forest and stream 
291 
bee rivers, but the coast nets have nothing to 
do with this so far as I have ever heard.” 
Now it seems to me there is something here 
worth examining and something which tends to 
substantiate the statement that the fish move 
up or down the rivers “in every month of the 
year. We know of the early summer ascent 
and of the “late run” and have no reason to 
doubt that many fish come into the rivers very 
early in the spring in the same manner as do 
their congenors on the other side of the Atlan¬ 
tic, and this leads us to inquire why there should 
be such a diversity of habit, why they do not 
enter and leave the streams nearly simultane¬ 
ously , the explanation I will endeavor to give 
is the result of considerable thought, and possi¬ 
bly it will stand until a better one is offered. 
In the opinion of many good observers the 
salmon does not carry out the work of reproduc¬ 
tion every year; that is to say, in many cases 
the fish do not always mature and deposit their 
ova every year, and some pass or go by occa¬ 
sional seasons. 
I do not suppose anyone would undertake to 
say that all salmon cast their spawn every year 
or every alternate year, because so far as I have 
been able to ascertain, nobody has any tangible 
proof in the premises, but there seems to be 
very strong leanings to the belief that a certain 
proportion of the fish spawn only on alternate 
years. 
Now the salmon, having performed their great 
work, have no excuse or reason for longer tarry¬ 
ing in the rivers in which most of them have 
spent many months, generally without food, and 
so they begin to move down the streams on their 
return to the ocean, where, by reason of the 
abundant food that is afforded, they are en¬ 
abled to recuperate and again become the well- 
conditioned, vigorous fish they formerly were. 
But the spent salmon, or kelts, do not al¬ 
ways hurry in descending the rivers, some even 
procrastinating their return to the sea until April 
and May. 
Now my theory is this: those kelts which do 
not return to the salt water until late in the 
winter or even in the spring cannot possibly re¬ 
cuperate to a degree that would enable them to 
mature spawn ripe for reproduction in the fol¬ 
lowing autumn, and that they, instead of re¬ 
turning to the rivers, remain in the salt water 
during the early winter months. 
But having acquired their full condition, their 
health, strength and vigor, the natural process 
of elaborating and ripening the ova begins and 
they are then prompted to return to the rivers 
in which those ova must be deposited, and a 
certain proportion of them attain that condition 
very early in the season, even as early as Janu¬ 
ary or February according to the length of time 
during which they have remained in the ocean; 
those are the fish which constitute the early run. 
The late run, so-called, most probably consists 
of those fish which deposited their spawn early 
in the previous autumn and descended at once 
to the sea, in which they have from ten months 
to a year to recuperate. 
Between the early and late runs come those 
fish which ascend the rivers during the summer 
months, most of which bear eggs which will 
mature in the coming autumn, but some of 
which ascend the river only in pursuance of that 
instinct which teaches them to pass up into the 
fresh water even if no ova are to be deposited. 
A Rival of His Majesty the Salmon 
It may be urged that most of the foregoing 
is nothing but conjecture; of course it is, but 
it is conjecture that has been based on no little 
study and the getting together of no inconsider¬ 
able number of facts; whether it may be proved 
correct or not time will show; much valuable 
information, in fact possibly the key to the 
whole situation, may be obtained by the careful 
and general tagging of all salmon that are han¬ 
dled at the hatcheries, and by keeping records 
of their subsequent coming into the rivers from 
which they are released. 
In the meantime it must be apparent to all ob¬ 
servers that there is yet a “whole lot” we don’t 
know about the salmon. 
STRIPED BASS AND SHAD 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Writing of the disappearance of shad and 
striped bass, Mr. E. A. Donnelly in the March 
number of Forest and Stream, seems to assume 
that both are migratory fish. The shad is migra¬ 
tory but not the striped bass. On our Northern 
coast the habit of the striped bass is to winter 
in fresh water, and summer in the salt. Thus 
the Hudson River bass spend the winter in deep 
holes up the river, emerging in spring to de¬ 
scend to the ocean and bays, where they re¬ 
main until hard cold begins in the fall. So far 
from their being migratory, it is doubtful if the 
Hudson River bass ever stray as far as Mon- 
tauk Point on the one hand or Barnegat on the 
other. 
The striped bass is one of the most widely 
distributed fish on the Atlantic Coast, being 
the Chesapeake it is locally known as the “rock- 
fish, and farther south than North Carolina it 
does not appear to migrate even from fresh to 
salt water. For example, all of the fresh water 
streams of South Carolina are full of them, yet 
t ley are never taken at any season of the ’year 
below the brackish water line. So much for the 
migratory theory. 
That the striped bass is fond of shad roe is 
no doubt true but it is rather straining the limit 
to speak of shad roe as its “natural food sup- 
py. A natural food supply must be constant 
but shad roe is nowhere more than occasional 
The natural food supply of the striped bass is 
small fish, Crustacea, and worms. Shad roe is 
o it merely a spring luxury, just as the straw¬ 
berry is to the human. 
Thus the disappearance of the striped bass 
cannot be attributed to a diminution of the 
suppiy of shad roe. But is the bass disappear- 
ng? Numbers were taken last summer in the 
JEiys.and aJong the beaches, which is proof the 
s i is sti here. It is less frequently taken in 
e Hudson than formerly, probably because the 
surface water is so foul, it follows the deep and 
cleaner water to the sea. The shad is undoubt¬ 
edly disappearing from the Hudson, and 
apparently from rivers further South. What¬ 
ever the cause elsewhere, in the Hudson it is the 
amount of sewage in the water, and probably 
also, the oil distributed by motor boats. 
W. E. SIMMONS. 
A DAY WITH THE JEWFISH 
H URRY up fol'ks! breakfast is ready, and 
the motorboat is waiting; conditions 
are right for Little Pass, and you 
should have good luck.” Such was our greet¬ 
ing on the morning of December the 8th last, 
by our genial host, Captain Lewis Roberts. 
We soon finished a good Southern breakfast, 
and piled in the boat, waved good-bye to the 
Siesta and headed for the narrow of Sarasota 
key. Our party consisted of Dr. Doerner (Old 
Doc), his two attractive daughters, Lillian and 
Frances, my good wife and myself. Henry and 
Jim manned the boat and kept her moving at 
good speed, while we busied ourselves getting 
the tackle in order, renewing the water for our 
live minnows and viewing the scenery. 
A matter of several miles around the Key 
brought us to Little Pass, an inlet so narrow 
that one can cast across, yet such a large volume 
of water from the Gulf rushes through this pass 
that at its mouth the current has hollowed out 
a remarkably deep hole with very abrupt banks. 
We anchored our boat a hundred yards or so 
inside, and made our way over the broken shells 
to the hole, where we were cautioned not to 
venture too close to the edge. 
We lost no time getting our lines overboard, 
while Jim baited the shark hook with a one 
pound mullet, and twirling it around over his 
head, he sent it flying some 40 feet into the 
deepest part of the pass, and securely lashed the 
end of the rope to a stake on the beach. Old 
Doc was the first to get fast to a fish. After 
baiting his hook with half a crab, he made a 
beautiful cast, and the bait had hardly touched 
water when it was struck so violently that the 
revolving reel handle trimmed the skin from his 
