482 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND "WILDLIFE SERVICE 



And it is so scarce a fish in the Passamaquoddy 

 region (it has long since vanished from St. John 

 Harbor) that three specimens, only, are known to 

 have been taken there within recent years. 3 



One has been taken near the head of the Bay of 

 Fundy on the Nova Scotian side (Scotts Bay, 

 Kings County) one on the Nova Scotian shore of 

 the open Gulf of Maine (Cranberry Head, Yar- 

 mouth County), and one on the outer coast of 

 Nova Scotia near Halifax (Petpeswick Harbor, 

 Halifax County), this last being the most northerly 

 record for the tautog. 4 



The more productive tautog grounds north of 

 the elbow of Cape Cod of which we chance to 

 know are the Cape Cod Bay shore southward from 

 Wellfleet; the Sandwich-Sagamore shore with the 

 jetties at the mouth of the Cape Cod Canal; the 

 bouldery ground around Manomet headland and 

 nearby; Gurnet Point at Duxbury; the ledges off 

 Scituate and Cohasset and especially those off 

 Swampscott; the Nahant, Marblehead, and Mag- 

 nolia Rocks; and here along the rocky shore from 

 Gloucester Harbor around Cape Ann. The Cape 

 Cod Bay grounds are exceptional, for the tautog 

 caught there are on smooth bottom, not among 

 ledges which are the usual haunts. We have also 

 known of good-sized tautog taken inside of Nauset 

 Inlet (where there are scattered boulders only), 

 one in a lobster pot during the summer of 1949. 

 And quite a number, large and small, are caught 

 within Duxbury Bay, especially around the pilings 

 of Powder Point Bridge. 



Although tautog tend to gather in certain choice 

 spots, they move around enough so that some idea 

 of their relative importance along different parts 

 of the coast line can be determined from the 

 catches made in pound nets. Thus the average 

 yield per pound net or trap has run from twice to 

 20 times as great for Cape Cod Bay as for the 

 north shore of Massachusetts Bay in reasonably 

 good years 6 during the periods between 1890 and 



• One in Passamaquoddy Bay In 1909 or 1910 (Reported by Huntsman 

 Contrlb. Canadian Biol. (1920-1921) 1922, p. 64); a second in a tidal tributary 

 of the St. Croix River in the summer of 1934, and another there in August 

 1935 (reported by McGonigle and Smith, Proc. Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., vol. 

 19, 1936, p. 160); all of these were taken in herring weirs. 



♦ These Nova Scotian specimens are in the Provincial Museum at Halifax; 

 see Vladykov and McKenzie (Proc. Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., vol. 19, 1935, 

 p. 100), and Fowler (Proc. Acad. Nat. Science, Philadelphia, vol. 67, 1916, 

 p. 517) for further details. 



' The reported catches for 1895, 1897-1900, and 1910 were 5 to 43 times as 

 great for Cape Cod Bay as for Essex County, made in 1.5 to 2.3 times as 

 many pound nets or sets of pound nets. 



1921, when the catches for Massachusetts were 

 reported by towns, hence can be localized. 6 



The regional discrepancy has not always been 

 so wide in seasons when the Cape Cod Bay catch 

 has been smaller; in 1909, for instance, when the 

 total catch reported for Cape Cod Bay was only 

 635 pounds of tautog (with 27 pound nets in 

 operation) the average catch per pound net or 

 set of pound nets was nearly as great for the coast 

 from Boston Harbor to Gloucester (total catch 

 203 pounds with 12 nets or sets of nets in opera- 

 tion). But the pound nets take a few tautog in 

 Cape Cod Bay, even in years when they are so 

 scarce north of Boston that none at all have been 

 reported for Essex County, despite the fact that 

 the bottom seems more suited to tautog there 

 because rockier. The slightly lower temperature 

 along the north shore of Massachusetts Bay may 

 have been the contributing factor. 



During the peak period 1895-1899, the chief 

 center of abundance for tautog for Cape Cod Bay 

 seems to have been along the Sagamore shore, 

 where the yearly catch, per pound net, then 

 averaged about 2% times as great as for the eastern 

 shore of the Bay, 7 Brewster to Provincetown. 

 And catches of 18,100 pounds of tautog by 2 pound 

 nets at Sandwich in 1895 and 36,010 pounds of 

 tautog in 12 nets in Brewster in 1898 suggest 

 concentrations of tautog quite out of the ordinary. 

 But the best tautog fishing has been reported from 

 the Wellfleet region in recent years. 



Catch statistics suggest, also, that not much 

 interchange takes place between the populations 

 of tautog of the Cape Cod Bay region, and of the 

 the rocky coasts along the north shore of Massa- 

 chusetts Bay, for the peaks of abundance (as 

 judged from the reported landings) have fallen in 

 different years in these two regions. 



April 29 (1949) and May 1 (1950) are the earliest 

 dates at which we have heard of tautog caught 

 either in Massachusetts Bay or in Cape Cod Bay 

 (Duxbury in both instances). 8 In 1950, which 

 appears to have been an "early" season, they were 

 reported as biting well in Cape Cod Bay by May 

 25 and at Duxbury by the last days of the month; 



• 1890-1900; 1906-1911; 1917-1921, In particular. Data are also available for 

 earlier years. 



' Total catch, Sagamore and Sandwich, 41,053 pounds, with 2 to 5 pound 

 nets or sets of nets working in the different years; Brewster to Provincetown, 

 18,549 pounds with 14 to 24 pound nets or sets of pound nets in operation 

 yearly. 



' As reported in Salt Water Sportsman for May 25, 1950. 



