826 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
The following act, passed by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 
1639, ordered that neither cod nor bass should be used as fertilizer for farm crops: 
At the Generali Courte, holden at Boston, the 22nd of the 3rd M., called May, 1639 — “And it 
is forbidden to all men, after the 20th of the next month, to imploy any codd or basse fish for manuring 
the ground, upon paine that every pson, being a fisherman, that shall sell or imploy any such fish 
for that end, shall loose the said priviledge of exemption from public charges, & that both fishermen, 
or others who shall use any of the said fish for that purpose, shall forfeit for every hundred of such 
fish so imployed for manuring ground twenty shillings & so pportionally for a lesser or greater num- 
ber; pvided, that it shall bee lawful to use the heads & offal of such fish for corne, this order not- 
withstanding.” 
The value and probably the limited supply of striped bass seemed to be realized 
by the colonists within 19 years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. 
Another distinction shared by the striped bass was an act of the Plymouth 
Colony in 1670 that granted all income that should accrue annually to the Colony 
from the fisheries at Cape Cod for bass, mackerel, or herring, be employed for and 
toward a free school in some town of this jurisdiction. As a result of this act the 
first public (free) school of the New World was made possible through moneys derived 
in part from the sale of striped bass. A portion of this fund was also expended in 
helping the widows and orphans of men formerly engaged in the service of the Colony. 
Appreciation of the striped bass as a superb game fish and a source of unexcelled 
recreation came during the last century when Herbert (1849) noted that with the sole 
exception of salmon fishing, striped bass fishing was the finest of the “seaboard vari- 
eties of piscatorial sport” and that the striped bass was the “boldest, bravest, strong- 
est, and most active fish that visits the waters of the midland States.” Today the 
striped bass is esteemed far more by sportsmen than by epicures and its value to the 
Nation is far greater from a recreational than from a food standpoint. 
DISTRIBUTION 
The striped bass, or rockfish, Roccus saxatilis (Walbaum) 1 2 ranges along the 
Eastern coast of North America from the St. Lawrence River, Canada, to the Tche- 
functa River, La. Introduced on the Pacific coast in San Francisco Bay, in 1879 and 
1882, the species now occurs from the Columbia River, Wash., south to Los Angeles 
County, Calif. The striped bass has probably the most extended geographic range of 
any American food and game fish. Its ability to exist in fresh, brackish, or salt 
waters throughout the year and from the cold rivers of Eastern Canada to the sub- 
tropical bayous of Louisiana, provides a unique record of successful adaptation to 
environment. (See fig. 1.) 
The most distant inland fresh-water range on the Atlantic coast from which 
striped bass have been recorded is Quebec, on the St. Lawrence River. Most coastal 
rivers from New Brunswick to Georgia contained striped bass in abundance in early 
colonial times according to various writers. 3 Inland coastal ranges for the species 
have included the Hudson River at Albany, the Delaware River at Lambertville, the 
Susquehanna River to Luzerne County, Pa., the Potomac River to Great Falls, the 
Roanoke River at Roanoke Rapids, the Alabama River at Montgomery, and 250 
miles up the Sacramento River in California. 
Few records exist to define the exact range of the striped bass in tributaries of the 
Gulf of Mexico. The Escambia River, at Pensacola, Fla., the Alabama River, at 
1 The scientific name of the striped bass has been corrected from Roccus lineatus (Bloch) to Roccus saxatilis (Walbaum). 
a Early records of striped bass distribution and abundance are noted by Perley (1850), Atkins (1889), Wood (1634), Mease (1815), 
Schoepf (1788), and Burns (1886). 
