34 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



fish will go wherever scup can go, and they feed at the top more. They 

 feed at the bottom at night. 



Mr. Dyer. I can tell you just my opinion about traps. If they did 

 not catch the mother fish in the spring, when they come along the shores 

 to spawn, I don't think they would destroy the fish a great deal. They 

 should not be allowed to put them down so early. I think they should 

 not be allowed to put them down before the 1st of June. By that time 

 the bottom fish have got through spawning. 



Squeteague come about the 10th of June ; they come from the west- 

 ward ; they catch them at Long Island before we do here. 



Question. What would you say of the plan of allowing them to fish 

 at any season, but requiring them to draw up the net two or three "days 

 in a week % 



Answer. That would be a good idea. 



Mr. Westgate. I do not think Spanish mackerel have been around 

 here many years ; they were something new to me, and I had been fish- 

 ing twenty years. 



Mr. Dyer. I never saw a Spanish mackerel till this year. 



Mr. Westgate. I never saw a bonito till two or three years ago ; I 

 have not caught many this year. I think new fish are coming on to the 

 shores, and if it were not for the pounds we would have them plenty. 



Pasque Island, Vineyard Sound; 



Cluh-House, Pasque, August 23, 1871. ' 



Philip C. Harmon, treasurer of the club, thought it a gross outrage 

 to have fish-pounds on the shore near. This pound was kept, he said, 

 by ]STew London men. There was a much larger capital employed 

 in pound-fishing than he had supposed — between five and six millions of 

 dollars. Fifty bass destroyed in the spring prevents a vast amount of 

 increase. 



Peter Balen, . a member of the club, said he understood that 

 the trappers threw away, at one time, a large number of dead black- 

 fish, (tautog.) There are not as many tautog as there used to be 

 by nearly one in twenty. There is a great diminution of the ground- 

 fish. The bass are more scarce. I think the traps interfere with them 

 very much. We had a law passed to prohibit drawing a seine on this 

 island ; but they draw a net every night, and if I were to go and try 

 to stop them, they would insult me. I am persuaded the trappers do 

 not make any money for. themselves, and they perfectly clear the whole 

 coast of fish. I think the great evil of the traps is, that they catch the 

 fish in spring before they have spawned. I do not think the blue-fish 

 diminish the other kinds of fish that I spoke of. They generally follow 

 the menhaden. 



Mr. Harmon. The blue-fish have very materially diminished along 

 here within three years, to such an extent that when fishing off our 

 stands we do not take more than two or three in a day. Out here 

 I have caught as many as sixty in a day by drailing for them. 

 2sTow we Cannot catch any. The blue-fish and bass accompany each 

 other, I think. The blue-fish chop up the menhaden, and the bass pick 

 up the pieces. I don't think there is one blue-fish where there were fifty 

 a few years ago. 



Mr. Balen. Two of us caught twenty-eight bass once, weighing from 

 five to twenty pounds apiece. 



