A Delightful Amusement - Fishing for Gudgeons
​Herring Run once offered a tasty treat by the hundreds.
Fishing for the tiny fish called gudgeon was once an annual springtime event in the Herring Run watershed. It was angling almost anyone could do with the simplest of equipment, and its popularity in Baltimore-area streams lasted well into the 20th century.

Accounts of gudgeon fishing in the Herring Run  from the Baltimore Sun go back as early as 1838.

The following fish story is from an article by Dennis Doyle of Bay Weekly, published February 5, 2017:

“The gudgeon (Gobio gobio) is a small (up to five inches) schooling fish of the carp family that lives in our brackish waters but spawns in freshwater. Francis F. Beirne, a Maryland historian, documented the gudgeon runs in his 1951 tome, The Amiable Baltimorean (reprinted in 1984), as a long-ago springtime obsession. Describing schools of the little fish in the ‘tens of thousands’ he noted ‘crowds of waiting anglers, armed with slender cane poles, sewing thread for line, a small bobber and a tiny hook baited with a pinch of worm. Cleaned, dusted with seasoned flour and fried a crispy brown, along with red-skinned potatoes, the gudgeon were a gourmand’s treat.’”
 
Sources:   
  https://bayweekly.com/remembering-the-tiny-gudgeon/  
 The Baltimore Sun 1/30/1838 and 3/12/1838, Letters to the Editor