SOME NOTES IN CONNECTION WITH THE BASS 
WORK AT MILL CREEK STATION. 
BY DWIGHT LYDELL. 
The output of bass from the Mill Creek Station and aux- 
ihary ponds during the season now practically closed, was as 
follows: Small mouth fry, 82,000; small mouth baby fingerlings 
and fingerlings, 24,000; large mouth advanced fry, 452,000; 
large mouth baby fingerlings and fingerlings, 88,500, all as per 
sizes herewith shown. 
As the subject of propagating bass was pretty well threshed 
over at our last two meetings, there is perhaps little to add at 
this time, at least in my own experience, that is new, but I in- 
vite your attention to one or two points that may be of interest 
and value. First, in regard to the construction of spawning 
boxes and the setting of the same, for small mouth bass. ‘Two 
years ago, at the Put-in-Bay meeting, I recommended a box en- 
closed or protected on three sides, leaving only one side open for 
the entrance of the spawners. In practice, however, I find that 
the three-sided box is too restricted and that it is much better 
to have two sides open than one, to allow more room and greater 
freedom for the circling and maneuvering of the spawning pair. 
By experiment I also found that a single row of beds placed 
twenty feet apart around a pond will turn out more fry than a 
double row with twice as many breeding fish, and the reason is 
apparent. In single rows there is little or no occasion or nec- 
essity for the fish to pass close to one bed in order to reach 
another, hence there is much less jealously, friction and scrap- 
ping. 
That the male small mouth bass will mate twice in a season 
and take care of two successive broods of fry, was demonstrated 
beyond doubt at Mill Creek this season. ‘Twenty nests, twenty 
males and twenty-eight females were placed in pond number 
three. On May 4th fourteen beds were spawned on, of which 
thirteen were productive. May 27th, twenty-three days after 
spawning, the fry were removed and shipped or transferred to 
rearing ponds. On May 29th, nine of the beds from which the 
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