Report of tf)e superintendent of 

 v$tate Hatcheries. 



Caledonia, N. Y., October i, 1898. 



To tl)e Commissioner^ of Fisheries, Game and Forests: 



GENTLEMEN : — The work for the year closing September 30 has been highly 

 satisfactory, and in importance and value exceeds that of any previous year. 



At the beginning of the fiscal year, work was commenced on a new hatchery at 

 Constantia, on Oneida Lake, in Oswego county, and the same was completed, 

 equipped and all ready for work April I. The Commission named it the Oneida 

 Hatchery. A special appropriation of $6,000 for acquiring a suitable site, building 

 and equipping of a fresh-water fish food hatchery, was passed by the Legislature of 

 1897. The work was finished within the amount of the appropriation, and it is a 

 first-class hatchery in every respect. Pike-perch, yellow perch, ciscoes and whitefish 

 are among the fish that will be hatched there the first year. The pike and the perch 

 are hatched in the spring, ciscoes and whitefish in the fall and winter. The manner 

 of hatching the above-named fish is called the jar-method ; glass jars, each holding 

 about four quarts of eggs, are used. Trout are hatched in an entirely different 

 manner. The hatchery has the capacity for handling 125,000,000 eggs of the spring- 

 spawning fish, and again in the fall and winter of 35,000,000 eggs of the fall or 

 winter-spawning fish, such as whitefish and ciscoes. 



It is the intention to build ponds for black bass in connection with this hatchery, 

 where the bass can deposit their eggs naturally, and the young bass be collected and 

 distributed. Comparatively few people know that black bass have never been hatched 

 artificially like trout, mascalonge, pike-perch, shad, whitefish, etc. The nearest 

 approach has been to confine a limited number of bass in one or two artificial ponds 

 so constructed that after the eggs were hatched and the young old enough, the adult 

 bass were taken or driven out of the ponds and the young collected and fed until they 

 could be distributed. I trust some one will have the time and patience to continue 

 experimenting in the line of artificial bass hatching, as I believe it can and will yet be 

 done. Then, and not until then, will it be possible to supply a sufficient quantity of 

 black bass to meet all the requisitions made by our citizens. The shortening of the 

 legal or open season for catching bass cannot but help to increase the number of 

 these fish. 



