REPORT OF THE COilillSSIOSEES xvii 



I knevr the first man -svlio caught a shad in the Petitcodiac river. His name was 

 Dawson Steeves. He made a net five fathoms long and drifted about three miles on 

 the river and got five shad going up, and drifting down he got five more. That was 

 about 90 or 95 years ago. Mr. Steeves himself told me this and said it was the begin- 

 ning of shad fishing in this river. 



The use of nets appears to have been adopted a little later on the X.S. shores 

 and on Cobequid bay, very short lengths seem to have been first used. As Mr. 

 Douglas said: — 



Then small nets were used, 35 fathoms long (one bunch). That was in 1837, and 

 the men easily filled their boats getting 300 or 400 shad on a tide. William Lawrence, 

 as a young man, built a boat and secured 38 barrels his first season. Every one who 

 had a boat then fished and, ffot all thev could handle. There was no trouble to get 



fish. 



The limited fishing operations above mentioned v.-as carried on for domestic and 

 local use, and the first genuine commercial enterprise dates back about 70 years. The 

 pioneer commercial shad fishermen were the Messrs. Halliday of Halifax, 2^.S., and 

 in the evidence of Mr. George Gregoire of Halifax this early net fishing is described. 

 He said: — 



I remember shad fishing in the Bay of Fundy from the time I was a boy say of 

 twelve years of age, sixty-three years ago. In the year 1845, I was working with Mr. 

 Tristram Halliday, of Halifax, who was a dealer in fish and the first canner of fish 

 in this country. Mr. Halliday was a Scotsman, and had been fishing shad in the bay 

 two or three years before I joined him. That year I had been fishing with him down 

 to the eastward, and left there to assist in shad fishing in the bay. I arrived here on 

 June 24, which was my twelfth birthday. The boats were then being left there from 

 the year before. We took nets with us. The boats were bought in New Brunswick, 

 and were skiffs. We fished seven skiffs that year, our buildings being on Daniel Hill's 

 property at Economy Cove. Each net was sixty fathoms long, four nets to a gang. 

 The nets were made of fine mullet twine and knit by our own men in the factory in 

 winter. The size of the mesh was 5 inches and 45 meshes deep, mounted on a top 

 rope with floats, on a third extension of the mesh. The bottom rope had sinkers. We 

 fished at night by drifting up the bay on flood tide, returning on the ebb tide going 

 down past our own place to low water and coming back home on the flood tide. We 

 usually picked our nets three times at night. In these years and up to 1856-7, with 

 the gear described and the time spent in drifting we would kill from 400 to 600 os 700 

 shad in a night. They were all big fat No. 1 shad. The first year I went to fish shad 

 we arrived at the fishing grounds on June 24, and got to work fishing July 1. At this 

 time there was very little fishing done outside of Mr. Halliday's Company. One or 

 two farmers had short nets and worked a little at it. 



By 1852 the drift nets had increased in length and the industry had begun to 

 expand. As ifr. Gregoire said : — 



As soon as a boat couldn't bring in more than 300 shad of a nigtt Mr. Halliday 

 would stop fishing. I fished with Mr. Halliday seven years. I worked in the factory 

 at Halifax with him when I wasn't working with the canners, and I helped to knit 

 nets. After this I fished nine summers with Mr. John O'Brien, of Noel. We used 

 the same sized mesh and 400 fathoms of net. I \ised to kill from 400 to 700 shad a 

 night. When the shad fell off to 200 at a catch I stopped. I fished by the hundred, 

 at $1 per hundred. 



About this time on the Petitcodiac river, as Mr. Dennis Eichard says, " We used 

 a net 150 fathoms long, the mesh being 45 inches; then it came down to 4 J inches, 

 3494—2 



