FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 137 



Brunswick or Nova Scotia, as it happens) for some distance out toward the mouth 

 of the bay and then scatter, to return again in spring by the same route. Thus, 

 to go more into detail, very few are caught on the Nova Scotian side between the 

 entrance to St. Mary Bay and Digby Gut, but fish on their way to the Shubena- 

 cadie River system from the sea yield an abundant harvest as they follow the shores 

 of Annapolis and Kings Counties (the Annapolis River also yields a few fish in its 

 lower course, as well as an odd one occasionally in the Annapolis Basin). Salmon 

 similarly en route to the St. John, the premier Gulf of Maine river, strike the coast 

 about Point Lepreau (about 23 miles west of the St. John), supporting an important 

 fishery from there to the mouth of the river ; but very few St. John River salmon can 

 go up the Bay of Fundy after they leave the river, for hardly any are taken on the 

 New Brunswick shore east of its mouth except for small catches made off the 

 Petit Codiac River near its head, the product of the local run in that stream. A 

 similar trend of salmon out toward the southwest and back along shore in the oppo- 

 site direction seems to obtain on the coast of Maine, for only an occasional fish, 

 probably the product of the Dennys River, is caught east of Mount Desert, while 

 several times as many, which may safely be credited to the Penobscot, are caught 

 along the stretch of coast line from Penobscot Bay to Cape Elizabeth. 



On the whole, the salmon may be looked upon as rather a local fish in these 

 waters; probably few of them stray very far from the streams to which they resort 

 for spawning, nor is it likely that many of the St. John River or Minas Basin fish 

 ever venture far outside the Bay of Fundy into the open Gxilf. Perhaps a 50-mile 

 radius would encircle the wanderings of the majority except, perhaps, in winter, 

 when we know noticing of their comings or goings. Marked salmon, however, occa- 

 sionally have been known to make long migrations on the other side of the Atlantic, 

 while fish marked in Nova Scotia have been taken in Newfoundland. Proof 

 that salmon may stray equally far in the Gulf of Maine is afforded by the yearly 

 captures near Cape Ann and in Massachusetts Bay of fish that must have come 

 from at least as far as the Penobscot River, if not from the Bay of Fundy, and by 

 the fact that odd salmon, either strays from the Gulf or (less likely) the product of 

 the periodic attempts to restock the Hudson, are caught almost every year about 

 Marthas Vineyard;^' wliile odd salmon, probably of the latter parentage, have been 

 taken in the pounds along the New Jersey coast. Even young fish may travel for 

 considerable distances during their first summer at sea, since "smolts" so small 

 that they must have run down to salt water but a few months previous, and for 

 which no nursery existed nearer than the Penobscot, have been taken in Cape Cod 

 Bay in October (p. 132). No salmon has ever been creditably reported more than 

 about 25 miles from the nearest land in the Gulf of Maine, and therefore the 100- 

 fathom contour incloses practically the entire range of the species there. '^ 



A question closely bound up with the migrations of the salmon in the sea is: 

 What proportion of them return year after year to spawn in the very rivers in which 

 they were hatched? It has been demonstrated by a variety of evidence, especially 



" Notably in the spring of 1918 when about 75 (including large fish up to 35 pounds) were taken at Gay Head and in the 

 neighborhood of Woods Hole. 



'' Smith (1895, p. 99) records one caught 50 miles at sea oti the coast of Delaware. 



