24 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
Several hundred barrels of cod were taken inside Delaware Bay during Febru- 
ary, 1928. In February and March, 1929, cod were caught in the lower bay, and 
in February, 1930, catches were made as far up as Fortesque. 9 Various fishermen 
interviewed in Wildwood and Cape May asserted that they could not recall com- 
mercial catches of cod being made inside the bay prior to the winter of 1927-28, but 
admitted that before then they had not tried fishing for them. It may be, therefore, 
that schools of cod enter the bay each winter. 
South of Delaware Bay the recapture of only three tagged cod has been defi- 
nitely recorded, all of them in 1928, but one fishing concern reports that several 
marked fish were taken in the fall of 1927 but the tags had been lost. One of these 
southern recaptures is associated with an extraordinary catch of cod made in Chesa- 
peake Bay during March, 1928. Harry It. Houston, commissioner of fisheries of 
Virginia, writes on April 5, 1928: 
For the first time in the present generation large numbers of cod have been caught inside 
Chesapeake Bay, the total catch being about 20,000 pounds. The fish were taken early in March 
in pound nets from near the capes to as far up as Buckroe Beach and ranged in size from 4 to 24 
pounds. The Chesapeake Seafood Corporation, of Hampton, Va., caught in one of their pounds 
near Cape Henry a 24-pound cod bearing on its tail tag No. 56379. 
Prior to this unusual catch 160 cod were reported caught in Chesapeake Bay 
during the first part of January, 1928, by the boat Hilda Mable while trying out a 
new otter trawl. Another good catch of cod was reported from the lower Chesapeake 
the first half of March, 1930, when as much as 1,000 pounds were taken from a single 
trap. The fish weighed up to 35 pounds each. It may be that cod enter Chesapeake 
Bay each winter, but that, like in Delaware Bay, their presence is unknown because 
there has been very little local fishing at that time. The last pound net is taken up 
in the lower bay about December 1 and the first is put down in the spring about 
March 1, so that the presence of cod in the Chesapeake can be made known by means 
of pound-net catches only during November, March, and April, and not between 
those months. 
Two tagged Nantucket Shoals cod have been recaptured in the vicinity of Hog 
Island, Va., in pound nets. By a coincidence both fish were recaptured the same 
day, December 4, 1928, although not in the same net. Oddly enough, neither of 
these cod was tagged during 1928, but one dated back to September 2, at Bound 
Shoal buoy, and the other to October 17, 1927, 3 miles northeast of Great Rip buoy, 
Nantucket Shoals. Even so, it is very likely that both of them left Nantucket 
Shoals in the same school, for they migrated a distance of about 400 miles. 
The winter of 1927-28 appears to have been out of the ordinary as regards the 
movements of the cod in the southern part of its winter range, featuring as it did a 
migration into various bays along the coast. These catches were as follows: 
1. Cod appeared in Sandy Hook Bay, N. J., for the first time in many years. 
One tagged cod released off Woods Hole was taken there. 
2. Cod were caught inside Great Bay, about 10 miles north from Atlantic City. 
This was considered very unusual by the local fishermen. 
3. Cod were caught in large numbers inside Delaware Bay for the first time, 
because prior to the winter of 1927-28 their presence there in commercial numbers 
was not known to the fishermen. One tagged Nantucket cod was taken there. 
Good catches were again made in the winter of 1928-29 and a cod tagged offshore from 
Cape May was taken inside the bay. 
• Fortesque, N. J., is about 24 miles from Cape May point, inside of Delaware Bay. 
