G52 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



nel known as Swash. Near the center of the shoal a light house has been built, called Battery 

 Light. When the shad have reached this point in the bay, they come up on the shoal in the night, 

 at slack water of ebb and flood of tide. From the Battery Light to head of the island is known to 

 be the center of their congregation, and a great strife for good berths prevails, so much so that 

 enterprising fishermen will lie in their boats for half a day, anchored to the spot where they desire 

 to cast the nets after dark. These drift-nets are made of fine twine and entangle the fishes by the 

 gill-flaps as they swim against them. The cork-line floats at the surface, and the lightly weighted 

 lead line at low tide trails along the bottom. At each end of the nets, which have ordinarily a 

 length of 300 yards, a float is tied, upon which rides a lantern. These lanterns are required to 

 distinguish the different nets as they are cast along the shoal parallel to each other, often with 

 not more than 50 or 60 feet intervening. They drift with the tide, and one floating too slowly or 

 snagged at the bottom becomes fouled with its neighbor as soon as it is overtaken. It is essen- 

 tial that all are put out simultaneously, or the dividing spaces soon become irregular, and many of 

 them too narrow, resulting in. the nets becoming entangled with each other. A still night on the 

 bay, in the height of season, is a pleasant experience. The anchored boats, scarcely discernible in 

 the dusk, become deep shadowy masses at intervals or disappear in the darkness. Suddenly a 

 muffled, quiet movement of oars is heard, and in quick succession lights appear on the water in a 

 long line, and the rapid movement of a hundred pairs of oars is heard as they click in the rowlocks. 

 Each rower vies with his rival to run out the 300 yards of net, his comrade in the stern rapidly 

 and skillfully throwing the corks and leads. Some impatient fellow usually pulls up his anchor 

 silently, but the light on the water telegraphs the fact to the rest and he rarely gets half a dozen 

 strokes ahead. One hundred boats often pull abreast across the line of the shoal. The second 

 lantern floating on the water announces the net all out. 



" Standing in the night on an elevated point of the island, with many hundred lights strewn 

 thickly over the wide expanse of water, the observer is impressed with the similarity of the view 

 above him and below, as if the stars overhead were reflected on the surface of the bay with double 

 brilliancy. 



"The boatman either turns directly back and ' runs the net,' passing the cork line through the 

 hands, readily detecting the presence of fish, or he rows back to the starting point, and it is run 

 from that end, the net all the time drifting with the tide. The shad, whenever found, are ' ungilled ' 

 and thrown into the boat, and the net drops away again. 



" The necessity for instantly going over the net relates to the presence of great quantities of 

 eels, which soon spoil the shod for the market or for the table. Sitting in my boat while the 

 oarsman was quietly rowing behind a ' giller' we were attracted by a continual splashing in a net 

 nearby. We thought it to be a sturgeon rolling and entanglin g himself in the twine as they 

 sometimes do. Heading the boat in the direction of the sound and corning near, it seemed at first 

 to be a number of 'herring' meshed in a singularly close huddle, and in their struggles flashing 

 their white sides in the dim starlight. As we came nearer I turned the light of the lantern full 

 upon them and discovered a swarm of eels tearing and stripping the flesh from the bones of a shad 

 which had gilled itself near the cork line. Gathered in a writhing mass, with their heads centered 

 upon the fragment of the fish, we had before us the living model of a drowning Medusa. There 

 was at least a bushel of them, greedily crowding each other, fastening their teeth in the flesh of 

 the shad, and by a quick, muscular torsion snatching pieces from the dying fish. It is not uncom- 

 mon to see a dozen heads of Bhad> each with a long, slender backbone attached, taken one after 

 the other out of the net, when a fisherman has delayed a little too long. Six good eels have been 

 thrown into the boat by a dexterous jerk of the net where a mutilated shad was hanging. I have 



