marked with numbered opercular tags. Fish re- 

 captured after having been marked either by fin- 

 clipping during the original census or by tagging in 

 later collections provided interesting information on 

 movements and home areas of these stream species. 



the winter of 1950-51 in their home pools. Of the 

 10 that were not in the pools in which they had 

 been taken originally, 6 were relatively short 

 distances away, averaging 0.12 mile. Additional 

 evidence of attachment of smallmouth bass to home 



Table 1. - Recaptures of marked smallmouth bass in Jordan Creek. Each fish was fin-clipped at 

 some time between July 25 and September 5, 1950, to identify it with the section of the stream in which 

 it was first taken. 



The locations of the fin-clipped smallmouth 

 bass that were recaptured, table 1, indicate that 

 part of the population remains in the same general 

 area at least for several months of the year. Eighty 

 per cent of the smallmouths recaptured during the 

 late summer and fall months of 1950 were in the 

 sections of the stream in which they had been 

 marked. During 1951, 67 per cent of the recaptures 

 were in the sections in which they had been taken 

 originally. Since these recaptures did not include 

 any tagged fish, the individuals considered here 

 were, with possibly a few exceptions, only those 

 marked during the original 1950 census. The 

 possible exceptions were a few smallmouth bass 

 recaptured late in 1951 that had been taken earlier 

 in the year but that perhaps had lost their tags. 



Attachment of smallmouth bass to home pools 

 was indicated by recaptures of tagged fish in 1951. 

 Two hundred thirty-nine smallmouth bass were 

 tagged during the period subsequent to the original 

 census and previous to October, 1951. During 1951, 

 25 of these bass were retaken. Fifteen of them 

 (60 per cent) were in the pools in which they had 

 been tagged. Of these, 5 apparently had passed 



pools was supplied by recovery of many more of 

 the tagged fish early in 1952. 



Experiments on Homing Behavior 



Three experiments were planned to test the 

 homing behavior of smallmouth bass in Jordan 

 Creek. For these experiments, pools were select- 

 ed that contained fair numbers of smallmouths and 

 that were distinctly isolated by shallow riffles. In 

 each experiment, the bass were taken from one pool, 

 assumed to be the home pool, given numbered 

 opercular tags, and transferred by truck to another 

 previously selected pool. Two experiments were 

 started the last week in September, 1950, the third 

 in early October of the same year. At intervals of 

 1 or 2 weeks from the beginning of these experi- 

 ments until the stream was frozen over in November, 

 the pools from which the smallmouths had been re- 

 moved were examined for returned fish. Late in the 

 fall the pools that had received the transferred 

 smallmouths also were examined (with the exception 

 of pool II, 2, mentioned later) for fish that might 



I 



