oldwife

Conger eels bark, schoolmasters sound as if they were delivering a lecture, and the oldwife gossips away with chirps and chatters.

As these are in the freshes, so the salts afford at certain times of the year many other kinds of fish in infinite shoals, such as the oldwife, a fish not much unlike a herring, and the sheepshead, a sort of fish which they esteem in the number of their best.

Those which I know myself, I remember by the names of herring, rock, sturgeon, shad, oldwife, sheepshead, black and red drums, trout, taylor, greenfish, sunfish, bass, chub, plaice, flounder, whiting, fatback, maid, wife, small turtle, crab, oyster, mussel, cockle, shrimp, needlefish, bream, carp, pike, jack, mullet, eel, conger eel, perch, and catfish.