142 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



Mr. Dyche : You cannot catch the fish there. All ponds are full of 

 vegetation in my part of the country and cannot be seined. 



Mr. Lydell : We have as much vegetation as anywhere, but before 

 we seine the men rake out four or five feet from the shore. Then a 

 larger rake is put in which takes it out about 20 feet from the shore. 

 In many places we clear out a place for the seine over 60 feet 

 long down the pond. The pond is covered with a line and the man 

 simply draws the end along and drives the little fish ahead until they 

 strike the clear water, and then we take the fish all up. 



Mr. C. W. Willard, Westerly, R. I. : I have been much interested, 

 from an angler's standpoint, in Dr. Bean's lack of success in taking 

 black bass when the lake was in bloom. I would like to hear from 

 some other angler or scientist on that point. 



Mr. Meehan : We cannot get the bass under those circumstances 

 and at that time unless we get where the wind has blown the bloom 

 away; and there you can sometimes get them, but not freely then, 

 because they seem to be sluggish or half sick. 



Mr. Ward T. Bower, Washington, D. C. : The earlier part of Dr. 

 Bean's remarks suggests to me that we are prone to pay too little 

 attention to the food problem. I am referring to where he spoke of 

 the great avidity with which the young bass took certain forms of 

 larval life. The thought occurred to me that possibly here is one 

 reason why Mr. Lydell is meeting with such remarkable success in his 

 breeding of bass. He spoke of the enormous amount of Daphnia that 

 may be found in his pond. He also spoke of the fact that the ponds 

 that were drawn down, or partially drawn down, during the winter 

 seemed most fertile in that food. I mention this because I think that 

 oftentimes we go at the matter in rather a haphazard manner, trusting 

 to luck. Possibly it would be well for us to look into the matter a 

 little more carefully, for the output of fish certainly is gauged by the 

 amount of food that the ponds produce. 



Mr. Clark : There is one thing that I forgot while I was on my 

 feet. You know we have talked a great deal about the chara moss 

 and what a great food producer it is. I think at one time Dr. Evermann 

 had much to say in regard to chara moss. Now we have this year met 

 with rather poor results in rearing fish in some of our ponds, and I 

 would like to ask Dr. Evermann if he thinks it would be possible for 

 the growth of moss in one year in a pond to be so great that it would 

 affect the food supply by smothering or some other process. I have an 

 idea about it myself but I would fike to ask him that question. 



Dr. B. W. Evermann, Washington, D. C. : I really know nothing 

 definitely regarding the matter, but all the experience that I have had 

 leads me to believe that the quantity of food supply would necessarily 

 be affected in even as brief a period as one year by the growth of chara 

 or any similar species of aquatic plant. 



As I look at it, chara would be most useful, or is most useful, because 

 of its disposition to mat down and to furnish a nidus in which these 

 small crustaceans and small protozoans and other small forms of animal 

 life may thrive ; and I can easily conceive that the matting down may 

 be so dense as to overdo the thing; but ordinarily not. 



