REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF FISH COMMISSIONERS. 15 



REPORT OF J. G. WOODBURY, 



Superintendent of Hatcheries and the Restoration of Fishes, embracing the Operations 

 carried out during the period between August 1, 1888, and October 1, 1890. 



San Francisco, October 1, 1890. 



To the honorable the Board of Fish Commissioners of the State of California: 



Gentlemen: After being appointed Superintendent by your honorable 

 Board on the first day of August, 1888, 1 visited Lake Tahoe, where Mr. 

 Frazier was in charge of hatching the six hundred thousand eyed trout 

 eggs, which had been contracted for by your honorable Board. 



These eggs were being hatched in a rented building, small and win- 

 dowless, and consequently giving insufficient light to distinctly observe 

 the condition of the fish in the troughs, which is a very essential mat- 

 ter, for cleanliness is a cardinal virtue in the successful hatching and 

 rearing of trout, and an abundance of light is necessary to perceive 

 what one is doing. 



The supply of water to the hatchery on a hot day was very precarious, 

 diminishing in quantity in the middle of the day, and with cattle tramp- 

 ing up the ground around the springs, and the rotten condition of the 

 wooden pipes which conveyed the water a long way to the hatchery, made 

 it a very uncertain business in hatching trout, and kept the attendant 

 in constant apprehension of some mishap. 



It seemed a reproach to the California Fish Commission to be com- 

 pelled to do its work of stocking Lakes Tahoe, Donner, Independence, 

 Webber, and the mountain streams in the vicinity with fish under such 

 adverse conditions as these. And if it is thought of sufhcient impor- 

 tance that these waters be stocked with trout, it should be done from 

 year to year, continuously, for intermittent work of this kind — stocking 

 these waters for a year or two and then skipping a year — is work almost 

 thrown away. 



It occurred to me that the State should select some favorable point for 

 shipping, and build its own hatchery, commodious and well appointed, 

 with a certainty of plenty of cold spring water, and make Lake Tahoe 

 a trout-hatching station as a distributing point for all these mountain 

 waters. 



Mr. Frazier reported that he shipped the trout, resulting from these 



six hundred thousand eggs, in 1888, to the localities and in the numbers 



given in the tables which accompany my report to your honorable 



Board. 



THE SISSON SALMON HATCHERY, 1888. 



The Board of Fish Commissioners had received word from Mr. Living- 

 ston Stone, who was in charge of the United States salmon hatchery on 

 the McCloud River, that he w^ould deliver at the McCloud River Station, 

 free of charge to the California Fish Commission, four million eyed 

 salmon eggs for stocking streams in this State. 



