The Hudson River
A Natural and Unnatural History, Expanded Edition
by: Robert H. Boyle, 1979, 1969

Chapter 6

THE MID-HUDSON

Hudson River Shad

Each spring, mature shad, born in the Hudson four to five years earlier, return from the Atlantic to spawn on the river flats that run northward from Kingston to Coxsackie. The commercial season extends from March 15 to June 1, but the fish usually do not arrive until about the first week in April. They seem to come in waves, and the appearance of the largest shad, known as “lilac" shad because of the lilacs then in bloom, signals the end of the run. Female lilac shad weigh as much as ten or twelve pounds. As the shad work their way upriver, fishermen set to the harvest with gill nets affixed to stakes or drifted with the tide. The shad swim into the nets head first, and when they attempt to withdraw, their gill covers catch on the mesh. In order to allow some fish to get upriver to spawn, the state conservation department requires that all nets be taken from the river from Friday to Sunday mornings. The fishing lasts about six weeks, with the female or roe shad commanding the higher price because of the eggs, a great delicacy. At riverside, a roe shad usually sells for a dollar, while the male or buck shad costs a quarter. There are some gourmets who consider the male better eating; not only is the flesh tastier, but the testes are excellent when poached.

Upon reaching Kingston and points north, the shad begin to spawn. Depending on age, a female carries between 116,000 and 468,000 eggs, and, according to those who have observed spawning on other rivers, the female mates with a single male, usually between sunset and midnight. Both swim near the surface, splashing vigorously. After they spawn, they are very emaciated as they make their way downriver again to sea. Spent shad, called “backers” or “downrunners,” are sometimes caught, but they are commercially worthless.

The fertilized eggs roll about the bottom of the Hudson, where they may be suffocated by silt washed down by heavy rains or by dredging, or eaten by predators. Catfish and eels are very fond of the eggs; in fact, eels often attack female shad caught in nets, ripping open the belly to get at the roe. Hatching takes anywhere from six to ten days, depending on temperature. Upon hatching, the shad larvae are about ten millimeters long, and for a week or two they nourish themselves on their yolk sacs. Unlike their parents, juvenile shad have teeth; they stay upriver during the summer months, nosing about in the depths of the river or in coves and marshes for small crustaceans, insect larvae, and other tidbits. The coves and marshes are not only rich feeding grounds but, being shallow, offer places of refuge from larger predators, such as striped bass. When the state maintained hatcheries, special care had to be taken to prevent eels from entering rearing ponds through water pipes to get at the young shad. The mortality among shad eggs and juveniles is extremely high; perhaps only one adult survives to reach market for every hundred thousand eggs fertilized.

Upon the approach of cool weather in September, the young shad begin working their way down the Hudson to the Atlantic. The young shad often swim near the surface, and their rippling passage downstream has been likened to a gentle spatter of raindrops. By the time they reach the harbor mouth in October and November, they are from three to five inches long and prepared to cope with life in the ocean until they return to the Hudson to spawn four or five years later.

Tagging studies indicate that at sea the shad move north to the Gulf of Maine, where they mingle in the summer and fall with shad from the Connecticut and Delaware rivers and Chesapeake Bay. They apparently feed on small crustaceans, such as inch long mysid shrimp. No one knows for certain where they spend the winter, but they probably move south along the Continental Shelf and as spring approaches they head inshore. In the early spring, there are great numbers of shad in the Delaware Bay, but probably only half of them are Delaware River fish. The other half seem to be migrants heading for more northern rivers, such as the Hudson and the Connecticut.

Over the years, the catch of Hudson shad has had violent ups and downs. In colonial days, shad were extremely abundant. In the mid 1800s, records show the fishery in relative decline. Then, toward the end of the nineteenth century, shad again became abundant; in 1889. the catch from the Hudson was 4,332,000 pounds, the all-time record. The future appeared excellent, but the fish went into a decline, and by 1916, the catch was a meager 40,173 pounds, the worst on record. In 1919, the catch was up to 374,974 pounds, but then it dropped to 94,369 pounds in 1924. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, it began to edge upward, and suddenly, in 1936, the catch was way up again, 2,467,900 pounds. For the next twenty-three years, with two exceptions, the annual catch was at least 1,000,000 pounds. In 1942, 4,253,528 pounds were caught, the highest number for this century. In 1960, the catch began to skid, and it is now down to about 100,000 pounds annually.

Fishermen and biologists have put forward any number of theories for these baffling fluctuations. One explanation is that shad populations are cyclical, and that the swings are normal and to be expected. Then, too, pollution, ship traffic, and other factors have been blamed. In the late 1940s, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service assigned a biologist, Gerald B. Talbot, to look into the problems affecting Hudson River shad. Talbot, now director of the U. S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife Laboratory in Tiburon, California, did a detailed study, “Factors Associated with Fluctuations in Abundance of Hudson River Shad,” in which he examined just about every possibility. He looked into stream flow and found no correlation between it and the size of the catch. "Tidal action, particularly during low flows, has more effect on the river velocity than does runoff,” he noted. A comparison of water temperatures over the years revealed nothing statistically significant. Ship traffic, although a mechanical hazard to nets, was not detrimental to the run, and dredging operations of that day had “no measurable adverse effect.” (I say “of that day” because the Corps of Engineers had yet to dredge the thirty-four-foot-deep ship channel to Albany.)

Until 1935, the state operated shad hatcheries and stocked the Hudson with young. Some fishermen insisted the closing of the hatcheries caused the catch to dwindle. But catches, in fact, improved afterwards. Talbot did an extensive analysis and concluded that “the number of eggs that it has been possible to obtain for hatchery operations is only an extremely small fraction of the amount spawned naturally, and the increased survival rate, if any, resulting from current shad-hatchery practices has not produced, and cannot be expected to produce, an increase in shad production.”

Pollution played an uncertain role. As early as 1906, pollution in the Albany Pool was a problem; at that time a state report noted, ‘Formerly, shad were caught up to the Troy Dam. . . . It would seem as if, year after year, the run of fish was retarded by an invisible line which annually stretched further and further down the river and beyond which the fish would not pass. . . At present, the fish do not seem to run much above Hudson.” Even so, downriver at the Battery, Talbot found “no correlation between average oxygen content of the water . . . and shad production during the period between 1915 and 1951. Any effect that pollution in this area has had on the runs of shad may well have been uniform since about 1919, as there appears to be little overall change in water quality, as measured by oxygen content since that time.”

Talbot believed the principal factor causing the fluctuation of the shad catch was the number of fish allowed to escape upriver to spawn. Recaptures of tagged fish demonstrated that too many spawners were being netted on their way upriver, and Talbot suggested that overflowing be curbed by closing more days to netting. He calculated that the size of the run each year was dependent on the amount of fish that had escaped the nets during the previous five years, four years, and one year, and by using a mathematical formula, he found it would be possible to “predict the size of the shad run one year in advance within desired confidence limits.” Unfortunately, nothing was done; Talbot’s findings were assigned to bureaucratic limbo. Ironically, shad might return to the Hudson in abundance because so many fishermen have given up in disgust; thus the shad population might have time to rebuild, as it has in the past.

No matter what factor or combination of factors has prompted the current decline of the shad, the descendants of Hudson River fish carry on elsewhere. Back in the nineteenth century, when stocking exotics such as carp was the rage, Seth Green, a New York pioneer of piscicuiture, became the first person to hatch shad artificially, and he established a state hatchery at Castleton on the Hudson. In 1871, the state of California asked New York authorities for permission to stock shad from the Hudson in the Sacramento River. At the time, Californians feared that immigrant Chinese, who were very fond of fish, would seine the Sacramento clean. New York agreed, and on June 19, 1871, Green began an epic rail journey west. He wrote:

I started at 6 a. m. from my hatching establishment ten miles below Albany, on the Hudson River, with twelve thousand young shad in four eight-gallon milk-cans. They had been hatched the night before at the establishment under charge of the New York commissioners. I arrived at Rochester at 10 p. m. and changed the water, substituting that from the Genesee River, without injury to the fish. I arrived at Cleveland at 7:45 next morning: put two hundred shad in Lake Erie, and changed the water again. The fish were then fresh and lively, without any signs of sickness. I again changed the water at Toledo, and when I arrived at Chicago at 7 p. m. the fish were still in good order. Here I first tried the water from the city water-works, but found there was too much oil in it; so I went to the lake. Having tasted the water and found that it would answer, I put two hundred fish in Lake Michigan, and on June 21 started with cans newly filled, at 10:45 a. m., for California. I carried an extra can of water, for before me was a long stretch of almost arid land; still I was fortunate enough to find some places between Chicago and Omaha where I could get a few pails of water and make a partial change. The fish were still in good order when we arrived at Omaha; but there I could not find any water in which they would live five minutes. The way I tested the water was by filling a tumbler and putting a few fish in it; it was easy to tell at once, by the behavior of the fry, whether the water agreed with them or not. ... From Omaha I did not find any good water for four hundred miles, and the only way I kept my charges alive was by drawing the water out of the cans into pails, and pouring it from one pail into another until purified; this process being assisted by my getting a little ice-water from the car-tanks.

June 22. Bad water all day, with the thermometer 100 degrees in the shade from 9 a. m. to 4 p. m. I used ice-water the entire day, a very little at a time, and had hard work to keep the temperature of the water below 82 degrees. I began to feel blue, and doubtful of the result. The fish suffered considerably, but the weather began to be cold toward night, and I got the temperature of the water down to 75 degrees at 9 p. in., the fish recovering a little.

June 23. I arrived at Laramie River at 5 p. m. and got a good change of water; fish doing well, and I began once more to feel hopeful and encouraged. We had a frost that night, and next morning at 7 I changed water at Green River, where it was in proper condition. At 2 p. m. I got another change from a stream in which there were trout, and again at Ogden, where I put two hundred fish in the river. June 25. The water was changed at the Humboldt River; the water was good and continued good all the rest of the way.

June 26. I arrived at Sacramento and took the fish up the river two hundred and seventy-five miles from Sacramento, in company with Messrs. Bedding and Smith, the California fishery commissioners. In their presence I deposited the fish in the Sacramento River the same night at 10 p. m.; there were about ten thousand in good order. On the sixth and seventh days out they began to be very busy looking for food. Whenever I changed the water they would clean up all the food there was in it in five minutes. They did not suffer for food as long as the sack lasted on their bellies; that is about five days; then they needed sustenance. If I could get a change of water often enough from running streams I could carry them a long way, as nearly all streams are filled with small insects. With this view I examined the water of the Sacramento where I put them, and found plenty of food for the young fry. I then went down to the Pacific Ocean and found that there were plenty of sand-fleas, which are the principal food of the old shad in the Atlantic. And now I can only say that if they do not have shad in the Pacific Ocean there will be but one cause, the roily water, caused by washing the mountains down for gold. However, I think the fish will get through all right.

Shad apparently do not have the strong “home stream” instinct that salmon do, and by 1876 the Hudson transplants ranged from the Golden Gate north to Vancouver Island, British Columbia. In 1880, mature shad were taken from the Columbia River. In 1885, shad fry from the Chesapeake Bay also were stocked in the Columbia River drainage system, and in recent years shad have come to outnumber the runs of native chinook and sockeye salmon in the Columbia. But the story of shad in the Columbia River does not end there. Present-day Pennsylvania fishermen, long irked by the loss of the shad run on the Susquehanna River because of the construction of impassable power dams, prevailed upon authorities to stock shad anew. In 1967, to the blare of publicity, fertilized eggs stripped from shad in the Columbia River were flown east from Portland, Oregon, and planted in the Susquehanna less than a day later. Almost a hundred years had passed since Green and Stone went west with young shad, but descendants of their Hudson River fish have come home, almost.

With shad at a low point in the Hudson, Everett Nack of Claverack, a commercial fisherman, has expanded us operations by specializing in still another species that was introduced to the Hudson. This species is the goldfish (Cczrassius auratus). A domesticated cousin of the carp, goldfish originally came from China and Japan, and they possibly got into the Hudson when garden pools overflowed or, when aquarium owners tossed them into the river or flushed them down toilets. Whatever their precise point of origin, goldfish have thrived in the river, although after two or three generations in the wild, they apparently hybridize with carp and lose their coloring. Instead of being bright red, gold, or orange, the offspring become a sere yellow. Even so there are enough goldfish being flushed down toilets or holding their own genetically so that Nack is able to seine them for sale to wholesale aquarium fish dealers. There are thousands upon thousands, if not millions, of goldfish in the Hudson, some of them the size of a catcher’s mitt, and they are in demand, especially for new garden pools in burgeoning suburbia. After several years of hauling a seine for goldfish, Nack has been able to hike his price up to seventy-five cents apiece from aquarium dealers, but, he says, “I know damn well some of those dealers get as much as ten dollars a pair.” On the average, Everett nets three to four thousand goldfish a year. He could obtain more; he knows where there is a great concentration in the Hudson near Castleton, but he cannot get at the goldfish by hauling a seine out into the river because wastes from the Fort Orange Paper Company are piled to such a depth that dangerous holes in the natural river bottom are covered over. He tried seining there once, but in doing so he stepped into a deceptively shallow pile of pulp wastes and almost drowned when the sludge gave way.

Nack is a true river rat, one of a handful I know. A carpenter by trade, and tall and lean, almost Lincolnesque in appearance, he spends every minute he can on the Hudson or its feeder streams. He knows where the trout are near “Fatso’s Bridge” on Claverack Creek (or at least where they were until a textile mill started pouring detergent into the “crick”), and he knows a sewage-polluted marsh where “the stink in August will knock your hat off.” Despite the depredations committed allegedly in the cause of “progress,” Everett continues to follow the river, and if there were to be a depression tomorrow, he would make out. He nets catfish, deemed unpalatable by others, and puts them in clear water tanks in his cellar, where the fish purge themselves and become a savory dish for the table. He seines the rivers for shiners and killiflsh (“minnies,” in his lingo), which he sells as live bait. With his four sons—fourteen, thirteen, eleven, and seven—panting after him, he digs in the marshes for snapping turtles (Chelydra aer pentina), vicious monsters which reach up to forty and fifty pounds; these are taken home, beheaded, scrubbed, cleaned, and chopped up before being dumped into the pot. Snapping turtles have very durable nerve endings, and individual pieces of meat will squirm and jump on the kitchen counter. “Man,” Everett says, “there’s nothing like turtle lasagna.”

For several years, Everett used to sell the smaller snapping turtles to Donald Bartholomew in Hudson for a dollar apiece. Bartholomew, a tool and die maker by profession and a student of the Iroquois by avocation, used to take the shells to a reservation near Syracuse, where the Iroquois, the majority of them Onondagas with a scattering of Mohawks, Oneidas, and Tuscaroras, would hollow them out, place cherry pits inside, and use them as ceremonial rattles. “I started doing this when they had a shortage of the right size of turtles,” Bartholomew says, “and I told them that on the Hudson we had trappers, such as Everett Nack, who caught the big turtles for food, but had no use for the small ones. I obtained them, and the Indians made the rattles. Some of those Hudson River turtles have ended up in museums all over the world. A couple of years ago, Bartholomew had a mold made, and he began making snapping turtle shells of fiberglass. “It’s the exact duplicate of the original,” he says. “I took some out to the reservation, and the Onondagas couldn’t tell the difference.” The Iroquois prefer the fiberglass shells because they hold up better, and the surplus is sold at roadside stands all across the country at so-called Indian trading posts.

In the winter, Nack traps. The river marshes are alive with muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) and mink (Mustela vison). The muskrats, “rats” in the local vernacular, are in their prime form mid-January to the beginning of April. In the early spring, it is difficult to get good skins because the rats are in a mating mood, and a male rat caught in a trap is usually set upon and bitten by his anxious fellow rats. Hudson River rats have thick pelts and heavy fur, and there are trappers who say they are the best in the country. A dealer in Poughkeepsie pays anywhere from one dollar to three dollars for a skin; the price depends on the Russian catch. Muskrats are native to North America, but at the turn of the century, several were released near Prague by one Prince Collerdo-Mannsfeld, and their descendants have since spread over most of Europe. In most European countries, muskrats are regarded as pests because they undermine dikes and railroad embankments, but the Russians trap them and often sell considerable numbers of skins to American furriers.

Water Chestnut

Like the carp, the water chestnut is an import. In all likelihood, it was planted in 1884 by a clergyman, the Reverend John Herman Wibbe, in Collins Lake near Schenectady. He apparently thought it would make an interesting addition to local flora. A mile-long outlet connects the lake with the Mohawk River and the barge canal, but for years the water chestnut stayed in the lake. In the 1920s, possibly as the result of flooding, it spread into the Mohawk, and it was so prolific that it prompted an investigation by Professor W. C. Muenscher of Cornell, an authority on aquatic plants. In a paper published in the 1934 Biological Survey of the Mohawk-Hudson Watershed, Professor Muenscher reported that the water chestnut occupied one thousand to twelve hundred acres in the Mohawk above Lock 6. There were no water chestnut plants in the Hudson, but there were reports of seeds found as far south as Catskill, and Professor Muenscher urged that measures be taken to stop the plant from spreading. Nothing was done, and the plant is now found up in Lake Champlain as well as in the mid-Hudson down to the mouth of Wappinger’s Creek and in the marshes at Constitution Island across from West Point. I myself have picked up seed husks on the shore at Croton.

Migratory Birds

Along the Hudson itself, the American golden plover (Pluoialis dominica), which migrates from the Arctic to the pampas of Uruguay and Argentina, is a regular fall visitor. The plover stops in marshes or along the shore to feed on small clams, shrimp, and crickets. Another long-distance traveler is the white-rumped sandpiper (Eriola fuscicollis), which flies from Baffin Island to as far south as the Strait of Magellan. The snow goose (Chen hyperborea) is a high-altitude flier above the Hudson on its trip from the Arctic to the southeastern Atlantic coast. Occasionally, one sets down on the river.

The Canada goose (Branta canadensis), which used to be an abundant breeder in the Hudson Valley, is making a comeback, thanks in good part to the fact that it can grow used to man and become semi-domesticated. Indeed, it is one of the easiest birds for aviculturists to keep in captivity, and escapes and releases from waterfowl collections may have added to the local population. For the past several years, Canada geese have nested in the Bronx and Pocantico rivers in Westchester County, and as the population expanded, young geese, seeking territories of their own, have gradually spread up the Hudson Valley.

One of the most beautiful waterfowl, the wood duck (Aix eponsa), has also made a comeback. Its very beauty and trusting nature made it almost literally a sitting duck for gunners, and by World War I, hunters had almost shot it out of existence in the United States. Its resurgence now is due largely to the work of sportsmen and aviculturists, such as the late Alain White of Litchfield, Connecticut. Wood ducks are native to North America, but when White began his work in the 19205, they were so rare that he had to buy breeding pairs from waterfowl collections in Europe. He hired a gamekeeper from England and began raising them, and in a few years, he started releasing banded wood ducks into the wild. By 1939, more than nine thousand had been freed and they had spread to forty-four states and several Canadian provinces. Wood duck are now re-established in such numbers in New York that they may be legally hunted.

Duck hunting along the Hudson is excellent. I know of hunters who do quite well off Ossining and Croton Point; the alert railroad commuter can see the blinds offshore. The best duck hunting on the river, however, is to be had in the mid-Hudson, and the most renowned hunter of all is a friend of Everett Nack, Crissy Wilson of Stottville, who is nicknamed Mr. Duck. Now in his late sixties and retired from the insurance business, Crissy has hunted ducks and geese on the river for more than forty years. He was named Crissy because he was born on Christmas Day. Short, stocky, and red-faced, he could be one of Henry Hudson’s crew.

In the fall, Crissy is on or about the Hudson every day, often in the Tivoli marshes on either side of Cruger Island. The first birds to arrive are blue-wing teal (Anas discors). They stay until the first heavy frost and then depart for the West Indies and Latin America. Blacks (A. rubdpes) and mallards (A. platyrhynchos) take their place. There are also widgeon (Mareca americana) and a smattering of shovelers (Spatula clypeata), and later in the season greater and lesser scaup (Aythya mania and A. offinis), a few redheads (A. americana), and “a pretty good flight” of canvasbacks (A. valisinerla). But most of all, there are great flocks of Canada geese stringing the autumn sky in waving V’s. “The geese are more in abundance on the Hudson than they’ve ever been since I started hunting,” Crissy says. In recent years, for reasons not yet understood, migrating Canadas have taken to flying down the Hudson instead of along the coast, their customary route. There are also brant (Branta bennicla), but they rarely land on the river. “The brant we see go straight on to Long Island,” Crissy says. “If they do stop, we butcher them. They’re dumber than dumb. When they take off, they bunch instead of scattering. Dumber ‘n dumb.”

When the river is calm, Crissy likes to hunt by “creeping,” an art unique to the Hudson and practiced on the river only between Albany and Kingston. To creep, a hunter uses a creeping boat, which looks like a wide canoe from the bottom and a two-man kayak from the top. Wire mats are set in holes in the foredeck, and rushes are attached upright to the mats as camouflage. The gunner sits up front peering through the rushes, while the creeper kneels in back with a creeping paddle, which has a foot-long handle and a three-foot blade. The paddle never leaves the water; the blade is slowly turned to the side and brought forward after each stroke. “I’ve seen some people scull,” Crissy says, “but that’s not near as effective as creeping. Usually I put decoys out five or six hundred feet from shore, and then, when the ducks come in, I creep out to them. The slower you go, the better creeper you are. It’s always advisable to creep against the wind. You go too fast otherwise, and besides, the ducks always face to the wind. If you creep against the wind their backs are to you. When you’re out creeping, you can get up so close to the ducks you can’t hardly scare ‘em out! Sometimes you have to stand up and wave your arms or hit the water with the paddle to get them to fly.

“Why, the very last day of hunting last year, my son and I were creeping, and we saw these two geese. I was shooting, and my son was creeping. He’s a better creeper than I am. My knees ain’t for kneeling any more. Anyway, we saw these two geese, and we started to creep. We got so close, I says, ‘No point in getting any closer.’ We raised up, and the geese jumped, one Canadian, other a snow. You can’t shoot the snow. I waited until they separated, and I killed the Canadian.”

Most of the ducks Crissy gets are blacks, while wood ducks are second in his bag. To foster wood duck breeding, he has put up nesting boxes on poles in the marshes and in old trees in the woods along the river. “The migration of ducks and geese is as great as it was twenty-five or thirty years ago along the Hudson, Crissy says, “but the ducks don’t stay as long. You get ‘em for one or two days, but then they’re gone. My contention is that the biggest factor is the water chestnut. The wild rice, the wild celery, the wild oats, the duck potatoes, they’re going or they’re gone with the spread of the water chestnut.”

All Crissy asks is a day on the river; he need not get his limit. Once we were sitting and talking, and Crissy hunched forward in his chair and said, “One year I went down to lower Tivoli Bay, where I had a blind. I was in the blind, just sitting and waiting, and there came fourteen geese. Oh, oh, I said to myself, we’re going to be doing some business. So these came down and circled and lit right in front of my decoys. Only they weren’t geese—they were whistling swans. They sat for an hour, and I didn’t do a thing to move them. I just sat there still and watched. They just played around, stretched their necks around. Oh, my God! If they’d stayed there all day, I wouldn’t have cared!”