had not, in
fact, even scratched the surface:

In the rivers are great plenty and variety of delicate fish. One
kind whereof is by the English called a sheepshead from the
resemblance the eye of it bears with the eye of a sheep. This fish
is generally about fifteen or sixteen inches long and about half a
foot broad. It is a wholesome and pleasant fish and of easy
digestion. A planter does often times take a dozen or fourteen in
an hour's time with hook and line.

There is another sort which the English call a drum, many of which
are two foot and a half or three foot long. This is likewise a very
good fish, and there is plenty of them. In the head of this fish
there is a jelly, which being taken and dried in the sun, then
beaten to powder and given in broth, procures speedy delivery to
women in labour.

At the heads of the rivers there are sturgeon and in the creeks are
great store of small fish, as perch, croakers, taylors, eels, and
divers others whose name I know not. Here are such plenty of
oysters as they may load ships with them. At the mouth of Elizabeth
River, when it is low water, they appear in rocks a foot above
water. There are also in some places great store of mussels and
cockles. There is also a fish called a stingray, which resembles a
skate, only on one side of his tail grows out a sharp bone like a
bodkin about four or five inches long, with which he sticks and
wounds other fish and then preys upon them.

The same author went farther than any other reporter up to that time in
telling a real fish story:

And now it comes into my mind, I shall here insert an account of a
very strange fish or rather a monster, which I happened to see in
Rappahannock River about a year before I came out of the country;
the manner of it was thus:

As I was coming down the forementioned river in a sloop bound for
the bay, it happened to prove calm, at which time we were three
leagues short of the river's mouth; the tide of ebb being then
done, the sloop-man dropped his grapline, and he and his boy took a
little boat belonging to the sloop, in which they went ashore for
water, leaving me aboard alone, in which time I took a small book
out of my pocket and sat down at the stern of the vessel to read;
but I had not read long before I heard a great rushing and flashing
of the wate