(2) Records of the catch of licensed pound nets in New Jersey. Since 

 1921 it has been required by law that pound-net operators report these to 

 the Board of Fish and Game Co iimis sinners (Table 3). These records are con- 

 tinuous and specify location of nets. Since the returns are on an annual 

 basis, seasonal distribution of the catch is not recorded. 



(3) Catch records transcribed from the books of companies and persons. 



In most of these, daily catches were recorded, and from the records themselves 

 or froiTi other sources, it has been possible to determine the numbers of nets 

 operated. Of special interest are the records of the catch of the pound-net 

 fishery conducted by the Vail family between I88L1 and 1923 in ?ort Pond Bay, 

 Montauk, New York, (Table h) ■ These records were put at my disposal (with 

 permission to oublish) by Capt. Charles Vail. Th^ cover the entire period 

 of the remarkable temporary increase in abundance of weakfish in New York 

 and southern New England (Bigelow and Welsh, 1925) in the first decade of 

 the present century, and since the catches were recorded daily, it is pos- 

 sible to compare the seasonal distribution of the catches before, during and 

 after the period of abundance. 



(U) Daily records of pound-net catches kept since 1928 by pound-net 

 operators on forins furnished by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 

 Many of these records include accounts of the numbers of nets lifted each 

 day as well as the numbers in operation during each part of the season. 



Save for interruptions froia storms and from the practice of occasion- 

 ally withdrawing the nets for drying in order to kill fouling organisms, 

 Dound-nets are fishin^; continuously even though the catch may not be removed 

 daily. However, some fish which enter the net escape, for Monday catches, 

 (nets are seldom lifted on Sunday) although larger than Saturday or Tuesday 

 catches, are on the average somewhat less than twice as large. Since detailed 

 records of the numbers of nets lifted daily are not available for all years, 

 the catch-per-lif t could not be computed even had it been desirable to do 

 so. Consequently the average catch-per-net was estimated by dividing the 

 total catch reported for each locality by the number of nets operated there 

 during the period under investigation. There is no reason to suspect that 

 the practice of lifting nets daily on week days chaniy,ed significantly dur- 

 ing this periodj hence the average catches-per-net are probably comparable 

 fixjm one year to another. 



Biological observations . — In each year from 1928 through 1932, field 

 observers stationed in certain localities where pound-net catches are landed 

 measured daily a number (usually 50) of weakfish taken at random from each 

 pound-net boat. They also took scale samples, usually from 10 specimens in 

 each sample of 50 . They recorded lengths to the nearest half -centimeter. 



For localities north of Delaware Bay, the length samples were grouped 

 into periods of varying duration so that as nearly as could be determined 

 by inspection, the size com.position was the same for each period. In the 

 following discussion these will be referred to as grouped samples. I then 



