Our Fish Immigrants 



39i 



arrived from the east, 8 or 9 years later. 

 By 1 88 1 the fish seems to have become 

 distributed along the coast of Washing- 

 ton, and in 1882 reached Puget Sound. 

 It was 9 years later, however, when the 

 first pioneer was recorded from Fraser 

 River, and the sanr - year there was a 

 report of shad in Stik'ne 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 im- 

 probable that the migrations of the shad 

 will extend still farther. Twenty years 

 ago, when the fish was found along only 

 2,000 miles of coast — from the Golden 

 Gate to Puget Sound — the national fish 

 commissioner at that time suggested that 

 the species would follow the track of the 

 Asiatic current and eventually reach the 

 coast of Asia and establish itself in some 

 of the great rivers. This prognostication 

 has not yet been realized. 



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 inci- 

 dentally in apparatus set primarily for 

 other species. 



Viewed from the purely business stand- 

 point, the transplanting of shad to the 

 Pacific coast has been a remarkably good 

 investment. As near as I can ascertain, 

 the total cost of the experiment was un- 

 der $4,000, and the results in California, 

 Oregon, and Washington have been ap- 

 proximately as follows: 



Annual catch at present time... 1,500,000 lbs. 

 Aggregate catch to end of 1906. . 13,250,000 lbs. 

 First value of aggregate catch $302,000 



Were it not that the shad has to com- 

 pete with a great variety and abundance 

 of other excellent fish, for which there is- 

 a strong predilection born of habit and 

 sentiment, this species would be in the 

 front rank of west coast fishes in the pop- 

 ular estimation. Notwithstanding its^ ex- 

 cellence, abundance, and cheapness, it is 

 .not very popular in the west, but there 

 are indications that it is becoming more 

 generally appreciated. 



It is not an altogether unreasonable 

 suggestion that a few generations hence 

 eastern people will be compelled to obtain 

 their shad from Pacific waters, for the 

 very destructive fishing methods now 

 pursued in the eastern rivers are having 

 a most disastrous effect on the perpetua- 

 tion of the species, and in some streams 

 the death knell of the shad has already 

 been sounded. Rivers on which the gen- 

 eral government has been conducting 

 shad-hatching operations for 30 years 

 have fecently been deprived of practically 

 their entire run of spawning fish, and the 

 hatcheries have been rendered useless. 

 The cultivation of shad on a small scale 

 was begun in the Columbia River in 

 1906. 



STRIPED BASS ON PACIFIC COAST 



The history of the introduction of the 

 striped bass on the western seaboard is 

 quite similar to that of the shad, and the 

 results have been equally striking. In 

 1879 the Federal Fishery Bureau planted 

 in an arm of San Francisco Bay about 

 135 striped bass, mostly i>4 to 3 inches 

 long, from the Navesink River, in New 

 Jersey. A second plant of 300 small fish 

 from the Shrewsbury River, New Jersey, 

 was made near the same place in 1882. 

 There were no other transhipments of this 

 species; and in contemplating the out- 

 come of this experiment after the expira- 

 tion of a quarter of a century, well may 

 we exclaim, "How great a fishery a little 

 plant hath made!" 



The striped bass found the waters of 

 San Francisco Bay and its tributaries as 

 congenial as did the shad, and has shown 

 an almost uninterrupted increase in abun- 



