Show By Dy B Teal Perhaps you never have thought of fish as family folks never paused to wonder where little fish come from Their nest nest- nesting nesting ing habits are truly more In in- in interesting than those of the birds particularly because of the water I medium with its swift cur cur- currents rents in which their work must be accomplished Byron W Dal Dal- Dalrymple Dalrymple rymple noted author has spent a great deal of time observing fish and their spawning sp habits Most infant fishes emerge with the yolk sac attached to their bodies They are too tiny to take solid food They remain in the nest slowly absorb sustenance from the yolk sac until they are strong enough to hunt food Inmost In Inmost most species growth is rapid This fact in the case of the bass pleases papa He sometimes lets his hunger get the best of him after his youngsters leave the nest nest and and gobbles them up Worse yet the kids may ape his ways vainly attempting to swallow each other otherl Not all fishes build nests Some like the suckers are sloth sloth- slothful slothful ful merely scattering their eggs over the stream bottom Pike are violent love lave makers but poor home bodies They simply deposit the eggs in weedy lows and leave them For Fur pure pun ardor perch put the leering pike to shame In springy spring y ou nu may muy m Y see a gaudy-colored gaudy female heavy with roe swim swim- swimming ming ruing into the shallows to spawn followed by perhaps a hundred males mails They battle each other splashing roiling the water each eager to become head man At this time they seem fearless You may wade right in among them without putting them to flight Mama perch though she builds no nest does consider the comfort of her offspring Often she chooses the west shore of the lake for egg laying thus in in- in insuring suring maximum warmth from the sun Her tier eggs are laid in a along along long thick strand which unfolds into a ribbon like ri like on-like mass The eggs absorb water quickly and harden The egg strand of this amazing prolific may bea be ben BO n a much as seven feet fed long four inches wide and weight with weight with absorbed water water much much more than the perch which deposited it The trouts and salmons swim upstream to spawn in order to tofi find fi nd places of greatest grea test safety sa f forthe for forthe the young Some species travel hundreds of miles WI OV rooming awesome obstacles We may ma learn much of the need for con conn conservation by understanding the family lives of our fishes Thi Th The beautiful little brook trout for example cannot due to its hab hab- habits habits its and our fishing pressures sustain itself nowadays without our assistance through propagation Of all fishes perhaps the very best family folks are those you would least suspect the suspect the lowly comic catfishes Papa bullhead and his spouse prepare the nest together |