108 Tliirty-iiintli Annual Mccling 



tliat yellow bass eggs will go from two to two and a half million to 

 the quart. 



In connection with recent efforts to propagate the white bass in Ar- 

 kansas, three yellow bass were spawned by hand in the usual way, the 

 eggs being placed in jars. They hatched in five days at a temperature of 

 50 degrees F. There seems to l)e no reason why these eggs cannot be 

 artificially taken and hatched in jars. Incidentally at the same place 

 where the yellow bass were spawned by hand, two crappie were stripped 

 and the eggs also hatched in a jar, the period of incubation being the 

 same. They seemed to have many of the characteristics of pike percli 

 eggs, but were not so adhesive, and there was not so much difticulty in 

 jiandling them. I wish Mr. Lydell would tell us something about the 

 white bass work done by him. 



Mr. DwtcHT LvDELi. : In 1890 I was sent by the Michigan Fish Com- 

 mission to Wisconsin to experiment in hatching white bass. The eggs 

 were incubated in jars and I had no trouble in getting a hatching per 

 centage of from 35 to 40. However, we experienced great difficulty in 

 taking the adult bass at spawning time. We found places where thou- 

 sands of them came to the shore early in the morning to spawn, but 

 when seined up we had nothing but male fish. In the evening it seemed 

 that nothing but females came in, so we set gill nets out in 20 feet of 

 water, and nearly all fish caught were ripe females. The eggs were 

 easily fertilized by males caught in the morning, and we had no trouble in 

 hatching them. We figured white bass eggs at one and a half million 

 to the quart. We took about 20,000,000 and had no trouble in trans- 

 porting part of them to Michigan. We turned- some of them over to the 

 Wisconsin Fish Commission and the fry were planted, I think, in Ash- 

 land County waters. We operated during the month of June on Lake 

 Minocqua and Lake Mendota, also on Lake Winneconne and the Winne- 

 conne River. The fish spawned at a temperature of 62 degrees to 70 

 degrees F. The records are in the office of the Michigan Fish Commis- 

 sion and will show exactly what we did. We had no trouble in hatching 

 the eggs in jars or in stripping the fish. They were the easiest fish to 

 strip I ever handled. The males resembled yellow perch in that the 

 supply of milt was alnmdant. As an experiment we seined up several 

 thousand white bass and put them into an enclosure in the creek. This 

 enclosure was about 200 feet long and the full width of tlie creek, 30 to 

 40 feet. However, we were unable to take any eggs in this way. 



