Morning journal and courier., 1883-09-10
The Ffshl0Ss Hudson.


 We do not know of 8 river of it's size in the United States which contains so few nen- migratory fish as the Hudson. Its only commercial fisheries of any value are those of the shad and striped bass. The former has been sustained by the fish commission, or 1t would have been as extinct as the sturgeon fisheries and the large bass are taken under the ice in brackish water, where they go to winter, and arc only transient lodgers, not permanent residents. In boyhood days VIC had what we then considered good fishing about Albany in the river and in the small streams emptying in it. That is, we could obtain strings of fish weighing from ten to thirty pounds in @ days fishing with hook and line. sThe fish were perch, cells, sunfsh, rock bass and bullheads, as 8 species of catfish is there called. Thirty years ago we have seen boats anchored in the channel all the way from Albany to Van Wie's Point, fishing for small striped bass of from half a pound to two pounds weight, using sturgeon spawn for bait and taking fair numbers.
 In those days walk down the Grsenbush bank to the well known Red House would usually give view of leaping sturgeon, and we have been as many as twenty leaps in an evening. Sturgeon was then so common that 1t was despised by many, and it was known along the river, even as far down as New York city, as "Albany beef" Now it is a rarity and luxury. After the Erie canal
 
 up into it, and few were taken in the river ; but they have never increased to any extent, and the perch are nearly extinct, while the striped bass about Albany have entirely disappeared. Ve have seen school boys take great strings of fish In the Wynantskill Downs Point called the Island Creek.
 Further down the river the striped bass fisheries of the Hudson were very good thirty years ago. We have just seen some extracts from papers about that time. The Sullivan County Whig of May IF, 1851, said: ''On Thursday morning last, nearly two tons of bass, of all sizes, varying from one to sixty pounds, were taken near Denning's Point, opposite Newburgh, in 8 seine owned by Van Mort and Knevils. Most of them were sent to Albany for a market". The Albany Reg ister, May, 1854, contained the following: ''The annual fishery en the Hudson, below the Highlands, has opened. Nine hundred pounds of bass were sent to New York from Croton banks by the cars on Saturday even- ing four hundred pounds, with respecta- ble sprinkling of shsd, the next evening, and the weather being favorable now, the proba- bility is that much larger oonsignInents will be sent of every evening for the greater part of g month. The shad are of good size, and some5of the bass taken reach twen- ty and twenty five pounds each.''
 We have no theory to advance as to the cause of the falling of of the fisheries of this river wS merely state the facts. It would seem as if a river of this size would furnish some fishing, but while the black bass have been ia the river for twenty or thirty years, no one would now think of catching one there unless by accident. The Hudson is said by Colonel McDonald, who gathered the fishery statistics of our coast rivers for the census of 1880, to exceed all others, even the famed Chesapeake, in it's yield of shsd i; but it's stock of anglers fishes have gone, and the ''noble Hudson," dwindIed to the di mensiens of creek in dry weather above Castleton, is now only Inhabited by the de- spised sucker and stray perch or two which wanders about seeking food in the places which once supported thousands of it's kin dred Truly it may be called the fishleas Hudson.