S3 40 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



there. I am going back immediately. I think the prospect is good 

 for a large Fall catch on our shores. I have been in the Bay of St. 

 Lawrence three seasons for mackerel, in 1868, 1869, 1870 three years. 

 1870 I made $06 for the season, the two years previous we shared $270, 

 each man for 5 months fishing. These were extra good years in the 

 Bay. 



Of all the mackerel we took during the three years amounting to 

 nearly 1,800 barrels, only 90 wash barrels were taken on Sudick shoals 

 within three miles of the shore. 



I have on the American shore made $500 to a share in a season, the 

 least I ever made on this shore mackereling was $400, a season of five 

 mouths. The Bay mackerel fishery for this and the two last years has 

 been an entire failure. I have been to Grand Manan one Winter for 

 herring. I bought my herring of the people on shore, paying cash for 

 them. I paid from 60 to 90 cents per hundred. There is no market, and 

 no use to which these herring can be put that will begin to pay the peo- 

 ple the amount of profit that this sale to American vessels produces. I 

 have also been to the Western Banks fishing for cod. We took one 

 baiting at New Brunswick and one at Cape Breton, paying 50 cents 

 per hundred at New Brunswick, and $1 per barrel at Cape Breton in 

 cash. At Cape Breton the herring remaining on hand were thrown 

 overboard after we were baited, as there was no vessels there to take 

 them, they were worthless for any purpose for which the people could 

 use them. 



SAMUEL M. FARMER. 



COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



GLOUCESTER, Sept. 3d, 1877. 

 COUNTY OF ESSEX, SS. 



Then personally appeared the above-named Samuel M. Farmer, and 

 made oath that all the above statements by him subscribed, are true to 

 the best of his knowledge and belief, before me, 



DAVID W. LOW, Notary 



No. 272. 



I, Alexander McDonald, of Provincetown, in the Commonwealth of 

 Massachusetts, being duly sworn, do depose and say that I am thirty 

 years of age and am the captain of the schooner Willie A. Jowell, engaged 

 in fishing for cod upon the Grand Banks and I have returned with one 

 thousand quintals of fish all taken on trawls. I have been trawling 

 for cod for nine years and until this year have always used salt clams 

 for bait which -I carried from home. This year I went to Newfoundland 

 to purchase fresh bait for the first time. I arrived at the Bay of Bulls 

 about the eighteenth day of July to get fresh bait, with seven hundred 

 quintals on board, taken previously with salt clams and squid caught 

 on the Banks. I found no bait at Bay of Bulls and left for Cape Royal 

 finding no bait there either. Then went to Portugal Cove, Conception 

 Bay, where I had to wait five days before I could purchase any bait at 

 all. I then returned to the Banks with twenty barrels of squid for which 

 I paid about thirty cents per hundred, having been absent from the fish- 

 ing grounds about two weeks. I caught one hundred quintals with the 

 squid I had purchased at Newfoundland, the remainder of the trip I 

 caught with salt bait at Newfoundland, and if I had not wasted so much 

 time in going to Newfoundland after fresh bait I should have caught 



