Jan. 29, 1898.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
89 
bass here, which gave us sport the whole summer long. 
Last year there was not a single good bass in any of 
tliem, but instead three or four schools of carp of 8 or 
lolbs., usually shy enough to keep well out of our way; 
but one morning when we were there at daylight we had 
an interesting hour following them about, fifteen or 
twentj'' in a school, and not disturbed when we were 
stooping over them, wishing for a spear or a gun. 
A feeder comes into the canal at the Lock from the 
level of the river above the dam, and many bass are 
taken at the feeder lock, some fifty rods away. Just 
above this feeder lock a retaining wall for the feeder 
serves as a waste discharge called a tumbling dam, and 
at its foot is a little pool 3 or 4ft. wide. Walking ov?.r 
this wall one day, the writer saw several bass, frightened 
by his shadow, scurrying under the rocks. Returning 
a couple of hours later, and approaching quietly, a fly, 
dropped down loft. below, was seized at once by the 
largest fish in the pool, and after a sharp struggle at 
some disadvantage, with light tackle directly over the 
fish, it floated quietly long enough to allow him to 
clamber down and net it. By giving the srared fish a 
rest after each effort, five were thvis taken. Last year a 
friend found one good one in this same pool, and se- 
cured it in the same wa}'. These could only have reached 
this place hj washing over in a flood. 
There are several shallow channels, some quite rapid, 
between this and the luain bed of the river, and these 
are full of bass, but hard to get. They can only be 
reached by wading, but the angler is hard to plfeas'e if 
he cannot find here some attractive water which he will 
be ambitious to fish. Shallow ripples and deep pools; 
overhanging willows and big rocks; grassy mats and 
foaming eddies; hoping Avith every cast for a 51b. bass, 
but they do not often run here over half that weight. 
There may be nothing in it, but we have always 
thought that it was too close to the head of the Little 
Falls to be comfortable for the big bass. 
Our experience has been that they much prefer the foot 
of strong water to its head, and the first rush of the 
Falls begins just opposite the Lock. 
But we find enough always to make the day here a 
happy one, for, with the author of "Random Casts," 
we feel that "It is not the number of fish he captures 
that makes the angler contented, for tne true angler 
can enjoy the mere casting of the fly, if he has only an 
occasional fish to reward his efforts." 
Henry Talbott. 
The Hudson River as a Salmon 
Stream. 
BY A. NELSON CHENEY. 
(Read at National Fisheries Congress, Tampa, Fla.) 
From time to time, during the past twenty-five years, to 
ni}^ personal knowledge, and probably for a longer pe- 
riod, there have appeared in various publications articles 
describing the Hudson River as an original salmon 
stream. Some of them have merely made the broad 
statement that the river once contained Salnw salar, and 
others in more explicit language described the great 
quantities of the fish that once inhabited the stream, and 
deplored the fact that they had become extinct in the 
river. Almost without exception, the sole foundation for 
the statement that the Hudson was once a natural salmon 
river rests upon an extract from the log of Henry Hud- 
son, of the Halfmoon, who records that in 1609 lie saw 
a "great store of salmons in the river" which now bears 
his name. 
Within the past fifteen years a gentleman wrote to a 
newspaper published in a city on the bank of the Hudson, 
declaring that his grandfather caught large numbers of 
salmon in the Hudson, and for this reason it was a proper 
water to be restocked with the king of fresh-water fishes. 
That old, old story which originated in England or Scot- 
land one or two hundred years ago, that apprentices and 
servants provided, when indentured to their masters, that 
they should not be required to eat salmon oftener than 
twice a week, has been transplanted to the banks of the 
Connecticut, and has even been applied to the Hudson 
and its alleged salmon. Nevertheless, I maintain, and 
will show in this paper, as I believe, conclusively, that 
the Hudson was not originall}'' a salmon stream, and 
that no salmon were ever found in it, except possibly an 
astray from the Connecticut, until it was planted by the 
United States Fish Commission and the Fisheries Com- 
mission of the State of New York. As to Hudson's 
declaration — or, to be exact, the declaration of Robert 
Juet, the master's mate of the Halfmoon, for he it was 
who wrote the journal — under date of Sept. 3, 1609, lie 
writes: "So wee weighed and went in and rode in five 
fathoms, oze ground, and saw many Salmons, and Mul- 
lets and Rays very great. The hight is 40 degrees 30 
minutes." Under date of the iSth: "Wee ran up into 
the river, twentie leagues, passing by high mountains. 
Wee had a very good depth as thirteene fathoms, -and 
great store of salmons in the river." A boat was sent 
out, and with a net "ten great mullets of a foot and a 
half long apiece, and a ray as great as four men could 
hale into the ship" were taken. Not a single salmon was 
captiired at any time while the ship was in the river. 
The Halfmoon entered the mouth of the river Sept. 3, 
and anchored inside Sandy Hook, and the next day, the 
fourth, was when the fishing was done. The ship 
ascended to the present site of the city of Hudson, and a 
boat's crew was sent up the stream to about where 
Waterford now stands, or a little north of the present 
city of Albany. The ship and its master returned and 
set sail for Europe on Sept. 23, so that, all told, Hudson 
was in the river twenty days in the month of September. 
Had there been salmon in the river, he must have seen 
them between Sandj^ Hook and Waterford. and they 
would not have been in that portion of the river at that 
time, as their spawning habits would have taken tjieiii 
fifty rniles further up the river than Waterford, to Baker's 
Falls, where shad ran until stopped by the building of the 
Troy dam in 1S25. In some of the Canadian rivers there 
is a late run of salmon, the fish running as late as Octo- 
ber, but this was not true of the Connecticut or other 
New England salmon streams, nor has it proven true 
Of the Hudson sinCe it Avas stocked by artificial means. 
Hudson being an Englishman, and pcSsibly more or less 
familiar with salmon in the rivers of his own country, 
and Juct being born at Limehousc, on the river Thames, 
where salmon were then common, it is perhaps fair to 
assume that, seeing schools of large fish of some sort, 
one or the other associated them with the fish of his 
home waters and called them salmon in the log. _ 
In a description of New Nethcrland, printed in Am- 
sterdam, Holland, in 1671, occurs this paragraph: "The 
streams and lakes, rich with fishes, furnish sturgeon, 
salmon, carp, bass, pike,, toach, bleak, all sorts of eel, 
sunfish which resemble the bullhead in taste, and codfish 
which are caught near waterfalls." It will be observed 
that European common names are applied to the fishes, 
and doubtless the writer was familiar with the fishes 
of the old country, and applied their names to the fishes 
in the new country that to him resembled those of the 
old. To this day codfish are not caught near waterfalls, 
and it is more than doubtful if salmon existed in the 
lakes and streams any more than bleak and roach. New 
Netherland is bounded "on the south by Virginia, north- 
cast by New England, north washed by the river Canada, 
and on the coast by the ocean," Besides codfish at the 
waterfalls and salmon in the streams and lakes, the writer 
found that "New Netherland hath, moreover, a wonder- 
ful little bird scarcely an inch long, quite brilliant in 
plumage, and sucking flowers like the bee; it is so 
delicate that a dash of water instantly kills it. When 
dried it is preserved as a curiosity." The hummingbird 
is a little larger now, and more hardy, but the description 
is perhaps as near of the bird as of codfish being taken 
at waterfalls and salmon in lakes within the boundaries 
as given of New Netherland, 
In 1680 Jasper Danker and Peter Sluyter, members of 
the Society of Labadists in Holland, visited this country, 
and they record of the Mohawk, a tributary of the Hud- 
son: "There are no fish in it, except trout, sunfish and 
other kinds peculiar to rivers, because the cahoqs stop 
the ascent of others." 
They dined in state with "Madam Rentselaer at Al- 
bany, and had to Cat exceedingly good pike, perch and 
other fish," but no salmon. 
New York had salmon streams on the north flowing 
into the St. Lawrence. Lake Champlain and Lake On- 
tario, for I have found laws for their protection enacted 
in iSoi and later, and mentioning the Oswego, Grass, 
Racket, St. R^gis rivers and Fish and Wood creeks, as 
well as other streams. A law enacted in 1801 provided 
that no dams should be erected on streams flowing in 
Lakes Ontario, Erie or Champlain, to prevent salmon 
from following their usual course up said streams, and 
when clams were erected, they must be provided with 
what are now called fishways, to enable fish to pass over 
the obstruction. There is every indication that the law- 
makers of the last of the last century and the first of this 
understood fully the value of the fish in the waters of the 
State as food, and threw every possible safeguard around 
them, but there is no record of a law protecting salmon 
in the Hudson until 1771, when it was enacted: 
"Whereas, It is thought that the fish called salmon, 
which are A^ery plenty in some of the rivers and lakes 
in this and the neighboring colonies, were brought into 
Hudson's River, they would, by spawning there, soon 
become numerous, to the great advantage of the Public: 
"And whereas, A Number of Persons in the county of 
Albany propose to make the experiment, and defray the 
expense attending the same; in order that the good de- 
sign may be more efi^ectually carried into execution, it 
is conceived necessary that a law should be passed for 
prohibiting the taking and destroying the Fish for a 
term of years." 
This act was signed by John, Earl of Dunmore, and 
in less than a month after, viz., April 2, 1771, the Com- 
mon Council of Albany passed the following' resolution : 
"Resolved by this Board, That a letter be sent to 
William Penturp for to come down & agree with the 
corporation, if he can undertake to bring live Salmons 
into Hudson's River." 
There is no record, however, that anything was actti- 
ally done, under this resolution, to stock the Hudson 
with salmon. Samuel L. Mitchell, Professor of Natural 
History in the University of New York, wrote in the 
"Transactions of the Literary and Philosophical Society 
of New Yoi'k," in 1815: "There is no steady migration 
of salmon to this river. Though pains have been taken 
to cherish the breed, salmon has never frequented the 
Hudson in any other manner than as a stray." In 1857 
Robert L. Pell, of Pelham, Ulster cotmty. petitioned 
the Legislature to construct fishways in the Hudson, and 
offered to stock the river with salmon without expense 
to the State. There is no evidence that the State ac- 
cepted the proposal of Mr. Pell to stock the river with 
salmon at private expense, and certainly the fishways 
were not built. 
I believe it unnecessary to quote further from old 
records and laws to prove that the Hudson River was 
not originally a natural salmon stream. The evidence 
is chiefly of a negative character, but I am of the opinion 
that it is conclusive. 
What has been done to make the Hudson a salmon 
stream has been done within the past twenty-five years, 
and I will rehearse the operations of the National and 
State Fish Commissions to this end as briefly as possible. 
Beginning with 1873, and continuing for three years 
after, the Fish Commission of- New York planted in the 
tributaries of the Hudson a quantity of fry of the Pacific 
salmon, hatched from eggs furnished by the United 
States Fish Commission. Several hundred thousand fry 
were planted, but so far as known, after going to sea as 
smolts, not a single fish returned to the river, and this 
is true also of other plantings of this species of salmon 
in other Atlantic coast rivers. 
In 1801 the late Col. Marshall McDonald, then United 
States Commissioner of Fisheries, requested me to make 
aii examination of some tributaries of the upper Hudson, 
with a view to making a plant of yearling quinnat salmon. 
Fie was thoroughly convincrd that the attempt to stock 
the Atlantic rivers with the fry of this fish was an abject 
failure, but at the Wytheville station of the Commission, 
in Virginia, rainbow trout from California had been es- 
tablished in the hatchery stream by planting fingerling 
fish after plantings of fry of this species of fish had failed, 
and he desired t6 try a like experiment with the salmon 
also from the Pacific Coast. I selected several streams ift 
Vermont, tributary to the Battenkill River, which in 
turn flows into the Hudson. The streams were free from 
everything injurious to young salmon, and there were 
no natural or artificial obstructions in them. Later I 
went to Vermont with one of the United States Fish 
Commission cars, and planted several thousand yearling 
California' salmon in the streams selected for the pur- 
pose. Not one of them has ever been heard of since 
they went down to the sea. 
The experiment of stocking the Hudson with Atlantic 
salmon (salar) was begun in 1882, at which time 225,000 
fry were planted in small streams tributary to the head 
of the river aboitt 260 miles above Sandy Hook. Noth- 
ing was heard from this plant until 1886, or four years 
after, when adiflt fish retitrned to the river, fish weighing 
from 9 to i61bs., and ascended to Troy, where they were 
stopped by the State dam. Every year since, with one 
exception, plants of salmon fry or yearlings have been 
made in the river, and every year aditlt fish have been 
captured in the lower river by the net fishermen. 
One thing has been proven to my satisfaction, beyond 
pcradventure, by these experiments. The young of the 
Salmo salar, when planted in the Hudson, do not go to 
the sea until they are two years old, and they return 
from the sea when they are four years old. 
If I should make this statement before a European 
audience, I would be accused of rank heresy, and pos- 
sibly here in Tampa delegates to the National Fisheries 
Congress will desire to know what proof I have of this 
assertion. I planted salmon frv in a trout stream tribu- 
tary to the Hudson which had never contained salmon, 
and it was two years before they arrived at the smelt 
stage and took their departure for the sea in silvery 
Hvery. Selecting another stream, I made a like plant, 
and it was two years before the pair put on the smolt 
dress, and turning their tails to the sea, drifted down 
with the current. During the past fourteen years I have 
planted salar fry in various streams, and always when 
in a new stream where thev could be watched, that no 
mistake would be made, they have remained for two 
years before going to sea. Since the first plant of salar 
fry, a total of 3,486,000 have been planted in the Hudson 
River, this number including 12,000 yearlings. All the 
eggs were furnished by the United States Fish Commis- 
sion, and came from the Penobscot River in Maine. 
For a number of years after the initial plant the United 
States paid all the expenses of hatching and distributing 
the young fish, but later the Government furnished the 
eggs, and the Fisheries, Game and Forest Commission 
of New York hatched and planted the fish at the ex- 
pense of the State. 
It is of record that in one year over 300 adidt salmon, 
fish from 10 to 381bs. each, were ta"ken in nets in the 
lower Hudson, every fish taken contrary to law. It is 
true that some salmon taken in nets are released by the 
fishermen, but the high price oflrered for Hudson River 
salmon in the New York markets sorely tempts a fisher- 
man to kill such salmon as may be taken in his net, in- 
.stead of releasing them uninjured, as the law directs. 
Fishways have been erected in the Hudson by the State 
at Troy. Mechanicsville and Thomson's Mills, but other 
fishways must be built before the river is open to the 
fish from the sea to the pure water of the upper river, 
where the salmon would naturally go to find spawning 
grounds. 
The Cohoes Falls, on the Mohawk, is to-day as much 
of a bar to the upward migration of salmon as when 
Jasper Dunker made the entry in his journal in 1680, 
which I have quoted. 
Baker's Falls, on the main river, has been supposed 
to be one of the causes why salmon never frequented 
the river at the times they ran into the Connecticut. 
These falls stopped the shad, and it has been said that 
they would stop salmon. Possibly they would, but I 
visited the falls with the late Commissioner McDonald, 
and we were both of the opinion that it was possible for 
salmon to surmount them on the proper stage of water. 
Why the Fludson was not originally a salmon stream 
when the Connecticut, a neighboring river, was, I shall 
not attempt to explain. It may have been that Cohoes, 
and other falls on the main river and its tributaries, 
operated as a bar to keep them from proper spawning 
.grounds, but one thing has been demonstrated most 
fully: The Hudson River of to-day, with its sewage 
from towns, and poisons from mills and factories, does 
not deter salmon from entering from the sea, once the 
fry are planted in its headwaters, and with fishways in 
all the obstructions, natural and artificial, it could be 
made a self-sustaining salmon river, if the millers would 
obey the law, while the State Fisheries Commission 
aided nature in keeping up the supply of young fish by 
artificially hatching the eggs. Col. McDonald told me 
on more than one occasion that if the Hudson was open 
to the salmon, and proper efforts were made to keep up 
the supply of young fish, and netting regulations were 
enforced, the river would from its salmon add $100,000 
a year of profit to the State financially, while largely aug- 
menting the food supply. 
San Francisco Fly-Casting- Club. 
San Francisco, Jan. iS-— Editor Forest and Stream: 
The San Francisco Fly-Casting Club is making prepar- 
ations for an open-to-the-world tournament, to be held 
m San Francisco on Sept. 9 and 10, 1898, in which fly- 
casting and lure-casting events will be programmed. 
Our club has taken this matter up in earnest, and will 
make the tournament a most attractive one, both in 
number, character and valtte of the medals and prizes, 
and as- an interesting event to the angling fraternity. 
It is hoped that competitors from the 'East and abroad 
will enter the contests, and with this object in view we 
should be much pleased if you would notice in your col- 
umns the fact and date of the tournament, and assure 
a most hearty welcome to all who can arrange to be 
with us. Horace Smyth, Sec'y. 
The FoKEST AND Stbeam IS put to press each week on 
Tuesday. Correspnrtclence intended for pubUeation 
should reanh nt the latest by Mmidafi, arid as mu^H 
earlier as practicable: 
