American Fisheries Society. 101 



year with them, ais I have testimonials to prove in the form of 

 letters — being the worst season in five years. 



During this week beginning May Gtli, we obtained and sub- 

 jected to hatching process in hatching jars, 9,000,000 eggs iii 

 round numbers; they were estimated on the l^asis of 25,000 eggs 

 l^er quart. 



I was personally on this river and had the pleasure of taking 

 the eggs from the first fish that was handled this year, which was 

 by estimation a 20-pound fish. I took those eggs myself, im- 

 pregnated them, washed the milt off of them, and watered them 

 until they were brovight up, carried them to the hatchery six 

 miles through the canal from Epanoke Eapids to Weldon, saw 

 them measured and put up in the jars, and they mieasured sixty 

 liquid quarts, which on the basis of twenty-five thousand to the 

 quart, would be 1,500,000 eggs, from that one fish! My recol- 

 lection is that during that week there were twelve fish stripped, 

 and the average production from those twelve fish was ovei 

 700,000 eggs per fish. That is correct data, on the basis of 

 25,000 eggs per quart. 



There are one or two other ])oints that 1 will mention. I 

 wish to call attention particularly to one feature of the fishery at 

 that point, which is in the nature of the spawning habits of that 

 fish. For twenty years and more I have heard of the rock fish 

 fight at Weldon, and although I had taken eggs there in two pre- 

 vious seasons al)out twenty years ago, I never witnessed a rock 

 fight until this year ; and this season I saw hundreds of fights, as 

 they term them. When these female fish are in spawning condi- 

 tion the male fish gather around them in great numbers. There 

 will be one big fish, which may weigh five to fifty pounds, as one 

 of them did, which T took eggs from, and she will be surrounded 

 by twenty, thirty or fifty small fish, and sometimes the fishermen 

 will run one of their nets under and catch one of these large fish, 

 and thirty or more of the small fish, and what seemed to be an 

 interesting point in connection with that, is that the small fish 

 .a])pear to be the only male fish that mate with the female. They 

 are known there as perch rock, because they are the size of a 

 perch, and by actual weight they do not weigh as much as two 

 pounds apiece, and yet they seem to re]:)resent practically about 

 all there is in the way of male fishes. Those rock fights were in- 



