BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 327 



the herring will keep three or four days without turning sour; if the 

 bait becomes stale the salmon will not bite. During the autumn sal- 

 mon fisheries there are four men in a boat with from 40 to GO salmon 

 lines." 



Tbe occurrence of strange hooks in salmon caught in the rivers empty- 

 ing into tbe Gulf of Bothnia, both in Sweden and Finland, was men- 

 tioned a century and a half ago. Thus Nils Gisler says in the " Trans- 

 actions of the Swedish Academy of Sciences " for 1752, p. 99 : "In the 

 Angermaun River there are annually caught many salmon from which 

 large hooks are taken, some of steel and others of brass. Some of these 

 hooks have pieces of line attached to them in a good state of preserva- 

 tion, some of them measuring 2 fathoms in length, with leaden weights 

 sometimes resembling in their shape church bells, with letters, names, 

 and places of residence marked thereon. In the Njurunda River two 

 hooks were taken from salmon in 1728, which in their shape differ 

 greatly from other hooks. Such hooks are not often found in this river, 

 as the large sea salmon do not often enter it, unless there is very high 

 water, as was the case in the year referred to above. The hooks found 

 in the other rivers are generally all of one and the same kind. Speci- 

 mens of hooks taken from salmon in different places have been sent to 

 the Royal Academy of Sciences. I do not know whether they are found 

 in all kinds and varieties of the sea salmon and in the lake salmon and 

 salmon trout. Sometimes hooks have been taken from salmon which had 

 been caught far up the streams ; thus one was taken in 174G from a 

 salmon caught G miles up the Lulea River. * * * Here, in Norr- 

 botteu, such hooks are not used." 



From time immemorial salmon-fisheries with hooks and lines have 

 been carried on during the winter near the coasts of Bornholm. The 

 apparatus used is very much like the one used in Skane, and the 

 salmon-fisheries, especially net-fisheries, are said to have increased very 

 much in these waters during the last ten years. It is specially reported 

 that the number of small salmon and young salmon, weighing from 1 to 

 3 pounds each, has increased greatly since 1874, when these fisheries 

 were comparatively" small. The number of salmon-nets, which in 1874 

 was small, amounted in 1880 to upwards of 6,000. On the Baltic coast of 

 North Germany the salmon-fisheries, both with hooks and lines and 

 ■with nets, have considerably increased of late years, and the number 

 of young salmon, weighing from 1 to 3 pounds, has i)articularly in- 

 creased. The firm of M. Radmann & Son, of Berlin, report that last 

 year 40,000 young salmon, weighing on an average 1^ pounds, were 

 brought to Berlin from the coast of Pomerania. 



The comparatively frequent occurrence in the salmon caught in our 

 rivers and on our coast s of brass hooks like those used on the coast of North 

 Germany proves, beyond a doubt, that many of the salmon, after hav- 

 ing visited the coast of North Germany, return to our waters. Others 

 have, during their migration to the Gulf of Bothnia, visited Bornholm 



