48 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



The menhadeu fisheries have been carried on here very extensively, 

 catching them, before the oil factories were using many, expressly for 

 bait and for the farmers, the farmers using them very freely, Mr. Abner 

 Chase using, to my knowledge, 3,000 barrels a year some years (and 

 his son has told me that his father used one year upwards of 4,000 bar- 

 rels of menhaden fish) from 1849 to 1857. There were from 300 to 500 

 vessels a year after bait in Narragansett Bay, bank fishermen from New 

 London, Conn., and mackerel and cod fishermen from Massachusetts 

 and Maine, taking from 25 barrels to 150 barrels, some of them taking 

 bait two or three times in a season, paying from 25 to 50 cents a barrel 

 for them. There are not nearly as many vessels coming here now after 

 bait, because they can get the bait at their own homes. Capt. Benjamin 

 Tallman, of this place, formerly took the lead in the fishing business, at 

 one time running four gangs, but, at present, the business is carried on 

 more extensively in Tiverton, E. I., Joseph Church & Co. taking the 

 lead. I commenced fishing in the year 1847 and fished with Capt. 

 Nicholas Tallman, the most successful fisherman of his day. We fished 

 twelve springs at Seaconnet Point, with traps and purse-seins, for every 

 kind of fish that came along. It was my duty to be oft' on the water 

 with a small boat with another man, and look down in the water around 

 the trap, and to see if there were any fish that were likely to. go in the 

 trap. I observed that everything and all that came along in the spring 

 always came from the southwest and went northeast invariably. The 

 first fish that usually came along would be herring and shad, next tautog 

 and flounders, and, in a few days, striped bass and sea-robins or wing- 

 flsh. About the same time scup and sea bass, squid, menhaden, and 

 mackerel came, and every kind of fish full of spawn except men- 

 haden. I have taken a fish out of the trap many a time and put it in 

 the water, and headed it up the river, and, as quick as I let go of it, 

 it would turn at once and go down the river northeast, satisfying me 

 that the first run of fish, of every kind, belongs east of Ehode Island. 

 I never knew of a round mackerel to be caught three days after horse 

 mackerel made its first appearance. I have seen a great many horse 

 mackerel and have caught a great many, but never saw any signs of any 

 spawn in them. When menhaden fish first come, they seem to be about 

 G inches to 12 inches or more apart, verj^ thin, not in schools, always 

 going east, and in about a week after their first appearance they come 

 along in large schools. That body of fish would be four weeks or more 

 going by Rhode Island. The next body of menhaden that came along 

 were smaller fish and came very slow and worked in the rivers. Horse 

 mackerel and sharks were with them. We usually left the Seaconnet 

 Point about the 10th of June and went pursing menhaden, and could 

 always catch more than we could sell. In 1858 we had good fishing in 

 the spring, but no menhaden in the summer, anjl, as there were a num- 

 ber of fishing vessels here waiting for bait, we persuaded them to go to 

 New London, Conn, with us, which they did, and we found three schools 



