386 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



stretched across the river aud allowed to drift with the current, following" oue another 

 at frequent intervals. Drifting or floating gill nets have been used from the earliest 

 times in the ocean fisheries for the capture of mackerel and herring. 



Gill-net fishing on the Great Lakes is a very different operation. Here the nets 

 are only about 4 feet in depth. They are hung to light cotton lines, heavily weighted, 

 fitted with cedar floats to keep them in an upright position, and sunk to the bottom 

 in water of any depth, varying from 10 to 75 fathoms. In the larger fisheries they 

 are operated from steam fishing boats, each boat having an outfit of nets which, if 

 fastened together and all set at one time, would stretch to a continuous length of from 

 20 to 30 miles. Gill nets of different proportions, but operated in a similar way, are 

 employed in the cod fisheries of the seacoast States. 



The mullet and shad gill-net fisheries of the Southern States have in recent years 

 become very important, and from Florida to Maine the gill net is used to some extent 

 for nearly all varieties of high-swimming marketable fish. 



In the first half of this century the American fisheries, so far as they were carried 

 on by the use of nets, were limited m extent. Gill nets and sweep seines were the 

 principal means of capture employed, and they were operated along the Atlantic coast 

 extensively enough to supply the local markets with fishery products, but except in 

 the New England States they were not of great importance. 



During the latter half of the century the development of net fisheries, encouraged 

 by the growth and spread of population, with the consequent extension of markets, 

 and by the perfection of transportation facilities, has been marvelously rapid. Gill 

 nets stretch their interminable lengths throughout all the waters inhabited by edible 

 fish — in the oceans east and west, in the rivers flowing into them, aud in the great 

 fresh-water lakes. Sweep seines, although for the most part abandoned in the great 

 New England fisheries, find profitable employment in other localities where they are 

 better adapted to the fishing-grounds. They are to be found in large numbers and 

 of great size on the Pacific coast. They form practically the only means of capture in 

 the important net fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico. The capacity of the modern sweep 

 seine is greater than the earlier fisherman would have believed possible. In the bays 

 of North Carolina the seine sweeps several miles of fishing ground at one operation, 

 being paid out from the deck of a steamboat and hauled by steam power stationed 

 on the land. The purse-seine steamers cruise about in the inexhaustible field afforded 

 by the deep waters of the ocean. Wherever you may view a great expanse of water 

 the black poles of the pounds, traps, and weirs attest the universal presence of these 

 appliances. In its special field of operations the trammel net is numerously employed. 

 Fykes, pots, small seines, and traps of multifarious form abound everywhere. 



If it is true that during this period of remarkable expansion of the commercial 

 fisberies no entirely new principle has been introduced in methods of capture; it is 

 also true that the elaboration and application of old methods have been sufficiently 

 progressive, and the observation of these changes is within the special province of 

 the net and twine manufacturer, who views the whole field of operations and who is 

 compelled to adapt his business to every new condition. Fishermen now living recall 

 the time when half a dozen sizes of hemp twine of a rather ordinary quality sufficed 

 for the requirements of all of the American fisheries. In the year 1893 there are 

 between eighty and ninety different kinds and sizes of twine in constant use as mate- 

 rial for netting, and the variety is increased to more than a hundred kinds and sizes 

 if we include such as are used for gill-net hanging lines. 



