20 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



accooBt of my health. Fish used to be very plenty, so that any one 

 could get as many as he wanted ; they were plenty until the trapping 

 was commenced. That was about 1828 or 1830. But I fished before 

 they had any trapping or purse-seines. One man could catch scup 

 enough forty years ago to load a boat in a short time. 1 have seen the 

 water all full of them under my boat. Every one could catch as many 

 sea-bass or tautog as he wanted. The blue-fish came around in 1834, 

 I think. I caught the first blue-fish, which was about a foot long. Every 

 year they became more and more plenty ; but still they did not make 

 any difference with the other fish. It never made any odds with the 

 tautog nor bass-fishing, because I have caught the bassright among them. 

 I had a bass once with a scup in his throat, choked with it. I don't think 

 blue-fish trouble scup at all. 1 never saw scup spawning ; but think they 

 spawn up the river, close in shore. I never fished for scup much, but they 

 were ])lenty, and there was no difficulty in catching them until they 

 began trai)ping them up. It was just so with tautog. I got up the 

 first petition against trapping tautog, and got seventy to one hundred 

 signers, and Sam Brown got one hundred. It was handed to our legis- 

 lature, and laid on the table, and I suppose thrown under the table or 

 turned out doors. The tautog began to grow scarce twenty years ago. 

 They set traps up over Saughkonet shore at the time I got up the peti- 

 tion. I think, if traps could be stopped, we should have fish plenty in 

 the course of three or four years. The spawn is taken up with the fish 

 going in to spawn in the spring of the year; there is no seed left in the 

 water for fish to grow from. Thousands and thousands of hundred- 

 weight of tautog have been sent to New York, besides hundreds of boxes 

 of scup. I have seen them take thousands of pounds of tautog oft* 

 Gooseberry Island in a morning and send them to New York. But now 

 they cannot get them around the shores. 



The blue-fish were in these waters before, and very large. My Either 

 used to catch them about the year 1800, not far from that. I think, 

 from what was said when I caught the first one, they must have been 

 out of the water sixteen or eighteen years. About 1800 they were very 

 plenty. They first made a net of rattan to trai> them, and then thej^ all 

 went away in a body, and till the little ones came back they did not 

 return again. I used to catch the little ones and bring them to market; 

 but nobody would buy them, and so I threw them away. The first man 

 who brought blue-fish to our market was Mr. John Springer, and he 

 first brought them when they came back the last time. * 



Scup were always here; were here when my father was a boy. 



When I first began to catch blue-fish, they did not weigh more than a 

 pound or two apiece ; but when they were here before, my father said 

 they weighed sixteen and eighteen pounds. 



They iirst began to set traps on the eastern shore about 1827 ; they 

 used to set them just the same as now ; they would drive the fish into 

 the pockets at the ends. 



Tliere are no school-bass here in the fall of the year. In old times, 

 thirty or forty years ago, the bass were around in schoolsin September, 

 and would run until cold weather. I have caught them as late as the 

 10th of December. I would get from one to two hundred a day. I 

 used nnu'kerel or menhaden for bait. I used dead bait, but of late 

 years 1 fished with lobster bait. That would not answer only when 

 there was a heavy sea and the water was thick; fused to catch a boat- 

 load in a day in that way. I got sixteen one morning, four of which 

 weighed 200 pounds, and the rest would weigh from thirty to forty 



