162 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



coast have meshes of the same size, or only a very little smaller than 

 those prescribed for the small-herring nets by the royal ordinance of 

 July 19, 1872, but these nets are intended for catching the larger herring, 

 and could scarcely be as advantageously employed for catching small- 

 herring as the nets used at Fjellbacka and Sackefjord, although during 

 the autumn a considerable number of small-herring was caught on the 

 southern coast. 1 Near Fjellbacka I had the opportunity of seeing how 

 small-herring, measuring 100 millimeters, and some even larger, squeezed 

 through the meshes, and that only very few small-herring measuring 

 less than 100 millimeters could be found among the large number of fish 

 in the nets. 



In the Limfjord, (Denmark,) where people have had such a long 

 experience in making laws concerning the use of the various fishing- 

 implements, the meshes in that portion of the net where the fish are 

 gathered measure only 0.55 of an inch, even in nets destined for catch- 

 ing herring, to be in keeping with which the meshes in the Swedish 

 small-herring nets should measure only 0.05 of an inch. 



Even when the old fisheries on the coast of Bohusliin were in their 

 most flourishing condition, when fishermen only now and then caught 

 the immature herring, as it was considered unfit for use by salters and 

 oil-refiners, 2 nets with nearlv as narrow meshes as those in use at 

 present were employed, 3 partly in order that the herring should no 

 remain fixed in the meshes and so make the net heavier, and partly in 

 order to give the necessary strength to the nets. 



Wherever net-fishing is carried on on a large scale, the fishermen 

 seem to maintain the opinion that the size of the meshes does not 

 necessarily imply that any considerable number of fish should remain 

 in tbe meshes; 4 and Mitchell relates that sometimes during the great 

 herring-fisheries in the North Sea the nets become so crowded with her- 

 ring that they have to be abandoned; 5 and it is said to be no unusual 

 occurrence in those parts that nets sink down on account of the large 

 number of fish in them. 



A question, intimately connected with that of limiting the use of 

 fishing-implements, is that of supplying the demand for bait. The 

 greater importance which the so-called winter-fisheries on the southern 

 and central coasts have gained during the last twenty years, on account 



1 It is a very different question whether an implement can be used, or whether it can, 

 under certain given conditions in a certain place, be used with the sure hope of gain. 

 If an implement is very practical in its mechanical application, it by no means follows 

 that its use will pay, and an implement which is suited to one place may be entirely 

 unsuited to another. 



s Nilsson, Reports on the Herring- Fisheries, p. 63. 



s Dulb, Transactions of the Royal Academy of Sciences for 1617, p. 36. Ekstrom, 

 Practical Essay, p. 20. Wright, W. von, Reports on the Herring-Fisheries, p. 169. 



4 Mitchell, The Herring, p. 105. De la Blanche™, La Peche et les Poissons, Paris, 

 1868, p. 725. 



fi The Herring, p. 39. 



