ACCLIMATIZATION OF FISH IN THE PACIFIC STATES. 
425 
losses arising from too great a stock, the dealers were obliged to restrict their receipts. 
Of course, at the figures last quoted the fishermen who sell on commission get no 
returns. 
In the Columbia River the prices for shad have never been as high as in California, 
although they have at times ruled almost as low. About 1887, when the fish first 
began to be numerous, the salmon fishermen and shippers of the lower river received 
about 1G cents a pound (gross price) by sending their shad to Portland. In 1893 and 
1891 the general retail price in Portland was 10 cents a pound, the fishermen receiving 
about 1 cents a pound, net. It is only by placing a limit on the supply that these 
prices are maintained. Fishermen who have endeavored to utilize the shad incidentally 
taken in their salmon nets have, as a rule, received such low prices that no inducement 
was offered to continue the shipments. At times in the past three years only 2 cents a 
pound could be realized by the fishermen on fish sent to market, a price entirely too 
low to pay for time and expense. 
FOOD QUALITIES OF THE SHAD. 
Notwithstanding the great abundance of the shad in the vicinity of the principal 
seaboard cities and towns of the Pacific States, a large proportion of the people of the 
west coast are totally unfamiliar with the food value of the fish, and it is eaten by only 
a comparatively small part of the population. While the price of the shad is such that 
it is within the reach of everyone, the supply of other fish that have been long in 
popular favor is also sufficiently abundant to keep the prices relatively low. As salmon, 
the prime favorite of the public, is most plentiful and lowest priced at the time when 
the shad is found in the markets in greatest numbers, the latter meets with only a 
limited demand. 
With the exceptions of some complaints about the bones, no one speaks in dispar- 
aging terms of the edible qualities of the shad; and if it did not have to compete with 
an almost unlimited supply of salmon, herring, smelt, anchovies, flounders, rockfish, 
and other species for which there is a strong local sentiment, there is no doubt it 
would occupy the very front rank in popular estimation among the fishes of the coast. 
One potent reason why the shad has not advanced farther in popular esteem is 
the poor condition in which it reached the consumer, about the time when its remarkable 
abundance first brought it into notice. The lack of care in the preservation of fish 
which has characterized the fishing industry of the west coast naturally led to the 
early deterioration of so delicate a fish as the shad, and people who ate the fish a number 
of years ago acquired a distaste for it, which has continued. It is gratifying to note 
that in the past few years there has been a radical change in the state of preservation 
in which the shad reaches the consumer, owing to the plan of the San Francisco dealers 
to restrict the receipts and to purchase, as far as possible, only the quantities that they 
can probably dispose of before the fish become tainted, one day’s catch supplying the 
next day’s trade. 
Of the opinion held regarding the edible qualities of the shad in the Columbia 
River region, Mr. Alexander says that the dealers consider the shad a very palatable 
and valuable fish, and greatly regret that the demand for it does not increase. People 
have so long been accustomed to eating salmon and smelts that they have formed a 
prejudice against all other fish. The fishermen all say that shad are excellent, and 
they fail to see why there should be so little call for them. 
