Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1892-09-17

WHAT THE POUND NETS CATCH.
How Twenty of Them Supply the New Yorl
Markets With Fish.

How Twenty Of Them Supply the New York
Markets With Fish.
TWENTY POUND NETS ALONG THE
- Jersey shore supply New York city with
most of its fish in summer. To pay for the
plant, STAR correspondent was informed, each
net must catch from ZOO to 10000 pounds of
weakfish and other scaly game per day.
pound net costs $4,000, and it only lasts one
year. Next spring a new one must be substi-
tuted for the old, only the anchors and chains
employed for fastenings being useful for
another season. The net itself has become
rotten and the wooden poles utilized for sup
ports have been eaten up by the bivalve mol
lusks known as the ''teredo." Sometimes two
sets OF poles are required in one summer.
In order to make the nets last SO long they
are tarred all over twice during the season, once
in the spring and again in midsummer. At
tempts have been made to preserve The poles,
which are expensive, by charging them with
mineral acids. Experiments have been tried in
this direction In England Holland Belgium and
elsewhere, but always without good results.
The acids are injected into the wood. They do
keep off the teredo to some extent but the pro-
cess costs SO much money that it is cheaper to
renew the poles. Besides, it is apt to faint the
water, so that the fish are driven away.
HOW THE NETS ARE SET.
Each pound net extends out three-quarters
of a mile into the ocean, approximately. The
length varies somewhat with the depth of the
water off shore, the pocket at the end into
which the fish are led requiring to be at depth
OF about forty feet. The fish find the net an OBJ
stacle While swimming along the coast in pur-
suit OF the small fry that swarm in the shall
lows, and they follow IL seward until they find
themselves inclosed in the pocket, from which
they cannot discover an exit Subsequently.
There they may be kept imprisoned for an in
definite time, until there is n market demand
at profitable prices. One day last year a single
pound net OF Asbury Park captured 100 900
weahfish, which comprised an entire school.
There was scarcity of them in New York and
10000 of the batch wero shipped to the me-
tropolis on ice by tug They fetched big
sum of money, but storm came up and so
moved the net that the remaining 80 900 es-
capped.
RUNNING A POUND NET
is very much like gambling Between the huc-
tuations OF the city marke. and the uncertainty
of making catches the owner never knows
whether he is going to come out ahead on the
speculation. At Presen. it is believed that there
are too manysuch SHARES along the jersey shore,
the result being an over supply, which makes
prices lover. The pound net fishermen are ac-
cused of over fishing the waters to the Peril of
the industry in future but the Atlantic is o
pretty big ocean and i. is not likely to be fikhed
out in this century. In early spring many shad
are caught in this manner as well as some
sheepshead and i'll the fall Spanish mackerel
come along.
SeabIight is New York's great source of
supply for biuefish. Every morning at about
daybreak $50 rowboats SO out from there and
angle with hook and line, each boat catching
from 100 20 1000 pounds at u trip and return
ing by am. 1t would be good thing for the
other fishes Of the sea if the bluefsh could all
be wiped out, inasmuch as every one of the
latter destroys many times its own weight of
useful food fishes every day. biting them to
pieces wautonly Is it swirns along. The blue
fish is a shark in ali but the name.