What is a a sawbelly???

[bfj2000]

I first of these during a family vacation at Seneca Lake in NY. We needed bait for lake trout, salmon, etc, expected live herring, but the local bait shop offered "sawbellies". They add salt to their water to toughen them up.

Also had experience with these in Brewster, Cape Cod in Late April many years ago. The sawbellies migrate from the bay into freshwater streams to breed. The fish were easily caught with nets and even bare hands. Folks were out catching them to facilitate their journey upstream to calmer waters. My son got quite a few bloody scrapes from scooping them out of the water to move them further upstream (thus the term "sawbelly"!)