Maryland House and Senate Documents

SHAD.

The shad is, without doubt, America's favorite food fish, and no where is it found in better condition than in Maryland waters.

A great many persons desire to know if the shad returns to the place of its birth. It gives us pleasure to tell the story in a condensed form so that the fact that the young shad will return in two or three years from the time it is planted to the river in which it is placed will be so impressed upon the minds of all that not a doubt will exist:

Prior to 1871 the shad was unknown to the Pacific coast. That year the United States Fish Commission carried from Havre de Grace, Maryland, a number of young shad such as we plant now in the rivers of this State, and planted them in the Sacramento river, California. Two years later the first shad ever seen in California waters was caught, the next year more were captured and the number has increased from year to year, until now California produces millions of the finest shad known. After the shad spawns in the spring it returns again to the ocean, the young do the same and return full grown to the fresh water stream where they first entered into life, ready to commence the increase of their kind.

YELLOW PERCH.

The yellow perch, to which very little attention was paid a few years ago, is now being sold in our markets to a larger extent; while not near as good a fish as the white perch, there is quite a demand for them. They are found in our markets quite early in the year and continue with us from February until November.

By examination of this report it will be seen that we have hatched, and liberated many millions of yellow perch in the rivers of Maryland. This fish is much move prized than formerly and we have received many requests for it to be planted in the various rivers of the State.

BLACK BASS.

There are two varieties of this splendid fish, the "large mouth" and the "smaller mouth." The history of the distribution of this fish is a study of great interest to the fish culturist.

The first that were planted in the Potomac river were brought from Wheeling creek, W. Va., in the tender of a B. & O. R. R. Co.'s locomotive, by a party of trainmen--Col. Thos. B. Davis, of Keyser, W. Va., a brother of ex-Senator H. G. Davis, of that State, being one of the number. Several of the rivers of Pennsylvania were stocked from the Potomac in 1870.

Prior to the building of the Erie canal in 1825, nature had not supplied any of the streams of New York with bass, with the exception of the streams connected with the Great Lake and the St. Lawrence river. The opening of that canal brought bass from Lake Erie to the Hudson river and to the waterways connected therewith. From the Hudson they were conveyed to Lake Saratoga, and from thence over the northeastern portion of the State.

For a number of years the Commissioners of Fisheries have been planting Bass in the streams of the Western Shore and they have also been introduced by the Eastern Shore Commissioner into the Wicomico, Pocomoke, Choptank, and St. Martins River. At Salisbury, several nice bass have been caught which were placed in Lake Humphries by director C. L. Vincent, Fish Commissioner for the Eastern Shore, 1900-1904. Mr. Vincent, himself, caught a two-pound bass in the Pocomoke river the summer past, and he expects to see good results from the fry placed in Eastern Shore Waters: