§6 CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME. 



commission to collect shad eggs from California waters and ship 

 them to their hatcheries, as they were desirous of restocking the 

 depleted waters of the Eastern states with shad. Shad were introduced 

 into California from New England states by tlie California Fish Com- 

 mission in 1871. They increased rapidly until a few years ago, and the 

 Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers were fairly alive with them in 

 the spring and summer, when the run of shad was at its height. 



The excessive fishing and pollution of the Eastern rivers has caused 

 the shad to become very scarce, and it was the desire of the Massachu- 

 setts and Connecticut commissions to restock their waters. It was 

 decided to collect the shad eggs for the two commissions, as it was 

 considered an opportune time to carry on experiments to locate the 

 spawning places of shad, as well as to make experiments to determine 

 whether shad culture could be carried on successfully in California and 

 to determine whether the process of fertilizing the eggs and propagating 

 the fry could be improved upon. 



Consequently the coimnission decided to operate a shad hatchery on 

 a small scale during 1916, to carry out the experiments and to gather 

 data in preparation for more extensive operations the following season. 

 When operations were begun, in May, it was thought that all the eggs 

 necessary for the shipments East, as well as for our experiments, could 

 be collected by the latter part of May or early in June, but the season 

 proved to be unfavorable and the work dragged along into July Mdthout 

 sufficient eggs being obtained at one time to make a shipment East. 



Fishing began on June 3 at Yuba City. The run was poor all 

 through the season in the upper reaches of the rivers; nowhere near its 

 size in former years. The light run of shad in the upper river was due 

 to the very cold spring, cold water, and later to the high, roily water 

 caused by the melting snow in the higher altitudes. During the season 

 1,421,000 shad eggs were collected and 872,000 fry hatched and success- 

 fully released in the Feather River. This work was under the imme- 

 diate supervision of Superintendent G. H. Lambson of the Mount 

 Shasta Hatchery. 



BURNEY CREEK EGG-COLLECTING STATION. 



In the spring of 1915 a lease was secured on a piece of land at the 

 mouth of Burney Creek, a tributary of Pit River, Shasta County, for 

 the purpose of collecting rainbow trout eggs. A rack was placed across 

 the stream and the necessary live cars and pens were made to hold 

 the fish that were expected to enter the creek. A tent and a few troughs 

 under it with hatching equipment was set up and operations were 

 begun. It was originally planned to eye the eggs and hatch them in 

 the old Hat Creek Hatchery, seven miles from Burney Creek, if a suffi- 

 cient number were taken ; but early in May an eruption of JMount 

 Las'sen sent a tremendous flood of mud, water and sand down the Hat 

 Creek Valley, destroying all the fish in the stream from its source to 

 its confluence with the Pit River. This was one of the most serious 

 destructions of fish life in recent years in California. Hat Creek rises 

 in the soutlieastern part of Shasta County, in a lake at the foot of 

 iMount Lassen, at an altitude of 7800 feet above sea level. It flows 

 northerly into the Pit River, two miles northwest of Carbon, where 



