72 Fish, Fishing and Fisheries of Pennsylvania. 



were put up in half barrels and sold for five dollars per hundred pounds. 

 They were not salted much and were nearly the same as fresh fish. They 

 were very fine and always in demand." 



Mr. Terry is the first man who ever skinned a blue pike in Erie. It 

 was a hard thing to do, and was considered his secret and was always 

 done "sub-rosa;" but a boy named Jocob Staub got on the top of a 

 shed once when he was skinning them, peeped through a crevice, dis- 

 covered the secret, and afterwards practiced it, much to Mr. Terry's dis- 

 comforture. Now they are skinned when frozen, but it is a very diflSicult 

 thing to do when not frozen. The largest white fish Mr. Terry ever 

 saw was one weighing thirty-three pounds, caught at Spider Island, 

 near Death's Door, Lake Michigan, and was an immense fish. 



In 1857 or 1858, when Mr. Terry came to Erie, they used No. 25 cot- 

 ton thread for making gill nets. Now nothing but linen thread is used 

 — Nos. 45 and 50. The year he came here, in July, the fishermen had 

 not had very good success that season, and could not account for it, and 

 some thought that the fish were getting scarce, and most of them had 

 pulled up their nets to wait for fall fishing. He brought as a present 

 to K. P. Burke sixteen No. 30 linen thread nets. He and Mr. Burke 

 went out and set them. The next day they went out and took them up 

 and brought in a big haul of white fish and trout. This astonished all 

 of the old fishermen. They began setting the cotton nets again with 

 no success. When the nets were taken up, Daniel Weeks, at that time 

 one of the most prominent of the fishermen, was very much mystified 

 and after examining the nets and finding that they were made of fine 

 linen thread, concluded that that was the explanation of it and immedi- 

 ately discarded his cotton thread nets and made new ones of linen, and 

 met with good success in his fishing. This was the first change from 

 cotton to linen thread nets at this point. 



Mr. Terry is one of the oldest fishermen here. He is a man of intel- 

 ligence and has kept thoroughly posted on all matters relating to fish- 

 ing in this locality from the time of his arrival to the present. 



The Dash family is a family of fishermen, father, son and grandson, 

 John Dash, Sr., Adam Dash, John Dash, Jr., and John A. Dash. Capt. 

 John A. Dash gave to the writer many interesting items relating to 

 fishing in this locality, the sum and substance of which is very similar 

 to what Mr. Ten-y and Capt. Clark Jones have furnished. Capt. Joseph 

 Wick says that the largest trout ever caught in Lake Erie was caught 

 by William Johnson in a trout net at Dunkirk, N. Y., in 1859. It 

 weighed seventy-five pounds. He says he has frequently seen them 

 weighing sixty-five pounds. He has been fishing allalong thelake since 

 1857 and the largest black bass he ever saw weighed five and one-half 

 pounds. He thinks the herring were getting more scarce every year, 

 but that there were a great mainy salted during Summer seasons all along 

 the lake. Capt. C. W. Pruyn says that he caught a gold fish inside of 



