METHODS OF COLLECTING AND HATCHING BUFFALO- 

 FISH EGGS AT THE U. S. FISHERIES BIOLOGICAL 

 STATION, FAIRPORT, IOWA. 



By H. L. Canfield, 



Superintendent of Fish-culture. 



The rapidly decreasing supply of the food fishes of the 

 Mississippi River and tributary streams, makes imperative the 

 need for additional knowledge regarding their habits. More 

 applicable measures for their protection may then be instituted 

 and the natural increase may be supplemented, as far as possible, 

 by artificial means. Prior to the time the work was taken up in 

 an experimental way at the Fairport Station, absolute failure or, 

 at most, very little success had resulted from the efforts of fish 

 culturists to collect and hatch the eggs of the buffalo-fishes of the 

 genus Ictiobus. A brief statement, then, of the methods we have 

 employed and the results obtained, will be of interest and value. 



The spawning of the buffalo-fishes, of which there are three 

 recognized species in our vicinity, takes place ordinarily between 

 April 15th and May 15th, in that section of the Mississippi River 

 between Davenport and Keokuk, Iowa, at which time the annual 

 spring rise of the river occurs. During this rise the lowlands, which 

 in times of ordinary water stages are dry, become inundated and 

 furnish very favorable spawning grounds for the buffalo. Knowing 

 the movements of the fish and realizing the impossibility of taking 

 many of them with seines, the commercial fishermen catch them 

 chiefly with fyke-nets provided with wings and with funnel 

 hoop-nets. The fyke-nets are set mainly on inundated lands in 

 the woods adjacent to rivers and inland sloughs, where there is a 

 current of water, while the hoop-nets are used along the shores and 

 entrances to inland sloughs. The larger part of the eggs hatched 

 at Fairport during the past three seasons was secured from fish 

 taken and marketed by the commercial fishermen, thus represent- 

 ing a supply which would otherwise have been a total loss. It has 

 been noted that, as the water recedes the catch of buffalo greatly 

 diminishes. From the fact that many of these, taken at this time, 

 are still unripe, it is presumed that such unripe fish naturally 



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