138 Notice of the Shad Fisheries of the River Delmvare. 



of the drifting seine, until each is finally brought to land ; when the 

 iwo ends have reached the shore, the fish are completely enclosed. 

 The next process is called landing ; to effect this, the men at each 

 end lay hold of the cork and lead lines of their respective ends, and 

 draw them together, pulling as uniformly as possible so as to keep 

 up a simultaneous movement, the lead line of each end being kept 

 near the bottom by a " holder down," as he is called, whose duty it 

 is to press down this line with his foot, allowing it to slip at every pull 

 of the men who are drawing in the net. In this way they soon 

 reach the central part or bag of the seine, when those pulling upon 

 the sunken line necessarily meet, and the contents of the net become 

 enclosed within the small space between its marginal lines ; this is 

 called bagging up. It now only remains to transfer the fish into the 

 market-boat, which is effected by means of scoop or Loop-nets — 

 small hand-nets, managed by a single man, and capable of holding 

 about twenty fish, and this is called bailing. 



It is an interesting sight to witness these operations during a fine 

 run of shad, when they are occasionally taken in hauls of thousands. 

 To see the water within the seine black with their backs and brist- 

 ling with their fins — to witness th'e'animation and bustle of the fish- 

 ermen, and behold their eagerness and anxiety to secure their booty, 

 are circumstances calculated to excite in the spectator of such an 

 enlivening scene, emotions of delight, and cause him to participate 

 with the successful fisherman in all his joy and hilarity. The writer 

 once witnessed the landing of ten thousand eight hundred shad taken 

 at a single haul — the greatest by many thousands ever made in the 

 river Delaware before or since. 



The regular shore-nets vary in length from one hundred and fifty 

 to five hundred fathoms. Formerly they were drawn in by manual 

 labor alone. Of late years, however, capstans have been employ- 

 ed to aid in this laborious operation. The number of men required 

 to manage a net varies from fifteen to twenty five. The whole 

 number employed at the Fancy Hill fisheries, including foremen, 

 clerk, market-men, tide-watchers, 8ic. is nearly one hundred. 



Besides the production of such an amount of healthful and deli- 

 cious food, in quantity generally suflicient to supply the states of 

 Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the fisheries give profitable employ- 

 ment to a great number of men, at a season when their services are 

 not particularly required in agricultural labor. The fisheries, there- 

 fore, constitute an important interest to the states bordering on the 



