Part II.] Pond Fish. 57 



white species. The first Black crappies thai the author re- 

 members having seen in Kansas were taken at Lake View, 

 being propagated from stock that the United States Fish Com- 

 mission car planted there nearly twenty years ago. 



Spawning Habits. 



The writer has never had much success either in finding 

 or in having the opportunity of examining the spawning bed:> 

 of the crappie. The White crappie seems to prefer roily 

 water for its spawning grounds, even when clear water is 

 accessible. That they can spawn and propagate their kind 

 in roily or even muddy ^yater is plainly shown from what 

 takes place in some of the over-flow ponds along the Kansas 

 river. These ponds have muddy bottoms, are shallow — gener- 

 ally from one to five feet deep — and the water is warm; yet 

 the crappies seem to thrive in them, and under what would 

 seem to be adverse conditions they produce thousands of young 

 which are from two to four inches in length in the fall of 

 the year. 



The writer has been able at times, and in certain places, 

 to locate the spawning grounds of the crappie, and in some 

 instances to locate the fish near the spawning beds, which 

 were made in little sandy or gravelly open places more or less 

 surrounded by water plants and mosses. In these instances 

 the water was from fourteen inches to four feet deep, and 

 being slightly roily it was impossible to get any very correct 

 observations. He knew that the bed was there, and judging 

 from the way the old fish guarded the spot and bristled up 

 its spines and chased every living creature that came near 

 that particular preserve, he knew that there were eggs or 

 very young fry (fish less than one inch long) in that par- 

 ticular spot. 



Fourteen thousand and six hundred were raised in an acre 

 pond at the Hatchery during the summer of 1910, but the 

 water was too roily in this pond to see the nests, though 

 several schools of very small and almost transparent fish were 

 observed during the summer and fall. 



Food Habits. 



The crappie has rather a large mouth, the lower jaw pro- 

 truding in a way that gives it a slight bulldog or puglike 

 appearance. However, the crappies are not given to the 

 destruction of other fishes to any great extent. The author 

 has looked into the stomachs of over five hundred specimens 

 and has a fair idea of their food habits, at least in the 

 localities where he has examined them. 



A large series of specimens that were examined from Lake 

 View show between twenty and thirty per cent of fish food. 

 Most of this fish food, however, was small minnows.* At 



* Minnows are minnows, and when full grown they are still small, 

 ranging in length from two to five or six inches for most of the species. 



