105 



with the result that the fish arrive at the ponds in an exhausted 

 condition. 



The stream once yielded as high as 5,000 barrels per season, 

 and maintained an average of 1,500 until 1912, when the 

 fishery was seriously affected by the dredging of the canal, 

 which changed the location of its outlet. The stream has 

 never recovered from the effect of this change, and during the 

 last few years it has yielded only a small per cent of its former 

 production. The average receipts from the sale of the privilege 

 for the seventeen years between 1895 and 1912 has been 

 $787.93, the highest price, $1,843.55, having been paid in 1893. 



This naturally productive stream has been heavily taxed by 

 the one-year lease system, and has passed through a precarious 

 stage of its existence during the dredging of the Cape Cod 

 Canal. If the town of Bourne will ease the abrupt slope in 

 certain parts of the stream, correct the defects in the present 

 fishway, declare an immediate closed season in order to allow 

 a good supply of alewives to reach the spawning grounds, and 

 then lease the fishery for five-year periods, it can be brought 

 back to its former position as one of the most productive 

 streams in Massachusetts. 



Agawam River. 



Agawam River, or Half Way Pond Stream, has its origin 

 in Half Way Pond, and flows through Wareham and Plymouth 

 for 9 miles into Buzzard's Bay. It is used for power and 

 flooding cranberry bogs, receiving as a tributary Maple Spring 

 Brook from Spectacle Pond, and forming in its course Glen 

 and Agawam ponds. The stream formerly received the un- 

 treated trade waste of the New Bedford and Agawam Finishing 

 Company, but in 1910 filter beds and an alkali reclaiming 

 plant were installed, and the waste has since been treated 

 before being emptied. However, the situation is not as satis- 

 factory as if none entered the stream. 



The fish house is located at the lower end of Agawam 

 Pond, on one arm of the Y formed by the stream from the 

 two spillways. A 100-yard fishway, part of which is under- 

 ground, leads to the millpond, passing over a 16-foot dam 



