194 'Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 



the sea herring (Clupea harengus) . Shad are a salt- 

 water fish, and begin to ascend the rivers of Florida in 

 January, those of North Carolina in February. In the 

 Hudson the fishermen expect the first fish about the 

 middle of March, and so on up the coast to its northern 

 range, which Jordan gives as the Miramachi River. It 

 only visits the rivers to spawn, and is in its finest con- 

 dition when fresh-run from the sea. 



When there are heavy snows to the north, which 

 bang on late and then let down a lot of snow water, the 

 shad will remain in the sea ofif the mouths of the rivers 

 until the temperature suits them, when they will rush 

 up, and the season is short and the catch light. The 

 fact that shad spend the greater portion of their lives 

 in the ocean, coming into the rivers merely to spawn, 

 is generally known, but it has long been a mystery as 

 to just what part of the ocean they located in after leav- 

 ing the rivers. 



Twenty-five or thirty years ago the theory was that 

 the shad went to the tropical regions after leaving fresh 

 water, and that they were returning from those regions' 

 when they appeared off the coast of Florida in Febru- 

 ary and gave off from the migration a certain number 

 of fish for each of the main rivers as they passed north, 

 reaching the Hudson in March. Investigations prose- 

 cuted by the United States Fish Commission have 

 shown that the shad don't go far from the mouths of 

 the rivers which they had previously entered for pur- 

 poses of spawning. The investigators of the commis- 

 sion have caught shad, in a net specially constructed 

 for the purpose, at points in the ocean some 200 miles 

 or so from the mouths of rivers. These fish are ever 

 on the hunt for a temperature of about 60 degrees, and 

 they go farther to find a depth where that degree pre- 



