THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1403 



shad fry were made in the Sacramento River, Cahfornia, in 1871, 1873, 1876, 

 1877, 1878, and 1880, and in the Columbia River, between Oregon and Wash- 

 ington, in 1885 and 1886, the aggregate for each stream being less than one 

 million and only one hundredth of the plants sometimes made in an east-coast 

 river in a single season. 



In April, 1873, the first shad was taken in California, and shortly there- 

 after many more were caught in the vicinity of San Francisco; by 1879 the 

 fish had become numerous, and by 1886 it had become one of the most abun- 

 dant food fishes of the State. In 1876 or 1877 shad were first taken in the 

 Columbia, so it is evident that an offshoot from the California colony soon 

 migrated northward and had already established itself when the new emigrants 

 arrived from the East eight or nine years later. By 1881 the fish seems to have 

 become distributed along the coast of Washington, and in 1882 reached Puget 

 Sound. It was nine years later, however, when the first pioneer was recorded 

 from Fraser River, British Columbia, and the same year there was a report of 

 shad in Stikine River, southeast Alaska. In 1904 a fine roe shad, caught at 

 Kasilof, on Cook Inlet, was the first known arrival in that remote region. To 

 the southward the fish is found as far as Los Angeles County, and the present 

 range of the species thus extends along about 4,000 miles of coast. It is not 

 improbable that the migrations of the shad will extend still farther. 



The two great centers of the shad's abundance are the Sacramento basin 

 and the lower Columbia River, and it has been asserted that in either of these 

 waters more shad could be taken than in any other water course in the country. 

 The catch affords an inadequate criterion of the shad's abundance, for fishermen 

 and dealers report that it would be easily possible, should the demand warrant 

 it, to treble or quadruple the present yield, as most of the fish are now taken 

 incidentally in apparatus set primarily for other species. Viewed from the 

 purely business standpoint, the transplanting of shad to the Pacific coast has 

 been a remarkably good investment. From the best information obtainable, 

 the entire cost of the experiment was less than $4,000, while the aggregate 

 catch for market in California, Oregon, and Washington to the end of 1907 was 

 approximately 15,000,000 pounds, for which the fishermen received $330,000. 



The history of the introduction of the striped bass on the western seaboard 

 is quite similar to that of the shad, and the result has been equally striking. In 

 1879, 135 young striped bass from New Jersey were deposited in San Francisco 

 Bay, and in 1882 a plant of 300 small fish from the same State was made in the 

 same place. These meager colonies found the waters of California fully as con- 

 genial as did the shad, and the fish has shown an almost uninterrupted increase 

 in abundance to the present time. From the San Francisco region the species 

 has gradually spread up and down the coast, and its range may eventually 

 equal that of the shad. Up to 1896 the fish had not been reported outside of 



