FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 229 



Our native trout will also make its way over obstructions that seem little less than 

 marvelous and swim up and over a dam in a sheet of water that falls vertically if the 

 sheet of falling water is thick enough, but if the fins pierce the water and encounter 

 only the air the fish falls to the bottom only to try the ascent again. 



Neither salmon nor trout can make a high jump vertically and at the same time 

 laterally, and so a dam with apron projecting down stream is a bar to the ascent of 

 these leaping fish and fishways must be built in them if the fish are to get above them. 

 A very slight vertical waterfall will stop black bass or the so-called pickerel, properly, 

 the pike, although both fish will fight their way up in a torrent of rushing water that 

 appears to be swift and strong enough to the observer to drive everything of fish kind 

 far down stream and away from its fierce boiling pools. Fish quickly avail themselves 

 of the benefit to be derived from a fishway. 



At Mechanicsville, on the Hudson, when a fishway was built a little water was 

 allowed to run through it to test it and a salmon came into it before the workmen got 

 out. On shutting the outlet of the same fishway, to clean it later, over sixty black 

 bass and a number of pike-perch were found inside of it and water enough remained 

 in the buckets to preserve the fish so they were not lost. When I went to Binghamton 

 with the builder of the fishway to locate it, men and boys lined the dam at low water 

 and were catching small black bass which gathered just below the apron and could 

 get no further. It was estimated that as high as 800 bass had been taken in one day 

 from the dam and the fishing went on day after day without ceasing, and few of the 

 bass I measured were more than eight or nine inches long; if they came within the 

 legal limit of eight inches they went on the "string." 



The building of a fishway stops such destruction, for, even if the fish do- not use 

 the pass, there can be no fishing legally within fifty rods of a fishway, as witness 

 Sections 117 and 118 of the Fisheries, Game and Forest Law: 



Section 117. Signboards near fishways. — The commissioners of fisheries, game and forest 

 are required to maintain, fifty rods from any fishway erected by the state, and on both sides of 

 the stream, signboards containing substantially the following notice : " Fifty rods to the fishway; 

 all persons are by law prohibited from fishing in this stream between this point and the fishway." 

 The provisions of this section shall apply to public waters only. 



Section 1 18. Fishing near fishways prohibited. — Fishing or attempting to take fish by any 

 device whatever, within fifty rods of such fishway, erected by the state, and any interference 

 with the signboards there maintained by the commissioners of fisheries, game and forest, is for- 

 bidden. Whoever shall violate or attempt to violate the provisions of this section shall be 

 deemed guilty of misdemeanor and in addition thereto shall be liable to a penalty of twenty-five 

 dollars for each violation and ten dollars for each fish so taken, killed or possessed. 



But the fish do use the fishway, for when I went to Binghamton with a Division 

 Engineer of the State to accept the fishway, and the head gate was closed, black bass 



