270 GAME FISH OF NORTH AMERICA. 



hooked. His whole effort was to sound, to run to the bottom, from 

 which the slightest pull would bring him back. I thought it must 

 be a very shy fish, with a tender mouth, and a small caudal fin in 

 proportion to his size, for he seemed to have but litde propelling 

 force. After some careful handling I was enabled to bring the fish 

 up to the side of the boat, and land it with a net. To my great 

 satisfaction, it proved to be a four pound shad, a meller, as fine a 

 fish as one would wish to see. That morning, in less than an hour, 

 I caught six others in the same way — two melters and four roe 

 shad ; two of the last weighed five and a half pounds each. During 

 this hour's fishing the preparation had hardly all dissolved from 

 the hooks. I have been out twice since in the early morning and 

 have had equal success." 



Thaddeus Norris, Esq., says, in Forest aTid Stream : — " Many 

 years ago, when I fished with a bow-line dipsy for perch fn Au- 

 gust, I occasionally took young shad six inches long, in water from 

 fifteen to twenty feet in depth, and have since heard of their being 

 taken in the same way. These fry were undoubtedly the pro- 

 duce of shad that spawned in May or June. The smaller fry. those 

 of two inches, which are so easily taken with n small fly from ttie 

 Long Bridge, are from the ova of the late spawners. I have also 

 known perch-fishers on the " Hen and Chickens," a rocky shoal in 

 the Delaware, eight or nine miles above Philadelphia, when fishing 

 for perch in September, to take shad varying from twelve to fifteen 

 inches in length. They would come in schools and bite voraciously 

 at the worm bait and not far below the surface." 



Mr. Theodore Lyman, of the Massachusetts Fish Commission, 

 has thrown more light on the growth of shad and their migrations 

 to and from sea, than all other writers on this subject. From in- 

 formation gained from old net-fishermen, and from his own obser- 

 vations, as shown in his various reports, he has clearly established 

 the fact that shad go to sea the autumn of the same summer they 

 are hatched. That the females remain at sea two years. That 

 many of the males, perhaps all of them, return to their native riv- 

 ers when not over a year old, as they are then pubescent and the 

 reproductive instinct impels them to the rivers. When varying in 

 length from nine to twehe inches, they are known on the Connec- 

 ticut as " Chicken Shad." In one of the reports alluded to, men- 



