American Fisheries Society. 99 



cies spawning at the fisheries at the headwaters of Albemark 

 Sound and brought in tuljs and buckets full of eggs, they were 

 amazed at the quantity and also at the successful hatching which 

 resulted, and considerable attention was attracted to the subject, 

 and it was talked about in Fish Commission circles a good deal. 

 Cases of sporadic spawning of that kind have been noticed on 

 those waters once in a great many years, as they have been in the 

 waters of the Susquehanna river about Havre de Grace. Now 

 had it not been for freshets occurring in the headwaters of those 

 rivers I do not think the Fish Commission would have found 

 those fishes spawning there at all. My observations at Weldon 

 this year led me to believe that those fish were pushed off from 

 tlie falls, where they naturally lay their eggs, by excessively 

 muddy and cold water, resulting from hail storms and abnorm- 

 ally cold rain fall ; so that in that way these fish were pushed out 

 of a locality which the Fish Commission was not frequenting, 

 and came under notice. 



About ten or eleven years ago there was an extraordinary re- 

 port that came up from Edenton, North Carolina, about a catch 

 of striped bass in sturgeon nets. The fishermen in that locality 

 informed me, I being one of their acquaintances, of having put 

 out some sturgeon eleven inch mesh gill nets and catching great 

 quantities of enormous striped bass which were in spawning con- 

 dition; and it happened at that particular time that I was in j, 

 position to make a recommendation, and Superintendent Leary, 

 who is now present, was sent down to Edenton to the headwaters 

 of Albemarle Sound with a field plant, jars, etc., in order 

 to take advantage of any second catch of those fish which might 

 be made; but he was disappointed, and my inference is that it 

 happened to be a favorable year in the Roanoke river for the fish 

 to lay their eggs, and they were not pushed out of these upper 

 waters by cold muddy freshets; consequently he was unable to 

 get any eggs there. 



This year on the 1 5th of April, a party under the direction of 

 the United States Fish Commission office, I being in charge, went 

 to Weldon and pitched a camp there composed of throe canvas 

 tents, and an examination was made into those spaAvning 

 grounds with results that are extremely gratifying. At Wel- 

 don, which is about 140 miles from the lighthouse, at the mouth 



