THE SHAD STREAMS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 163 


inhabitants, people from Mahantongo, Blue mountains, and in fact, for 
fifty miles around, wouid bring salt in tight barrels and trade it for shad. 
They would clean and sort the shad on the river shore, put them in bar- 
rels and return home. The common price of shad was three and four 
cents each. 
“Besides shad, there were many other kinds of food-fish. The most 
noted among them was the old Susquehanna salmon, weighing as high 
as fifteen pounds. These salmon were considered even superior to the 
shad and commanded a higher price. They were caught in seines, on 
hooks and lines, and were the sport to the gigger at night. Nescopeck 
falls, directly opposite Berwick, near where the Nescopeck creek empties: 
into the river, was a noted place for salmon fishing with hook and line. 
Men standing onthe shore with long poles and lines often, in drawing 
out the fish, would lodge them in the branches of the trees, giving them 
the appearance of salmon-producing trees. The shad fisheries, which I 
have alluded to, were not common property. The owner of the soil was 
the owner of the fishery, and no one was allowed to fish without a per- 
mit. The owners of the fishery also had the seines, and when not using 
them they would hire them out to others and take their pay in shad; 
the seiner’s share was always one-half the catch. At the Webb fishery 
I have known eleven and twelve thousand shad taken at one haul. Those 
fisheries were always considered and used as a source of great pleasure, 
value and profit, and everybody depended on them for their aniual fish 
and table supply. It was considered the best and cheapest food for all. 
“Immediately after the erection of the river dams the stad became 
scarce, the seines rotted, the people murmured, their avocation was gone 
and many old fishermen cursed old Nathan Beach for holding the plow, 
and the driver of the six yokes of oxen that broke the ground at Berwick 
for the Pennsylvania canal. The people suffered more damage in their 
common food supply than the state profited by her ‘internal improve- 
ment,’ as it was called. Although eighty-nine years old to-day, I still 
hope to live long enough to see all the obstructions removed from 
one end of the noble Susquehanna to the other, and that the old stream 
may vet furnish cheap food to two millions of people along its banks, and 
that I may stand again on the shore of the old Webb fishery and witness. 
another haul of ten thousand shad.” 
George F. Horton contributes the following statement : 
“T spent many a pleasant day inmy boyhood with the men who raw 
the shad fishery in the Susquehanna near where I now live. I could 
easily fill a small volume with a description of the varied amusements 
and merriments of those by-gone days; but that would hardly be what 
you are after. This fishery was about two miles above the mouth of the 
Wyalusing creek at the place we now call Tarrytown ; formerly all was 
Wyalusing along here. There were other fisheries above and below us, 
but this the only one I have any personal knowledge of. 'The proprie- 
