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BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
opinion. It is comparatively small for a shad, not attaining a weight greater than 
about 2% pounds. A few have been handled commercially on the Ohio River. 
Shad were marketed from that stream and its tributaries to the extent of 6,950 
pounds in 1899 (Townsend, 1902) and 8,750 pounds in 1903 (U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, 
1904). Since the average price in the latter year was 10 cents a pound to fishermen, 
it is evident that the fish were purchased for food rather than for bait. It is an 
interesting commentary upon the state of knowledge of our aquatic recources that 
while Federal and State governments in the eighth and ninth decades of the last 
century were making serious efforts to introduce the Atlantic shad into the Missisippi 
Basin the native shad remained generally unutilized and unknown. Evermann 
reported its use only as bait for catfish. Should it be utilized as a food fish, it would 
be necessary carefully to distinguish it from the river herring, a distinction that 
need offer no serious difficulty. 
It was reported to Evermann that the fish was first taken about Louisville, Ky., 
in 1896, and that a great increase in the catch came in 1897 with the adoption of 
surface-fishing seines in lieu of the bottom-fishing seines previously used. Lightly 
leaded seines fishing in the upper few feet of Water took Ohio shad along with spoon- 
bill, the runs of the two species occurring at the same time, principally the latter 
part of May. 
There were many Ohio shad at Keokuk in 1915, enough, it is believed, to support 
a substantial fishery. No effort was made to secure them, but Stringham examined 
more than a hundred that chanced to be taken and saw many more. In 1916 there 
were comparatively few, only 35 being handled by him. In the experimental net 
used on the cop of the lock gate, the shad was taken more abundantly than any other 
fish except the river quillback and the spotted catfish. 
All shad seen at Keokuk were taken during a short season extending from early 
in May to the middle or latter part of July— May 3 to July 12, 1915, and May 16 to 
June 25, 1916. Not one was seen at another season. All fish examined during these 
seasons were either sexually ripe or approaching that condition. It is evident that 
their presence at Keokuk coincides with a period of spawning migration. Whether 
they come from salt water in the Gulf, and how far north they would go— these are 
questions for answers to which there are no data. 13 
The fact that there are no records of the capture of this fish above the dam has no 
significance, because there were no records for the river at all before the dam was 
constructed. Locally the fish has been confused with other species, and such shad as 
were identified were assumed to be Atlantic shad introduced by the Federal Govern- 
ment. This applies to three specimens, numbered 21,345 among the collections of the 
National Museum, taken May 3, 1878, in the Ohio River. The experiment with the 
trammel net on the lock gate (Coker, 1929, p. 100), in which 45 Ohio shad were taken 
from the lower side, and only one from the upper, suggests strongly that the fish 
were endeavoring to pass the dam. If the fish occurs in West Virginia, as stated by 
Townsend (1902, p. 664), it is there at least 125 miles farther from the Gulf than at 
Keokuk. The Ohio shad came abundantly to the dam during spawning migration, 
and it is extremely improbable that the dam had chanced to be constructed precisely 
at the upper limit of the path of migration. We must assume, then, that the dam 
checks the upward course of the fish. 
13 At Lynxville, Wis., Mr. Kaya described a second kind of herring in such terms as to suggest the Ohio shad; the fish had 
formerly been taken in seines, not with hook and line. 
