Handling The Eggs

Shad do not spawn during the day, but commence these operations about dusk and continue them till midnight. For the purposes of artificial cultivation they must be taken when they are perfectly ripe, as it is called, in other words when the eggs are mature and ready to be deposited in the natural way. So it is that over these beds, and during the first half of the night, the seines are swept to catch the spawners and milters which are to be manipulated scientifically, as they are thus secured in their best condition. The moment the seine is hauled, its contents of all sorts are ladled with a scoop net into a boat, and while it is being set again the fish are handled. The manipulator has in front of him on one of the thwarts a tin pan containing a little water, and taking fish after fish he holds it over this with one hand and gently presses its belly with the other. The ready performance of this is a matter of practice, and if the eggs and milt are ripe they will exude under a slight pressure. As last as the fish have been stripped, males and females being used indiscriminately, they are thrown into another boat.

When the fish have all been stripped or the pan is full, it is kept in gentle motion for thirty minutes, after which the water is changed, and the gentle motion and changing of the water alternated until the eggs swell, become hard and distended, and the impregnation is perfected.

In the course of the first fifteen minutes the temperature of the water in the pan falls some ten degrees, and the eggs finally become so hard that they feel to the touch like shot; although when first dropped into the pan they can hardly be felt at all. This is repeated as often as the net is hauled, and when no more spawners can be caught, the pans are carried to the hatching boxes and emptied into them. These boxes are covered with coal tar, to prevent the wire rusting on the bottom and the growth of animal matter, and have along the sides sticks of wood acting as floats, and presenting the wire screen at such an angle to the current that the eggs are kept in a perpetual boiling motion. The boxes are fastened one behind the other by ropes attached to the floats, and need little or no care except to be occasionally stirred at slack tide. The screens on the bottom have a square mesh and twenty-two wires to the inch. The eggs exhibit life in twenty-four hours, and hatch in from four to ten days, according to the heat of the water, and then the living fish are turned out and left to care for themselves. The only precaution taken being to turn them out at night when their enemies are not feeding and they can have time to get into the deep water.

Instead of trusting to good fortune to get ripe spawners from the nets these may be obtained in a way similar to the treatment of salmon and trout. A pond may be built by darning up a stream running into the main river, in this the shad may be confined till they are ripe. It has been supposed that shad were so timid a fish that they would hardly ascend fish-ways, and could not be kept in confinement, but such does not turn out to be the case. There is no difficulty in ponding them and in examining them from time to time till they become in proper condition to strip. They are not more timid than other fish.

The cultivation of shad is necessarily a work of public duty, it cannot be maintained by private enterprise as the increase belongs to the entire community, not to any individual. This may be a communistic possession of property but even that is better than no property at all. It is an easy and simple branch of fish culture and were it assisted by proper laws and the breeding fish allowed to reach their spawning grounds in sufficient numbers its results would be astonishing. As it is, the more fish that are bred the more fishing is done and the closer is drawn the barrier that shuts them out from the upper waters of the rivers that they inhabit. At least forty-eight hours in every week should be a close time during which no fishing should be allowed in order that a fair proportion at least should be permitted to fulfil the duties and necessities of their continued existence. No skill in fish culture can hatch fish when there are no parents from whom to obtain the eggs. That proposition is self evident.

Migratory Fish Confined To Fresh Water

An experiment was made by Mr. Wilmot of Canada, by which it is thought to be proved that salmon can live in fresh water wholly, if they are permitted to migrate forward and back from the great lakes into their fluvial tributaries. This change, it is claimed, satisfies the demands of their natures and supplies them with abundant and fitting food. A similar conclusion appears to be reached in reference to the shad. A number of the fry were deposited in the Genesee river, and were seen in that and Lake Ontario,where they appeared to remain till they were grown. They increased in size year by year and were caught frequently in nets near the mouth of the Genesee. Some were large enough to be marketed, and it is possible that they bred of themselves, as their numbers instead of diminishing, augmented. In four years after they were introduced, they were observed in immense shoals at the lower end of the lake. Still it must be borne in mind that both of these fish could descend to the sea, although the journey would be a long one. Moreover, it has not been shown that the salmon feed in Lake Ontario, but some of the shad that were caught in the lake were full of food.

Another interesting experiment resulted with similar success. At the request of the commissioners of California, some twenty thousand shad fry were sent to that state. They were carried through the vicissitudes of their journey safely but at the cost of much labor and anxiety, and were safely deposited in the Sacramento river. Up to that time, shad were wholly unknown in the Pacific coast, so the experiment was nothing less than to introduce them into a new ocean. Of course the undertaking was most doubtful in its results. There were questions of water, food, temperature and so forth, which no man could answer and which had to be referred solely to the fish themselves. Fortunately they rendered a verdict in favor of the attempt. They adapted themselves promptly to their new home; they explored the neighborhood, discovered satisfactory food, made themselves contented and proceeded to possess the land, or rather water. In 1874, shad weighing three and a half pounds, were caught in the Sacramento, which they were ascending evidently for the purpose of spawning, and in 1878, they were an article of commerce and sale in the public markets. It is therefore, possible that within a few years the rivers of the Pacific slope will teem with this excellent fish as abundantly as was once the case with the rivers of the Atlantic states.

Attempts have been made to transport shad eggs and fry in salt water, but without success. The young are delicate at best, and have to be watched with the greatest care during removal from place to place, and the oftener the water can he changed the better; about 6,000 is as many as can be trusted in one milk can, unless for very short journeys. A plan has been suggested for hatching shad and other fish in still water, where there is any power by steam or otherwise, of keeping the boxes in motion. These are made of metal, and are dipped up and down by being hung on the end of a bar lifted and lowered by machinery or otherwise. The point is to keep up a circulation of the current of water, and any arrangement that effects this will hatch the fish.

The time of shad spawning depends upon the temperature of the water of the rivers, which must be between 65° and 80°. This differs on different rivers. On the St. John, in Florida, and in the Savannah River. it is in February ; in March shad begin to run into the Potomac, and in May and June they are spawning; in the Hudson the season is still later, usually commencing in May and closing about the 1st of July; in June it begins in the Connecticut, and extends up to the middle of July; so that the farther you go north the later the season is.

It is propable that the introduction of shad even into the tributaries of the Mississippi may be a success. There was a four pound shad taken in the Ohio at Louisville, in 1877, from those that were deposited in 1872, and there were forty or fifty shad taken daily during th6 entire spring of that year. Reports have come in from many parts of the west giving more or less creditible accounts of the capture of shad, although many of the circumstances that there surround them are adverse to their life and growth.

Alewives And Salt Water Herring

These are to be hatched like shad, and ascend the rivers to spawn at about the same times. Bartram in his "Harvest of the Sea," p. 168, assures us that in England, the herring spawns and breeds in salt water, and twice in the year. This is not the case in America. We are supposed to have a herring that belongs entirely to the fresh water, but the identity of which is not quite established, but our common herring is migratory in its character, like the shad. Since the shad was introduced into the rivers emptying into Lake Ontario, the herring seems to have appeared there having been seen quite frequently in the spring of 1878 along the shores of the lake and in the streams flowing into it, having entered them apparently for the purpose of spawning. .