260 KEPORT OF ONTARIO GAME No. 53 



many as 5,000 to 10,000 in one haul during the night; this Avas in the 

 summer time, in July and June. These were salted or sold on the 

 ground to dealers. I have caught as many in a season as Avould allow 

 the owners of the seine for their share about |2,000, the other |2,000 

 would go to the fishermen. Even more than this number were caught 

 sometimes. Fishing was carried on in the fall of the year also. White- 

 fish w^ere thick also everywhere in Lal^e Ontario at that time. I have 

 known as many as 90,000 to be taken in one haul in one night. I was 

 present and saw them counted. I have often known from 5,000 to 

 10,000 being taken, and have taken 40,000 myself in a seine several 

 times. This was in July, at Wellington Beach. Those that were 

 saved of the 90,000 hauled were salted; many of these were lost 

 because they could not be taken care of. There was another haul as 

 large as this taken at AVest Lake Beach. The net was a 175-rod seine. 

 The fish were wonderfully numerous. But when I left Lake Ontario 

 fourteen years ago there was no whiteflsh to be had by the fishermen 

 where these great hauls had been made before; in fact, the whitefish 

 fishery had ceased to exist. There Avas no more of it. I left Lake 

 Ontario to fish here, and a number of other fishermen left there for the 

 same cause." 



Mr. John Lang, fisherman and fishdealer, testifying as to the fish- 

 eries in Lake Huron about Kettle Point, stated : 



" Whitefish were very plentiful in former years ; as many as forty 

 or fifty barrels in one haul, say five thousand fish, was an ordinary 

 catch. These fish have fallen off very greatly." 



Noah Jolie, a fisherman of forty years' experience, stated that 

 about eighteen years before (1874) he had had two fishing grounds on 

 the Detroit River, and that both grounds produced about 70,000 fish, 

 or an average of about 20,000 per net. At that time, as far as he could 

 remember, there were some fifteen or twenty grounds on the Canadian 

 side of the river, of Avhich some were better and some worse than his. 

 He gave up fishing about thirteen years before (1879) because fish be- 

 came so scarce that it no longer paid him to continue in the business. 



James A. Smith, shipwright and boatbuilder, but formerly for 

 thirty-five years a fisherman and fishdealer, stated: 



" Whitefish were so plentiful in Lake Ontario that with one seine — 

 I owned half of it and it was a fifty-rod seine, too — ^we put up in one 

 month 180 barrels for our net's share. The other men, eight in num- 

 ber, would get the equivalent to 180 barrels amongst them; this was 

 in the month of June, in 1869 or 1870, and was on Consecon Beach. 

 There were other seines fishing also, but probably not so large in 

 extent as ours. The same year, in November, the fish were very num- 

 erous, and all larger fish than nsual, weighing about two and three- 

 quarte(rs pounds ; as many as we could barrel we caught a,nd salted, but 

 a great many besides were lost. Whitefish were so numerous that 

 they were hauled away for manure for use upon farms. The whitefish 



