and August 1982 because the warm air and water temperatures were too 

 stressful for tagging winter flounder. 



Evaluation of life history information 

 Sex, reproductive condition, and spawning population 



The sex ratio of winter flounder taken during the population surveys 

 was weighted in favor of females, ranging from 1.14 females per male in 

 1977 to 2.59 in 1980 (Table 18). Sex ratios during the spawning season 

 were similar to the overall ratios. The sex ratio did not remain constant 

 but changed from year to year. For unknown reasons the ratio increased 

 by approximately one female per male in even-numbered years. Since all 

 fish were sexed externally, the process may have been subject to individual 

 bias and error. 



The proportion of females classified as reproductive during the 

 spawning season ranged from 52 to 73% on a yearly basis (Table 19) . 

 Within group percentages ranged from 100% for the relatively scarce 

 females of the large size classes down to 23% in the 22 to 26-cm size 

 group where females initially became mature. These proportions were 

 used to calculate the total number of spawning females. The average 

 size of maturity for female winter flounder is probably around 25 cm 

 (Perlmutter 1947; Kennedy and Steele 1971). Therefore, except for the 

 smallest size group, most, if not all larger females were mature and 

 probably spawned in the River even though some were subjectively classified 

 as non-reproductive. This has had the effect of lowering the annual 

 estimates of spawning females and total fecundity. The original method 

 of estimation had the opposite effect and overestimated spawning females. 

 In this calculation the percentage of all females age 3 and older were 



46 



