Snyder. — The Shad Outlook 119 



The first two years, 1916-1917, I tried ninety-six cases and prosecuted 

 the majority of them myself, in the interest of saving of expense, because we 

 are limited in revenue. Only two cases were lost out of the ninety-six. 

 This year, or rather since 1917, the prosecutions have been a little over a 

 hundred. I have had thirty-nine cases in one county of Bladen for the 

 violation of the shad act and convicted all of them. 



Now along the line of conservation, your legislatures should appoint 

 commissions and give them proper authority. If the commission should 

 find today that an act had been committed which was proper a year or a 

 month or two before, but that it was necessary to stop it right away in the 

 interest of conservation, and if they could meet together any day and do it, 

 why, in such a way you can handle conservation. We have done it very 

 successfully. 



Now, referring to the Albemarle shad business, the government has a 

 fish hatchery in our state, and it is a very nice thing for North Carolina. 

 It has not been so very successful for the last two or three years, but I am 

 satisfied that it will be in the future. The management, prompted by one or 

 two local men right at that place, worked up some feeling against it. It was 

 not intentional, but they just did not manipulate things properly, and they 

 could not get the eggs they needed. 



There was a law providing that on certain grounds in this sound, called 

 the hatching grounds, the men should not set a net except between four 

 o'clock and eleven o'clock in the afternoon, that being the time that the 

 superintendent wanted the eggs for hatching. That was limited to the set 

 net, stake nets or anchor gill nets. Pound nets set in the sound were allowed 

 to stay all the time with no restrictions, so that the man who could only 

 buy and furnish a little net and could not handle a pound net was limited in 

 the time, by statute, when he could take the fish for a livelihood; whereas 

 the other man was allowed to take them all the time, and that was what 

 brought about the feeling. In order to allay that feeling and to help the 

 hatchery achieve success the Board at a meeting in October of 1917, passed 

 a rule which went into effect right away, because they had authority to do 

 it, and this rule is bringing about now the good feeling which you will find 

 existing between the hatchery and the fishermen in Albemarle Sound. They 

 provided in that law that the fishermen could only set nets on certain days 

 and at certain hours. 



Now I have been down there recently, and the men say they will obey 

 the rule. I tell them if they would not help this hatchery and carry out the 

 rules, I will make it so they cannot fish on this ground at all. 



The shad industry certainly, in my opinion, depends upon a closed 

 season, and the work of the hatchery. We have a closed season after the 

 20th of May. The experiments in our waters indicate that not many shad 

 are hatched, before about the 10th of May. It takes a certain temperature 

 of water for a shad egg to hatch, and we do not have it before that time, 

 and a shad that lays its egg before that time might as well be taken. And if 

 we have a closed season from the 20th of May on, it shuts the hatchery down. 

 We have no fears for the future of the shad industry of North Carolina. 



