American Fisheries Society. 135 



Mr. Atkins: How often in other parts of the year? 



Mr. Leary : L feed usually twice a week. 



Q. Do you think they require less during the spawning sea- 

 son 



A. I do. Proof of that is that during the spawning season 

 bass are hard to catch even with the most tempting bait. 



Mr. Atkins: I have an idea that possibly it might be worth 

 while to withhold food entirely from them at that season. 



Mr. Leary : Possibly it might, but the bass that are not nest- 

 ing want a little feeding, and those are the fellows that get it. 



Mr. Titcomb: What is the length of your spawning season? 



Mr. Leary: From about the 8th of February until June — 

 occasionally, as I say, we find a nest in June, Imt the larger num- 

 ber of nests have always been found in the month of April. 



Mr. Titcomb : Wont you explain about the food which you 

 collected for your young fish? 



Mr. Leary : The crawfish we collect by seining the pools and 

 an adjoining creek known as Purgatory, and we have secured 

 as many as a barrel at a time, and we carry them home and stoi'o 

 them in one of our nursery pools, keep them alive, and all the 

 dead fish we have at that time, or left over from feeding the 

 bass from the Blanco river, mud shad and mullet, we throw in 

 to the crawfish. In feeding we break the tails off the crawfish, 

 skin them and prepare them by chopping very fine and screening, 

 feeding only the tails to the young fish, and the residue of th(> 

 fish we throw in to the old bass, which they readily take. 



Mr. Titcomb : Don't you also collect a lot of small snails ? 



Mr. Leary : Xo, because we have an abundance of snails in 

 the ponds — especially at this season of the year when they ar.) 

 throwing off spat and little particles of jelly-like stuff' which the 

 fish like, but I do take from the holes of the Blanco river that 

 I can seine, a mud shad, and sucking mullet, we call them down 

 there, I take them home and chop them up. I skin and take the 

 bones out of all the fish that I chop and feed to my fingerling 

 l)ass. 



Mr. Titcomb : You don't cook any food for your fisli ? 



Mr. Leary: I do not. I tried liver and they do not take it 

 readily — of course we want to give them what they like most. 



Mr. Titcomb: Did you ever try mush and erawlish luixeil':' 



