16 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
fish only small quantities are caught. In May and June, particularly at the mouth of 
the York River, croakers are caught with hand lines. This happens to be at a time 
when few of these fish are taken in poimd nets. A limited amount of hand-line fishing 
for large squeteagues is done in the lower parts of the York and Rappahannock Rivers 
in October. About the same time many hand-line fishermen in small boats are seen off 
Ocean View fishing for spots, which appear to collect there, presumably preparatory 
to leaving the bay. 
Eel pots are used throughout the Chesapeake region, but chiefly in the vicinity 
of the lower Choptank River and at the head of the bay. Virtually nothing except 
eels is caught in these traps. 
In 1920 about 40,000 persons were engaged in the fisheries of Maryland and 
Virginia, and the shore property, boats, and gear employed (exclusive of the men- 
haden industry) were valued at about $12,000,000. The property of the menhaden 
industry, including factories, boats, and gear, was valued at about $5,000,000, and 
about 350,000,000 pounds of menhaden, worth about $2,000,000, were caught in and 
near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. 
It may be of interest to make a comparison here of the catches of fish taken from 
Chesapeake Bay and Georges Bank, both intensively fished areas, the one protected 
by land and fed by numerous streams and the other in the open ocean. Chesapeake 
Bay and the brackish parts of its tributaries contain about 2,700 square miles and 
produced about 1 1 tons of fish per square mile in 1920, whereas Georges Bank, with 
an area of about 7,000 square miles, produced about 3 tons of fish to the square mile. 
It is apparent from the statistics collected by the United States Bureau of 
Fisheries that, as a whole, no serious decline in the quantities of fish caught in Chesa- 
peake Bay has taken place during recent years. The catch, however, probably is kept 
up to a certain extent through more intensive fishing and by the use of more efficient 
gear. It has been shown elsewhere that a much larger part (8114 per cent) of the 
total quantity of fish taken in Chesapeake Bay is caught with pound nets than 
with all other gear combined. Unfortunately, this apparatus is often very wasteful 
of young and undersized fish, especially if the operators are indifferent and careless. 
It may be said with great credit to some of the operators (as, for example, the 
Buchanan brothers, who run pound nets in Lynnhaven Roads, at James Siding, and 
others) that they are very careful to return to the water uninjured small and un- 
marketable fish. On the other hand, not a few pound-net operators empty the 
entire catch into their boats and later, at their leisure and after the fish are all dead, 
sort out the small fish and throw them overboard; it sometimes happens that only 
comparatively few fish of marketable size are contained in the catch. In fact, it is 
not unusual for some 5,000 young spots, croakers, or butterfish, all just slightly 
under marketable size, to be destroyed in one day at a set of two pound nets. Such 
a practice can not be condemned too strongly. Fishermen with forethought and 
with a sense of duty to the future will not do this, of course, but will cull their catch 
at the net (whenever weather conditions are not too unfavorable) and reduce the 
waste to a minimum. 
