THE MULLET FISHERY. 559 
in part, no doubt of the previous year’s hatching. The first school of this run appears \ on the 
coast in April or in the first part of May, and they continue to come for two or three weeks, when 
they are all inside and scattered about the bay shores. In September,” he continues, “there is a 
run of large fish which come,*as the young one does, from the eastward, swimming at the surface 
of the water and making considerable commotion. Some years there is but one large school in 
the run, and at others many small schools, and it is thought that the fish are more abundant when 
they come in the latter form. At Choctawhatchee Inlet, where the spawning grounds are near 
by, the fish come iu with the flood tide and go out again with the ebb tide; and at Pensacola Inlet, 
where the spawning grounds are far away, they come into the bay and stay until the operation is 
over. * * * The many lagoons of Choctawhatchee Bay are almost blocked up with spawning 
mullet in October, and they are very abundant at the head of Pensacola Bay, near the mouths of 
the fresh-water rivers, at that time.” 
In another place, Mr. Stearns, in referring to the run of mullet, says: ‘In the latter part of 
October and November the mullet are running, and the fishermen are then busy. Sometimes two 
or three weeks are passed in watching for the fish to come along, but if the station is a good one 
the fishermen do not go away or lose confidence in their arrival sooner or later. When they 
arrive they sometimes come in such numbers that one or two hauls constitute the catch for a 
season. From 20 to 150 barrels are caught at one haul of the seine, and with larger seines twice 
or three times that amount could be taken, for the fish often come in schools 1 to 3 miles long and. 
400 to 500 yards wide.” 
From the evidence at hand it is clear that the mullet fisheries for different parts of West 
Florida continue from the middle of August to the first of January, though the height of the season 
for most localities is in October and November. Farther west there seems to be less tendency 
to migrate, the fish remaining more constantly in any given locality, and on the Texas coast it is 
said that there is no special time of abundance, but that mullet are equally plenty at any season. 
2. ORIGIN OF THE FISHERY. 
The mullet fisheries of the United States began with the first settlement of the country, and 
the early colonists of Saint Augustine took sufficient quantities for their own tables by means of 
the primitive cast-nets which they brought from their foreign homes. Later the residents of the 
Carolinas took and salted small quantities each season for family use, and ere long some began 
putting up a few barrels to exchange with their neighbors for produce. Thus the fishery has 
gradually increased to the present time, though it is still far below its natural limit. In the Gulf 
of Mexico small vessels have frequently been employed in the mullet, fisheries, the crews being 
provided with seines with which to secure the fish, while the vessels served as homes for the 
fishermen, and were also of service in marketing the catch. Several New England fishing vessels 
visited the west coast of Florida for the purpose of catching mullet, groupers, and red-snappers 
forty years ago, and the fishing for the last named species has been continued to the present time. 
Several Gulf smacks, in addition to the large fleet belonging at Key West and other Florida ports, 
engage regularly in the grouper and snapper fishery ‘each season. Mr. A. Howard Clark informs 
us that in the fall of 1842 the schooner Nautilus, of Gloucester, Mass., was fitted out with a drag- 
seine, and after shipping a crew of eight men started for Florida to engage in catching and salting 
mullet to be sent to Savannah. Mr. Charles S. Stewart, of East Gloucester, 8ne of the crew, told 
him that the Nautilus, and the Yorktown, another Gloucester schooner that went to Florida the 
same winter, were the first vessels to engage in the mullet fisheries of that region. Mr. Stewart 
says: “The Nautilus proceeded to Apalachicola, and from thence to Saint Ann’s Bay, where 40 
