and the Maritime Provinces. 161 



bay. At low tide there is little water in any of these inlets, but at high 

 tide the water rushes up into them for long distances. The tides rise 

 twenty-five and even fifty feet. At high tide, in the salmon and trout- 

 running seasons, these fish follow with the water into the bays and rivers 

 as far as the tide goes, and swarm back with it when it ebbs. He says 

 he has seen the smaller rivers, streams, or rather stream beds, one hundred 

 feet wide, actually choked from shore to shore with the biggest salmon a 

 man ever saw struggling upward with the tide. 



" It is not more than eight or nine years ago that the first attempt was 

 made to establish fisheries there on a large scale. Drawing seines was 

 impossible, and the fish wheels of Oregon were impracticable. So a simple 

 but exceedingly effective trap was introduced. It was not original with 

 the salmon fishermen, the idea being borrowed from the porpoise fishermen 

 of Hudson bay. Immense nets are made from the largest and strongest 

 twine, and of length and depth to suit the inlet to be fished. At low tide 

 the nets are set at the mouths of the bays or inlets, and the top of the net 

 is hauled to the bottom so as to offer no obstruction to the water or fish as 

 they pass upward with the rising tide. Just before the tide turned the line 

 holding the floater side of the net to the anchored side is drawn out. The 

 buoys instantly rise to the surface and the trap is set. When the tide 

 comes back men are stationed above the nets some distance, and with poles 

 and brush beat the water and make noises of various kinds. This is to 

 keep the great body of fish from pressing upon the net at once, and as the 

 fish are exceedingly timid they rush back up stream by the thousand, and 

 will actually be left on the dry land by the receding tide, so panic-stricken 

 do they become at the noises made by the men. When the tide has gone 

 out, the dry beds of the inlets will be piled with tons upon tons of salmon 

 or trout. Not salmon and trout, for both kinds are never found in the 

 same inlet. In one the trap may secure fifty or one hundred tons of 

 salmon at a run, while in the next estuary below the catch will be trout. 

 He has seen 10,000 salmon taken at one haul. 



" He says the marvellous salmon runs of the Oregon rivers are no 

 comparison to the tremendous rushes of those Hudson straits fish. It 

 may be that if the latter bad big fresh-water rivers, to explore they would 

 not be massed so thickly along the coast, but the channels they seek are 

 not sufficient to let them all in. In his opinion, if the salmon supply of 

 the world elsewhere should ever become exhausted, it can be replaced 

 easily by the fish of those great northern waters. A thousand big vessels 

 could take on cargoes of salmon and trout there every season without 

 visibly lessening the supply." 



" There would be no sport with the rod if salmon were as abundant 

 as that," said the Judge. " One of the greatest charms of salmon-fishing 



