallow 

 saucerlike nest with his tail, or he may just select 

 an area near some roots or small sticks. He vigor- 

 ously defends his nest site from would-be in- 

 truders. Spawning begins when the water is 65° 

 to 75° F. A male gets a ripe female over his 

 nest and spawns with her. Wlien she stops drop- 

 ping eggs, he drives her away; his nest may 

 produce from 1,200 to 15,000 fry. 



The male stays over his nest, guarding the eggs, 

 which generally hatch in 4 to 10 days. Held down 

 at first by their yolk sacs, the fry generally become 

 ligliter and rise in a group or school to the top of 

 the water. Until the fry are very active, the 

 watchful male keeps them together in this school. 

 Before the school breaks up, we go out in a small 



