228 American Fisheries Society 



the wild stock brought to the hatchery. In order to im- 

 prove this situation, we set about to find a way whereby 

 the spawn might be obtained from wild waters. At first 

 we studied spawning conditions in our inland lakes. We 

 found that invariably the perch spawn during the night, 

 coming to the shallower parts of the lake and hanging 

 their ribbons of eggs on brush or rushes or any fairly 

 suitable place. We also found that nearly all of this spawn 

 was destroyed by turtles and other enemies in the lake. 

 Even the perch themselves fed upon it the next day. 



Early one morning we made a tour of a lake known 

 to contain many adult perch and found that quantities of 

 the spawn could be collected and shipped to the hatch- 

 eries. We also found that nearly one hundred per cent 

 of the spawn was fertile and in some instances far better 

 than that obtained from the station ponds. But this only 

 supplied us with a limited quantity; therefore, observa- 

 tions were made on waters of the Great Lakes. At Wild- 

 fowl Bay, in the Saginaw district, where adult perch were 

 quite abundant we found that during the spawning sea- 

 son hundreds of millions of perch eggs were destroyed by 

 being washed ashore in great windrows along the beach. 

 It is safe to say that two hundred million were lost in 

 this one locality. Collecting operations have since been 

 carried on there two seasons and the supply has been 

 unlimited. There seems to be no reason why nearly all 

 of these eggs could not be rescued and sent to our hatch- 

 eries, provided equipment for handling them were avail- 

 able. As most of them are in the eyed stage when they 

 are washed ashore and are a total loss to the waters from 

 which they come, I see no reason why other states should 

 not profit by securing some of these eggs. 



Experiments heretofore in hatching the eyed spawn have 

 always been carried on with the old Chase hatching jar, 

 but this season we found that about ten million of the 

 eggs placed in a fry tank twelve feet long, four feet wide 



