INLAND FISHERIES COMMISSIONERS' REPORT. 7 



Ntiture supplies fish, and artificial means deplete them at all times, 

 and at the worst times. The soup that comes to our shores laden with 

 spawn and looking for a place to reproduce, are taken by the thousands 

 of barrels from April 20th to Jane 30th. The markets of New York 

 and Philadelphia and wherever a market may be found are flooded 

 with cheap fish. No one cares, seller or buyer, what the result is, so 

 long as they can sell, so long as they can bny. This lasts for a few 

 weeks, and then good-by to scup. Every spawning fish so caught rep- 

 resents tens of thousands of young. The men who capture them by 

 the thousands of barrels are few and far between. If there are no 

 facilities for a quick sale, they are carted on to the nearest available 

 spot for manure. So with tautog or black fish. In the spring, from 

 say the first to the middle of May, these fish are taken loaded with 

 spawn, by traps, by heart nets and by land lines. It is wonderful 

 how prolific they are, else they would be rarer than rich men in 

 heaven, but we know their abundance despite these draw-backs, and 

 can form no estimate of their numbers if they were properly pro- 

 tected. 



Those of our community who are ignorant of, or careless of, the 

 riches that nature, so bountiful on land and sea, gives us each year in 

 the waters of our beautiful bay, may well consider if it is wise to waste 

 it as it has been and is wasted. They should enact such laws as shall 

 check the greed of the few, and inure to the benefit of the many. 

 Proper protection for the food fishes should be as important a question, 

 and legislated upon as carefully as any other subject that comes be- 

 fore the General Assembly, and until that is done we cannot hope for 

 any improvement in the present condition of affairs. 



We now give as briefly as possible a list of the traps. 



Sakonnet Point — Five (5) traps were set here the past season, be- 

 gining on the 2d of May. The first Aveek, no fish of any account 

 the second week, about one hundred barrels, mostly tautog and round 

 mackerel, with large quantities of sea-robbins (useful for manure); 

 the third week ending the 23d of May, there were taken about fifty 

 barrels of scup, and fifty barrels of other marketable fish (tautog, 

 sea bass, mackerel and about five barrels of small striped bass); the 



