276 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



weighing as much as that, but that must be entirely exceptional and I 

 experience would not be repeated again if you lived to be as old as I am. 



Dr. B. M. Briggs, Brooklyn : My experience is that this year they 

 are running small, and some years ago they ran very large — 10 to 12 

 pounds — ofif Sheepshead Bay. They appear to run of uniform size 

 when they run in schools, but this year thy have been running small 

 and the only way to tell is to take five to seven years and average them. 

 Probably the large ones come in once in five or six years. 



Dr. Gill: That remark is correct, that is, that they are associated 

 together in schools in approximately the same size. Indeed many schools 

 of fish do that. You will find a school of large and a school of small 

 fish, and the average is that which may be derived from the considera- 

 tion of the schools of one year in comparison with the schools of an- 

 other; the average is very often exceeded. 



Mr. Kenneth Fowler, New York: The experience in the whole- 

 sale fish trade of New York in regard to weakfish I think largely 

 demonstrates that the smaller fish are caught in the coastwise waters, 

 and that the large fish are almost entirely caught in the outside waters. 

 The catch for New York market is made largely by fishing smacks and 

 seining operations in practically the open waters of the ocean. Every 

 year we have large catches of weakfish, 50,000 to 100,000 pounds, seined 

 in the open ocean, and the fish will average from 5 to 7 pounds right 

 through the catch. 



Also it is a fact that the size of the weakfish differs in different 

 years, and that has been amply demonstrated by experience in the trade 

 back ten or fifteen years. But this year, notwithstanding the statement 

 of the gentleman who has just preceded me, I think at least one-half 

 of the catch of the weakfish by the seining fleet for the New York 

 market has averaged at least 5 pounds. Our experiences further go 

 to show that the run of particularly small fish comes on in the fall of 

 the year, and that the large fish are caught almost entirely in the early 

 months of the summer, June and July, running until the early part of 

 August, with exceptional runs of large fish in the fall. 



