16 report of commissioner of fish and fisheries. 



Newport, Ehode Island, 



August 2, 1871— Afternoon. 

 Lieutenant Governor Pardon W. Stevens : 



I have only one pound ; I do not trap at all. We thought we could 

 do better in buying fish. The trap is a Ehode Island institution entire- 

 ly ; they are set only about three weeks. Previous to last year they 

 commenced trapping about the 20th of April, but this year not till the 

 1st of May. The trap is like an oblong box, with one end knocked out. 

 But in a heart-seine we can hold the fish we catch. A brother of my 

 partner got a bass in his pound that weighed fifty-two pounds. The 

 leader of the trap must be long enough to get to a sufficient depth 

 of water. Over on the Saughkonet side' the leaders are two hundred 

 fathoms. The leaders run from east to west, with the mouth of the trap 

 to the north ; and where they set several traps, the leader of one runs a 

 little by that of another. The fishers there measure off the water and 

 draw for it. There is a sort of agreement among the trappers that the 

 leaders shall be two hundred fathoms. There is one place where they • 

 allow them longer. On the southeast corner of the State they allow 

 them to go out five hundred fathoms, so as to get square with the one 

 at Saughkonet Point. 



We set the mouth of the trap up stream because, as the tide runs north, 

 the trap must be right across the tide ; the open part to the northwest, 

 and the leader on the south side. The mouth is in some instances 

 leaded and goes to the bottom. I never worked a trap at Saughkonet ; 

 what I know about the fishing there I learn when I go there to buy fish. 

 I never worked a trap except down in this bay. 



I think the fish are bound eastward. I always took the ground that 

 if the fish were bound to the river the traps would not hinder them. I 

 think the heart-seine is much more injurious than the trap, if either. 

 There are many days when a man cannot attend to his trap. It requires 

 almost as much attention to fish with a trap as in the hauling of a seine. 

 Half a gang attend half a day and the other half the rest. It usually 

 requires six men to haul up the gate to a trap. I attend one with one 

 man. 



I had a heart-seine at Sachuest Point, thinking that if the fish went 

 up the river there I would try and get some. The leader runs from the 

 shore sixty-five or seventy fathoms. We attended that diligently, and 

 all the scup we got was two. We got perhaps half a dozen tautog, a 

 few dozen codfish, and a few barrels of herring. We set to catch 

 Spanish mackerel or anything that would run in in the summer. I was 

 satisfied that no fish went above, but they went across. I know the fish- 

 ermen do not go more than two and a half miles north of Saughkonet 

 Point; but we were two miles above them. . . 



As a general rule, we have to set our traps on the east side of the 

 channel for the first run of scup. I do not know so much about the 

 second run, because small scup stay here all summer. When you take 

 up a school of these, they are almost a calico-color ; the first run are 

 almost white. I never saw any with regular bars on them. Some that 

 are called the third run of scup are caught up at the head of the bay. 

 I cannot tell whether the large scup have ever been caught up at the 

 head of the bay, because I never fished there. My idea is that the fish 

 come in east of Block Island and strike first at Watch Hill and Point 

 Judith. I don't know how far into the Sound they go ; but they catch 

 them first at Watch Hill. I think the big scup do not go up the West 

 Biver. I have seen them running across Brenton's Beef on their way 



