598 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 
operations from the time the male fish begins to prepare the bed until a good many 
days atter the hatching is completed, and we know that the male bass guards the 
bed against all intruders. He will put up the stiffest kind of a fight against any 
animal that approaches the bed with a view of preying upon the spawn. There is 
no danger of a carp ever looting the spawn from a black bass bed. On the other 
hand I do not think the carp can retaliate against the bass in any way, shape or 
form. While the bass is preying on the carp, the carp can not come back at them 
in any way. In other words, in the interchange of hostilities between the two 
species, the bass gets the better of it at every stage of the proceedings, and I think it 
is a perfectly natural result that the bass should increase in waters where there is an 
abundance of carp. 
* * * * * * * 
Mr. Lypetu. I never have known but a single instance where the carp has 
destroyed the spawn of the black bass, and I never knew of their destroying any 
other spawn. I have handled and opened what few carp were caught at the Detroit 
river, Belle Isle, fisheries, during the last ten years, but never found any spawn in 
them.@ 
* * * * * x * 
The Presipent [Mr. Dickrrson]. I have made this assertion, that no carp ever 
got hold of an egg of a black bass unless Mr. Bass had first been taken off from that 
spawning bed. I do not believe there is such a thing as a carp ever having devoured 
a single egg from a black bass bed where the black bass was on the bed. Of course 
if the beds are deserted that is different, but as long as the bass is alive and guard- 
ing the bed, no carp ever got a single egg. 
Other opinions were expressed, all with the same tenor; but it must 
be remembered that these are in most cases only opinions. They are 
expressed by practical fishermen, however, men who have had more 
experience with the black bass and with the carp than almost any one 
else in this country, and for this reason their opinions must be given 
weight.” 
In the Transactions of the Thirty-second Annual Meeting of the 
same society (1903, p. 54) a statement similar to the above is made by 
Mr. J. L. Leary. It is in part as follows: 
As to his [the carp’s] destroying the eggs or young fish, it is not a fact. My 
experience is that I could not raise the crappy in clear water, and I adopted the plan 
of putting so many carp in crappy ponds, and I raised some crappy and no carp, 
showing that the young carp are all destroyed by the crappy. The smallest sunfish 
can chase him away, for the carp is a big coward; the carp is a rapid grower and a 
good fish. 
While we are discussing the case of the carp it may be well to give 
a little more fully the ideas of two members of the American Fisheries 
Society (Transactions of the Thirtieth Annual Meeting, 1901) as to 
the probable increase of these fish, as has been suggested above, on 
account of having young carp for food. Mr. Dickerson, of Detroit, 
aThis fishery is not prosecuted during the spawning season of the bass; the statement is meant to 
refer to white-fish spawn. 
b This question should be tested by introducing a few carp into a bass breeding pond. 
