III.— TESTIMONY IN REGARD TO THE PRESENT CON- 

 DITION OF THE FISHERIES, TAKEN IN 1871. 



Newport, Ehode Island, 



August 1, 1871. 

 The following reports were all made by a phonographic reporter, Mr- 

 H. E. Eockwell, of Washington, and are intended to present the words 

 of the witnesses, without alteration : 



Henry O. Tifft : 



There are very few fish indeed now, to what there used to be. They 

 are growing scarcer every year; they are much scarcer this year than 

 last, I think. I hear people who fish say that they cannot do any- 

 thing to what they could once. One of them told me he had been out 

 and fished a week, and did not catch a black-fish. The traps catch them 

 up in the spring of the year. The tautog are a species that go up the 

 Providence Eiver to spawn ; it is salt water all the way up. We used 

 to catch scup and tautog, as many as we wanted, away up Providence 

 Eiver ; but they don't catch scup now. I don't think they could go any- 

 where in Narragansett Bay and catch scup with a hook and line. I 

 don't think they catch them much in the pounds. 



Mr. Macy. If you were to take a vote of the people, I think it would 

 be ten to one against the use of pounds. All the people say to me that 

 the pounds are the cause of the diminution of the fish. 



Mr. Tifft. Most of the traps are in the river ; none outside. They 

 are in the East and West Bays, and all the way up on both shores 

 nearly half-way up to Providence. There is a trap-seine at Point Judith 

 now; there is a pound everywhere that they can drive stakes. There 

 are three times as many pounds this year as last; it is a money-making 

 business, and all want to go into it. They say the legislature has no 

 power to stop them, and will keep on fishing if they are prosecuted. 

 The fish strike at Point Judith before they do in West Bay. It seems 

 as if they were coming from the south. Traps were put down first at 

 Saughkonet. In the spring of the year you will see little spring-bass 

 in the market, about six inches long, taken in these nets. The majority 

 of them are small when they first come. 



Mr. Macy. Sixteen or eighteen years ago there were five vessels went 

 out from here, fishing for mackerel, but they sunk money in it and 

 dropped the business. 



Mr. Tifft. There are some pounds on the south end of Providence 

 Island, on both sides of the Canonicut, and through the east and west 

 passages, up as far as Tiverton. Scup are out of the question. All kinds 

 of fish are killed out, and the breeding broken up. I think, what the 

 pound men call small scup, that they say they catch so plenty this year, 

 are skip-jacks.* They look almost precisely alike when small. The skip- 

 jack is a small species; never grows large ; the only difference from the 

 scup is, that the skip-jack has finer scales than the scup. The skip-jack 

 grow about four or five inches long. They are caught about the 

 wharves here; but no scup has a chance to spawn in our waters. 



* This is a mistake ; the fish in question are small scup. — S. F. B. 



