272 FISHES OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



125 pounds. Fish weighing from half a pound upward are- caught for market, 

 and the average weight is probably 3 to 5 pounds. 



In North Carolina striped bass are caught in some numbers throughout the 

 year, just as in the Potomac and other streams to the northward; but the princi- 

 pal run is in spring when the fish are going upstream to spawn. 



The spawning season in this state extends from late in April to early in May. 

 Probably the most important striped bass spawning ground in the country at 

 this time is in Roanoke River, in the vicinity of Weldon, where there is a fall of 

 50 feet in about 6 miles. In these rapids, where the muddy current is exceedingly 

 strong and rendered very erratic by islands, boulders, and rocks, the fish spawns; 

 and it is here that the general government has recently taken up the artificial 

 propagation of the species. The eggs are similar to those of the shad, but 

 average a trifle larger; and the number deposited by a full-sized fish may exceed 

 several millions. In 1903 Mr. S. G. Worth, while conducting hatching operations 

 on the Roanoke, stripped from a 20-pound fish a mass of eggs which after fertili- 

 zation and immersion in water measured 60 quarts, equivalent to 1,500,000 on a 

 basis of 25,000 to the quart. On April 21, 1897, a female ''rock" caught in a 

 shad seine at Avoca weighed 60 pounds, was 4 feet 4 inches long, and had ovaries 

 16 inches long and 5 inches wide, but the eggs were not nearly ripe. The roe of a 

 fish weighing over 100 pounds taken at the same place in 1896 is said to have 

 weighed 44 pounds. The average egg production of 12 fish stripped at Weldon 

 in 1903 was over 700,000. The eggs may be hatched in shad jars, and the 

 young emerge in 36 hours when the water temperature in 70° F. 



Mr. Worth (1903) has given the following very interesting account of the 

 spawning habits of this fish in Roanoke River: 



For twenty years and more I have heard of the rock-fish fights at Weldon, and although 

 I had taken eggs there in two seasons about twenty years ago, I never witnessed a rock fight 

 until this year; and this season I saw hundreds of fights, as they term them. When the female 

 fish are in spawning condition the male fish gather around them in great numbers. There will 

 be one big fish, wliich may weigh five to fifty pounds, as one of them did which I took eggs from, 

 and she will be surrounded by twenty, thirty or fifty small fish, and sometimes the fishermen 

 will run one of their nets under and catch one of these large fish and thirty or more of the small 

 fish; and what seemed to be an interesting point in connection with that is that the small 

 fish appear to be the only male fish that mate with the female. They are known there as perch 

 rock, because they are the size of a perch, and by actual weight they do not weigh as much as 

 two pounds apiece, and yet they seem to represent practically about all there is in the way of 

 male fishes. These rock fights were interesting. The fishes showed themselves on top of the 

 water and flurried the water and made noises that would attract your attention, so that you 

 would turn around to see the water breaking a hundred yards away. I thought before that 

 that there was a good deal of imagination in it, but I know that it is a fact, and any one can 

 witness it, and when that is going on it is the spawning season, which follows right on the heels 

 of the shad spawning. 



It is assumed by all the fishermen that operate on the river that tlie reddening of the 

 water is caused by the gashes made by the fishes finning one another in their attempt to get 

 nearer to the spawning female fish. It causes a bloody stain which I did not myself witness, 

 but I know it has taken place, from the great number of persons who told me about it, and that 

 the water w^as actually discolored. 



