American Fisheries Society. 69 



^Ir. Straiiahan: Our beds would be oecupied l)y s\iceeeding 

 bass. 



]\Ir. Peabody : You speak of voui- pond tbat you rented, of 

 an acre and a lialf, on wbich you raised b^rge-nionth bass. Don't 

 you mean to convey tbe idea that you ]ia\'e more success in tbat 

 pond raisino- birge-moutli 1)ass than vou do in your regubir arti- 

 jficial ponds ? 



A. Xo,sir: from five beds I had something like 100,000, 

 which is a great deal larger per cent than I had the other way. 



Q. How many did you get from this one and a half acre 

 ]Dond ? 



A. Two hundred and sixty-two thousand. 



Q. Were there any other fish in that pond? 



A. Very few; that is the reason I rented the pond. There 

 were a few sunfish, very small, some minnows. Ijut hardly any- 

 thing else ; and there was plenty of vegetation there. 1 n another 

 instance we rented a lake probably four acres in extent, and put 

 in 350 or 3G0 large-mouth bass, and got no results at all. There 

 were lots of other fish, turtles, eels and everything of that kind, 

 and our results from there were very unfavorable. In the Sol- 

 diers' Home pond two and three years ago we did very well ; Init 

 this season the pond has become full of suckers, sunfish, blue 

 gills and turtles, and our bass propagation there is commencing 

 to dwindle. Unless we can draw that pond down and gQt rid 

 of all those enemies, we Avill meet with failure there another 

 year; l)ut if I had the same pond where I could control it and 

 draw it down as I wanted it, there woiild be no trouble to get 

 a million bass from that one ])ond. The pond is al)oiit an acre 

 and a half in extent. 



Q. What do you consider the most injurious to the raising 

 of 1)ass — what enemies ? 



A. Small sunfish and minnows I have found do more to 

 destroy the young bass than anything else in the world that we 

 have ever found. I do not find that any l)eds are destroyed; 

 I never found the l)eds destroyed, but in one of our imnds last 

 year I carried on an ex})eriment for my own benefit. I had. I 

 think, fifteen l)eds of large mouth bass eggs. That ])ond was 

 alive with minnows, and the vegetation grew up tliere early. 

 About the time the voun^- l)ass were coming off the nest, there 



