138 Notice of the Shad Fisheries of the River Delaware. 
of the drifting seine, until each is finally brought to land; when the 
two ends have reached the shore, the fish are completely enclosed. 
The next process is called landing; to effect this, the men at each 
end lay hold of the cork and lead lines of their respective ends, and 
draw them together, pulling as uniformly as possible so as to keep 
up a simultaneous movement, the lead line of each end being kept 
near the bottom by a “ holder down,” as he is called, whose duty it 
is to press down this line with his foot, allowing it to slip at every pull 
of the men who are drawing in the net. In this way they soon 
reach the central part or bag of the seine, when those pulling upon 
the sunken line necessarily meet, and the contents of the net become 
enclosed within the small space between its marginal lines ; this is 
called bagging up. It now only remains to transfer the fish into the 
market-boat, which is effected by means of scoop or hoop-nets— 
small band-nets, managed by a single man, and capable of holding 
about twenty fish, and this is called bailing. 
It is an interesting sight to witness these operations during a fine 
ran of shad, when they are occasionally taken in hauls of thousands. 
To see the water within the seine black with their backs and brist- 
with their fins—to witness the animation and bustle of the fish- 
ermen, and behold their eagerness and anxiety to secure their booty, 
are circumstances calculated to excite in the spectator of such an 
enlivening scene, emotions of delight, and cause him to participate 
with the successful fisherman in all his joy and hilarity. The writer 
once witnessed the landing of ten thousand eight hundred shad taken 
at a single haul—the greatest by many thousands ever made in the 
river Delaware before or since. 
The regular shore-nets vary in Jength from one hundred and fifty 
to five hundred fathoms. Formerly they were drawn in by manual 
labor alone. Of late years, however, capstans have been employ- 
ed to aid in this laborious operation. ‘The number of men required 
to manage a net varies from fifteen to twenty five. The whole 
number employed at the Fancy Hill fisheries, including foremen, 
clerk, market-men, tide-watchers, &c. is nearly one hundre 
Besides the production of such an amount of healthful iad deli- 
cious food, in quantity generally sufficient to supply the states of 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the fisheries give profitable employ- 
ment to a great number of men, at a season when their services are 
not particularly required in agricultural labor. The fisheries, there- 
fore, constitute an important interest to the states bordering on the 
