Rock Bass ; Redeye ; Goggle-eye 



small minnows, white grubs, and angleworms are best. It will 

 take the trolling spoon quite readily and the spinner and the 

 bucktail also are successful lures. Minnows may be used either 

 in still-fishing or in trolling. During the summer grasshoppers are 

 a good bait, and pieces of freshwater mussel or yellow perch 

 are e.xcellent. In the fall still-fishing with small minnows usually 

 meets with success. Casting with the artificial fiy is not a com- 

 mon method for catching the rock bass, yet we have had many 

 good rises and have taken some fine examples in that way; we 

 have also taken it on the artificial frog. Small crawfish also are 

 a tempting bait. 



As already stated, they are pretty gamy when first hooked, 

 and make quite a fight at times, especially at first, and again 

 when brought alongside the boat. 



As a pan-fish the rock bass is not equal to the bluegill. 

 Its flesh is softer and less flaky, and is apt to have a muddy 

 taste unless the fish comes from rather cool, clear water. We 

 are inclined to think that those from streams are of better flavour 

 than the ones taken from lakes. 



The rock bass has been handled to some extent by the 

 United States Fish Commission, through whose operations it has 

 been introduced into waters which it did not previously inhabit. 



Head 2|; depth 2 to 2^; eye 3-^ to 4^; snout 4; maxillary 

 2-^; D. XI, 10; A. VI, 10; scales about 6-39-12, 6 to 8 rows on 

 cheek; coeca 7; vertebrae 14+18; gillrakers 7 to 10. Body ob- 

 long, moderately compressed, head large; profile in adult some- 

 what depressed above the eyes; mouth large, the maxillary 

 reaching middle of pupil; gillrakers developed only on lower 

 part of arch ; preopercle serrate near its angle. Colour, olive 

 green, conspicuously tinged with brassy, and with much dark 

 mottling; the young irregularly barred and blotched with black, 

 and with very little brassy; the adult with a dark spot on each 

 scale, these forming interrupted black stripes; a black opercular 

 spot; dark mottlings on the soft dorsal, caudal and anal; eye 

 more or less red. 



In the Roanoke River of Virginia is found a rock bass closely 

 resembling the common rock bass. It seems to differ only in 

 having the scales on the cheek minute and imbedded and wholly 

 invisible over most of the cheek, and in having the profile over 



340 



