598 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 



operations from the time the male fish begins to prepare the bed until a good many 

 days after the hatching is completed, and we know that the male bass guards the 

 bed against all intruders. He will put up the stiff est kind of a fight against any 

 animal that approaches the bed with a view of preying upon the spawn. There is 

 no danger of a carp ever looting the spawn from a black bass bed. On the other 

 hand I do not think the carp can retaliate against the bass in any way, shape or 

 form. While the bass is preying on the carp, the carp can not come back at them 

 in any way. In other words, in the interchange of hostilities between the two 

 species, the bass gets the better of it at every stage of the proceedings, and I think it 

 is a perfectly natural result that the bass should increase in waters where there is an 

 abundance of carp. 



****** ^ 



Mr. Lydell. I never have known but a single instance where the carp has 

 destroyed the spawn of the black bass, and I never knew of their destroying any 

 other spawn. I have handle<i and opened what few carp were caught at the Detroit 

 river. Belle Isle, fisheries, during the last ten years, but never found any spawn in 

 them.« 



******* 



The President [Mr. Dickeeson]. I have made this assertion, that no carp ever 

 got hold of an egg of a black bass unless Mr. Bass had first been taken off from that 

 spawning bed. I do not believe there is such a thing as a carp ever having devoured 

 a single egg from a black bass bed where the black bass was on the bed. Of course 

 if the beds are deserted that is different, but as long as the bass is alive and guard- 

 ing the bed, no carp ever got a single egg. 



Other opinions were expressed, all with the same tenor; but it must 

 be remembered that these are in most cases only opinions. Thej'^ are 

 expressed by practical fishermen, however, men who have had more 

 experience with the black bass and with the carp than almost anyone 

 else in this country, and for this reason their opinions must be given 

 weight.^ 



In the Transactions of the Thirty-second Annual Meeting of the 

 same society (1903, p. 54) a statement similar to the above is made by 

 Mr. J. L. Leary. It is in part as follows: 



As to his [the carp's] destroying the eggs or young fish, it is not a fact. My 

 experience is that I could not raise the crappy in clear water, and I adopted the plan 

 of putting so many carp in crappy ponds, and I raised some crappy and no carp, 

 showing that the young carp are all destroyed by the crappy. The smallest sunfish 

 can chase him away, for the carp is a big coward; the carp is a rapid grower and a 

 good fish. 



While we are discussing the case of the carp it may })e well to give 

 a little more fully the ideas of two members of the American Fisheries 

 Society (Transactions of the Thirtieth Annual Meeting, 1901) as to 

 the probable increase of these fish, as has been suggested above, on 

 account of having young carp for food. Mr. Dickerson, of Detroit, 



a This fishery is not prosecuted during the spawning season of the bass; the statement is meant to 

 refer to white-fish spawn. 

 b This question should be tested by introducing a few carp into a bass breeding pond. 



