REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 51 
fourth is having the mussels removed from it. Usually two men, 
but occasionally only one man, handle such an outfit. 
Mussel fishing on this river in 1914 was followed from Pine Bend, 
about 20 miles below St. Paul, Minn., to the mouth of the Missouri 
River, near Alton, IIl., the fishmg ending abruptly at that point. A 
few shells have been taken as far up the river as Bemidji, Minn., 
but no sale of them has ever been made. Probably the most. pro- 
ductive portion of the river in 1914 was in the vicinity of Frontenac, 
Minn., where, within a few miles, the 45 men engaged caught 645 
tons of shells, valued at $10,570, and $2,100 worth of pearls and 
slugs. The beds near Maiden Rock, Wis., were also quite profitable, 
the output of 36 men amounting to 390 tons, valued at $6,630, and 
$2,100 worth of pearls. Lake Pepin as a whole produced 1,932 tons 
of shells, valued at $31,486, and $11,820 worth of pearls. It is said 
that there were at least 1,000 men fishing for mussels in Lake Pepin 
in 1911, the catch amounting to about 4,000 tons, compared with 
an output of less than 2,000 tons in 1914 taken by 281 fishermen. 
In 1900, when the first mussel fishing was done at Red Wing, Minn., 
there were said to have been 75 boats at work on the beds there, 
compared with 8 boats in 1914. The first mussel fishing at New 
Albin, Iowa, was in 1899, when there were at least 20 men working 
on the beds, which yielded an average day’s catch per man of 
several thousand pounds, compared with 150 to 200 pounds now. 
In the early days of the fishery very few shells other than nigger- 
heads were saved. As recently as 1910 as many as 70 or 80 men 
worked on the mussel beds opposite New Boston, Ill., while in 1914 
only 15 men were engaged and small catches were made. There 
were 15 or 18 mussel fishermen out of Quincy, II, in 1900, while in 
1915 there were none, this being due both to overfishing and to the 
building of dams and dikes by the Government to preserve the chan- 
nel of the river. Similar changes have taken place at Canton, Mo., 
where a button factory is located, but the shell supply is obtained 
from various parts of the Mississippi Valley. The mussel beds in 
the vicinity of Prairie du Chien a few years ago were the most pro- 
lific by far of any in the entire river, but in 1914 the catch of 100 
men. in that vicinity amounted to only 385 tons, valued at $6,872, 
and $5,500 worth of pearls and slugs. 
A great decline has taken place also in the beds near Muscatine, 
Iowa, where the industry was first established in 1891. The near ex- 
haustion of the beds in this vicinity has caused many of the local fisher- 
men to seek unworked mussel streams in various parts of the country. 
The catch of the Mississippi River as a whole was divided among 
the different species approximately as follows: Niggerheads, 25 per 
cent; three-ridges (including blue-points), 23 per cent; wartybacks, 
13 per cent; muckets, 13 per cent; pig-toes, 6 per cent; washboards, 
6 per cent; pocketbooks, 3 per cent; yellow sand-shells, 2 per cent; 
Missouri niggerheads, 2 per cent; pistol-grips, 2 per cent; and mon- 
key-faces, 1 percent. Theremaining 4 per cent consist of black sand- 
shells, ladyfingers, bullheads, and a few other unimportant species. 
Cedar Riwer.—The catch of this river was apportioned among the 
different forms of apparatus as follows: 54 per cent with forks, 22 
per cent with hands while wading, 18 per cent with crowfoot bars, 
and the remainder with rakes. Muckets predominated in the catch, 
