BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 49 



of menhaden off New London light, caught* them and baited the ves- 

 sels, and that was all that we could find. From there we went to Green- 

 port, L. I., and did not find anj^ there, although we heard of the fisher- 

 men hauling some ashore up at Jamesport and Eiver Head. That I 

 think was the dryest season for my business that I ever saw. Since 

 then, most of the time, there has been plenty of menhaden; although 

 I think it will average about one year in five, since I commenced, tha/t 

 fish are very scarce. In talking with some of the old fishermen, they 

 say by what they hear the menhaden are as plenty now as they were 

 when they first went fishing. They say that they then had seasons 

 when they were very scarce, and also when they were very plenty. The 

 fishermen here are all satisfied that the menhaden spawn in Ehode 

 Island waters, and the little menhaden that we see here are hatched 

 in Narragansett Bay. I went to Maine to build a pogie factory, the first 

 one that was ever built in Maine, in November, 18G3, and had it in run- 

 ning order June 10, 1864. The people of South Bristol, Me. told me 

 that I would not have any trouble catching all the pogies that I should 

 want in John's Bay, that the shores and bays were full of them, and 

 that they plagued and bothered them, while they were fishing for 

 mackerel, so much that they carried stones in their boats to stone or 

 drive them away, but I did not find them so. The fish were very scarce 

 in 1864. I got only 4,000 barrels. I cruised off-shore 20 miles and hailed 

 vessels. They reported that they had not seen any fish. The same year 

 Capt. Albert Grey, of Tiverton, started with four boats and a full gang 

 to fish in Maine. He sailed from Rhode Island to Mount Desert, Me., 

 but did not see a school of menhaden to set at, and returned without 

 wetting his seine. Up to that time there had not been a purse-seine set 

 in the waters of Maine.* Therefore, it is very evident that it was not 

 the purse-seine that drove the pogies off the coast of IMaine at that time. 

 The first part of the fishing season of 1865 was not much better until the 

 4th of August. At that time a large body of very large and fat pogies 

 came in from off-shore from the southeast. They were not in schools, but 

 in one body. I fished between the islands of Damiscove and Mouhegau. 

 I, as well as my fishermen, thought that body of fish was eight miles 

 wide, and it seemed to completely fill the space between those two 

 islands, which is about ten miles. Capt. Washborn Clifford, of South 

 Bristol, was freighting canned lobsters from the factory at Isle an Haut 

 to Boston that season. He told me that the pogies seemed to be the 

 whole length of the coast, and he did not run out of them until he got 

 to Wood Island, a distance of one hundred miles. He said they made 

 him think of a heavy shower of rain falling on the ocean; the ocean 



appeared to be alive with them. It may seem like a large story to tell, 



• . 



* This statement needs some slight modification. Though menhaden were scarce in 

 Maine in 1864, many thousands of barrels were caught. Purse-seines were used in 

 these waters by Gloucester fishermen in search of menhaden and mackerel as early a8 

 1857. 



Bull. U. S. F. C, 81 4 



