SOME IMPORTANT BAIT FISHES 



top, steel blue on sides, white on 

 belly; size of females to 5 inches, 

 males to 11 inches. 



Range a/tid breeding hahifs. — 

 This minnow is found most often 

 in creeks and rivers from Montana 

 and Xew Mexico east to the Atlan- 

 tic coast and south to Florida. The 

 creek chub, sometimes called the 

 horned dace because of the tuber- 

 cles the males develop during the 

 breedino; season, spawns during 

 April, May, and June in small 

 creeks, on gravel beds at the base 

 of pools, or at the head of riffles. 

 The male prepares and guards the 

 nest during the breeding season. 

 The young fish make an excellent 

 growth in the first year, reaching 

 a length of 3I/2 inches by Septem- 

 ber. Those maturing late in the 

 fall spawn the following season. 



Food. — The creek chub seems to 

 eat anything that comes its way. 

 It has been known to feed on algae, 

 vegetable matter, aquatic insects, 

 terrestrial insects, crayfish, small 

 fish, fish eggs, chub eggs, snails, 

 and small mollusks, and it oft^n 

 rises to a trout lure. Sometimes a 

 chub stomach will contain only sur- 

 face drift. A study of 37 stom- 

 achs taken from fish collected in 

 the eastern and midwestern United 

 States showed the average percent- 

 age of the various food items to be 

 as follows: Insects, 51.3; mollusks, 

 3 ; crustaceans, 0.8 ; fishes, 5.4; cray- 

 fish, 3; annelids, 2.1; surface drift, 

 26; algae, 2.8 ; plants, 4.6; vegetable 

 debris and plant seeds, 1. ~ 



Importance. — The creek chub is 

 excellent bait for pike and panfish. 



Though it spawns in moving wa- 

 ters, it grows very well in ponds and 

 slow-moving streams. The adults 

 strip easily and the number of eggs 

 is relatively large. This fish is ex- 

 ceptionally suited to production in 

 large numbers in artificial ponds. 



PRODUCTION 



The tenacity of life of the creek 

 chub makes it a good minnow for 

 handling, holding, and transport- 

 ing. It can tolerate, to a consider- 

 able degree, exposure to sudden 

 changes in water temperature, but 

 the culture of this species is not an 

 easy task. A suitable spawning 

 area (running water in a gravel- 

 bottomed stream) must be provided 

 where natural spawning can occur, 

 or the breeders must be stripped 

 and the fertilized eggs incubated 

 in a hatchery. 



Preparing the spawning raceway 



When selecting a location for a 

 creek-chub hatchery, it is most im- 

 portant to formulate plans for the 

 number of minnows to be raised, so 

 as to determine whether a sufficient 

 volume of water is available at the 

 location to operate the needed num- 

 ber of raceways and rearing ponds. 



The general layout of an area 

 for the culture of creek chubs con- 

 sists of a stream emptying into a 

 pool. The stream provides the 

 spawning space, and the pool acts 

 as a refuge area for the breeders 

 during the spawning season and 

 later as a collecting basin or a rear- 

 ing pond for the newly hatched fry. 

 In Ohio, a successful raceway pre- 



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