14 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



months, and I fish all the while with a line. I have fished regularly 

 since 1828, and know something about it. Compared with the fishing 

 twenty years ago, under the same conditions, the number of tautog 

 caught now would not be more than one-eighth as many. There are no 

 scup now • I have not caught one this year. I have been fishing two 

 weeks, and fishing where scup ought to be very abundant ; I have not 

 caught one or seen one. I consider them nearer gone than the Indians. 

 Twenty years ago I used to go outside for my fishing mostly, and my 

 car would hold from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds. In 

 the ordinary condition of weather I would fill it and be home by nine 

 o'clock in the morning ; and when I left off fishing, having caught as 

 many as I wanted, I could have caught* as many more if. I wished. I 

 think that now, fishing the same time, under the same circumstances, 

 on the same ground, if I saved all that I could, and exhausted my ability, 

 and got twenty-five pounds of all kinds of fish, I should do well. I 

 fished for nothing except tautog. I first began to appreciate a difference 

 within ten or twelve years — a very sensible difference. I never saw 

 any difference until traps were set. I know that, after the traps had 

 been in successful operation a short time, there was a clear diminution 

 of the fish, the same that there always is in countries where birds are 

 trapped. You cannot shoot up the game — neither woodcock nor pin- 

 nated grouse • and you cannot exterminate the fish with the hook and 

 line. Consequently there was no diminution until the traps were set 

 here. Of course the fish are diminishing all the while. I don't believe 

 that to-morrow morning you can take a box of crabs, and go out and catch 

 a hundred pounds a day for a week. We don't know what they take in 

 traps. They say they never get any, although other people have seen 

 them carried off by the cartload. They take everything from a shark 

 down to a large chogset. The very moment you sink your trap to the 

 bottom, you are sure to take shark as any other fish. Those who fish for 

 striped bass tell me they are very scarce. I have been here two weeks, 

 and have caught a few fine tautog, but I have caught them all in the 

 river ; and of course that is no way to determine whether there are any 

 fish, because if there were one or two hundred fish here at this time, 

 they would be sea-fish that came into the river. I remember very well 

 when the blue-fish came here. 



Mr. Swan. The blue-fish were small when they first came here, not 

 weighing over a pound and a half. The biggest I ever caught weighed 

 fourteen pounds. I think I have seen one weighing eighteen pounds. 



Mr. Dennis. I have my own theory about squeteague. I was fishing, 

 six or seven years ago, off Point Judith, when I hooked the first sque- 

 teague I ever caught here. I then took twelve large fish, weighing 

 seven or eight pounds. I take it they require a peculiar kind of bait, 

 which is becoming more abundant than it has been. There is. only one 

 fish here that maintains its numerical integrity ; that is the chogset. 



Mr. Southwick. Nothing but menhaden are used for manure. In 

 the five years that I fished I never sold any to be put on land, except 

 about two barrels of waste fish. I have sold, perhaps, in that time, 

 seventy-five barrels of menhaden. 



Mr. Swan. We find the tautog two or three miles from land in winter, 

 and the chogset stow away in deep water. Lobsters are pretty scarce 

 now. Last year 1 averaged forty a day in my pots ; this year not more 

 than twenty-five or thirty. They sometimes burrow themselves up in 

 the sand. 



Captain Sherman fully indorsed the statement of Mr. Dennis. He 

 had been fishing with him a great deal. There has been a general de- 



