40 REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF FISH COMMISSIONERS. 



Many have asked for the introduction of the Big-mouthed Black bass 

 from the Southern States for planting in our warmer waters; also, the 

 big catfish of Texas, which occasionally weighs three hundred pounds. 

 It is said that it would be very desirable for the Sacramento and San 

 Joaquin Rivers. 



A part of the fund should be expended for the scientific investigation 

 of the economic fishes of our State, and experimenting in artificial 

 reproduction of others fishes, among them the sturgeon, which valuable 

 food fish is becoming notably scarce. 



For all of the foregoing, which is expensive field work, the present 

 appropriation of $5,000 is ridiculously insufficient, and it is needful 

 that $12,000 should be annually approjDriated for the sole and exclusive 

 use of this department. 



Therefore, I would suggest to your honorable Board that you would 

 petition the Legislature for an annual appropriation of $12,000 for the 

 Hatcheries and Restoration of Fishes. 



SCREENS FOR DITCHES. 



Most ditches take their supply of water from the streams above the 

 valleys, from the lower foothills to far into the high mountains. 



Our mountain streams are good spawning grounds for trout and 

 salmon. 



The young trout, as soon as able to swim, leave their hidden recesses 

 in the gravel and seek the shallow water near the bank or shore of the 

 streams where the water is less swift. Here they are better able to stem 

 the current, and are also comparatively safe from the raids of larger fish 

 which live in the deeper water, and are cautious about venturing into 

 the shallow water. 



Ditches, of course, take their supply from the shores of these streams. 

 The current at the inlet of these ditches is strong, and draws the little 

 fellows down with the water farther and farther. The current within 

 the ditch is so strong that they cannot get back, hardly, even if the 

 instinct of fear impelled them to do so. 



But they go with the current willingly. Mother Nature has not taught 

 them that these side issues from their native brooks lead to their destruc- 

 tion, by distributing them with the water to nourish the roots of alfalfa 

 and timothy grasses, or through the great fields of the raisin grape or 

 wine vineyards and orange orchards ; nor by being dashed over the 

 rocks through nozzles of miners' pipes, nor by being ground up into 

 mince meat by the turbine wheels of sawmills and papermills. 



These thousands of ditches tapping the mountain streams the whole 

 length of our State, from Oregon to Arizona, destroy ten times more 

 fishes, especially the trout and salmon, than is done by all other means 

 of illegal destruction of fishes. The numbers of trout destroyed through 

 the agency of ditches will run up into millions every year. 



This great destruction of fishes is self-evident to every man who taps 

 a trout stream for irrigating purposes, unless the process has been going 

 on so long that the stream has already become barren of fishes. 



I have already cited an instance in this report of the great destruction 

 of trout in Siskiyou County by a ditch from Shasta River, which was 

 told to me by the owner of the ditch.* I have known of what I write 

 by observation in traveling over this State during the past twenty years. 



*Refer to trip to look up a trout hatchery in 1889. 



