Fishing in Long Island Sound Was a Favorite Sport of Early Pelhamites

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J. Gardiner Minard was an important early resident of Pelhamville.  He was a local newspaperman, a shop keeper, baseball player, and volunteer fireman, among other things.  As he aged, he became an unofficial local historian who wrote countless stories for the local newspaper about the early days of Pelhamville.  

Slowly over the last few years I have been collecting many of the history articles and anecdotes that Minard wrote and that were published in The Pelham Sun.  On May 3, 1929, at the very end of the Roaring Twenties, Minard published an unusual set of anecdotes about the importance of fishing on Long Island Sound to local Pelham residents in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Minard tells such stories as the time when two rival groups of Pelhamites bet each other over who would catch the most blackfish on the Sound the following day.  One of the two groups set out the evening before and collected two bushels of mussels that they mashed and then took to a spot in the Sound and dumped them overboard near a favorite blackfish spot, knowing that the bait at such a "salted" site would attract fish the next morning.  They marked the spot with a float.

The rival group thought their opponents had boasted a bit too much about likely success and, thus, suspected foul play.  They went out extraordinarily the following day and found the float.  Suspecting the area might have been baited, they moved the float some distance away, anchored over the spot and began hauling in blackfish one after the other.  

Soon their rivals appeared and anchored over the float.  Though they fished all morning, all they could do was watch as the other group hauled up fish while they caught none.  Soon they figured out what had happened and were furious as the others merrily laughed at their expense.

Minard's account, however, is most interesting because it documents a little of the life of stock actor Richard Jacob Moye who lived in North Pelham.  He was known as an accomplished character actor who played such roles as the Dutch grocer in the "Chimmie Fadden" and as Dickey Dyles in "The Stowaway" in traveling productions throughout the region.  

Minard's account is well worth a read and forms a part of the history and lore of Pelhamville.

Blackfish (Tautoga Onitis)

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"FISHING IN LONG ISLAND SOUND WAS FAVORITE SPORT OF EARLY PELHAMITES
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Tom Barker, Peter Rohrs and Charles Hemmingway Great Fishing Enthusiasts.  Richard Moye Stages A Little Comedy Of His Own
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By J. Gardiner Minard
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With the arrival of the fishing season, we wonder what has caused a falling off in this line of sport in the Pelhams.  Up to a quarter of a century ago there were any number of men in North Pelham who owned boats which they kept in New Rochelle moorings and every Sunday they made a trip to the fishing grounds and always brought home good catches. 

Flounders are not nearly so plentiful now as in those days when 200 in a couple of hours at Cedar rock and Hunter's Island were not considered unusual.  Peter Rohrs of Chester Park I believe still carries on, but Pete's hobby is striped bass, and it takes a world of patience to troll for hours and not get a strike.  Blackfish however, were what most of the local fishermen went after and many tales of these parties could be told.

Tom Barker and Charlie Hemingway each had a boat at Huntington's ship yard in New Rochelle and each Sunday they invited a couple of friends to fish.  There was considerable rivalry between these two parties.

One Saturday evening Charlie came down on his bicycle and stopped at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Third Street where a number of men, including Tom, were sitting on the stone wall that stood there.  Charlie was in a kidding spirit and asked Tom whom he was taking out the next day.

After being told, he said, 'I bet you we will catch more fish and bigger ones than you.  I know a spot where I used to catch quite a few.  It hasn't been fished for a long time, and I have an idea they will run there tomorrow.  Bring all the money you can and we will cover it.'

Charlie's continual betting offers made Tom suspicious and he remarked that he thought he would go home to bed.  Charlie wanted to know what time he was leaving the next day and Tom replied he would start at the usual time, seven o'clock.

But Tom didn't go home.  He hunted up the two friends who he was to be taken [sic] with him and told of his suspicions and they agreed to go an hour earlier.  At 6:30 they reached the fishinig grounds and circled about scanning the surface of the water.  They saw what they were looking for and what happened will be related after.  Dropping anchor they put out their lines and almost immediately they began hooking blacks.  

Charlie, too, had notified his guests to be on the job early and just as the first blacks were being hauled aboard Charlie and his guests were seen coming out of New Rochelle harbor.  One of them remarked that fishermen were already out and Charlie looked and said, 'I'll be hanged if it isn't Tom and his party.  They went out early to try and beat us but we are going to fool them.  Wait until they see us hauling the fish in.'

When they got near enough to hail each other, Tom and his friends called out to Charlie to come over and anchor near their boat as the fish were plentiful and big.  Charlie cruised about until something on the surface attracted his attention and he smiled as he dropped his anchor and said to his friends in an undertone 'the fish must be plentiful today when they catch them like that, but wait until we start and they will turn green with envy.'

Charlie and his friends got out their lines and ten minutes passed without a bite while Tom's boat kept bringing them up.  As they pulled up beauties they held them up for Charlie and his guests to admire at the same time urging him to bring his boat over near theirs.

Again and again Charlie gazed at a block of wood floating on the surface and after a half hour during which time his party had only landed two small ones, he grabbed the block and pulled up the cord attached and lifted a stone from the bottom.  He examined it for a moment and then rising in the boat began to talk marine language.  'Hey you,' he shouted, 'I bet you shifted my float.'

A burst of laughter from the other boat was the response.  It was all too true.  After quitting work at noon Saturday, Charlie had gone directly to New Rochelle, got his boat out and going to the mussel beds, gathered two bushels and took them out to the blackfish grounds.  Mashing them, he scattered them about and placed a float to mark the spot.

He had boasted too much the previous evening and Tom suspected this scheme.  He and his friends had gone out early and found the float and taking it up, carried it 150 feet away and dropped it there.  Then they anchored at Charlie's baited ground.  They had lots of fun with Charlie the following few days and all he could say was that it was a poor trick after he had missed his dinner Saturday to bait the ground, for them to shift the float.

Richard J. Moye, the character actor, who resided in North Pelham was also a fisherman.  Moye was killed at the New Haven station here just ten years ago.  He will be remembered as the Dutch grocer in the 'Chimmie Fadden' and as Dickey Dyles in 'The Stowaway.'  He was with the Jacob Litt Stock Co., and they went on the road in the late fall and finished in the early spring.  It was a feast or a famine with stock company actors and actresses in those days and Moye experienced hard times during the summer months.  He had a wife and three children.

It was shortly after noon on a hot summer day he came into my store on Wolf's Lane and told me in confidence that he was down and out and there was not a thing to eat in the house.  He disdained charity and wanted to know whether there was any chance getting fish in the Sound.  It was a bad season for fishing but I assured him we might get a few.  If he could get enough for a meal he would be satisfied.

Moye was born on Staten Island where his father kept a hotel with a summer garden which was patronized by Germans.  He spoke perfect English as well as all German dialects and it was one of his hobbies to catch an American and German, both strangers, and break into a jargon of bad English and worse German and start a dispute between them, the German insisting Moye was not a German and the American insisting he was not an American but German.  

We got the boat out and fished.  As I had thought, the fish were not running good and the afternoon was hot, even on the water.  Dusk was approaching and for an hour Moye had been silent and apparently in deep thought.  We had about a dozen small flounders, three bergals, one small blackfish and one small eel.  I got a bite and started to haul up and Moye at the same time got a nibble which caused him to jerk the line and his derby hat fell to the bottom of the boat just as I brought a good sized flounder over the side; but the fish fell off the hook into the boat and landed on Moye's derby and before I could grab it, it had flapped completely about the brim leaving a trail of slime.

I picked up the hat and got out my handkerchief to wipe it off, but Moye grabbed the hat in affected alarm and yelled 'Don't wipe that off; it is worth money to us.  Now look here; I have simply got to have a whiskey.  You have 15 cents and you only drink beer.  Are there any saloons around here?'

There were two saloons:  Simmons on the Shore Road over the Pelham Manor boundary line in New Rochelle and the Neptune House kept by Tom McMahon one hundred yards east.  After putting up the boat we went first to Simmons'.  Moye crept up the porch and peeked through the curtain.  There was a coachman standing at the bar.  This one wouldn't do.  At McMahon's there were two well dressed and prosperous looking Irishmen at the bar smiling and apparently joking.  This was the place.  

Again cautioning me to keep my face straight, he placed his right hand on the small of his back, bent over as if suffering with a back ache, screwed his face as if in pain and carrying the basket of fish in his right hand, opened the door and entered, at the same time launching into an attack on the English and German languages.  He didn't even look towards the strangers but they were looking at him and their [illegible] finally into chuckles.

'What's the matter, Dutchy?' asked one.  Moye made a painful effort to straighten up and began another murder of the two languages, the purport of which was that his wife had invited a large number of guests to a fish breakfast and sent him out at daylight to catch the fish.  We had been all day and the wife and guests were still waiting and he was due for a reprimand.

'Have a drink, Dutchy?' one asked.  Moye cast a disdainful look at the bar and finally agreed to a 'schmall schnapps.'   McMahon put out the gas bottle and Moye filled it to the brim.  When the stranger called his attention to this he explained that his eyesight was bad but it was bad luck to pour any part of it back into the bottle.

When asked what he had caught he referred to the fish as 'flet flounders, dark gomplectioned bleck fish, bluegalls and a long round schlippery fish' which he said I had called an eel, but he was quite certain it was a serpent.  His deep gutteral words and rolling r's had the men in stitches.  They asked him what that was on his hat and he took off the derby, patted it affectionately and said that he didn't like to tell because they would not believe him for never in his life had he seen such a thing before.  Pressed for the story he said that for more than an hour a large fish was swimming on the surface and watching him.  His hat fell off into the boat and this fish was evidently waiting for this opportunity and jumping out of the water into the boat, it started swimming around the brim of the hat like a merry-go-round.  He chased after the fish trying to catch it and finally got dizzy and fell himself to the bottom of the boat and the fish with a noise like a laugh, jumped overboard.  As proof he not only had the mark on the hat, but there was a salt water mark on his trousers to prove the fall.

The drinks were coming fast and I was beginning to worry over Moye.  From experience I knew the more he drank the more entertaining he became and also more helpless.  I must get him home and take the blame.  I suggested we 'geh heim.'  One of the strangers took out his watch and said anxiously 'Great Scot, look at the time it is; we have just time to make the train.'  As they shook hands with Moye, the latter straightened up, smiled and said 'Good night gentlemen, we have had a very pleasant evening and we appreciate.'

The two men gasped and stared for a moment and one exclaimed 'Say:  who the devil are you?'  

Smiling broader Moye answered 'I am Richard Jacob Moye, the actor.'

'Oh thunder, come back here,' and they dragged Moye back to the bar.  Now it was real reason for worry.  Getting one of the men to one side, I explained Moye's circumstances and why we had gone fishing and begged him not to give him any more drinks.  He agreed and conveyed the information to his friend.  They telephoned for a hack and getting Moye and myself in, we left them at the New Haven station where they gave the driver a fat tip and instructed him to take us home.

The next morning Moye entered my store pop eyed.  He explained he had gotten up early and dressed in the same old clothes expecting to ask me to go fishing again, but when he put his hand in the coat pocket had found two five dollar bills there.  How did they get there?  I could only suggest the two strangers as wanting to pay for the evening's entertainment.

In conclusion this story will illustrate Moye's versatility and ability to impersonate characters; twenty-eight years ago the people of this community were shocked to read that a justice of the peace of the town of Pelham had been arrested in Mount Vernon charged with intoxication but released as soon as his identity became known.  The town board met and investigated itself and gave each member a clean bill of health, but was unable to get a retraction from either the newspaper or the Mount Vernon police who were quite certain of the identity of the individual.  Two of those ex-judges are alive and I believe to this day they regard each other with suspicion.

It was Moye who was arrested."

Source:  Minard, J. Gardiner, FISHING IN LONG ISLAND SOUND WAS FAVORITE SPORT OF EARLY PELHAMITES -- Tom Barker, Peter Rohrs and Charles Hemmingway Great Fishing Enthusiasts.  Richard Moye Stages A Little Comedy Of His Own, The Pelham Sun, May 3, 1929, p. 19, cols. 1-5.

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A Pelham Fish Story

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For hundreds of years, Pelham was considered a sportsman's paradise for hunters, fishermen, clam diggers, hikers, and those who loved the great outdoors.  Though adjacent to the growing metropolis of New York City, the town was sufficiently remote so that thousands of ducks, geese, turkeys, pheasants, grouse, woodcocks, doves, and other game were taken in and around the Town each year.  Additionally, during much of the 19th century (and at times even today), the waters off Pelham shores teemed with hundreds of species of large fish including striped bass, bluefish, sharks of various types,  blackfish, sea bass of various kinds,  flounder of various types, and much, much more.

Thousands of sports-loving New Yorkers have fished the waters off Pelham (including today's Pelham Bay Park) for centuries and continue to do so today.  Thus, as one might expect, so-called fishermen's tales have been common over the last two hundred years.  Some, however, are a little odder than others -- such as today's "Pelham Fish Story" reported in 1889.

According to the tale, two friends rowed a small boat out to Huckleberry Island off the shores of Pelham to fish for blackfish.  Like all who fish, they were ever the optimists and had prepared for success.  One had brought a length of unusual window cord with which to string the pair's catches through the gills and hang them overboard to keep them alive as long as possible.  

The pair had a lucky day.  The fish were biting.  By 4:00 p.m., they had caught forty-two pounds worth of blackfish, stringing each one on the window cord that they tied to the oarlock of the rowboat.  They kept the fish so strung in the water to keep them alive.  

Near the end of the day, ready to call it quits, one of the two tried to untie the cord and lift the fish into the boat, only to let the cord slip through his hands.  The pair watched helplessly as the mass of blackfish slowly squirmed away, deeper and deeper into the waters of the Sound.

Avid fishermen, two weeks later the pair was out fishing again.  This time they were fishing from the Eastchester town dock near Eastchester Bay on the Hutchinson River.  The two had not been fishing for more than ten minutes when one of them hooked what he thought was a monster fish.  He tugged and pulled to bring it up.  As it reached the surface, to his shock, it was "the self-same string of blackfish that I had caught two weeks before at Huckleberry Island."  

He knew it was the same string of blackfish because they were attached to the very window cord he had used to string them in the first place.  Even more surprising, not only was every fish that the pair had caught and strung two weeks before still alive, but also "every fish weighed double what it did before."  Thus, according to the fisherman's tale, ""instead of having forty-two pounds I had ninety-seven pounds of nice, living fish." 

Somehow, the string of fish had made its way for miles from Huckleberry Island to the Eastchester Town Dock.  Moreover, the blackfish reputedly had thrived and grown in Pelham waters during the previous two weeks.

We all have heard strange fishermen's tall tales before, usually involving little more than exaggerating the size of a fish.  Before dismissing this particular tale skeptically, however, let this author now step outside the role of local historian and relate his own fisherman's tale -- one that evokes the "Pelham Fish Story" told above.  The author's own tale is, most assuredly, true.

As a youngster growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, I had the fortune to fish frequently at what was then called Ross Barnett Reservoir.  One summer in the early 1970s, while fishing for catfish with a friend, we left a rod and reel propped and unattended as was so often done (whether napping or tending to multiple rods).  Shortly the rod bent violently and began bobbing, signaling that a catfish was on the hook.  Before either of us could get to the rod to fight the fish and reel it in, the fish dragged the rod and reel right into the water and took off with it.  (I even stripped to skivvies, dove in after it to the bottom, and felt in the murky water for the outfit.  Soon it was apparent.  The rod and reel were gone -- a difficult result for an avid young fisherman who did not have the money to replace it easily.

Several weeks later, I was able to return to the spot and was trying my hand at stalking catfish once again.  This time, I had learned my lesson and kept the rod and reel in my hands.  Soon the rod bent violently and began bobbing.  I began fighting the fish, but it seemed unusually large and difficult to reel in to shore.  

I was successful and reeled in a nice catfish.  It was nice (several pounds) but not, however, as large as I expected given the difficulty I had getting it to shore.  As I looked more closely, I noticed what looked like an extra line hanging out the fish's mouth.  I tugged on the extra line.  It seemed snagged on something.  I began pulling and felt it give a little.

I pulled and tugged until I reached what was on the other end of the extra line.  It was the rod and reel that had been pulled into the water several weeks before.  Incredibly, the catfish seemed none the worse for the wear and tear.  Indeed, it seemed quite healthy, but for the two hooks and lines that it had swallowed.  

You may think this catfish story is merely another tall tale, but it is entirely true (except, perhaps, for exaggerating ever so slightly the size of the fish).  I ask you, however, to ask yourself:  if I assume the catfish tale to be true, might the Pelham Fish Story involving catching the same blackfish twice in 1889 also be true?

I, for one, am a believer. . . . 

Blackfish (Tautoga Onitis)

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Below is the text of a news item that forms the basis of today's Historic Pelham article.  It is followed by a citation and link to its source.

"Ready to Furnish Proof.

Two weeks ago last Sunday a friend and myself were fishing for blackfish at Huckleberry Island.  Our luck was good.  Every time that we caught a fish we would string it on a line that we had tied to the oarlock.  About 4 o'clock P. M. we got tired of fishing, and in untying the line it slipped from my hand and sank to the bottom, fish and all.  Last Sunday my friend and myself were fishing at the East Chester town dock.  We hadn't been fishing ten minutes before I had a tremendous bite and hauled up the self-same string of blackfish that I had caught two weeks before at Huckleberry Island.  Every fish was alive, and strange to say every fish weighed double what it did before, and instead of having forty-two pounds I had ninety-seven pounds of nice, living fish.  This string of fish must have traveled about ten miles.  There is no mistake about the string that I used, because it was a piece of window cord that I took with me from home.  This story can be vouched for by the crew of the yacht Sara, who saw me lose the fish two weeks ago.

W. A. S., 
432 East Seventy-fifth street."

Source:  Ready to Furnish Proof, The Evening World [NY, NY], Jul. 2, 1889, p. 3, col. 2.  

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