16 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



narrow, while the meshes are from 3£ to 4 inches wide. This enables 

 the smaller fish to escape and retains the larger ones, whose usual 

 size ranges from 3 to 4^ pounds, and from 12 to 14, or even nearly 18 

 inches in length. These nets are set across the mouth or along the 

 shore of some small bay into which runs a stream of sufficient size to 

 allow the fish to run up to spawn. The bottom of the net is sunk with 

 heavy weights, while the upper side is supported by cork bobs which float 

 upon the top of the water. The net is examined twice a day, and the fish 

 taken from the meshes. They are then slit down the belly and cleaned 

 thoroughly ; after being washed carefully in fresh water they are 

 packed in a barrel and salted down carefully. When full the barrel 

 contains about a third salt and water. Iu some places the people have 

 out a large number of nets, and often catch from a quarter to half a 

 barrel of trout daily; but the latter is a capital day's work and seldom 

 made. 



Trout are caught at all seasons, from early in the spring, when the 

 ice breaks up, to late in the fall. They are most abundant just before 

 it is high tide ; and their favorite time is from 2 to 4 in the afternoon 

 of a rather windy and lowering clay. They at all times seem to prefer 

 cloudy weather in which to be about, and when the wind blows lightly, 

 ruffling the water, and are then caught in greater abundance than at 

 any other time. In some of the bays the trout are so abundant that you 

 can cast a double-hooked line and generally catch a fish almost instantly 

 on each hook. I have in mind a locality called Baie Des Bodies, where 

 a small stream comes down into a sort of bay or arm of the sea, and 

 where, iu 1875, a party of five of us succeeded in taking with hook and 

 line some 938 fish, large and small, fishing only part of two days. The 

 fish bit at the red and gray flies, and as fast as we could haul them in. 

 About 100 of these would- weigh less than half.a pound each, the ma- 

 jority between 1 and 2 pounds, as many as 75 of them 3 pounds apiece, 

 and the largest weighed 4J pounds. 



There seems to be three or four varieties or species of trout in these 

 regions, but they have not all as yet been positively identified. They 

 are called here salmon trout, spotted and gray trout, sea trout, and 

 another species, if indeed it be a valid one, called by the people the mini 

 trout. Of these three or four, the sea and spotted and gray trout alone . 

 appear extensively as articles of commerce. Trout are caught all along 

 the coast from Mingan to Blanc Sablon, if not to Belle Isle itself. Any- 

 where about the mouths of small streams these fish are abundant. The 

 huge streams are usually so completely filled with salmon nets that 

 trout nets are of no account whatever. In the small places, even, 1 

 have known a, small boy hardly ten years old to catch from half a barrel 

 to a barrel and a half of trout in a season with one or two small nets 

 only, thus earning from $15 to $20 on this alone. The fish, like all other 

 "catches," are taken by the traders at a nominal price in exchange for 

 food and articles of necessity, ind sold in Quebec as grade 1, 2 ? or 3, 



