t we had only
the luck to catch one apiece.

April. We had an elegant dinner; beef and greens, roast pig, fine
boiled rockfish.

July. We dined today on the fish called the sheepshead, with crabs.
Twice every week we have fine fish.

On the edges of these shoals in Nominy River or in holes between
the rocks is plenty of fish.

Well, Ben, you and Mr. Fithian are invited by Mr. Turberville, to a
fish feast tomorrow, said Mr. Carter when we entered the Hall to
dinner.

As we were rowing up Nominy we saw fishermen in great numbers in
canoes and almost constantly taking in fish,--bass and perch.

This is a fine sheepshead, Mr. Stadly [the music master], shall I
help you? Or would you prefer a bass or a perch? Or perhaps you
will rather help yourself to some picked crab. It is all extremely
fine, sir, I'll help myself.

August. Each Wednesday and Saturday, we dine on fish all the
summer, always plenty of rock, perch, and crabs, and often
sheepshead and trout.

September. We dined on fish and crabs, which were provided for our
company, tomorrow being fish day.

September. Dined on fish,--rock, perch, fine crabs, and a large
fresh mackerel.

I was invited this morning by Captain Tibbs to a barbecue. This
differs but little from the fish feasts, instead of fish the dinner
is roasted pig, with the proper appendages, but the diversion and
exercise are the very same at both.

An English traveler in 1759, Andrew Burnaby, registered his wonder at
the way fish were taken in the reaches of the Chesapeake:

Sturgeon and shad are in such prodigious numbers [in Chesapeake
Bay] that one day within the space of two miles only, some
gentlemen in canoes caught above six hundred of the former with
hooks, which they let down to the bottom and drew up at a venture
when they perceived them to rub against a fish; and of the latter
above five thousand have been caught at one single haul of the
seine.

The "gentlemen" concerned were obviously not slaves serving the needs
of a plantation, but, judging from the amount caught, expert commercial
fishermen. The sturgeon, after the roe was removed, were stacked in
carts and peddled in nearby towns. The shad, after as many as possible
were sold fresh, were salted down.

The snagging of big sturgeon as recounted by the French traveler
Francois J. de Chas