Snyder. — Notes on St^nped Bass 95 



completed in from thirty-six to forty-eight hours depend- 

 ing upon the temperature of the water. At first the fish 

 are very weak and He on the bottom of the aquarium but 

 every few moments they struggle upwards for an inch or 

 two then drop head first to the bottom. Gaining strength, 

 they rise higher and higher, and in twenty-four hours all 

 have left the bottom and swim about in the aquarium. 

 The shells of the eggs are very light and it is impracti- 

 cable to keep them from leaving the jars and passing into 

 the aquaria. Here they collect on the bottom of the 

 aquaria, and, in this warm water, soon decay and seem 

 to poison the water, for, if the little fish are left in the 

 aquaria with the shells, nearly all of them will die before 

 they are two days old. To avoid this, as soon as the fish 

 swim up well they are carefully transferred to clean 

 aquaria, and in this case there is practically no loss un- 

 less they are weakened by lack of food when held too 

 long. Those that cannot be transferred to a clean aqua- 

 rium without taking up egg shells are taken out and 

 planted. 



As all the eggs are taken by fishermen, often under 

 adverse conditions, and as special care is required in car- 

 ing for them in the field, it is not surprising that a larger 

 percentage of the eggs received fail to produce fish. This 

 is especially true when it is understood that on an aver- 

 age a given fisherman does not capture more than one 

 spawning fish in two or three years, and that it is only 

 five years since the fishermen began taking the eggs them- 

 selves. Yet, during this time the percentage hatched has 

 arisen from less than fifty per cent, to seventy per cent., 

 so that, although we did not receive quite as many eggs 

 last spring as on two previous years, we hatched more 

 fish than ever before. To illustrate how little opportu- 

 nity one has to experiment and study the handling and 

 care of these eggs in the field I may say that during the 

 past four seasons I have spent many days and nights on 

 the river with the fishermen and have taken the eggs 

 from only five fish, which were all the ripe fish I saw 



