FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. I 33 



and August. It is a difficult matter to obtain information about fish at a season of the 

 year when it is illegal to capture them, but the shad fishermen contend that for their 

 own eating they prefer a shad taken from the river in July ; that it was the custom, 

 before the law forbade it, to set nets for shad on the night of the 3d of July for a 

 Fourth of July feast and they intimate that in some instances this is secretly done to 

 this day and that hard roe shad are common enough through July and August. 

 Capt. Pinder has caught shad from the river in good condition as late as November, 

 but in all probability they were fish that had recuperated from the exhaustion of 

 spawning and were on their way to sea. 



All the Hudson River fishermen are of one mind as to shad becoming sweeter and 

 fatter the longer they remain in fresh water, but this is not true of shad in other rivers 

 as I learned from a visit to the upper waters of the west branch of the Delaware, where 

 the shad have a peculiar flavor when they get to a point seventy-five miles above 

 Lackawaxen. 



Shad formerly ran up the Hudson River to Baker's Falls at Sandy Hill, some 

 fifty miles above Troy, and it was customary for the farmers to come from miles 

 away and camp at the falls during the shad run and catch and salt shad for home 

 consumption. The building of the dam at Troy in 1825 checked the upward migra- 

 tion of the shad in the river, and except a carload of shad fry planted by the United 

 States Fish Commission in the river at Glens Falls in 1884, the Hudson has had no 

 shad above Troy since the dam was built. It is, however, more than possible to 

 restock the river with shad so that they will again ascend to Baker's Falls. To 

 accomplish this result the nets must be taken up in the lower river to allow spawning 

 fish to come up, and fishways must be built to enable the fish to pass the fixed 

 obstructions in the form of dams. Shad are timid fish, and although they run at 

 night they hesitate about entering anything which looks like a trap. They will not 

 enter a dark fishway, but they will, and they have entered fishways that permit the 

 light to enter from the top and sides. The Delaware River is a notable example of 

 the efficiency of a properly constructed fishway. In former years shad ran up the 

 west branch of the Delaware to Collet's dam, a few miles above Deposit. The 

 building of a dam at Lackawaxen, seventy-five miles below, cut them off in their 

 spring run, and no shad were seen or caught above the dam until fishways were built 

 in it. As soon as the fishways were completed the shad again ran up to Collet's dam. 

 and have done so every year since. It is true that I found at Deposit that the shad 

 were not regarded as the best of food, because their flesh had a peculiar flavor ; but 

 the fact that shad had access to the head waters of the stream for spawning purposes 

 has much to do with the abundance of the fish in the lower river, for the fry are born 



