there
fishing till the 12th of August, [1610] and then finding that the
fishing did fail, I thought good to return to the island
[Jamestown]....

Captain Argall also offered his opinion of the usefulness of the
islands off Virginia's seacoast peninsula, later known as the Eastern
Shore:

Salt might easily be made there, if there were any ponds digged,
for that I found salt kernel where the water had overflowed in
certain places. Here also is great store of fish, both shellfish
and others.

The root of the trouble, so far as local fishing conditions were
concerned, was the lack of adequate equipment together with ignorance
of its proper use. Perhaps the ease with which fish were caught at
certain times had spoiled the hardy settlers.

A low opinion of their attitude in this vital pursuit came from Sir
Thomas Gates in 1610:

A colony is therefore denominated because they should be coloni,
the tillers of the earth and stewards of fertility. Our mutinous
loiterers would not sow with providence and therefore they reaped
the fruits of far too dear bought repentance. An incredible example
of their idleness is the report of Sir Thomas Gates who affirms
that after his first coming thither he had seen some of them eat
their fish raw rather than they would go a stone's cast to fetch
wood and dress it.

Joined unto these another evil: There is great store of fish in the
river, especially of sturgeon, but our men provided no more of them
than present necessity, not barreling up any store against the
season [when] the sturgeon returned to the sea. And not to
dissemble their folly, they suffered fourteen nets, which was all
they had, to rot and spoil, which by orderly drying and mending
might have been preserved but being lost, all help of fishing
perished.

Very few of them had come equipped for fishing. Their seines were as
old-fashioned as those used by the Apostles in the New Testament, the
simple kind you lowered from a boat and dragged ashore. The Indians had
taught them how to spear large fish and erect weirs out of stakes and
brushwood to entrap migrating schools. Such methods worked well enough
during the season. But in cold weather, when provisions ran low,
scarcely any fish were present in the bay proper.

It was different in New England and Canada. There the fishing was good
the year round. The sea bottom was dragged by