EXPERIMENTS IN REARING BASS FROM 

 NO. i TO NO. 2 FINGERLINGS 



By Dwight Lydell 



As the applications for bass in Michigan have been in- 

 creasing at a remarkable rate during the last few years, it 

 has become evident that something must or might be done to 

 supply these applicants with fish. As no money was avail- 

 able for enlarging the plant and thereby increasing the out- 

 put, and as nearly all applicants expect at least four or five 

 cans, it occurred to me that if our bass of three-fourths to 

 one inch in length, and put up at 500 to 1,000 to the can 

 (according to the distance shipped), could be reared to 

 about two inches in length and shipped at 250 or 500 per 

 can, at least one-half more applicants could be supplied and 

 they would be as well or better satisfied. 



Anyone not familiar with the feeding of young bass of 

 the length mentioned above has no idea what he is up against 

 until he attempts to raise a few thousand. It is easy enough 

 t<> teach the adult bass to take liver when cut up into strips 

 to resemble a worm when sinking, but to prepare liver in 

 tin's form for thousands of one-inch fish would be an endless 

 task. 



Unlike most other fishes, the desire of the bass, both 

 large- and small-month, is for something moving, something 

 alive. This makes it doubly hard for the fish culturist to 

 find a prepared food or to prepare one that the bass will take 

 in quantities large enough to make them grow rapidly. At 

 the Mill Creek station in Michigan, where over one and one- 

 half millions of bass in the various stages from advanced fry 

 to no. 3 fingerlings are shipped each year, experiments in 

 feeding the one-inch fish have been carried on during the 

 past season with ground liver, beef, crayfish, clam meat 

 and suckers. 



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