AMERICAN FISHES IN ITALY. 

 Table VII. — Black Bass (Micropterus salmoides). 



953 



Table VIII. — Total Catch in Lake Varano in 1907. 



I was criticised for introducing the sunfish, but I believe that I do not 

 deserve it. The sunfish is of much better flavor than the ordinary bleak. 

 Delicious steaks can be cut out of the larger of them, and the fish bring a good 

 price where better known. They are also a very good food for the carnivorous 

 fishes in the lake. They increase in an extraordinary manner in shallow lakes 

 and must be fished out diligently. They do not reach any importance in deeper 

 lakes and in consequence can not have any effect. In lakes where there are no 

 salraonoids the sunfish should be an excellent item of popular food. The average 

 weight of the fish caught is 100 grams, which is reached in three years, but we 

 have caught individuals weighing 400 grams. Another advantage is that 

 except when the lake is frozen it is always possible to catch more or less sunfish, 

 a thing which is of great importance to the fisherman. The long spawning 

 season, lasting from May until the middle of August, offers the advantage that, 

 as the sunfish do not grow during the winter, there is present through almost 

 the entire year a quantity of small fishes to constitute a food for the predatory 

 species. If the sunfish now and then eats other small fry, it does not consume 

 dangerously great quantities. That it does not eat spawn is well established. 

 The fish should be of great value in Italy in swampy waters, where it thrives 



B. B. F. 190S— Pt 2— iS 



