20 RP]PORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



ticcount of ray health. Fish used to be very plenty-, so that any one 

 coukl get as many as he wanted ; they were plenty until the trapping- 

 was coninienced. That was about 1828 or 1830. But I lished before 

 they had any trai>ping' or i>urse-seines. One man could catch scup 

 enough ibrty years ago to load a boat in a short time. 1 have si^en the 

 water all full of them under my boat. Every one could catch as many 

 sea-bass or tautog as he wanted. The blue-tish came around in 1834, 

 I think. I caught the first blue-tish, w hich was about a foot long. Every 

 year they became more and more plenty ; but still they did not make 

 any difference with the other tish. It never made any odds with the 

 tautog nor bass-tishing, because I have caught the bassright among them. 

 I had a bass once with a scup in his throat, choked with it. I don't think 

 blue-fish trouble scup at all. 1 never saw scu]^ spawning ; but think they 

 spawn u}) the river, close in shore. I never fished for scup much, but they 

 Avere ]>lenty, and there was no difficulty in catching them until they 

 l)egan trap[)ing them up. It Avas just so with taiitog. I got up the 

 first petition against trapping tautog, and got seventy to one hundred 

 signers, and Sam Brown got one hundred. It was handed to our legis- 

 lature, and laid on the table, and I suppose thrown under the table or 

 turned out doors. The tautog began to grow scarce twenty years ago. 

 They set traps up, over Saughkonet shore at the time I got up the peti- 

 tion. 1 think, if traps could be stop])ed, we should have fish {)lenty in 

 the course of three or four years. The s[)awn is taken up with the fish 

 going in to spawn in the spring of the year; there is no seed left in the 

 water for tish to grow from. Thousands and thousands of hundred- 

 weight of tautog have been sent to New York, besides hundreds of boxes 

 of scup. I have seen them take thousands of ]>ounds of tautog off 

 Gooseberry Island in a morning and send them to New York. But now 

 they cannot get them around the shores. 



The blue-tish were in these waters before, and very large. My fatlier 

 used to catch them about the year 1800, not far from that. 1 think, 

 from what was said when I caught the first one, they must have been 

 out of the water sixteen or eighteen years. About 1800 they were very 

 plenty. They first made a net of rattan to trap them, and then they all 

 went away in a body, and till the little ones came back they did not 

 return again. I used to catch the little ones and bring them to market f 

 but nobody would buy them, and sol threw them away. The first man 

 who brought blue-fish to our market was Mr. John Springer, and he 

 first brought them^when they came back the last time. 



Scup were always here ; were here when my father was a boy. 



When I first began to catch blue- fish, they did not weigh more than a 

 pound or two apiece ; but when they were here before, my father said 

 they weighed sixteen and eighteen pounds. 



They first began to set traps on the eastern shore about 1827 ; they 

 used to set them just the same as now; they would drive the fish into 

 the pockets at the ends. 



Tliere are no school-bass here in the fall of the year. In old times, 

 thirty or forty years ago, the bass were around in schools in September, 

 and would run until cold weather. I have caught them as late as the 

 10th of December. I would get from one to two hundred a day. I 

 used nuickerel or menhaden for bait. I used dead bait, but of late 

 years I fished with lobster bait. That would not answer only when 

 there was a heavy sea and the water was thick; lused to catch a boat- 

 load in a day in that way. I got sixteen one morning, four of which 

 weighed 200 xjouuds, and the rest would weigh from thirty to forty 



