ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION OF THE SHAD AND PIKE PERCH
THE SHAD – The shad (Alosa sapidissima) is the largest, best-known, and most
valuable member of the herring family in the United States. The body is deep and compressed, the depth varying with the sex and spawning condition, but averaging about one-third the body length. The head, contained about 4^ times n the body length, is quite deep; the cheek is deeper than long. The jaws are about equal, the lower jaw fitting into a deep notch on the tip of the upper.
Teeth are present in the young, but are not found on the jaws in the adult. The eye is contained 5| to 6 times in the length of head. The gill Rakers are long, slender, and numerous, there being from 93 to 120 on the first arch. The fins are small and weak, the dorsal containing 15 rays and the anal 21.
The lower edge of the body is strongly serrated, the plate-like scales numbering 21 before the ventral fin and 16 behind it. The scales in the lateral line number 60. The body is dark-bluish or greenish above, silvery on the sides, and white beneath. There is a dark spot behind the gill-opening and sometimes a row of smaller spots along the side.
The vertical fins often have black or dusky edges. The peritoneum is white. Supposed structural and color peculiarities in shad from different regions or basins have not been verified.
From the other clupeoids with which the shad is frequently associated in the rivers, it may be readily distinguished. In all of them the cheek is longer than deep. The hickory shad or hickory jack (Pomolobus mediocris) has a projecting lower jaw and a very straight profile. The river herrings or alewives are much smaller than the shad, have fewer and shorter gill rakers, and a larger eye (3J in head). In the branch herring (P. pseudoharengus) the peritoneum is pale, while in the Gluth erring (P. cesti Valis) it is black.
The female shad is larger than the male, the average difference in weight being more than a pound. The mature males taken in the fisheries of the Atlantic coast weigh from 1£ to 6 pounds, the average being about 3 pounds; the females usually weigh from 3 to 6 pounds, the average being If pounds. The general average for both sexes is between 3| and 4 pounds.
In the early history of the fisheries, shad weighing 11, 12, and even 14 pounds were reported, but 9-pound shad are very rare on the Atlantic coast, and 10 pounds seems to be the Maximum. Some seasons an unusual number of large shad (7 to 9 pounds) appear in certain streams. On the Pacific coast shad average a pound or more heavier than on the Atlantic, occasionally attaining a weight of 14 pounds; many have been reported weighing 9 to 12 pounds.
The shad is distributed along the entire east coast of the United States, and northward and eastward to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It has gradually spread from the Sacramento River, California, where it was introduced by the California Fish Commission, and is now taken from southern California (Los Angeles County) to southeast Alaska.
In the early history of the country its abundance excited unbounded astonishment. Nearly every river on the Atlantic coast was invaded in the spring by immense schools, which, in their upward course, furnished an ample supply of good food.
Notwithstanding greatly increased fishing operations and the curtailment of the spawning-grounds, the supply in recent years has not only been generally maintained, but owing to fish-cultural efforts has been largely augmented in certain streams, notably in the Kennebec, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Choptank, Potomac, Nanticoke, Rappahannock, York, James, Chowan, Roanoke, Neuse, and St. Johns’ rivers, and in Chesapeake Bay, Albemarle Sound, Croatan Sound, and Pamlico Sound, and the Sacramento and Columbia rivers.
SHAD IN THE OCEAN.
The shad passes most of its existence at sea, and little is known of its habits and movements when out of the rivers. The ocean areas to which it resorts are unknown, and what its salt-water food consists of has not been determined.
In the Gulf of Maine, it is known to associate in large numbers with mackerel and herring during the months of June, September, and October, being most numerous in June. It has been taken at North Truro, Massachusetts, in the fall, when the ocean temperature was from 43° to 49°.
In the month of November, one year after another, it has been found on the west side of Sakonnet River, Rhode Island. In May and June, it has been captured with mackerel a few miles northeast of Cape Cod Light. Some instances of capture indicate that under certain conditions the adults may remain in the fresh-water rivers a whole year.
In November 1890, 600 were taken in the Chesapeake Bay. It has been found in the Potomac in considerable abundance in August and September, and even during the last week in December. Its movements are largely controlled by the water temperature. It is believed that it seeks to occupy an area having a temperature of 60° or 70°, and that its migrations are determined by the shifting of this area.
SHAD IN THE RIVERS.
The annual migration of the shad from the ocean to the rivers is for the sole purpose of reproduction. It ascends to suitable spawning grounds, which are invariably in fresh water, occupying several weeks in depositing and fertilizing its eggs in any given stream.
Its migrations from the sea are in quite a regular succession of time with relation to latitude. It first appears in the St. Johns River, Florida, about November 15, the season of greatest abundance being February and March. In the Savannah River, Georgia, and the Edisto, South Carolina, the run begins early in January and ends the last of March.
In the North Carolina rivers these stages of the migration are a little later. In the Potomac River advance individuals appear late in February, but the fish is most numerous in April. In the Delaware River the maximum run is about the 1st of May. It reaches the Hudson River the last of March and is found in the Connecticut toward the end of April, is most abundant the last of May, and leaves the stream late in July.
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