594 



HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



fishermen went far to sea after cod and mackerel, the smacks south of Cape Cod enveloped live 

 clams in netting bags, and kept them in the wells with which many of the vessels are provided. 

 If the voyage is to be a short one, clams may also be preserved alive for a considerable period by 

 being put in a cool place, and stores of ice are now taken on some vessels from New York for this 

 purpose. 



The vessels of Cape Cod, Gloucester, and Maine, which form the largest part of the fleet on 

 the Banks of Newfoundland in the cod and mackerel fisheries, have no wells, and therefore are 

 obliged to carry their bait removed from the shell, salted and packed in barrels. With the edible 

 Mya arenaria are often mixed in the bait-barrel an inferior 'species, the "sea-clam" or "skimmer" 

 and also the quahaug, both of which are to be considered hereafter. The principal depots for the 

 digging, manufacture, or sale of bait to the "bankers" have been already mentioned, but every 

 town on the New England coast north of Cape Cod, where clams occur at all, is a point of bait 

 supply. The salting is of two kinds, "full salting" and "slack salting" or "corning." In the 

 former, 1 bushel of salt is placed in each barrel of opened clams ; in the latter case, from half a 

 peck to half a bushel of salt is allowed to every barrel. It is reckoned that 12 bushels of clams 

 in the shell make a barrel of salt bait, the present price of which is about $4. 



In the old style of mackerel fishing, however, clams were chopped up (often with a mixture 

 of menhaden) and sprinkled overboard as "toll-bait" to attract the mackerel to the surface. 

 A vessel going to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence on a mackerel voyage of three months, in the old 

 days, would carry from 5 to 10 barrels oif salted clams, besides 30 to 35 barrels of menhaden; but 

 it was generally thought that the clams were rnnch better than the menhaden. Now mackerel 

 are caught in seines, and there is now little use for toll-bait. 



In the cod-fishery trawls are not baited with clams, and their use is therefore restricted to 

 the hand-line or dory-fishing. In this fishery about one hundred vessels go every year on trips 

 of from three to four months' duration to the Grand and Western Banks. The crews of these vessels 

 will average twelve men, each one of whom will, as a rule, use 2 barrels of salted clams before 

 the end of the season. This makes an average of 24 barrels for one hundred vessels, or an 

 annual consumption, north of Cape Cod, of 2,400 barrels, representing 28.800 bushels (in the shell), 

 annually consumed as salt bait on the Banks of Newfoundland alone. 



10. STATISTICAL RECAPITULATION OF FISHERY FOR SOFT CLAMS. 

 A summary of the statistics of the foregoing pages produces the following table : 



Statistics of production of Mya arenaria in 1880. 



" The clam fisheries of this State have not been noted on the preceding pages. The information gathered by the 

 census agents give the statistics as herein. A. H. CLARK. 



t Number of clams by count, at two hundred per bushel, 212,940,800. 



