Common Shad; American Shad 



At various times between 1871 and 1880, 619,000 shad fry were 

 planted in the Sacramento River, and in 1885 and 1886 910,000 were 

 placed in the Columbia River. There young shad found the environ- 

 ment congenial, suitable spawning grounds were found, and they have 

 thrived so well that they have spread to San Diego on the South and 

 to Fort Wrangel on the North a distance of more than 2,000 miles. 

 The shad is now one of the most abundant and most delicious food- 

 fishes in the markets of San Francisco and other west coast cities. 



The shad is an anadromous fish which passes most of its life in 

 the sea, performing annual migrations from the ocean to the rivers for 

 the sole purpose of reproduction. Little is known of its life in the 

 ocean, the places to which it resorts are unknown and but little is 

 known regarding its food. In the spring it ascends to suitable spawn- 

 ing grounds, which are always in fresh water, occupying several 

 weeks in depositing and fertilizing its eggs in any given stream. It 

 appears in the St. Johns River, Florida, as early as November, 

 but not in great abundance until February and March. Beginning 

 with the Savannah and Edisto rivers in January, the run in the 

 different streams to the northward is successively later, the height 

 of the run in the Potomac being in April, in the Delaware early 

 in May, and the Miramichi River, in New Brunswick, about the 

 last of May. 



The main body ascends when the water temperature is 56 

 to 66, the number diminishing when the temperature is over 66. 

 They come in successive schools, the males preceding the females. 

 Of 61,000 shad received at Washington from March 19 to 24, 1897, 

 90% were males. Toward the close of the season males were 

 extremely scarce. Formerly the shad ascended many streams 

 much farther than they are now able to go, owing to the erection 

 of many impassable dams, beyond which the fish cannot go. 



As the shad enter the rivers only for the purpose of spawning, 

 the fisheries are necessarily prosecuted during the spawning sea- 

 son, and often upon the favourite spawning-grounds. So great 

 is the demand for this delicious food-fish, and so assiduously do 

 the fishermen ply their vocation with many kinds of gear 

 during the period when, under ordinary circumstances, the fish 

 should be protected, that the shad-fisheries would long since 

 have been a thing of the past had it not been for artificial prop- 

 agation. During the spring of 1900 the U. S. Fish Commission 



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