Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-01-14
SAWDUST AND FISH.
The Former Should be Kept Out of
Streams to Preserve the Latter,

The Former Should be Kept Out of
Streams to Preserve the Latter.
This subject has Just been brought to the
attention of the Legislature of California
by the Governors message The follow
ing from the last issue of Forest and Stream
shows the necessity of action in the mat
ter:
In my opinion the famous Mill brook.
of Plainfeld, Mass, which has a record of
century as the finest trout water in the
Hampshire hills, supplies those very con.
ditions and corroborative data which
Piscator" declares are essential to deter
mine what pernicious effect the presence
of sawdust has upon the denizens of mill
streams Here is water-power which
carried no less than thirteen manufactures
| fifty years ago. These included a tapnerv
sawmlil and factories for making brush
| and broom handles, whipstocks and cheese
and butter boxes, all discharging more
or less sawdust and shavings into the
streams, to say nothing of three satinet
| factories and telt-hat factory, whose
waste must have been deleterious to fish
life. Most of these buildings have since
| been destroyed by fire or tumbled into
pieces by decay, but the old foundation
walls and dams remain, and untold tons
of tanbark and sawdust still cover
the beds of the abandoned mill ponds knee
deep, all of it in a perfect state of preser-
walton, as happen to know from wading
| the stream last summer. Nevertheless
the brook continues fairly stocked with
small trout, despite the supplementary fact
| that it has been numerically fshed ever
| since the memorial days of the 'Mountain
Miller" fifty tingerlings being not unusual
now for days catch. Besides at no time
within my recollection have there been
less than three sawdust-producing mills on
this stream at once, so that it may be as
serted that its waters have not been nor
mally clear for century. Where the cur
rent Is rapid and the water broken by
lodges or powders the presence of sawdust
is scarcely perceptible, but at initials,
and in the basins above the dams, it ac-
| cumulates in quantity and remains, be-
coming water-soaked and sinking to the
| bottom.
Obviously in localities where the en-
tire bottom is imbedded by sawdust, fish
can neither spawn nor feed but il hap
pens that such deposits do not form on
their breeding places, nor is the area of
their foraging ground appreciably dimin-
ished by their presence. Even in the
half-emptied and useless ponds, the cur
rent constantly scours out a central cham
mel through the sawdust, leaving the bot
tom clear and pebbly; so that, in fact,
these local beds are of no more detriment
to the fish than SO many submerged logs.
The tout can range far and wide without
encountering them at ALL Yet, strange TO
| say-that Is, it must seem strange TO those
persons who take it for granted that saw
dust kills tish-the most likely places for
the larger trout are these self-same
| pebbly channels in the old ponds.
along whose edges, despite a hundred
freshets and ice-shoves, the persistent saw
dust aud tanbark lie in windrows so deep
that the wader feels as if he was going to
sink out of sight whenever he puts his foot
into the yielding mass, every movement of
which stirs up broadening efilorescence
which spreads for rods away, distributing
itself throughout the stream. From these
sawdust beds | can always fish out three
or four good trout with cautious hy and
at certain times the surface is fairly
dimpled with breaking fish, which pre-
suinably are after Larvae and insects which
the sawdust has harbored, though careful
investigation might discover other induce
ments Tor their congregaiing there. Forest
and Stream.