158 THE SHAD STREAMS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 

were the old fishermen and the knitting of the old shad seines. The 
seines were knit in sections by the shareholders, each owning so many 
yards of the net, and each one receiving his share of fish according to 
the number of yards owned. I lived one year with Mr. Pierce Butler, 
where I learned to knit seines, and have never forgotten it. We used 
to knit on rainy and cold days and evenings, and when the sections 
were all done, Dick Covert, with the help of John Scott, would knit 
them together and hang the same, put on the corks and leads; this was 
considered quite a trick, and but few would undertake the job. I re- 
member I used to go over on the beach on the line of the Butler and 
Dorrance farms and help the fishermen pick up the shad, and when the 
luck was good, always given one to take home. I remember seeing the 
shad put in piles on the beach, and after they were all equally divided 
some one would turn his back and the brailman would say, ‘who shall 
have this?’ until they all received their share, one pile left out for the 
poor women. The boats with the seine shipped would row up to the 
falls and then hauled out down by the riffles opposite where Dick 
Covert used to live. I think it was a bad day for the people along the 
Susquehanna when the shad were prevented coming up the river; the 
fish would be worth more to the people than the old canal. You had 
better buy the canal, put a railroad on the tow-path, burst up the dams 
and increase the value of all the flats above the dams, then you would 
have plenty of shad and all other kinds of fish, and then I think you 
could afford to send some to your friends out west. I got an old fish- 
dealer here to send to Baltimore for some shad, but they had been too 
long out of water and too far from home to be good. It used always to 
be said that there were no shad like the Susquehanna shad.” 
Writing from Kansas City, under date of March 22, 1881, Mr. Alvan 
Dana says: . 
“T have no remembrance of any shad being taken at or near Sheshen- 
quin, but at Wilkes-Barre I have seen shad caught in seines before any 
bridge was built there. The nets were drawn atthe north side of the 
river; I don’t remember to what extent was the catch, but I have often 
heard my grandmother say that immense quantities were taken in the 
vicinity of her father’s, who lived about a mile below the old ‘Red Tav- 
ern’in Hanover; that at one haul 9,999 werecaught; that when they had 
got all they could procure salt to cure or sell for three coppers, they gave 
to the widows and the poor, and hung up their nets, though the shad 
were as plenty as ever. In 1816, I went to Owego to live, and there be- 
came acquainted with a Mr. Duane, who was one of the men who drew 
the net; he said the actual number was 9,997, but two more were added 
to make the figures all nines. 
“ When the Nanticoke dam was built, the shad could not come above it, 
and men were in the habit of fishing there with a three-pronged hook, 
sinker and stout line and pole; this was sunk, and after a few minutes 
