308 REPOET OP COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Eock, a certain Captaiu Eldridge, of Bucksport, caught a salmon on a 

 hook while "drailing" for pollack; that is, dragging a seven or eight 

 fathom line with a baited hook after a schooner under sail. This was 

 over fiftj' years ago, when salmon were plenty in the Penobscot, yet 

 it was considered a great wonder; and the old gentleman who told the 

 story,* though he was seventy-six years of age, and had been all his 

 life engaged in fishing, had never heard of another instance of the 

 kind. There are several stories of salmon being taken on trolling- 

 lines, but no exact statements in regard to those occurrences have been 

 obtained. Inhabitants of the island of Matinicus, fifteen miles seaward 

 from Owl's Head, report that salmon are sometimes taken in seiuelfe 

 drawn for mackerel in that vicinity. 



About eight years ago, in the month of July, a small salmon, (grilse,) 

 weighing two or three j)ounds, was caught by Mr. William L. Howe, of 

 Liucoluville, in a net set for menhaden at Wooden Ball Island, f which 

 lies between Matinicus and Seal Rock, and is therefore but a few miles 

 from the locality where the salmon was caught on the pollack-hook, as 

 stated above. 



On the western shore of the bay, salmon-fishing begins about seven 

 miles above Owl's Head, at Rockport, where it has been regularly car- 

 ried on for more than sixty years. For many years past, four nets 

 have been set there. For the past five years the fishery of 1873 was 

 the best ; that of 1871 and 1872 the poorest. The average of late has 

 been about 150 salmon a season in all of the nets ; this is pronounced 

 a small catch in cojnparison with that of years ago.t 



Above Rockport there are no salmou-fisjieries up to a point below the 

 harbor of Camden, where two nets are set. From this point northward, 

 within ten miles, there were, in 1873, twenty-one gangs of nets, compris- 

 ing thirty-seven hooks. The greater part of these are in the town c^ 

 Lincolnville, and a large number of them are crowded into the small 

 bight into which empties Duck Trap Stream. 



The most northerly net-berth is in the town of Northport. In all, 

 there were set along the western shore of the bay forty-three hooks, in 

 twenty-seven separate gangs. The whole number' of salmon caught in 

 them in 1873 was 1,561, | being an average of 3C.3 a hook, and of 58 

 a gang. 



The best catch was 175 salmon in three hooks, and the poorest 12 

 salmon in two hooks. 



In the vicinity of French's Beach, Lincolnville, the nets are generally 

 set about May 10, and taken up early in July. It is within these dates 

 only that fishing is generally profitable. Some fishermen catch consid- 



*Jaines S. Collies, of Castine. 



t Letter of H. H. Page. 



t The most of the data of this statement were furnished me by Ayres & Miller, fish- 

 dealers of Camden. Mr. Job Pendleton, of Lincolnville, from entirely separate but 

 less comijlete data, estimated the catch at a little over 1,583. 



