The largemouth bass, because of its wide distribution in lakes and sluggish rivers 

 throughout Illinois, is considered by many as our most innportant ganne fish. Various figures 

 have been used to represent the recreational value of (cost of catching) a pound of bass. In 

 a recent paper, Bellrose & Rollings (1949) describe wildlife and fishery values of some bot- 

 tomland lakes along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. In this paper they use a recrea- 

 tional value, furnished to them by us, of $2.50 per pound for largemouth. This value was 

 derived from rather meager data on the time required to catch a pound of this species. Since 

 this estimate was nnade, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in its Manual of Instruc- 

 tions, River Basin Studies, has used a value of $2.00 per pound as the estimated recreational 

 value of bass. 



Weighting and measuring the catch is part of Illinois Natural History 

 Survey research at Ridge Lake. 



