April first is the start of trout season in New York State. In honor of fishing season is this article by Arch Merrill about Rochester’s own Seth Green. Some of this article was later published in his book Gaslights and Gingerbread (1959).

Catharine Creek Trout Stampede
Another Monument to Seth Green

By Arch Merrill

Originally published: April 1, 1953

“GREATEST ANGLER” — Seth Green (left), “father of fish culture,” is shown with three of his friends at Caledonia fish hatchery in 1880s. He built hatchery. Others in picture (from left) are Henry Morse, Charles Morse, William Bowman.

ALMOST touching elbows, the fishermen will be lining the banks of Catharine Creek this day that opens the trout season in the Finger Lakes country.

A merry old man with a big hat and a Santa Claus beard will be with them—but only in spirit. For Seth Green has been in his grave for nearly 80 years.

Still, wherever fishes leap and anglers cast their lines, his name should be revered. No one in all history contributed more to the piscatorial world. Izaak Walton merely wrote about fishing. Seth Green literally created millions of fish.

He was called “the father of fish culture.” While he did not discover the idea of the artificial propagation of fish, he was the first to give the idea wide and practical application. Before he died at the age of 71, he had hatched the spawn of 20 kinds of fish and hybridized many others. He stocked streams all over the country. At Caledonia he built a pioneer fish hatchery and rearing pond.

He received medals from scientific societies: at home and abroad. He wrote three books and many articles on piscatorial subjects. He was a champion fly caster, a crack shot, an inventor of fishing equipment, a naturalist. He traveled widely, knew important people, but he was happiest with a crony in a flat-bottomed boat on a sunshiny Spring day, dropping a line in some fish lair he alone knew.

SETH GREEN was born on Patrick’s Day of 1817 in a log cabin in present a clearing near the intersection of Culver Road and Empire Boulevard. He was very young when his father moved to the then rising and soon extinct village of Carthage on the east bank of the Genesee, south of the Lower Falls. The senior Green opened a tavern there. It burned and he moved to another at St Paul and Norton Streets.

Youth Seth would-slouch for hours in a flat-bottomed boat in the river near Carthage Landing, his head over the water, seemingly asleep. Critical neighbors called him “The Lazy Boy of the Genesee.” but he was not asleep. He was studying the fish life in the water.

As a young man he ran a fish stall in the City Market on the Main Street bridge at the Front Street corner. There is a legend that he began his fish propagation experiments in that environment.

It is certain that in 1938 he was In Canada watching salmon in the spawning season. He studied means of protecting the spawn from the male fish that consumed it and that led to his successful artificial impregnation of dry spawn and the development of the famed shad-hatching box in 1864.

* * *

THAT SAME YEAR he established a hatchery and trout pond along Spring Brook near Caledonia. Some say it was the first in America. Green’s experiments attracted wide attention and in 1867 he was invited to stock New England streams. At Holyoke, Mass., fearful commercial fishermen broke his nets and hindered his work in every way. Still ha succeeded in batching 14 million shad in a fortnight, quadrupling the fish population of the Connecticut River.

Later he stocked the Hudson, Potomac and Susquehanna Rivers with shad and other varieties. One June day in 1871 he left a hatchery oh the Hudson for Sacramento, Calif., with 12,000 newly hatched shad. Ten days later he planted them in the Sacramento River, the first shad in Pacific Coast waters. It was the beginning of a big commercial fishing industry there.

Green experimented also with the hatching of sturgeon, white fish, striped bass and other species. He was a tireless chap.

In 1868 the State of New York purchased Green’s hatchery at Caledonia and he became its superintendent, a post he held until his death. A boulder on the grounds and a large picture of
Green over a breeding keep his memory green there. He served for years as a state fish commissioner and also* as a member of the national fisheries commission.

His books on fishing, one published in collaboration with Robert B. Roosevelt, uncle of TR, were in great demand. He also contributed to various outdoor publications and his advice was
sought by people in far places.

* * *

SETH GREEN became famous but he ever was a companionable man. He did not .like to
fish or hunt alone. He gathered bis cronies at his Spring Brook hatcheries for a day of sport and an evening of good talk. He was a rare story teller. Keuka Lake was a favorite fishing ground for the greatest angler of them all. It was there he developed, his formidable “rig,” with six leaders and three treble gang hooks.

In the Genesee Yacht Club regattas on the river in the 1870s Seth Green was at the helm of the craft that bore his name. On frosty Sundays he drove his fleet mare in the cutter races on East
Avenue and his ruddy face and flowing white beard made spectators think of a Curriers and Ives print.

“The father of fish culture,” an international figure who never lost his homespun ways, died at his Alexander Street home on August 20, 1888.

He was the best friend fishermen ever had.