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pounds fish twenty-four hours in the day and seven days 
in the week. And how under the circumstances any 
shad ever succeeded in getting into the Connecticut 
River, was always a mystery to me, notwithstanding the 
fact that they did come in in considerable numbers. 
Just as soon as they have passed that gauntlet, the 
moment they enter the mouth of the river, they find 
from eighty to a hundred gill nets sweeping down into 
the river into the Sound, taking what shad were left 
from the pound. Those few shad that safely go above 
these gill nets, as soon as they reach Essex, which is 
about the upper station of the gill net, then every single sta- 
tion on the river from there to Holyoke where itwas possible 
to run a sweep net a sweep net was put; and these were so 
arranged as to go across the river and one follow the 
other as fast as possible. That fishing was continued in 
the Connecticut River for years until finally shad began 
to decrease very rapidly. In 1870 or thereabouts, after 
the shad hatching first began in the Connecticut, we 
increased the shad so rapidly, and there was such im- 
mense quantities of them that the fishermen begged us 
to desist, saying there is no use hatching shad you cannot 
sell. 
But the work was continued, the commissioners believ- 
ing that the proper work of the commission was to make 
shad cheap for the masses. As I said before, this fish- 
ing had gone on in such a way. But whether that is the 
cause of the decrease of the shad, I don’t know. I have 
stated this to correct Mr. Bowman’s idea. The com- 
missioners have continued all through this time putting 
shad into the Connecticut in enormous numbers up to 
within a year or two, and the last year or two it has been 
continued but not to such an extent. But in the mean- 
time the shad have come down from some four or five 
hundred thousand a year to about twenty thousand. For 
this year, as far as I recollect, the number is about thir- 
teen thousand, as I have heard only recently. 
