Its food consists of small fishes, crabs, lobsters, shrimps, squids, sandworms, and other marine invertebrates. It grows to a very large size, being frequently taken by anglers from thirty to sixty pounds, and in the nets of fishermen as heavy as one hundred pounds or more. In the city of Baltimore, in boyhood days, I often went to the fish markets on Saturdays to see and admire the various kinds of fishes. On one occasion there were several large rockfish being weighed on the old-time balance, consisting of a beam and two large, flat, wooden scales supported by chains. The largest fish did not weigh quite two fifty-six-pound weights. A man then asked me how much I weighed, and I replied one hundred and three pounds. I was then placed on the scale instead of the weights, with the result that the fish outweighed me perhaps a pound or two. At all events it weighed between one hundred and three and one hundred and twelve pounds--probably one hundred and five pounds. It was as long as an average man. The striped-bass is a food-fish of fine quality, and the markets of the eastern cities are well supplied with it during summer and fall, and to a certain extent during the winter. It is very active from early spring until late in the fall, when it resorts to the back-waters and bayous of tidal rivers for the winter. It is said by some to hibernate, but this is doubtful. The opinion is probably due to the fact that it is more sluggish and listless while in winter quarters, and refuses to respond to the wiles of the angler. That the striped-bass is a game-fish of high degree goes without saying. It is rated by some enthusiastic anglers as being superior even to the salmon in game qualities. This opinion, however, is hardly correct when the two are compared weight for weight. In surf-fishing the first rush of a large fish, upon feeling the hook, is something to be remembered. It is probably longer and stronger than that of a salmon of equal weight, for the reason that while the latter fish is leaping from the water in its efforts to escape, the bass is making his furious dash for liberty beneath the surface, and exerting every ounce of his muscular fibre in the effort. But this immense strain cannot long be continued, and as he seldom breaks water like the salmon, and does not sulk, he resorts to strategy and finesse to free himself.