164 American Fisheries Society 



not eat the tadpoles, but took them as fast as they developed 

 into frogs. About 5,000 yearling goldfish and 50 pairs of 

 large spawners were placed in the same pond. The yearlings 

 were all taken, but most of the old goldfish ( weighing from 

 one to two pounds each) escaped. However, all the young 

 goldfish were taken by the young bass of the season. This 

 same pond was supplied with hickory shad, old and young, 

 and river minnows. About 50 pairs of crappie spawners 

 were in the same pond. When drained in the fall there were 

 about 35,000 young bass and crappie. The young bass 

 were feeding upon the young crappie and upon each other, 

 and the old bass were feeding upon both young bass and 

 young crappie, and almost any live thing they could find. 

 The goldfish were all gone except about half of the old 

 spawners. There were a few tadpoles left that had not 

 changed into frogs and a few small minnows, but none of 

 the 500 goldfish that had been thrown in the pond about 

 two weeks before. These bass had learned to come to cer- 

 tain places to be fed and would take goldfish as fast as they 

 were thrown in. 



One fish, taken from this pond with a book baited with 

 a goldfish, had five goldfish in its stomach. This fish weighed 

 about two pounds and the total length of the five goldfish 

 found in its stomach was greater than the length of the bass 

 itself; yet it bit at the sixth goldfish. There were 100 bass 

 in that two-acre pond and if each one took five goldfish tor 

 a meal the supply of 500 would be devoured at one meal. 

 Last fall, while moving bass from one pond to another, we 

 found that a bass weighing 2 n 4 pounds had caught a bass 

 weighing 2 pounds and was trying to swallow it, the smaller 

 fish being head and shoulders in the mouth and throat of 

 the larger. It took some work to separate them, then both 

 swam away. It is not an uncommon thing to find finger- 

 lings and yearlings that have choked to death trying to 

 swallow their brethren. 



The number of bass that can be raised in a body oi water 

 depends largely upon the amount of food it is possible to 



