THE FISHERIES OF THE SUSQUEHANNA RIVER. 



653 



seen four eels fall out of the abdominal cavity of a shad, when no eels were visible, when the fish 

 came over the gunnel. They had devoured the viscera, which always seems to be the first portion 

 sought by them. 



"The habit is to run the net as soon as it is all out, and take the fish out immediately, before 

 they can be injured by the eels. The eels never mesh ; they are too slippery to get entangled. In 

 the shoal fishing, when the weather becomes warm, the 'eel-cuts,' as these are called, often out- 

 number the marketable shad. The fishermen salt down the better ones for their winter food." 



The net is run twice or three times and is then taken up. Little else than shad is taken ; a few 

 striped bass and a few suckers are occasionally found. The captures, to each boat with two men, 

 number from 'water hauls' to several hundred shad. 



" After the first tide's fishing the boats anchor. Often several tie fast to another anchored one, 

 and the men while away the hours to the next tide in gossip and yarn spinning, or go to sleep iu 

 the bottom of the boat. It often happens when anchored apart from the rest, they find themselves, 

 in the small hours of the morning, chilly and solitary iu the middle of the bay. 



" Quiet and harmony is the ordinary state of their communion, although the strife for good 

 berths sometimes arouses a dissension. An attempt to anticipate the line of boats.in laying out the 

 nets at too early a stage of the tide calls forth sudden and certain penalty. Not only the boats on 

 each side, but some of those from a distance, crowd around and unite their protests, and when these 

 are unavailing the offender is hemmed in by the boatmen, who, in a half jocose manner, yet with a 

 fully in earnest purpose, set their nets across the line of direction he has started in ' surrounding 

 him ,' If he is still obstinate enough to persist or to attempt to cut the nets which are in his way, a 

 melee ensues, and some sturdy boatman is apt to belabor him into reason with an oar, public 

 opinion favoring a certain amount of this kind of punishment. 



" The boats used in the head of the bay are small, and the mutton-leg sails have no provision 

 for reefing. The foresail is much larger, and sail is shortened by unstopping the foremast and put- 

 ting the mainsail in its place. At the approach of a squall they hurriedly pull in the nets and scat- 

 ter like a shoal of mullets when a porpoise appears among them. They get caught out occasionally, 

 :"id getting to the lee of the shoal or the island, they sometimes lie with the killock out all day." 



FYKES AND POUND-NETS. A large number of fykes are in use from Havre de Grace to Co- 

 lumbia in summer for the capture of perch, rock, and catfish. Under the Maryland law the use 

 of pound-nets is prohibited, and their absence from the Susquehanna is a striking feature to one 

 accustomed to seeing them in such general use in other parts of the bay. 



STATISTICS. The history of the impoverishment of the Susquehanna fisheries is the same as 

 for the Potomac. 



The minimum of production was reached in 1878, from which time there has been a gradual 

 and steady increase. 



The Swquehanna River. 



* Four ponnds ; 36 liaul-Bcmi'S ; 302 gill-nets; 3,000 fyke-nets. 



