Hey guys, I'm transcribing a civil war diary from a soldier who spent some time stationed in Alexandria, VA (not the whole time, I think). He went fishing from time to time, and recorded every day for about 9 months in his diary. For example, he caught a large perch one day. But the next day, he caught a "fine mejs." The excerpt in question is that "we was out fishing tonight. caught a fine mejs. had better luck than usual."
I did some light googling, but I am certainly not schooled in the ways of fish. It is in cursive, so it could very well be spelled nejs. When I search for that, google does inexplicably turn up the Atlantic Needlefish as the first result. Thoughts on possible interpretations of this diary entry?
I'm not an expert on the period, but I've done a bit of similar transcription/deciphering before. Are you barred from sharing images for confidentiality purposes? A pic would be very helpful.
This next bit is conjectural, so if this isn't appropriate for the forum, I'm happy to delete.
There's a chance he was writing "mess," i.e., "bunch." In other words, "We was out fishing tonight. Caught a fine mess [of fish]." Cursive double-S digraphs regularly looked like "fs" or "js" when written in cursive well into the nineteenth century.
EDIT: I can't source this to anything specific, but I've transcribed documents from the period myself, and I also have worked in publishing.