NATURAL HISTORY.— FISH 



273 



The harvest time of the Grand Rapids Indians is in October 

 when the fish come into the shoal waters, which extend for sev- 

 eral miles southeast of the reserve. Each family buys or begs 

 six balls of twine from which the women soon weave a net, 

 sixteen meshes wide, and twenty-five to thirty fathoms long. 

 This is a stormy season and the coast is full)' exposed to the 

 northerly gales which frequently prevent them from visiting 

 the nets for days and sometimes the net, heavily loaded with 

 fish, is carried away and lost, a serious misfortune to the pov- 

 erty-stricken owner. Ordinarily the net is visited two or three 

 times a day. The fish are hung at the fishery in "sticks " upon 

 staging, to dry and freeze; a stick, an inch in diameter is thrust 

 through the tail and they are hung heads downward in bunches 

 of ten. The flesh becomes firmer by this process which usually 

 tends to improve them, but if warm weather overtakes them 

 while on the stage the characteristic " hung" flavor becomes 

 unbearably rank. Larger fish are reduced to the whitefish 

 standard by hanging fewer of them in each bunch. 



The gill nets used in the eddies of the streams are shorter 

 than those of the lake. Scoop nets are used at the Grand 

 Rapids of the Saskatchewan in September and October. They 

 are two to three feet in diameter with a handle twelve feet 

 long. The net is swept down with the current, sometimes, 

 bringing up two or three fish at a haul; again, the fisherman 

 casts for hours without success. It is very fatiguing work, 

 standing in the snow and swinging the heavy net, dripping with 

 ice-cold water. The whitefish taken in the river are much 

 smaller than those from Lake Winnipeg. 



What are known as " small whitefish " weigh two to three 

 pounds. I found these in the Saskatchewan, Slave, and Buffalo 

 Rivers, and at Rae. The " large whitefish " were abundant in 

 Lake Winnipeg, at Resolution, Hay River, and Big Island, 

 about the Great Slave Lake and on the Lower Mackenzie and 

 the Peel River. Old Jack Fiddler sent two fish to the post, 

 during my stay, which weighed fifteen and sixteen pounds each. 

 Whitefish have been caught near Grand Rapids which exceeded 

 twenty pounds each in weight. The nets are set under the ice 

 in winter, especially if the fall fishery has been a failure. This 

 is done by cutting holes at intervals through which by means 

 of a long, spliced pole a line is passed by which the net is 



