78 fish Cultural Association. 
a 
in order that we may derive any advantage from their ef- 
forts, that a law should be passed restricting fishermen from 
using their nets for at least one entire day in the week during 
the fishing-season, so that spawning-fish may have an oppor- 
tunity to ascend the stream and effect their spawning. We 
are quite positive in asserting that until this is done. we 
never shall be able to increase the number of shad in the 
North’ River.’ Young fish may be put into the -Tiver pura 
we stop them when mature from ascending the river, we are 
working in a blind and senseless way. We call, then, par- 
ticularly on this Association to give their aid, both indi- 
vidually and collectively, to remedying this over-fishing, and 
to use their efforts to induce legislators to pass such laws 
as will restrict the periods of shad-fishing. 
In the Connecticut River the shad, as usual, surpassed 
all others’ as to flavor, and ‘size, Webrvare torced to j\declame 
however, from information we have obtained, that the catch 
here, too, was less than for a number of years. We are in- 
clined” £o\.eive the same reasons for the scarcity of shad in 
the Connecticut as are found in the Hudson. 
It is not for a single year, then, that the efforts of legisia- 
tion should be directed towards preventing over-fishing in a 
river, but for a.series of years,, If it takes, as it is aseeme 
ed, three years to produce a crop of shad, in 1877 we caught 
all the fish which were bred im 2673. This spring wevare 
about preventing the gravid shad, born in 1874, from re- 
producing their kind. 
As to the price of shad during the last season, it must 
be understood as having but little to do with production. 
The price of shad is affected by a great many accidental 
causes. Shad may be in good demand in not very large 
quantity, when mackerel may come in and make shad very 
