44 REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF FISH COMMISSIONERS. 



estimated the number of eggs at two million two hundred and forty-eight 

 thousand. Their rate of growth is very rapid. Dr. C. C. Abbott, for 

 five successive years, found in the Delaware River young an inch long in 

 the second week in June. About the middle of October these had grown 

 to the length of four and a half inches. 



The young fish — five to nine inches in length — which are taken in 

 such quantities in the Potomac in February and March, are supposed to 

 be the young of the previous year. Captain Gavitt, of Westerly, Rhode 

 Island, has caught bass in June that weighed from one half to one pound, 

 put them in a pond, and taken them out in the following October, when 

 they weighed six pounds. The average size of this fish probably does 

 not exceed twenty pounds. In the Potomac, Hudson, and Connecticut 

 Rivers the largest seldom exceed thirty or forty pounds, though in the 

 Potomac fifty-pound fish are not unusual. The Fish Commission has 

 for several years had a standing oflJer of a reward for a sixty-pound fish 

 from the Potomac, but none has been forthcoming as yet. The largest 

 Striped bass on record was one weighing one hundred and twelve pounds, 

 taken at Orleans, Massachusetts, in the town cove. Such a fish would 

 be at least six feet in length. A fairly proportioned bass thirty-six 

 inches long would weigh at least eighteen pounds. 



Uses. — The Striped bass is one of the most valuable of our food fishes, 

 its flesh being firm, finely flavored, and hard enough to bear exposure 

 to the air for some time without injury. It is also the most popular 

 game fish, next to the salmon. Those in the markets are chiefly 

 obtained in seines and traps, set at various points along the coast from 

 the south side of Cape Cod to New Jersey. Great quantities are also 

 taken in the shad seines in the spring. They may be readily taken, 

 also, by heaving and hauling in the surf with menhaden bait, the fish 

 being tolled by the use of great quantities of menhaden ground into 

 small bits, and in fresh or brackish water by the use of the artificial fly. 

 At various points on the coast of southern New England are club- 

 houses, supported by wealthy amateurs for the purpose of carrying on 

 these sports. 



It has already been stated that the Striped bass are believed to be 

 less abundant in the Gulf of St. Lawrence than in former years. 

 Similar complaints are heard from the Bay of Fundy, and from Cape 

 Cod, where the period of diminution is believed to date from the last 

 advent of the Bluefish: about 1850. The bas^ fishery, in Cape Cod Bay, 

 was formerly of great importance, but the capture of. this fish is now of 

 rare occurrence. The early settlers of New England seem to have been 

 more impressed by the abundance of bass than by any other circum- 

 stances connected with the fisheries, and the early chronicles are full of 

 allusions to their exceeding plenty and excellence. 



Captain John Smith saw so many in one river, that he declared that 

 he thought he might have walked across on their backs dryshod. While 

 there can be no doubt that north of Cape Cod their numbers have 

 decreased, there is no reason to believe that elsewhere on our coast^ the 

 fisheries have had any especial eflect upon them. A Hessian officer, 

 writing in 1777, declared that enormous numbers were, at that time, 

 brought to New York; and the same might be said at the present day. 

 Three fishing gangs at Bridgehampton, New York, took over eight 

 thousand in less than a week, in December, 1874. Captain Charles 

 Ludlow secured at one set of his seine one thousand six hundred and 

 seventy-two bass, or about three and a half tons. Shortly afterwards -a 



