84 Tzvcnty-sevcnth Annual Meeting 



LARGE-MOUTHED BLACK BASS. 



riethods of Hatching and Rearing. 



A great deal has been said and written, at former meetings 

 of this society, on bass culture, by persons of much greater ability 

 than myself, therefore do not expect an elaborate essay from me. 

 But as we departed somewhat from the usual method of handling 

 our bass spawners at the Nebraska hatcheries the past season, 

 possibly my experiments and the results obtained will prove of 

 interefct to those engaged in this branch of fish culture. 



Our main spawning pond has a surface area of about one 

 acre and, with the exception of the kettle, or drainage point, 

 averages about two feet in depth; bottom being both mud and 

 sand. 



Previous to the spring of 1896 it had been the custom to 

 place the spawners in the pond as soon as the ice melted of¥, 

 together with a large number of chubs and shiners to serve as 

 food and pay no more attention to them until the pond was 

 drawn off in the fall to remove whatever young bass there might 

 be. This haphazard manner of propagation, of course, resulted 

 in rather indififerent success. 



In the spring of 1896 I used gravel spawning beds with brush 

 shelter and removed a large number of the fry to another pond 

 when about a month okl and fed ground crayfish with consider- 

 able success. 



The spawning season for bass, in our ponds, extends usually 

 over a period of about six weeks and I noticed when we trans- 

 ferred the fry there was a great difference in the size of some as 

 compared with others and after the fry was moved I noticed that 

 although I fed an abundance of ground crayfish, and there was 

 considerable insect life in the pond, the larger fr\' preyed on 

 the smaller ones continually, diminishing the number to a con- 

 siderable extent. 



In the spring of 1897 I decided to change the method of 

 handling the spawners entirely; instead of transferring them from 

 the winter pond to the spawning pond when the ice melted ofY, 

 we placed the spawners in a pond that had previously been used 

 for trout where temperature was about 55 degrees. 



We then drew off the water in the spawning pond about the 

 1st of May and allowed it to remain dry for ten days. We then 

 placed eight wagonloads of mixed fine and coarse gravel on the 

 bottom of shallow portions of the pond, in spots or beds about 

 eight feet square and about two inches deep. We also put in 

 twelve spawning boxes made of wood three feet square with 



