REPORT OF- TBl^COilillSSIOyERS xxxiii 



Further up the river, at Ebnsdale, the evidence proved conclusively how impor- 

 tant the gravel areas in the Shubenacadie were as shad breeding areas. This river 

 is the natural spawning ground of shad, as one resident said: — 



Shad can be seen stiU and not moving in the daytime. I have caught them 

 mostly head down stream as if they came up and played down. They were for my 

 own use, but we sold a few and corned some. The females had spawn but a good 

 many were males, and were smaller, fatter and better eating. Usually there were 

 more females than males. At high tides they run up males and females mixed. After 

 a few days there would be none and later another run. Two or three runs occur. 

 They began about May 1 and I got seven or eight in the morning. They stop them 

 down below us and it is unfair to us above. I don't notice the spawning schools so 

 much now because the fish are scarce. The water was alive with spawning fish when 

 they used to be plentiful. They say the fish scoot round in the water and play so that 

 they can't be netted. They won't go into the net. Some think they spawn in the lake 

 but none are got there, and they spawn in the river, especially a crooked place called 

 the Oxbow or Carsons land, a muddy grassy place with gravelly spots. This river 

 is imdoubtedly their natural spawning ground. 



One of the most experienced fishermen on the upper Shubenacadie waters 

 informed the Commission that : — 



The shad were very plentiful about 1893, and a net set would take 75, 100 or 120 

 in a night for a season or two, but they slacked o£E quickly because of sawdust pollu- 

 tion and eels. In the spring of 1905-6, one man here got thirty or forty, they had 

 decreased so much. Old people say that shad come back to the same spots. The 

 spawning groimds are not below Sandy McDonalds, Barneys Brook, because tide 

 comes up there and the bottom is mud — they choose a good clean bottom. They spawn 

 at Enfield and come down looking long and lanky. The Shubenacadie and Nine Mile 

 rivers are their natural spawning rivers, and they should have been used better. 



Undoubtedly the taking of quantities of shad in this river must have had a 

 depleting effect. In early days the taking of these spawning shad was limited and 

 merely for local domestic use; but as it assimied the character of a commercial 

 enterprise to supply such markets as those of Halifax and Truro, the effect of more 

 extensive fishing has been correspondingly disastrous. 



Causes of Decline. 



DESTRUCTIOX OF SPAWNING SHAD. 



We have in the preceding part of this report referred to the extensive destruction 

 of spawning shad up the various rivers tribut^ary to the Bay of Fundy, and we feel 

 compelled to place this cause at the head of the harmful causes which have beev 

 most disastrovis of all in bringing about the decline of the shad industry. In the 

 St. John river this serious matter was referred to long ago by Dr. M. H. Perley, who 

 in 1852, claimed that the ' spring shad should not be caught at all, they are of little 

 value when taken, and their capture, by destroying the breeding fish, tends greatly 

 to the injury of the valuable shad fishery of the bay, which ought to be most care- 

 fully preserved and protected.' The same authority declared that ' the shad which pass 

 up the river in the spring *are spawning fish of large size, heavy with roe and very 

 thin. As a matter of course these fish have but little flavour as compared with the 

 fat and luscious sea shad taken in the autumn and they are scarcely worth salting. 

 The chief shad fishery is that for sea shad taken outside St. John harbour by drifting 



349i-3 



