PRESENT CONDITION OF THE FISHERIES. 21 



pounds apiece. Four or five years ago I could not catch any. The sea- 

 bass ai^e very scarce now. 



Mackerel used to be caught here all the year round, but they are scarce 

 now. 



The skip-jack is something like the bonito : the bonito has a darker 

 and broader stripe than the skip-jack. The bonito is striped like an 

 albicore. 



I don't know but one kind of sword-fish here. I know the bill-fish ; 

 they are a long fish, with a bill something like that of a sword-fish. I 

 have seen a bill-fish three feet long. They are not at all like the sword- 

 fish. They have little fins like tlie mackerel. They followed some ship 

 in here ; they were here in the fall of the year and latter part of the 

 summer, only one year. That was forty years ago; I have seen none 

 since. The docks were all full of them then, about eight or ten inches 

 long and very black. They would bite anything you might put down, 

 even a bit of pork. 



The bull's-eye fish were here from 1812 to 1830, perhaps ; they were 

 very plenty. The women would haul them in with seines — barrels of 

 them ; once in a while two or three are caught in the fall of the year; 

 they were nearly a foot long, very thick and fat. One year they poisoned 

 ever}^ one who eat them ; people thought they had been feeding on some 

 copper-bank ; they were much fatter than common mackerel. I salted 

 a barrel, and carried them out to Havana. They were never sent from 

 here to a market abroad. They were so fat they would rust too quick, 

 like the Boston Bay mackerel. Split them and they would fall apart, they 

 were so fat. 



Menhaden are decreasing too. In 1819 I saw a school of menhaden 

 out at sea, when 1 was going to Portland, that was two miles wide and 

 forty miles long. I sailed through them. We were out of sight of land. 

 They appeared to be all heading southwest. There were no fish near 

 them. I have seen a school on this coast three miles long. I think they 

 spawn in April or May. 



They catch a few shad in the traps here now ; they never used to do 

 tliat. They get plenty of herring m the spring. Herring are bigger 

 than alewives; they come along together and spawn together; they 

 spawn in April and May; they are used only for bait. People never 

 pretend to smoke them. There are many different kinds of herring. 



I^EWPORT, August 3, 1871. 



W. E. Whalley, of Narragansett Pier : 



I am using a trap-seine. We work on the tide, and we don't care 

 on which side of the seine it is. We catch all kinds of fish that wear 

 scales, and some that don't — big fish and eels. We catch sturgeon, from 

 seven pounds uj) to three or four hundred. I do not know how many 

 heart- seines are being worked this season. The heart-seines take the 

 fish both ways ; the traj), only one way. They are of various sizes, 

 according to the locality, the leaders being from seventy-five to two 

 hundred fathoms. The trap-seine is calculated to take fish Avorking 

 down an eddy ; the heart-seine, where the tide works both ways. They 

 are at Horse Xeck, and all along where the tide sets both ways. Taking 

 fish in traps depends on the eddies; the better the eddy the better the 

 chance for fishing. When the tide sets up into the bayous, there is an 

 eddy when it runs back, and the fish run in. We fish every half-hour, 



