128 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES, 



Professor Bated, If the trappers will uot assent to tliat, I would favor 

 a law prohibiting the whole business. 



Mr. Powell. Ehode Island has waked up to the necessity for regu- 

 lating her fishing. The fish are gone to such an extent that, at a clam- 

 bake of some New Hampshire peojde in Rhode Island, they brought 

 their fish along with them. 



Professor Baird. Massachusetts people say, "What is the use of try- 

 ing to catch fish with the hook and line while the trappers at Saugh- 

 konet are allowed to take our fish f " 



Mr. PowEL. I would like to ask Mr. Peed whether it was usual or 

 unusual for the large and small fish to come in together. The fisher- 

 men say it was unusual. 



Mr. Peed. I cannot tell in regard to scup. I know the scup have 

 decreased very much for the last five years, since I came there. 



Mr. PowEL. Tliis year we have had the young scup coming in almost 

 in their former abundance. 



Mr. Eeed. There is no bay so peculiarly situated as Providence 

 Bay. It has three outlets, and the fishing-grounds are numerous. You 

 can put a trap down in certain places where the tide fliows backward 

 and forward, in such a way that your trap would be as effectual in 

 stopping and catching the fish as a dam run right straight across the 

 tide. The fish cannot get up except when the traps are lifted. They 

 have come constantly to these places, trying to get up, but it has been 

 impossible. 



Professor Baird. Then you think that, apart from the capture of the 

 fish, the ])resence of the nets has kept them out ? 



Mr. Peed. Yes, sir. 



Mr. PowEL. Your argument would be that the two weeks' supply has 

 been the cause of the greater abundance of young scup ? 



Mr. Peed, Partly so. Squeteague have been very scarce, and I do 

 not believe there were five thousand pounds of blue-fish caught in the 

 whole bay. Squeteague were not as plenty as they were last year. In 

 fact, almost all the fish in our bay have totally" disappeared. 



I suppose the scup had a free run of two weeks, and when they struck 

 that water free from traps they spread themselves, and could choose 

 any kind of tenqierature or any kind of bottom, whether sandy, or rocky, 

 or mud. Thus we have an uimsual variety in the bay. At Prudence 

 Island there are very bold rocks, and it is a great place for catching 

 scup and tautog. 



Professor Baird. If the intermission from catching for two weeks was 

 sufticient to create so great a supply, it shows what we may expect if 

 we keep up that intermission through the season. If we have the inter- 

 mission of three nights and two days in a week, throughout the season, 

 instead of the incidental two weeks, we may hope to restore an ample 

 supply to all our waters. 



Mr. PowEL. There are three well-described kinds of scup on our coast; 

 and very probably eacli has a different habitat. There is something 

 different in them, because they come one after the other. They are de- 

 scribed as three different growths, when we know they come from some- 

 where about the Florida capes, to begin with. 



Professor Baird. Do they *? 



Mr. PowEL. They come from somewhere down south, and they turn 

 in, as they come along, into the different estuaries. Where do they go; 

 and why don't they all go into the first place? 



Some gentlemen tell us that fish always return to the waters in which 

 Ibey were spawned. How do they know it ? They know it in regard to 



