The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-06-17
Old Resident Recalls Days
 Of Local Fishing Banks
Tells of Changes in City Since the Days of Long Ago When Fishing Was One of Major Sports of Local Men.

Great big, pallatable soft shell lob sters caught underneath rocks at the foot of Main Street, the finest of oy- sters taken from Berkshire MiN pond, fish--blue, flats and blacks and a half Stratford Avenue bridge, scalops, dozen other varities caught off the picked from amongst the sea grass n ear the Loconobile plant, diamond 1 backed elrapin caught in the Strat- ford marsh near the Lake Torpedo Boat company plant, striped bass in front of the Loco and duck shooting from the Yellow Mill bridge. Sounds Ike the Arabian Nights but--every word is true.
 You dear reader are most likely not among the grnaln number of peo- pie who remember when any of the above statements might have been 1 true. John Hanford, s2, of 1276 Linden avenue, Stratford is a man who not done any one of these things, but he actually did do them Mfr. Hanford comes of one of the pionee fam1ae es or the Soueh End of Bridgeport and nearby locality in the days before the Civil War, is a revelation to even those people who may think they know all about the Park City.
 Good Old Days"
 'I often wish that the people of what I did in my younger days" MT. Hanford related to the writer today. One of my greatest sources of re- gret is the fact that the waters off Bridgeport have been so polluted by acids and dyes from the factories and from the sewerage that it Is no longer possible to do the fishing we did when was youngster."
 My birthplace was at the foot of Main street, in 1S40, and spent many happy days in that section I have always been interested in the great outdoors, and have been a fisherman a T aFl enough to own a boat and a gun"
 We used to go fishing off the old Stratford avenue bridge, and caught a dozen varieties of fish by merely Today, no fish can live in the many colored depths of muck which has taken the place of the once pure, clean water.'
 ''I have gone up into the pond at Berkshire Mill and come back with some very delicious oysters Every fall, we went along the flats near what is now the LocomoFbile plant and scooped in a boatIoad of fine seal lops in no time at all. We now pay $1.1O a quart for these very tasty articles but in the old days I used to make what I thought was big money by gathering scallops and selling them for 25 cents a quart
 We got the most delicious round and long clans off Pdnt-no-point just east of Pleasure Beach, and caught great big diamond-backed ter rapin in the Strtaford marshes back of the island. We shot ducks from the Yellow Mill bridge, and I have come away with many fine birds which pulled out of the air by stand- ing on the bridge and shooting them as they came flying along"
 We got some nice big fat cells and clans in the flats along Yellow Mill pond. Hundreds of thousands of dol lars worth of fish have been destroyed and others kept away by the pollution and I most sincerely wish that the ] poor people of today could get their food as easily as we did then"
 ''We used to go down to the rocks l which were part of the bank at Sea- 1 side, before the breakwater was built, | and by a hook made for the purpose, | reach in and pull out Holsters from the rocks. The Holsters