1444 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



No. 309. 



I, MICHAEL MCDONALD, of French River, in New London, in Queen's 

 County, Prince Edward Island, fisherman, make oath and say : 



1. That I have been engaged in fishing for about twenty-five years in 

 both boats and schooners. I have been in island, New Brunswick, and 

 American schooners, and I know the fishing grounds well, having fished 

 up the Bay Chaleur, round this island, Cape Breton, the Magdalen 

 Islands, and elsewhere. 



2. That there are about one hundred and fifty boats fishing out of 

 New London, the harbor and beach, and the number is increasing fast; 

 it is only about six years since the boats began to go in for fishing to 

 any extent. 



3. That the boats take on an average crews of four men each, besides 

 the men employed at the stages, of whom there are a good number. 



4. That the boats are now better built, better modeled, and better 

 fitted out than they used to be ; people are paying more attention to the 

 business than they did a few years ago ; they find that the fishing pays, 

 and that is why people go in for it. There is a class of men now coining 

 on who give their whole attention to fishing and attend to nothing else. 



5. Tbat I have been fishing in island vessels for the last eleven years. 

 On board these vessels we used to get from two hundred and fifty to 

 three hundred barrels of mackerel a trip, and we used to make on an 

 average two trips a summer, making for the whole summer average 

 catches of from five to six hundred barrels of mackerel. 



6. That we caught about three-quarters of our fish close to shore, 

 within three miles from land. The best fishing is from one mile and 

 one-half to three miles from shore. We used to catch our fish up the 

 Bay Chaleur, round the island coast, and Cape Breton. 



7. That I sailed out of Portsmouth in New Hampshire, in the United 

 States, for two years, one year on board the schooner Commonwealth, 

 and the other year on board another schooner, both of which fished 

 down in the bay. They did not do very well, as they did not get more 

 than sixty barrels of mackerel each year. The reason for the smallness 

 of their catch was that they were not well acquainted round the bay 

 and fished too far from the land, catching most of their fish about nine 

 miles off the shore. They would have done better in closer to the shore. 

 At that time the cutters were about and the Americans were afraid of 

 them ; some of their schooners were taken by the cutters those years. 



8. That I was out one season in the schooner Water Lily, of Carlton, 

 New Brunswick, and on board of her we did pretty well, getting over 

 six hundred barrels of mackerel. She was of about seventy tons bur- 

 den, and carried seventeen or eighteen hands. These six hundred bar- 

 rels were nearly all caught around the island shore, mostly all at from 

 one and one-half to three miles from shore. 



9. That there have been large fleets of American vessels down in the 

 gulf fishing every year; I have seen as many as two hundred at one 

 time in Port Hood, and that would be only a part of their fleet. 



10. That the right to refit and transship the fish is a great advantage 

 to the American fishermen down here in the gulf. They are able to 

 land their fish, send them away in the steamers, and take in another 

 outfit without losing much time. By being able to transship here and 

 refit instead of going home with their fish, they s.tve a fortnight each 

 trip, and that right in the fishing season. That would amount to another 

 trip in the course of the season as a general thing. 



11. I do not think it would be worth while for the Americans to fit 



