Soon after the ice goes out, while the water is still very rapid and turgid, the alewives run up, and they are as good eating as smelts, though too full of bones. They are smoked slightly, but not salted. About this time, too, the smaller boys begin catching yellow-perch at the mouths of the brooks. These, and tom-cod, are not thought worth putting on the market, but they are crisp little fish, and a string of them, thirteen for twelve cents, makes a good supper.[[2]]
Suckers also come with the opening of the brooks. The discovery has been made lately, that these fish, which New Englanders despise (quite wrongly, for if well cooked they are firm and good), are prized by the Jewish population of some of the bigger cities, and bring a good price. A ton and a half of suckers were shipped from our river this season.
Our royal fish are the shad, which arrive in the middle of May, when the woods are all blossoming. The May river is full of their great silvery squadrons. They are caught at night, in drift nets, by hundreds. Most of them are shipped away, but our Town must and does eat as many as possible. One family, who know what they like, practically abjure all other solid food for the shad season!
Of all our fish, eels are the most mysterious; for they go down river to the ocean (out of the fresh water streams and lakes) to spawn, instead of coming up. No one knows what mysterious depths they penetrate, but it is said that baby eels are found in one and two thousand fathoms of water. By midsummer they are about six inches long, and are running home up the brooks. They wriggle up waterfalls and scale the sheer faces of dams. They stay three or four years in their inland home, growing to full size, and in September, the fat grown-up eels run down the streams again, to spawn in the sea. This is the time when they are caught at dams and in mill streams, and shipped to the big cities in quantities. Our biggest paper mill, not long ago, was shut down entirely because of the eels, which got in through the flumes by hundreds, and stopped the water wheels.
The taking of the Acushticook eels is now a regular industry, and this came about rather sadly. Stephen Mitchell, the millwright of the Acushticook paper mill, was a fine man, with a turn for inventing. His ideas were sound and a good many of his mechanical devices turned out excellently. He became interested in explosives, and worked for a long time at a new method for capping torpedoes. He had been warned time and again, and such an intelligent man must have realized perfectly the danger of work with explosive materials, but one day an accident happened. There was an explosion which took not only both hands, but his eyes.
I think everyone in the town felt sickened by the accident, and by the prospect of helpless invalidism ahead of a fine active man. But Stephen, as soon as his wounds healed, began looking for something to do.
The Acushticook eels had always been fished for in a desultory fashion, and Stephen cast about for a way to make the fishing amount to more. The mill owners did all in their power to help him. They gladly gave him the sole right of the use of the stream, and helped him in building his dam. He had also a grant from the Legislature. He hired good workers, and for many years he and his wife, who was a master hand, lived happily and successfully on their fishery. Sometimes two tons of eels were shipped in the course of the autumn.
Stephen always was cheerful. He could see enough difference between light and darkness to find his way about town, and he was so quick to recognize voices that you forgot his blindness. He kept among people a great deal, and was an animated talker at town gatherings. He was an opinionated man, but a fine and upright one. After his death his widow kept on with the fishery, and she still runs it with profit.
[2] Both tom-cod and perch are now shipped to the cities in quantities.