Fish, Fishing and Fisheries of Pennsylvania. 41 



lOwing causes: (1) The practice of fishing with drift nets in the lower 

 portions of the rivers. (2) The "close time," or the time during which 

 fishing is forbidden in the rivers not being sufficiently long and not 

 being observed. (3) The destruction of the young, when returning to 

 the sea, by fish baskets. 



The annual supply depends, of course, upon the ability of the shad to 

 reach proper places for the deposit and hatching of their eggs. In 

 their progress up the river they met net after net thrown across the 

 channel for their capture. All the contrivances which man, their most 

 destructive and unrelenting enemy, could devise, were placed to entrap 

 them, and as a natural result very few of those which originally started 

 from the sea reached their spawning grounds. The "close time" com- 

 menced at midnight on Saturday of each and every week during the 

 fishing season and continued until midnight Sunday. 



The first act of the commissioners was to endeavor to better the con- 

 dition of the shad fisheries. They began operations on the Susque- 

 hanna which, at that time, were stated to be in rather a better condition 

 than the Delaware, through the fact that about that period the Colum- 

 bia dam had been partially destroyed by immense quantities of ice 

 which were swept down the river by the winter and spring floods, and 

 which formed in a huge gorge immediately upon the crest of the dam. 



The efforts of the commission were first bent in having the deadly 

 fish-baskets removed, but they met a serious legal difficulty at the very 

 outset. They found that there was a peculiar construction of the law 

 which required that ten days' notice be given by the sheriff before pro- 

 ceeding with a posse comitatus to destroy the basket. As a result the 

 law requiring the removal of these wretched contrivances was rendered 

 practically inoperative. The commissioners thereupon earnestly recom- 

 mended that that part in the law requiring ten days' notice be stricken 

 out, and that the passage of the law should be in itself sufficient notice, 

 and that in addition to the required destruction of the baskets, an act 

 imposing a penalty for the erection or maintenance of fish-baskets be 

 passed. With this law upon the statute books the board believed that 

 in another year they would be able to announce the entire removal of 

 the destructive fish-baskets. 



With the question of drift nets also the commission had long debate. 

 While it was admitted that by this means more fish were captured 

 than should be, yet this interest was too large and too valuable to be 

 swept away by an encroachment, especially since the ground is often 

 inaccessable to shore fishing and consequently the only means of fishing 

 would be with a drift or gilling net. They, therefore, recommended a 

 proper " close time" and that a strict observance of it be enforced. This 

 they believed would be a great assistance in repairing the losses caused 

 by these nets. The legislature subsequently adopted the recommenda- 

 tion of the commissioners, and wardens may now seize and destroy fish- 



