FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



265 



General range. — East coast of the United States, common from South Carolina 

 to Cape Cod; casual in the Gulf of Maine as far as Eastport. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — Although the scup is one of the most familiar 

 shore fish ri^ht up to the elbow of Cape Cod, with the southern shore of Massachu- 

 setts and its off-lying islands yielding annual catches of 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 

 pounds in good years, very few find their way past Monomoy into the colder waters 

 of the Gulf of Maine. The first definite mention of scup caught north of Cape 

 Cod is Storer's statement that one was taken at Nahant in 1835, and another in 1836, 

 but that it was never seen there before. Possibly, however, these and one picked 

 up dead at Cohasset in 1833 25 were the survivors of a smack load that had been 

 liberated in Boston Harbor some years earlier (1831 or 1832). A similar "plant" 

 was made in Plymouth Bay in 1834 or 1835, but there is no reason to suppose 

 that these planted fish established themselves or that their introduction has in 

 any way influenced the numbers of scup caught subsequently in the Gulf. 





Fig. 126.— Annual catch of scup (pounds) in pound nets and traps in Massachusetts, from statistics published by the State 



Commissioners of fisheries and game 



When the practice of setting mackerel nets outside Provincetown Harbor 

 was first adopted (about 1842) a few scup were taken in them from year to year, 

 and it seems that a few stragglers appear in our waters during most summers, 

 for odd fish were yearly caught in Cape Cod Bay and between Boston and Cape 

 Ann during the period 1860 to 1867, and a number were taken in a weir on Milk 

 Island near Glouscester in 1878. We find still larger catches reported from Man- 

 chester, Mass., in 1885, 1886, and 1887 (507, 1,243, and 1,755 pounds, respectively), 

 and from Gloucester in 1888 (1,767 pounds); none at all, however, in 1889. Scup 

 were reported in small numbers in one part of Massachusetts Bay or another nearly 

 every summer from 1891 until 1904, and occasionally since then. 



" The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States. Section I, 1884, p. 387. Washington. 



