The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1902-05-23
STORY OF
BLACK BASS
How They Were Taken From
the West to the East.
Fish are Supposed to Have Gone
Through Erie Canal From Lake
Erie to the Hudson, and from
There Were Distributed
Elsewhere.


pursue the black bass in eastern
waters know that if the Erie CANA
had not been dug and if the Baltimore
and Ohio railroad had not been push
ed beyond the stubborn barrier of the
lower Alleghanies there might not be
any black bass in those waters to
catch.
1t is one of the mysteries of natural
fish distribution on this continent at
the beginning ''great fish shake
down, as it is called that while the
region of the Mississippi valley and
the great lakes had black bass but no
shad or cells or herring, the region to
the east of it had shad and cells and
herring, but on black bass, with the
one exception of the st. Lawrence
river.
Some years after the Erie canal
was opened, Hudson river anglers be-
tween Albany and Troy and above
Troy, began to catch black bass.
Young bass had undoubtedly wander
ed from Lake Erie and travelled into
the canal feeders at Buffalo and
travelled eastward through the canal.
In the Hudson they throve.
From the Hudson between fifty and
sixty years ago, Saratoga lake was
stocked with black bass. Effnor lake,
in Saratoga county, was subsequently
stocked with black bass from Saratoga
lack and from Effnor lake the fish
passed into Sacandage river, whence
they passed into the Hudso IN, stocking
that river from Luzerne south.
Luzerne Falls, was barrier to their
further advance up the Hudson, but
Schroon lake, in Essex county, hav-
ing had bass introduced into it from
Lake Effnor, the fish we're enabled in
time to get into the Hudson by way
of Schroon river, and thus completed
the populating of the upper Hudson
about Luzerne falls
Between 1850 and 1862, lakes or
ponds in Massachusetts and other New
England states and in bordering New
York counties and White Lake in
Sullivan county, were stocked with
black bass from Saratoga lake and the
Hudson river Flax lake, near Ware
ham, Mass, being the first of the
New England lakes in which the fish
were placed. From these lakes the
black bass has come to be an inhabi-
tant of a wide range of waters be-
tween the Hudson and the New Eng
land coast line.
The FIRST black bass to which habitat
in Pennsylvania was given, were
taken from White lake and placed in
Elk Pond, Wayne county, Pa, in
1855, and from Elk Pond the many in
land waters of northeastern Penn
sylvania which are famous for their
black bass fishing today were stocked.
So that the black bass of northern
New York, New England and north
eastern Pennsylvania waters are de-
scended from the few adventurous
youngsters that struggled long ago
from Lake Erie through the Erie
canal
The streams beyond the Allegheny
mountains, flowing into the Ohio,
abounded with black bass from the
original ''shake down" This was
notably the case in what is now West
Virginia.
Gen. W. w. Shriver, who lived at
Wheeling and was an enthusiastic
angler, and one of the first to recog-
nize in the black bass prince among
game fishes, believed that it would do
we'll in the Potomac river, but there
Z as no way that live fish could be
transported to its waters Then the
Baltimore & Ohio railroad came
along that way, and one day Gen.
Shriver and ]. Dukehart took thirty
live adult bass from Wheeling Creek
and Alban G. Stabler, pioneer con-
ductor on the Baltimore & Ohio plac-
ed them in the water tank of the
tender on the locomotive of his train
and transported them to Cumberland,
on the Potomac river, where they
were released.
This was in 1854 From that stock
ing of the Potomac that river and it's
branches became teeming haunts of
black bass
Notwithstanding the qualities of
the black bass the fish had only local
fame for many years after its intro
duction into the waters of northern
New York and elsewhere, northern
anglers first learned generally of it's
merit as a game fish after the civil
war Soldiers at the front caught
them in the Potomac learned to appre-
ciate them and after coming home
taught others to fish for them.
In 1870 that rare old time angler
Thaddeus Norris associated with A.
b. Reeder of EastoL. Pa , in the task,
brought from the Potomac river near
Harpers Ferry, at their own expense
large number of black bass, with
which they stocked the Susquehanna
and Delaware rivers In 1878 the in.
crease of these bass in both streams
has been so great, and the waters of