196 TWELFTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



light. In the New York Aquarium the light is rather dim, and is therefore 

 just suitable for hatching smelt eggs. 



The tide and moon, according to Mr. Walters, control the spawning of 

 smelt. When the tide is about half up and the moon is about half grown, 

 at seven or eight in the evening, smelt run up in goodly numbers, and they 

 will arrive on the spawning grounds later and later every night after that. 

 The)' ascend the streams until they find a good, clean gravel bed or coarse 

 stones and lie there and spread their eggs all over the bottom. 



Smelt eggs have not been carried out of water very long, but they have 

 been shipped to the Bisby Club and the Sacandaga Club and reported good 

 on arrival. They have been carried in cans of water from Brookhaven, a 

 journey lasting eight hours. 



On March 10, at the small creek at Cold Spring Harbor, near the 

 hatchery a few smelt were caught at night. At Great River the pool was 

 seined every night and males chiefly were taken. It is believed that females 

 for the most part were caught in gill nets at the river mouth. A few smelt 

 were also taken on the night of March 10 at Huntington. Up to March 18 

 only about 7,000,000 eggs had been secured, and up to March 21 about 

 17,000,000 — Centerport having furnished the most of them. The fish were 

 small in many cases, yielding only from 1,000 to 5,000 eggs. On March 22, 

 Mr. Walters found the smelt spawning in the lower part of Jones creek, 

 instead of at the head as usual, and the temperature of the water where 

 they spawned was 42 degrees. On Great River, about the time for the 

 smelt to spawn, they disappeared and could not be found, and gill net 

 fishermen did not catch any after that date. On March 22, at night, about 

 1,500 to 1,600 very small smelt were picked up among the stones of Jones 

 creek, at Cold Spring Harbor. They burrowed down among the stones to 

 deposit their spawn. On March 29th, Mr. Walters had 37,000,000 eggs on 

 the tables, a lot more in the troughs and another lot a"; Centerport. On 

 April 1 st Mr. Walters had about 60,000,000 eggs. He had some eggs that 

 would count nearly 20,000 to the ounce — the smallest he ever saw. Center- 

 port is the main locality for smelt eggs. On April 5th the collections 

 amounted to 70,000,000 eggs. On April 8th, 10,000,000 more were taken 

 from the bed of Jones creek at Cold Spring Harbor, and they were found 

 to be perfectly good. Eighty-two million eggs had been collected up to 



