396 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
carp as to be almost useless to the company. The company employed 4 fishermen by the month to seine 
the lake, and during that time — some four months — bought 19 good-sized seals [i. e., sea lions] taken 
near Cliff House. These seals were placed in Lake Merced in 1891, and for a time the company 
employed men to go over the lake to pick up the pieces of dead carp that were so numerous as to be 
dangerous to the purity of the water. In the summer of 1895, at the request and expense of the water 
company, I engaged several Italian fishermen to go to the lake, and under our supervision they used 
all kinds of drag nets and seines in the lake and were unable to take any carp or any other fish than 
sticklebacks. The seals have. grown very thin. Another effort was made in same manner with like 
result in fall of 1895. I am of the opinion that there are no carp, big or little, in the lake at this time. 
The coming season the company will try again for carp, and if none is found the seals will be killed 
off and large-mouth black bass placed in the lake. 
A rather wide-spread, opinion prevails that the carp consumes or uproots the wild 
celery on which wild ducks feed, and “it is reported that these game birds have 
diminished in numbers of late wherever in this State their feeding-grounds have been 
invaded by the carp.” 
Carp are credited with eating other and better food-fishes, but the charge seems 
almost too trivial to notice. The ingestion of live fish must be very rarely if ever 
undertaken, and is inconsistent with the anatomy and known habits of the carp. 
The habit of eating the spawn of other fish is ascribed to the carp in the Pacific 
States, as in other parts of the country. From a statement hereafter quoted, it will 
be seen that by some the scarcity of Sacramento perch in California is attributed to 
this cause. 
The San Francisco Evening Bulletin of May 29, 1894, contained the following 
editorial notice of the carp and catfish under the caption “ Where the fish commission 
went astray.” The article may be quoted to illustrate the sentiment entertained by 
many persons against the carp, and to show the general grounds for that sentiment. 
When the fish commission a few years ago undertook to stock the rivers and sloughs of California 
with catfish and carp, the Bulletin deprecated that sort of enterprise. Pains were taken to acquire 
information from various sources about the value of these species as food-fish, in addition to what was 
personally known from observation on western rivers. It was found that these fish were relatively 
of small value, and that this was overbalanced by the injury they would do in decreasing the number 
of better fish. 
The German carp had already been tried in ponds and lakes on private estates. Not a single favor- 
able report could be obtained. The tenor of the reports were that the fish were a nuisance, and that 
efforts were being made to exterminate them. Ponds and small lakes were drained off, but the fish 
went into the mud and lived for weeks. When the water was turned on, the fish were as active as 
ever. They multiplied with amazing rapidity. But nobody seemed to want them, except the few 
who were still bent on making experiments. These fish have multiplied in the rivers and sloughs 
until in many places they have become a nuisance. Like the English sparrow on the land, they are 
beyond extermination, and are everywhere execrated. 
Now comes the Oregonian and reports that carp have become so plentiful in the sloughs and bays 
along the Columbia that fishermen have offered to supply farmers with any desired quantity for manure 
at $5 a ton. The carp are gross feeders, consuming better food-fishes and wild celery and grasses on 
which wild ducks feed and fatten. It is reported that these game birds have diminished in numbers 
of late wherever in this State their feeding-grounds have been invaded by carp. 
Then the fish commissioners made another unfortunate experiment, against the strongest pro- 
tests that could he put forth. They introduced the hated and almost worthless catfish to the waters 
of California. These fish, like the carp, have multiplied rapidly. It was reported, in answer to the 
protests made at the time, that only a superior kind of catfish would be introduced, against which 
there could be no valid objection. But they turned out to he the same old toughs that have occupied 
western rivers and bayous to the exclusion of better fish. These catfish are voracious feeders on 
young trout and salmon. Their value is so low that very few seek them. The Chinese sell them occa- 
sionally, as they do carp, if they can find a customer. But most consumers turn away from these fish 
in disgust. 
