During spawning, many eggs are deposited over the stream bottom where they stick to gravel, stones, logs, or other objects. A few surviving, spent fish move back to the sea after spawning. Bluebacks feed on plankton, various small floating animals, small fish fry, and fish eggs. Distribution of blueback herring in NY state. Dark dots represent where actual samples of blueback herring were taken.
White dots represent historic distributions.
A 250 KB image of the blueback herring is also available for download .