were scattered and difficult to catch. 

 The Amagansett fleet returned to New 

 York waters where schools again were 

 encountered off the eastern end of Long 

 Island. Fishing continued in Long Island 

 waters through the close of the season 

 (October 23). 



Fishing in Narragansett Bay by 

 Point Judith vessels was relatively 

 unproductive until the second week in 

 July. Schools which subsequently con- 

 gregated in the upper reaches of the 

 Bay provided consistently good catches 

 through the remainder of the summer. 

 The last landings at Point Judith were 

 made on October Z3. 



Early season landings at Glou- 

 cester were extremely light, with fish- 

 ing restricted to the eastern end of 

 Cape Cod. During the first week in 

 July, however, schools became in- 

 creasingly abundant in Massachusetts 

 and Plymouth Bays, and during the 

 following 4 weeks good catches were 

 made almost daily in these localities. 

 Schools became scarce in early August, 

 and, except for a week of fair fishing 

 on several large schools of migrating 

 fish encountered off the eastern end 

 of Cape Cod in early September, land- 

 ings during the remainder of the season 

 were generally poor. Fishing termi- 

 nated in this locality on September 24. 



Although schools appeared to be 

 fairly numerous in Maine waters from 

 late July through late August, vessel 

 captains reported that they were deep 

 and difficult to catch. Only eleven 

 landings were' recorded at Portland 

 during the entire season, all of which 

 originated in the vicinity of Case o Bay. 



The purse -seine catch in the North 

 Atlantic Area amounted to 78,000 tons. 

 This was adecrease of 17,000 tons from 

 that of the previous year and 5,000 

 tons below that in 1955. The July fish- 

 ery provided the greatest share of the 

 catch (29 percent), followed by August 

 (25 percent), September (22 percent), 

 June (13 percent), and October (11 

 percent). Catch per unit of effort 

 amoiinted to 24 tons per set, the low- 

 est in the past 3 years (36 tons in 

 1956 and 29 tons in 1955). 



North Carolina Fall Fishery 



The fall fishing season in North 

 Carolina extended from November 14 

 through January 12, 1958, but 98 per- 

 cent of the catch was taken in only 16 

 days of fishing between November 16 

 and December 28. Fishing during the 

 first 2 weeks of the season was re- 

 stricted to several huge schools of 

 large fish which traveled slowly along 

 the coast between Drum Inlet and Cape 

 Lookout. Schools of smaller fish were 

 present at the same time in the in- 

 shore waters west of Cape Lookout, 

 but these were largely ignored by the 

 fleet. Adverse weather interrupted 

 fishing during the first and second 

 weeks in December when fish were 

 reported by airplane pilots to be in 

 greatest abundance on the grounds. 

 When fishing resumed on December 16, 

 most of the large fish had already 

 migrated beyond the range of the fleet, 

 and the catch from Dec ember 18 through 

 the end of the season was contributed 

 exclusively by young- of-the -year which 

 had first appeared inside Cape Look- 

 out in early December. A catch of 

 56,300 tons was only about two-thirds 

 that of the previous year (81,000 tons) 

 and the lowest since 1953. December 

 landings accounted for 52 percent of 

 the total for the season; November 

 accounted for 45 percent, with the 

 remainder contributed in January 1958. 

 Catch per unit of effort, 3 8 tons per 

 set, was about the same as in 1955 

 (39 tons per set), but greater than 

 that in 1956 (3 2 tons per set). 



Distribution of Fishing Effort 



The geographical distribution of 

 fishing effort by the purse-seine fleet 

 in 1957 is shown in figures 2, 3, and 

 4 where the calculated number of 

 purse-seine sets was plotted within 

 10-minute unit areas. It may be seen 

 that fishing was conducted from the 

 northeast coast of Florida northward 

 to the central Gulf of Maine, with most 

 of the catches made inside the 20- 

 fathom contour. Unit areas in which 

 fishing was concentrated (200 sets and 

 over) were located in the vicinity of 

 Fernandina, Fla., and Cape Fear, N. C; 

 in Chesapeake Bay and coastal waters 



