April 19, 1779. To cure fish properly requires two days in the brine before packing and they can only lie packed with safety in dry weather. These circumstances joined with the heading and drawing almost all the fish (a very tedious operation) will show that no time was lost—only 9 days elapsed from his arrival here to his completing his load of 15,000 herrings, a time beyond which many wagons have waited on these shores for 4,000 uncured fish and many have been obliged to return without one, after coming 40 and 50 miles and offering 2 and 5 dollars a thousand. Several indeed from my own shore and six who want 36,000 herring will, I believe, quit this night without a fish, after waiting all this storm on the shore five days.
Mr. Clarke has had his fish completed two days.... He has been delayed by the almost continual storm that has prevailed since his arrival and which has ruined us fishermen.
My fishery has been miserably conducted from the beginning as might be expected from my entire ignorance and the penury of my partner who was poorer than myself.... Still I have expectations that it may turn out an immense thing from the trial we have made. The shores being opposite to Maryland Point, the reach above and below with the mouths of the two creeks on this side form a sweep, both tides upon them, that must collect for fish; and they are kept in by a kind of pound on the Virginia shore's trend. There apparent advantages accord with the experiment for, with a desperate patched-up seine that always breaks with a good haul, we have contrived to land 20,000 a day, every day we can haul. We are nearer to the Fredericksburg and Falmouth Virginia markets than any shore that is or can be opened on the river by 10 miles notwithstanding every discouragement and particularly the activity and lies practiced against us by the Little Creek fisheries on each side, who must fail with our success.
April 10, 1795. Herrings they tell me are 10 shillings per thousand at all the shores. If I had your lease I could make a fortune. I have a great mind to send Pollard and George up for your small boat and seine.... If Peyton comes down with his seine to haul at my shore, I will seine salted herrings enough for us both.
That acidulous but always colorful roving reporter from the mid-west, Anne Royall, offers the best picture, for accuracy and detail, of hauling a seine ever presented by anyone not a technician. Though written almost 50 years after the Revolution, it describes the kind of fishing on which Virginians had principally depended since Christopher Newport began the Colonial era and George Washington ended it:
The market of Alexandria is abundant and cheap; though much inferior to any in any part of the western country, except beef and fish, which are by far superior to that of the western markets.... Their exquisite fish, oysters, crabs, and foreign fruits upon the whole bring them upon a value with us.
Their fish differ from ours, even some species. Their catfish is the only sort in which we excel; they have none that answer to our blue cat, either in size or flavor, and nothing like our mud-cat. Their catfish is from ten to fifteen inches in length, with a wide mouth, like the mud-cat of the Western waters; but their cat differ from both ours in substance and color; they are soft, pied black and white. They are principally used to make soup, which is much esteemed by the inhabitants. All their fish are small compared with ours. Besides the catfish which they take in the latter part of the winter, they have the rock, winter shad, mackerel, and perch, shad and herring. The winter shad is very fine indeed. They are like our perch, but infinitely smaller. These fish are sold very low; a large string, enough for a dozen persons, may be purchased for a few cents. No fish, however, that I have tasted, equal our trout.
The Potomac at Alexandria, is rather over a mile in width; it is celebrated for its beauty. It is certainly a great blessing to this country in supplying its inhabitants with food in the article of fish.
Fish is abundant (at Washington), and cheap at all seasons, shad is three dollars per hundred; herrings, one dollar per thousand.
Great quantities of herring and shad are taken in these waters during the fishing season, which commences in March, and lasts about ten weeks. As many as 160,000 are said to be caught at one haul. When the season commences no time is to be lost, not even Sunday. Although I am not one of those that make no scruple of breaking the Sabbath, yet, Sunday, as it was, I was anxious to see a process which I had never witnessed—I mean that of taking fish with a seine—there being no such thing in the Western country. It is very natural for one to form an opinion of some sort respecting things they have never seen, but the idea I had formed of the method of fishing with a seine was far from a correct one. In the first place, about fifteen or twenty men, and very often an hundred, repair to the place where the fish are to be taken, with a seine and a skiff. This skiff, however, must be large enough to contain the net and three men—two to row, and one to let out the net. These nets, or seines, are of different sizes, say from two to three hundred fathom in length, and from three to four fathom wide. On one edge are fastened pieces of cork-wood as large as a man's fist, about two feet asunder, and on the opposite edge are fastened pieces of lead, about the same distance—the lead is intended to keep the lower end of the seine close to the bottom of the river. The width of the seine is adapted to the depth of the river, so that the corks just appear on its surface, otherwise the lead would draw the top of the seine under water, and the fish would escape over the top. All this being understood and the seine and rowers in the boat, they give one end of the seine to a party of men on the shore, who are to hold it fast. Those in the boat then row off from the shore, letting out the seine as they go; they advance in a straight line towards the opposite shore, until they gain the middle of the river, when they proceed down the stream, until the net is all out of the boat except just sufficient to reach the shore from whence they set out, to which they immediately proceed. Here an equal number of men take hold of the net with those at the other end, and both parties commence drawing it towards the shore. As they draw, they advance towards each other, until they finally meet, and now comes the most pleasing part of the business. It is amusing enough to see what a spattering the fish make when they find themselves completely foiled: they raise the water in a perfect shower, and wet every one that stands within their reach. I ought to have mentioned, that when the fish begin to draw near the shore, one or two men step into the water, on each side of the net, and hold it close to the bottom of the channel, otherwise the fish would escape underneath. All this being accomplished, the fishermen proceed to take out the fish in greater or less numbers, as they are more or less fortunate. These fishermen make a wretched appearance, they certainly bring up the rear of the human race. They were scarcely covered with clothes, were mostly drunk, and had the looks of the veriest sots on earth.