44 MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 



to me a most interesting one, whom I hoped to know 

 much better. 



In the spring, perhaps of 1848 or '49, just after the ice 

 had left the river and the creeks, a party of us boys went 

 down the island creek, as we called it, Popskinny, or Pop- 

 squinea, as it appears on maps, to fish. It was merely an 

 arm of the river which crooked out and in again, making 

 an island some four or five miles long, beginning a couple 

 of miles below Greenbush. The water was cold yet, but 

 the hardy yellow perch were astir and the creek was full 

 of them. A railroad has filled the creek in where it crosses 

 and the water is shallow to-day, and but few fish go in it 

 now. There had been a few perch and bullheads taken 

 when Old Port came rowing a light scow down the creek. 

 Some one said that he had gill nets for herring set further 

 down, and this was a way of taking fish that I wanted to 

 see; so, when he stopped to ask, "What luck?" I got per- 

 mission to get in his boat and go with him. Two nets, 

 each about one hundred feet long and four feet deep, were 

 stretched across the creek, and had been there all night. 

 I helped raise them, and it was such fun! To-day it 

 would not be fun ; we take such different views of a thing 

 at different times of life. He took perhaps a bushel of 

 perch, half as many suckers and some 200 "herrin'," as 

 the alewife is called up the Hudson. "The perch an' suck- 

 ers ain't worth much," said he; "about ten cents a string 

 of a dozen or fifteen, accordin' to size; but the herrin' 

 fetches $2 per 100 as early as this; when they begin to 

 catch 'em in the river they drop to half that price, and by 

 May i they are so plenty and cheap that I don't bother 

 with 'em. At this time, you see, the people want to eat 

 'em fresh, and they're fine; but later they are spawning, 

 and are only fit for saltin' down." This was the financial 

 part of Port's herring fishing. I went in his boat with 



