THE SALMON FISHEB. 19 



tic salmon are not singular in this respect. There 

 is invariably a fag end of the autumn run which re- 

 mains all winter in the headwaters of the Laurentian 

 tributaries, and only last^ winter (1890) as many as 

 two hundred well conditioned salmon were taken 

 through the ice with nets by market fishermen at the 

 head of Belisle Bay, a pocket of the river St. John, 

 in New Brunswick, thirty miles above the mouth of 

 the river. This bay in the winter season is heavily 

 stocked with pickerel, chub, suckers and other small 

 fresh-water fish, though at very high tide the water 

 may become slightly brackish. Mr. I. H. Phair, of 

 Fredericton, who first communicated his observa- 

 tions to the Forest and Stream, states that the salmon 

 rare poor and dark colored in the early part of the 

 winter, but as the season advances they improve and 

 "become exceedingly fat. The stomachs of those 

 which were examined were found to be full of young 

 fish, and a pickerel six or eight inches long was 

 taken from the mouth of one of them. There were 

 never brighter or fatter fish, Mr. Phair says; but 

 when boiled a slight earthy or ground flavor was de- 

 tected, like that peculiar to the land-locked salmon. 

 These were of course late salmon which remained 

 up stream all winter. 



