REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [38] 



the 11th of May. The schools continue swimming- at the surface until 

 about the middle of June, when they sink down into deep water. Now 

 none can be taken in the seines. When they disappear they are full of 

 spawn; when they again appear, in twelve or fifteen days, they are 

 spawned. When any are accidentally hooked up or tolled up during 

 the slack season they are sometimes seen to have partially spawned. 

 When they come to the surface they form in schools and move to the 

 eastward. These remarks apply to the large fish. Small fish may be 

 schooling at the surface all the time. A pound mackerel in the spring 

 is apt to have spawn in it. 



" When jigging was the ordinary method of catching mackerel," writes 

 Captain Collins, " many thousands of barrels were taken each year dur- 

 ing or just previous to the spawning season, when the ova was well de- 

 veloped. It was not an uncommon occurrence for vessels to secure fares 

 in the Bay of Saint Lawrence before the spawning season was over." 



Capt. N. E. Atwood, of Provincetown, Mass., gives the following ac- 

 count of the migrations and movements of mackerel: 



"The mackerel comes to us from the south. As they are with spawn 

 nearly mature when they arrive in our bay they probably come into the 

 South Channel, passing east of Nantucket, then along the eastern shore 

 of Cape Cod, then around the cape and on until they reach their spawn- 

 ing ground in from 15 to 5 fathoms of water, in the southern part of 

 Massachusetts Bay, where they deposit, as I have answered in another 

 reply." 



"Mackerel leave the coast in the same manner as they came in in the 

 spring. The mackerel is a migratory species, coming on our coast in 

 the spring, and when the waiter becomes cold leaving the inshore 

 ground and going to their winter quarters. We have no way of know- 

 ing where they are when away, but can only say they are at their winter 

 home. The first that arrive are the largest; others come in later, but 

 are smaller or rather a mixture of large and small fish. There are no 

 equal intervals between the arrival of the different schools. When the 

 fish leave our shores they go gradually, and they are several weeks 

 passing away from our coast. The mackerel never fails to come, but 

 often varies in abundance in different years. This may be due to the 

 fact that the bait has taken a different course. The first run of mack- 

 erel is made up almost entirely of male fish, but the spawn of the few 

 females that accompany them is always very nearly matured when they 

 reach our coast. "I have to-day (July 1, 1877) examined a quantity of 

 mackerel brought in by a vessel, caught in another locality, and find 

 they are about three-quarters males. Neither sex will take the hook 

 when they first come in; they seem to have no inclination to bite until 

 they have deposited their spawn; they then commence to feed, and in 

 time become fat. The large spawning mackerel, after they have de- 

 posited, pass on to the north. We do not see much of them until they 

 return late in the autumn. When they pass by here going off the coast 



