THE  ALEWIFE  (CLUPEA VERNALIS).

NATURAL HISTORY.-The range of this species is from Florida to Newfoundland.  In Maine it has a more gregarious character than any other river fish. It pushes up the rivers in dense bodies, which appear to seek unerringly each their native lakes, and the young descend to sea in solid columns. Before the obstruction of the streams by far the greater part of the alewives deposited their spawn in lakes and ponds. No stream seems to be too small for them if its waters are derived from a pond, and there can have been  hardly an accessible pond in the whole State they did not visit. The inaccessible waters were those rendered so by the interposition of insurmountable falls or too great a distance from the sea.   They are known to have ascended the Sebasticook, a branch of the Kennebec, to Newport, 100 miles from the sea, in great numbers, and on another branch, the Sandy River, tradition says that they bred  in  Temple  Pond,  about 120 miles from the sea. It is not probable that their migrations were more extensive than this in any part of the State, except on the east branch of the Penobscot, where  tradition says they reached a point nearly 200 miles from the sea.

The main body of the alewives enter the rivers late in May ; some rivers not until June. They move almost exclusively by daylight and especially in bright sunny weathr. An unusual flow of water deters them from entering a stream. They are very courageous in the passage of falls, venturing into very small channels that promise to lead them past obstructions, and often forcing their way up inclined planes where the depth of water is not enough to cover their bodies. After spawning, the old fish soon return to sea, and the young follow them between July and September, when from 2 to 4 inches in length. The time that they require to attain maturity is estimated at three or four years. They do not appear to ascend the rivers more than once in a lifetime for any other purpose than to spawn.

The alewives frequenting the same breeding place are remarkably uniform in size and appear­ance, but between those of different streams there are remarkable differences, mainly in the matter of size. Among the largest are those of the Kennebec, of which three hundred and fifty will fill a barrel, while of the Damariscotta alewives a barrel holds four hundred and twenty-five, and of the Brooksville alewives seven hundred and fifty. The latter are the smallest known, but are very good fish.

The ovaries of a Maine alewife contain about 165,000 eggs. With this high degree of fertility they combine a considerable degree of hardiness in both adult and young compared with other members of their family, and to these characteristics we may attribute the fact that they increase with remarkable certainty and at a rapid rate when afforded even ordinary facilities.  The placing of a few hundred adults in a pond at the season of their ascent is surely followed by the descent of a throng of young a few weeks later, and the return of a considerable  body of mature  fish after the lapse of three or four years. It is doubtful whether there is another  among our whole list of fish that will so well repay efforts at cultivation.

From:
The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States
Section V, History and Methods of the Fisheries, Volume I, 808 pages pp.687-8.

• Author: George Brown Goode (1851-1896)
• Date Published: 1884-1887
• Publisher: U.S. Government Printing Office
• Location: Washington, DC