pennsylvania angler 1953 - Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission

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MEMORIES OF CANAL DAYS (From page 6) ticking and assorted merchandise, the canal became an efficient freight artery. Toward the turn of the century it slowly declined, conceding defeat to the steam locomotive and the iron rails. Many adventurous and romantic stories centered around these old waterways. Funneling the boating traffic of those early days, the canal was the scene of exciting activities for robust men and wide-eyed, barefoot youngsters. Ponderous vessels, measuring 80feet long, loaded with as much as 75 to 100-tons of cargo, were towed through the canal with teams of horses and mules. Two and in some cases three boats were coupled together and a team of three to five .mules labored strenuously pulling the heavy vessels. Though the lead boat carried some cargo, it was fitted with a small cabin which served as sleeping and eating quarters for the crew. Here the captain made his quarters and did the cooking for the boatmen. The bowsman or tiller steered the vessels while a driver, a young lad eager for the adventurous life on the canal, drove the team of mules over the clay packed banks. The driving of the team is described in an early ballad of the Erie Canal. "So haul in your tow-line And take in your slack, Take a reef in your breeches And straighten your back; Through sunshine and storm Down the towpath we'll walk, And we'll touch up the mules When they kick and balk." The canal was hardly more than 25feet wide, but this narrowness offered no hardship when boat trains going opposite directions met in the canal. The boatmen simply slackened the tow lines to the heavy vessels, the lighter boats passed over the lines and continued on their way. Loaded heavily with coal, lime and lumber, the boats sank deeply into the water. Eel grass was a constant hinderance to speed and taxed the endurance of the mules. Entire crews were assigned the task of keeping the weed growth mowed. Crews of five to six men stood on the edge of big mud flats and swung long-handled scythes from side to side under the water, cutting the tall aquatic weeds. Old timers tell how livestock was left to roam on the farms and when the grass was cut to float down the canal, pigs would flock to the banks to feast upon the sweet foliage. Toward evening the farm women would venture along the canal, whistling and calling for the pigs to return home. After trudging some 25-miles during a day, evening found the boating crew pulling into a layover station. There the mules were fed in muzzle bags and taken aboard for the night or placed in nearby stables. Letting the driver-boy to guard the cargo, captain and bowsman would occasionally wander into a nearby saloon for an evening of wine and song. Daybreak would find the mules harnessed and plodding over the tow path, the driver-boy at side, the steersman guiding the tiller, and the captain full of strange oaths, out of sorts with the slow progress through the locks. The canal was not of one continuous depth but a series of locks lifting or lowering the boats to various levels corresponding to the height of the land. Hundreds of locks were scattered along the entire length of the canal, and locking through was the term applied to lifting or lowering the canal boats on their uphill or downhill journey. The locks were simply stone walls on opposite sides of the canal with gates at opposite ends. The vessels were pulled into these locks, gates and wickers closed until the water within raised or lowered the boats and allowed them to pass into another stretch of the canal. As the vessels approached these locks, the boatsmen would sound the approach with a long blast on a conch shell or boat horn. Tenders would get the locks in readiness. People in the villages scattered along the waterway remarked how pleasant, during the summer months to hear, amid the starry darkness, the boatman wind his mellow horn in summons to the drowsy tender of the lock to make ready his approach. How the echo from the conch shell rolled between the hills! Clearly heard at distances of from three to four miles, the far reaching, pleading call was the signal for nearby youngsters to run and watch the boats pass through the locks, journey on their way. Old boatmen were masters at tooting these large sea shells and some could even play a fair tune with them. It is said today that when fisherman visit the canal for catfish on dark, stormy nights, with only the light of kerosene lanterns dimly lighting the shore, the resounding bellow of the conch horn can be heard as boatmen sound their warning to lock tenders years ago. Some say this is only the wind whistling among the tree tops high over the waterway, but who can deny boats and boatmen are not traveling this same waterway on misty nights just as they did in days of old? All was not toil and work on the canal. There were moments of gaiety and merry-making plus many hours of good fishing. Boatmen tell how baited lines were trolled and husky suckers, chubs, catfish and pickerel were caught for breakfast or dinner. Tales are told too, of passing through villages where the farmers' ducks and geese were swimming in the canal. Some boatmen baited hooks with corn and dangled the bait to these birds. Fresh fowl was welcome on the evening meal menu! Row boats were shoved into the canal on Sunday afternoons and grandma and grandfather, only youngsters then, spent hours drifting on the slow moving race perhaps planning their wedding in the local church. Moonlight rides on the canal had a bewitching air that made youngsters very susceptible to the whims of cupid. The canal offered good fishing too; youngsters and old timers spent afternoons fishing, watching the boats go by. With grassy banks, shady willow trees and deep, inviting pools, it was one of the favorite fishing spots in those early days of yesteryear. The approach of winter found the old canal drained and boats placed in huge basins for the dormant months. Tons of fish were gathered in the autumn as the last pools of water seeped away, but in spring, when the river was diverted into the canal, equal numbers of fish returned. This draining of the canal was mentioned in an article published in the Berwick Enterprise Newspaper issued December 22, 1900. "Perhaps for the last time the water was let out of the canal last week. For all the boating that has been done this season it was hardly worth while to let it in. In fact this statement applied with equal relevance to the proceeding three to four years. During the period with the coming of the winter and the closing of navigation it has been surmised each time that the old waterway was to be abandoned. But now it may almost be accepted as a reality. All the lock tenders have been 24 PENNSYLVANIA ANGLER
advised to accept, if offered, other more permanent positions, and this information together with the repeated threatenings of discontinuance leads one to think that the canal is now an industry that is to fade in history." The canal business steadily declined after the upsurge of the iron rails and steam locomotive, was finally abandoned in the year 1904. Die hards and those who fought desperately to keep the shipping business alive refused to take their boats to the bay. Many of their boats were trapped in the canal as it dried after the last emptying of water. For years the boat hulls, mired deeply in mud, remained as ghostlike reminders of a lost transportation industry. One cannot estimate the great part this old waterway played in the development of this state or even its stimulation to the sport of fishing. From the beginning of the canal days to the present time, anglers of all ages, from grandfather to grandson, visited the sluggish man-made stream. Youngsters played upon the grassy banks, swam in the deep pools shaded by overhanging willows and experienced their first joy in catching colorful sunfish, fat suckers and pickerel. Though many parts of the canal are now filled in and converted into everything from drive-in theaters to truck gardens, other parts are choked with weeds, brush and garbage. But long sections remain clean and offer surprisingly good fishing! Evenings in the early spring and summer the tow path and sod banks are dotted with lights from kerosene lanterns of fishermen in quest of catfish, giving the appearance of a tiny sleepy village at night. July finds other anglers wading in the canal or walking along the clay banks casting spoons, MAY—1953 spinners or live minnows for pickerel and bass. Long sections of the canal have attractive pools that hold pickerel, catfish, carp, sunfish, bass and eels. Though known to many fishermen, these sites are seldom spoken of for they remain as one of their secret spots where they gather afternoons to enjoy fishing in solitude. Indeed, many fishermen would rather let you smoke their favorite pipe than tell you of their fishing spot in the old "ragin canal." Though today nothing churns the waters, the old canal is not forgotten. With the old boatmen holding annual re-unions at Rolling Green Park, tales and exciting moments of boatings and fishing in the old canal are told and re-told among veteran boatmen. But there are others too who will remember these old water ways, perhaps not for the boating activity, but as their secret rendezvous for afternoons of fishing. The railroads and highways have become the life-lanes of the old canal towns, but the canal will continue to live on, if only in the hearts of fishermen! ROMANCE OF THE SHAD (From page 11) one about four miles above Bloomsburg, others below and above the town of Berwick, and still another at Beach Haven. Between this place and Nanticoke Dam there were three. Above Nanticoke, others were at Fish Island, the Wilkes-Barre bridge, at Mill Creek, at Monocacy Island, Wintermoot Island, Scovel's Island, and additional fisheries were scattered from here to Standing Stone, about six miles below Towanda. At the eight fisheries near Northumberland 300 shad was a common haul, while some ran from 3,000 to 5,000. About the year 1820, the Rockefeller Fishery, just below Danville, gave an annual yield of from 3,000 to 4,000, worth from 12% to 25 cents apiece. The most productive fishery was the one just above Berwick. Here thousands upon thousands of shad were caught, and at the Tuekanow Fishery thousands of shad were caught day and night in the early spring. So many shad were taken at the Webb and Boone Fishery that when a market could not be found for all of them, they were hauled to Boone's farm and used as fertilizer to enrich the ground. The annual catch at the Hunlock Fishery is said to have been more than 10,000. At Dutch Fishery, in one night, 3,800 shad were taken, while at the Fish Island Fishery nearly as many shad were taken once at a single haul as were taken at Hunlock's in a whole year. Both at Wyalusing and Standing Stone, popular rendezvous of bass fishermen of this day, the annual catch of shad was between 3,000 and 4,000. Apparently the fisheries down the river were much more productive than those above. As the river was ascended, the shad appear to have diminished in numbers but to have increased in size. Opinion of many during the shad fishing days was that the great size obtained by the Susquehanna shad was due to the long run up the fresh water stream—carrying the idea of the survival of the fittest. That they were of great size is beyond doubt, those caught at the fisheries in Northumberland and Montour Counties ranging from three to nine pounds. Thousands of shad weighing from 8 to 9 pounds were caught in Columbia County and one weighed on a wager turned the scales at 13 pounds. The price of shad varied, according to their size, from about 4 to 25 cents, depending upon their scarcity or abundance. In those days they would cost about as much as a pound of beef, a pound of tobacco, or a dozen eggs. At the time the first dam was built in the Susquehanna, they sold for from 10 to 12 cents, and there is a record of a man who gave 20 barrels of shad for a good Durham cow. In exchange for maple sugar one good shad was worth a pound of sugar. Every family along the river with any means whatever, had its half barrel or more of shad salted away each season, and some smoked shad hanging in their kitchen chimneys. The plentifulness and cheapness of shad benefited the entire Commonwealth. Country folk from, a radius of 50 miles came to the Susquehanna to get their winter's supply, people journeyed from the New York State line, from Easton, and from Philadelphia to get these splendid food fish. Most of these people camped on the river bank, and brought with them whatever they had of marketable nature in payment as well as partial reimbursement for the journey. From the New York State line and Easton 25
Page 1 and 2: •SpS , ¥ *?%!£ 1*. ^is jp mSST
Page 3 and 4: COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HON. J
Page 5 and 6: L MAY—1953 the I. NOR'WESTER over
Page 7 and 8: There's Fish in the Old Canal Again
Page 9 and 10: CANAL WAS DRAINED in late autumn pr
Page 11 and 12: CANAL TODAY looks like this ln many
Page 13 and 14: W l fish were imprisoned to be slau
Page 15 and 16: ••^•••••m return of t
Page 17 and 18: (usually dark), with a definitely f
Page 19 and 20: k, I County. DON SHINER PHOTO beaut
Page 21 and 22: the strip lead, hence will describe
Page 23 and 24: THE Basic problem of dry fly castin
Page 25: striped bass a hook-and-line game f
Page 29 and 30: The line should be well greased to
Page 31 and 32: cade of cars containing sportsmen,
Page 33 and 34: %i Large trout have also been nette
Page 35 and 36: Ir ^M*ass the Worms Pappy!* 3 Yep

pennsylvania angler 1953 - Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission

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