kalos72, do you have 'Armies of the Night'? It is very useful to anyone running a campaign in NYC. I know you are mostly looking for info and stats on fishing and food consumtion, but I find no information in the module that indicates fishing provides food for the survivors in Manhattan. Here are a few notes from the module.
Many thousands (tens -of-thousands?) of NYC's inhabitants are virtual slaves under the yoke of the Mayor or another gang. These slaves are certainly underfed.
Cockroaches are mentioned; "roaches are an important source of food. As edible as any other arthopod, they are much smaller than lobsters-but far more numerous, and considerably easier to trap."
Pigeons are present in the millions, and use the lower tiers of buildings that had their windows blown out by blast damage or vandals.
Rats are another pest that Manhattan's residents call lunch.
The gang that took over the Seaport Museum uses captured sailing vessels to raid nearby farming communities on the East and Hudson rivers. Food is the primary target of these raids.
Rovers seem very active in searching buildings for lost or forgotten caches of food. During the build-up to the nuclear war many residents stock piled food and water. When the bombs fell on the Thanksgiving holiday, many people were away from the city, and never made it back to thier pre-war stash.
In the street markets of Manhattan T2K a 9mm pistol is worth 35 kg of canned/ domestic food, while an M16 is valued at 120 kg.
Though it is never mentioned, I always imagined that many people fished from shore, bridges, or docks as best as they could manage with improvised poles and throw lines.
I just wanted to give you some of this info. I think it is cool if you want to make fish a major part of the economy in your game. This could lead to all kinds of game hooks like controlling the vibrant fish market(s), communities that specialize in salting/smoking fish for preservation, fishermen who are attacked by pirates etc.
I had a campaign in NYC once years ago where the players tried to set up a supply line to import wheat-flour and bake bread on a large scale. This baked bread would have been distributed among the poor peaceful communities to encourage the locals to support the players. This never really got past the planning stages, although the team did recon several retail and commercial bakeries.
The problem with these types of plans is that NYC is one of the most violent, desperate places on earth, where the strongest gang-members carry multiple firearms and are veterans of the streets. Gun battles among a landscape saturated by hard cover and dangerous terrain is serious business, and my players managed enough bad luck to spend about half the campaign recovering from one serious wound or another. Good times.
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