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FOREST AND STREAM. 



[June 2, 1893, 



FOOD FOR FISHES. 



BY A. KELSON CHENEY. 

 [A paper read before the American Fisheries Society.] 



Asa ruee fishermen give themselves little concern 

 about the food supply of the fishes which they delight to 

 capture with rod and reel, with fly and bait. If a trout 

 as it is taken from the landing-net is found to be plump 

 and well fed, the fact is noted as it is placed on a bed of 

 ferns in the creel: and so, too, when a trout proves to be 

 gaunt and lean its condition is commented upon, but not 

 one angler in a hundred ever thinks of making the least 

 effort to supply food which will enable the gaunt, lean 

 fish to become plump and well fed. 



Nearly ten years ago I prepared a paper upon the sub- 

 ject of Food Fish and Fish Food, which was read before 

 this Society. Since that time great strides forward have 

 been made in all branches of the science of fishculture, 

 and fishermen are reaping the benefits; but to-day, out- 

 side of fishcultural establishments, the subject of sup- 

 plying the ever-increasing output of fish with an abund- 

 ance and variety of food receives little if any more 

 attention than it did then. This is a matter in which 

 fishermen, if they are inclined, can render valuable aid 

 to the hatcheries and fish-breeding establishments that 

 are planting fish in public waters. 



I am of the opinion that there may be many anglers 

 throughout the land willing to render assistance in in- 

 creasing the food supply of fishes in waters not within 

 the direct influence of the National or State Fish Com- 

 missions, if they could know how to go about it, and at 

 the same time know what a simple matter it is to furnish 

 a diversity of food to fishes that from natural causes may 

 be restricted in their diet. Primarily I address the 

 anglers, but the subject is so broad a one that in applying 

 the suggestions that I shall make, others may be inter- 

 ested. As an example of stocking water with fish food 

 not native to it, 1 may cite a lake in the State of New 

 York, which is thirty-six miles long and from one to two 

 and one-half miles 'wide, that was planted with 18,000 

 crayfish in 1878. The plant was made in two or three 

 streams at one end of the lake, and for several years past 

 the crayfish have been found in abundance from one end 

 to the other of the thirty-six miles of water. A form of 

 fish food that I have been and am sppcially interested in 

 is the fresh-water shrimp, Gammarus fasciatus of Say, 

 or perhaps more frequently called Gamma7 x us pidex. 

 We have three species of Gammarus in our ponds, brooks 

 and rivers, and Prof. S. I. Smith says of them: "They 

 probably breed throughout the spring and summer, as 

 females taken at various times from March to August 

 are found carrying eggs or young in various stages of de- 

 velopment." He infers that, as species allied to the 

 fasciatus develop rapidly, they breed several times each 

 season. When trout are found to have dark-red flesh with 

 cream-like curds between the flesh flakes, it is a sure sign 

 that the waters they inhabit produce crustacean food in 

 abundance. 



I have transplanted shrimp in trout streams with the 

 best results, but never have tried them in ponds. Cale- 

 donia Spring Creek, on which one of the hatching stations 

 of the New York Fish Commission is situated, is famous 

 the country over for its well-conditioned trout and its 

 abundance of fish food. The Castalia stream in Ohio is 

 similar in character to Caledonia Creek, and the fish food 

 in many respects is identical because of transplanting 

 mosses and water weeds with accompanying insect and 

 crustacean forms of life from the latter to the former. 

 Prof. J. A. Lintner examined a can of mosses and aquatic 

 plants sent to him from Caledonia Creek after "his atten- 

 tion had been called to the remarkable abundance of 

 trout in the stream, abounding it was believed, as in no 

 other natural locality in the United States." 



When the can was opened the mosses and plants 

 swarmed with insect larva? and crustaceans to such an 

 extent that he could not believe that it was a fair repre- 

 sentation of the fauna of the creek, and wrote to know if 

 other animal life than that which naturally accompanied 

 the plants had not been placed in the can, but none had 

 been introduced except those contained in the plant when 

 gathered. Shrimp were so numerous in the moss that 

 one could not raise a handful of it without noticing the 

 very large number of these creatures present. The water 

 from the can was poured into an aquarium and at once 

 "numerous examples of the minute crustacean cyclops 

 were observed, resting against its glass sides or darting 

 swiftly through the water, the females bearing on each 

 side of them the ovoid sac of eggs which forms so con- 

 spicuous a feature of their appearance." 



Prof. Peck, the State Botanist, who examined the 

 aquatic plants from Caledonia, said: "There is among 

 the mosses one of special interest, both because of its 

 rare occurrence and because of the noticeable coincidence 

 between its abundant growth there and the abundance 

 of animal life that accompanies it. * * * It is known 

 to botanists by the name Hijpnum noteinphilum, or 

 moisture-loving moss. Franklin and Lancaster counties, 

 Pennsylvania, are its previously reported localities, 

 where it is 6aid to grow in limestone springs. It was 

 discovered in the Caledonia Creek several years ago * * 

 but up to the present time this remains its only known 

 locality in our State." Prof. Peck advises that in trans- 

 planting this moss, limestone waters should be selected, 

 although one of the mosses associated with it at Caledo- 

 nia occurs in waters free from lime. Prof. Lintner says 

 that the small Crustacea? of the family Gammaridce un- 

 dergo no metamorphoses after their escape from the egg, 

 and therefore give promise of no difficulty in their pro- 

 pagation, and he thinks that in time every order for 

 5,000 brook trout will be accompanied with an order for 

 100.000 shrimps. The food of the shrimps is in doubt, 

 "but they are believed to be principally vegetable feed- 

 ers, although eating animal matter in a decayed state 

 when convenient to them." Again quoting from Prof. 

 Lintner: "The ordinary Jaws of nature give us a prod- 

 igality of insect life almost infinitely in excess of fish 

 fecundity. A fish deposits her spawn but once during 

 the year, but in the aphis or plant louse in one year there 

 may be twenty generations. Latreiile says that a female 

 aphis produces about twenty-five young* each day, and 

 Reaumur proved by experiment that a single aphis might 

 be the progenitor of nearly six billion descendants during 

 her life. The crustaceans are also remarkably prolific, 

 * * * the proposition to propagate crustaceans and 

 insects for fishculture must be regarded as intimately 

 connected with that of transplantation — perhaps as a 

 corollary of it.'' 



Mr. Thomas Andrews, of Guildford, England, a noted 

 pisciculturist whose reputation as a successful fish propa- 

 gator is broader than his native land, in writing me of 

 some large fish in one of his ponds, said that they were 

 grown in ponds containing an extraordinary amount of 

 natural food, which he made a point of cultivating. I 

 asked him to tell me what this food consisted of and his 

 manner of rearing it, and he writes as follows: 



"Westgate House, Guildford, England, May 7,1892. 

 —I make a great point of natural food for my trout, and 

 devote several boxes of 10 or 12ft. long, 6ft. wide and 1ft. 

 deep to that purpose, besides numerous small ponds and 

 side streams. In order to appreciate the value of the 

 principal, and I consider the best, food for young trout, 

 viz., Gammarus pulex, one must observe them at this 

 season of the year, and they will be found in pairs. If a 

 pair is captured, the male insect detaches itself from the 

 female, and she will look large on the abdomen and of an 

 orange color. If she is placed in the palm of the hand 

 and slightly pressed with a camel's hair pencil, the young 

 will be squeezed from her. This is my food for young 

 fry! The young shrimp is just the size for a hungry 

 trout seven weeks old, and I have often brought the 

 GatiimafUs up from my ponds to the hatchery and fed 

 them there. There are, of course, other insects which are 

 very suitable for the young fish, and I cultivate largely 

 the 'alder fly,' whose eggs are to be found on the rushes 

 and grass hanging over the streams or ponds in Mav and 

 J une in England. I collect these eggs and hatch 'them 

 out, turning the larva? into the water. I need hardly tell 

 you that they are almost microscopic, and just the tbiDg for 

 the young fish. Then there is the 'grannom fly.' which I 

 cultivate by bringing home the eggs which are found in 

 bunches, attached to rushes, bits of stick, grass and 

 woodwork in the rivers. To-day I had a can of gran- 

 nom eggs sent up, and I should 'think there is a bushel 

 basketful of these. They will be sent down to my ponds 

 Qn Monday and placed just as they are in among weeds 

 and rushes and will hatch in due time. The May -fly we 

 can and do introduce in the same way, but until last sea- 

 son they were put into a pond where there were about 

 15,000 yearlings, and they 3tood but little chance to in- 

 crease. Last season the eggs of the May-fly had a place 

 devoted to them, where there were no fish, and we have 

 found quantities of larvae already. We also cultivate 

 the Limniadce (snails), and the young of these make cap- 

 ital food for my fish of all ages. We feed the snails and 

 shrimps on liver and horseflesh, and where my man 

 washes his meat sieve the snails have collected in heaps 

 and devour all that is washed off the sieves. My experi- 

 ence has taught me that one yearling fish is' worth a 

 hundred or a thousand fry for stocking purposes, yet 

 I do not deny that a great many fish can be saved in the 

 fry stage by artificial feeding. ' I get fewer fish perhaps 

 (by feeding natural food), but I get monsters of 6, 7, 8 

 and 9in. in a year, and my yearlings fetch three times 

 the price of some other pisciculturists. Public opinion 

 also in England is in favor of yearling or two-year-old 

 fish for stocking purposes, and the results are more sat- 

 isfactory by far. We cannot get anything like enough 

 yearlings or two-year-olds to supply the' demand, and 

 most people over here have given up stocking with fry. 

 There is of course a sale for fry in England, as proper 

 rearing ponds have in many cases been made, but the 

 general opinion is in favor of yearlings." 



Mr. Andrews's letter shows the way to vast possibilities, 

 not only in the line of rearing trout fry in ponds on nat- 

 ural food, but in supplying mature fish in wild waters 

 with a generous addition to their larder by transplanting 

 eggs, larva? or imagos of various insects. It is a most 

 fascinating subject, but the pages already written warn 

 me that I must be brief. The alder- fly and grannom -fly, 

 referred to by Mr. Andrew's, belong to the dun tribe, the 

 former being the alder, orl or light dun, and the latter 

 the greentail or shell-fly of the fly-fisherman. The duns 

 belong to the family Fhryganidce and are called caddis- 

 flies, and the larva? are called caddis worms, and are 

 sometimes confused with the May-fly, which they should 

 not be. The dun or caddis-flies are so common that a 

 description of any one of the score or more species is un- 

 necessary. The larva? or creeper cases are hollow cylin- 

 ders, smooth inside, composed of straw, grass roots 

 small stones and shells, and closed at one end. They are 

 excellent trout food; every trout fisherman is familiar 

 with them, and they are easily collected for transplant- 

 ing. I). Barfuth, of the University of.-Bonn (Report U. S. 

 Fish Commission 1873 and *74 and 1874 and '75, p. 73s). 

 examined a number of the common trout of Europe 

 (fario) and found these to contain the creeper cases of 

 Fhryganidce as follows: In one, 136 cases: in another, 

 585; m another, 116; in another, 186, and in another, llo! 

 Of six trout examined, the cases were found in all the 

 stomachs, and also in the entrails; in one, the intestinal 

 canal, as far as the anus, was completely stuffed with the 

 cases. 



A book written by a lady for fly-fishermen, with the 

 title, "Favorite Flies," soon to be issued from the press of 

 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, will contain six plates 

 of natural insects, including the different stages, of the 

 May, caddis, stone and other flies. 



Last year I experimented with the May-fly, Ephemera, 

 to discover if it could be transplanted to waters where it 

 was unknown, and found that it would bear safely a 

 journey of twenty-four hours, at least. This fly is called 

 the dog-fly, and one of the species— there are more than 

 two dozen — is called shad-fly, and they are the "drakes" 

 of the fly-fishermen, the "green drake" being the largest 

 and best known. Of the abundance of the ; May-fly it is 

 said (Westwood's Introduction to the Classification of 

 Insects), that in some pools of Europe it is customary to 

 collect their dead bodies and use them for manure. The 

 distinguished naturalist Reaumur gives this account 

 (Introduction to Entomology : Kir by and Spruce): "The 

 myriads of Ephemerce which filled the air over the cur- 

 rent of the river, and over the bank on which I stood, 

 are neither to be expressed nor conceived. When the 

 snow falls with the largest flakes, and with the least in- 

 terval between them, the air is not so full of them as 

 that which surrounded us with Epliemerce. Scarcely 

 had I remained in one place a few minutes when the 

 step on which I stood was quite concealed with a layer 

 of them from two to four inches in depth." This was 

 near the River Mp rne, in France. 



I know personally of but few places where the flight of 

 May-fly is in clouds, but in one place in New York it 

 closely approaches, if it did not equal, that related by 

 Reaumur. In a flight of May-fly there will be discovered 



green, gray and purplish-black drakes. At first all are 

 green, the female changing to gray and the male to 

 purplish-black. Before my experiments with the May-fly 

 on drakes, had extended beyond confining them to see 

 how long they would live, the Fishing Gazette, London, 

 printed an article, written by Major W. G. Turle, in 

 which he described a completely successful experiment 

 in transplanting and establishing the May fly in waters 

 where it was previously unknown. I gathered my flies 

 in a bait bucket and a tin biscuit box, but Ma jor' Turle 

 improved upon that by using band-boxes with lines of 

 worsted from side to side for perches. The flies were 

 caught by picking them from the bushes and placing them 

 in the boxes, and the boxes were taken by railroad train 

 to the waters which it was desired to stock, and there the 

 flies were released on the bank. Major Turle was of the 

 opinion that it required two years for the eggs to mature, 

 but, as will be seen from Mr. Andrews's letter, it requires 

 but a year. The illustration of the larva? or creeper of the 

 May-fly used in this paper was prepared for Mr. Frederic 

 M. Halford's work, "Floating Flies and How to Dress 

 Them," but was rejected for another process, and was 

 very kindly loaned by Mr. R. B. Marston, editor of the 

 Fishing Gazette, London, and a corresponding member of 

 this Society. 



The illustration is 5in. long, and a particularly fine cut, 

 but the natural creeper is less than lin. in length. The 

 larva? as well as the fly can be transplanted, and besides 

 furnishing food for the fish the diet may teach and en- 

 courage the trout to rise to a fly. 



THE SUSQUEHANNA. 



ITS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

 LA paper read before the American Fisheries Society.l 

 The Pennsylvania Canal Company commenced build- 

 ing dams as feeders to its system about the year 1826. 

 Previous to that time the Suequehanna River had been 

 one of the most prolific for at least three species of ana- 

 dromous fishes, the shad, the herring and the striped 

 bass or rock fish, as good fishes of commercial value as 

 any of the Atlantic coast series, and besides these there 

 was an abundance of non-migratory species which fur- 

 nished ample food for the dwellers along and in the 

 vicinity of its shores. From the time of the erecting of 

 these obstructions commenced the gradual decline of all 

 species and the total loss to all dwellers above of all the 

 migratory tribes except the eel, which found its way 

 through rifts and crevices. Soon other factors of de- 

 struction became operative, notably soils washed in from 

 cultivated lands, and later, the immense quantities of 

 debris from the anthracite coal fields which now covers 

 the bed of the river in all pools and eddies, to the almost 

 total destruction of the natural spawning grounds and 

 life of the eggs, from the Lackawanna coal fields at 

 Scranton on the North Branch to the bay at Havre de 

 Grace. The time [is also not far distant when the same 

 condition will obtain in the West Branch, from the bi- 

 tuminous field of Clearfield and above, unless a halt is 

 called, and all this deleterious matter is made some other 

 disposition of. As far as relates to soil wash, it seems 

 unavoidable, but proper legislation and enforcement of 

 the laws could remedy the other. The sulphur impreg- 

 nated water from the mines acts only locally and is 

 gradually disseminated and purified, but to the abate- 

 ment of the dumping of mine refuse into the streams 

 tributary to the main river must we look if the waters 

 are ever to be again rehabilitated. The dragging of 

 seines over the spawning beds, catching the gravid fish 

 from off then nests and covering up the spawn already 

 deposited, has been another fruitful source of depletion. 

 There are laws to deal with this feature, and the fault 

 lies in the proper enforcement. Up until the early sev- 

 enties when artificial propagation and restocking was in- 

 troduced, the supply of all classes of food fish had grad- 

 ually diminished until the waters were almost barren. 

 Striped bass, shad and herring had disappeared with the 

 erection of the dams, while the pike perch, locally 

 termed the Susquehanna salmon, the pickerel (Es. ret.) 

 the yellow perch, the sunfish and catfish, the most es- 

 teemed of the non-migratory fishes, had almost entirely 

 disappeared. With the organization of our fisheries 

 commission, about 1870, began a practical regeneration. 

 The black bass, as a new variety, has proved wonderfully 

 prolific, and several others of the smaller perch family 

 have obtained a fast hold. These waters seem best 

 adapted to the percoids, and greater efforts in stocking 

 with this species ought to be persisted in. The- rein tra- 

 duction of wall-eyed pike or pike perch has been mani- 

 festing itself in increased numbers very perceptibly. 

 When fish propagation assumed important proportions, 

 we had hoped much for this river as a fit habitat for the 

 Pacific salmon, and many hundred thousands of fry were 

 placed in the upper Sinnemahoning and other tribu- 

 taries only to remain a year or two as smolts and parr 

 and then disappear. Only one adult specimen did I 

 ever see or hear of, and that came ashore here dead, 

 killed probably in some log jam above during the June 

 freshet of 1889. This specimen would, I estimated, weigh 

 about thirty pounds and was in prime condition, too 

 much putrefied to remove from the water, but was an un- 

 doubted quinnat salmon. I gave an account of it at the 

 time to Forest and Stream and to T. H. Bean at Wash- 

 ington, but saw afterward that he was probably in 

 Alaska, as I got no acknowledgment of my letter. 

 Trout {Sal. font.) were common in the early years of the 

 present century, but as the settlements increased, the 

 forests became depleted, the water roiled and tempera- 

 ture increased, they decamped for cooler and purer 

 springs. 



I have been familiar with this river for forty years and 

 have followed its changed conditions with much interest 

 and with increasing alarm unlesB the public can be roused 

 up to effective effort for its preservation. The future of 

 our noble river, with its broad expanse, looks gloomy in- 

 deed, and not only the Susquehanna, but is it not true of 

 most of our American rivers? And what can we hope 

 for but depletion unless intelligent public sentiment can 

 be aroused to arrest the destructive influences. Our 

 Fisheries Society is doing its best and exerting a healthy 

 influence, and it is with the view and hope of discussion, 

 and efforts that may eventually lead to more important 

 results, that I respectfully submit this paper for your 

 consideration. 'A. F. Clapp. 



Sunbubv, Pa., May 16. 



