358 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



thirds miles. In each haul of the seine over 1,200 acres of bottom are 

 swept by the bottom line and the larger portion of the fishes in this area 

 dragged on shore. Two hauls are made each day of twenty-four hours; 

 one on each ebb-tide. 



In 1873, while on a visit to some of the larger fisheries, I saw 2,316 

 shad and about 25,000 herring taken at one haul. I was told at the time 

 that 4,000 shad were taken two years before. 



Nearly all of the seine fishermen stated that this season they were 

 losing more and more money the longer they fished. Instead of counting 

 the shad by thousands, 200 was quite above the average haul for the 

 large seines. It was apprehended that some of the proprietors would 

 become bankrupt. 



The decrease of fishing by seines is made evident by the desertion 

 of many of the once most famous shores of the river. Opossum Nose, 

 Cockwit Point, Marshall Hall, White House, Urban's, Scone's Gut, 

 Smith's Point, Indian Head, Craney Island, and others, have been aban- 

 doned within fifteen years. 



The abandonment of fishery-shores is to be attributed to the failures 

 to make profitable captures for a period of years. These have arisen 

 from a reduction of the numbers of the fishes, primarily; and, also, from 

 variation in the run- ways of the fishes because of changes in the bed of 

 the river (as at Craney Island) and of the obstacles to their ascent, 

 principally the drift-nets and the pound-net leaders. The large rental 

 which certain owners have demanded has also left certain shores idle. 



The cause of the dearth of fish must be largely owing to over-fishing ; 

 the immense exhausting sweeps of the great seines j the continual drift- 

 ing of the gill-nets, almost invisible to the fishes in the roily water, yet 

 reachiug across the channels often three-quarters of a mile and from the 

 surface to the bed of the river; and of late years the pound-nets, fencing 

 off long stretches of the run- ways of the fishes, until it is scarcely an 

 exaggeration to say that not a gallon of the water of the river flows into 

 Chesapeake Bay without being strained through the meshes of some net. 

 The skim-nets used in the vicinity of the Great Falls are of small con- 

 sequence in the reduction, as the total of their catch is inconsiderable. 

 It is the custom, without exception, in all fishing-localities to hear 

 the different net interests attribute the decrease of fishes to the abuses 

 of nets different from their own. The Potomac is not unlike other 

 regions in this particular. 



The drift-netters accuse the large seines, and the seine-owners inveigh 

 against the drift-nets and pound-nets, and ask for laws and regulations 

 to coutrol and prohibit them. 



A special point of complaint, is the incursion of " foreign fishermen" 

 upon the fishing-grounds. During the last two seasons a considerable 

 number of drift-netters have come upon the Potomac during the shad 

 season, from Pennsylvania and farther north. The presence of these 

 men seems to the resident fishermen and proprietors to be an intrusion 

 and an outrage, and their strongest desire is for a law removing them. 



