32 SHAD FISHERT COlIillSSIOX 



oui seine. I get 50 or 60 cod per Jay, i.e., 10 to 30 pouuds, rarely 40 or 5(1 pounds. 

 Very early in May we see spawn in the shad, but in May it is all done. Remove all 

 obstructions in rivers and build artificial hatching stations. I farm and the fishing 

 is only a side show with me. 



H. A. Dalmake, Wolfville: I have known the Gaspereau river for 20 years. 

 Splmon are seined, dipped, and I have heard are dynamited, and there are many fish- 

 ir^' grounds on the river, all destroying ascending fish. Were salmon allowed to 

 ascend, the river would improve. They are taken at the tail of mill races, and I have 

 prosecuted men for poaching them there. These artificial channels and mill races 

 s})ould be fenced off and the salmon kept in the main river. Every device is built to 

 turn the fish out of the channel. Every net has a fike or a place for one. 



AixsLET Bishop said he lived two miles out of Kentville and farmed as well as 

 fished. As to the size of shad I took thirty and they weighed 90 poimds cleaned. 

 That was my catch this season. Four or five years ago I got one of nine xwunds and 

 five and sis pound fish are common. Fishing stations have fallen off. Off Starr's Point 

 I used to count five or sis fisheries, now there is only one left. The fishing did not 

 pay, shad fell off so. We seldom get gaspereau; but we have no herring net around 

 the bunt as some have. Small fish escape. I have seen small gaspereau go through a 

 four or four inch mesh and there must be great quantities escaping as the tide ebbs. 

 My weir is fully half a mile long. The spawn shad have been destroyed it is hard to 

 see how any get up as one man has a dozen nets. There are 200 nets taking spawn 

 shad in the Annapolis river. This year is the worst we ever had and I speak practi- 

 cally from fifty years experience for my father fished before nie and I heard much 

 from him. We got fine hauls t€u or twelve years ago, there was no anxiety. In the 

 eighties we used to take 2,000 or 3,000 shad. But now my catch has ranged from sixty 

 down to one. Closing down the shad fishing totally would not help at all as only one 

 stand is fished to four or five formerly. It is the cod which enables us to make it pay. 

 Oecasionally^we get a salmon. Shad don't spawn in our area, but United States rivers 

 affect our fisheries as the fish migi-ate up here from the south. 



Gaspard Eoy, Kext\tlle, said his experience was about 30 years. He was inter- 

 ested in three fisheries, but only one was fished for several seasons. Early in the sea- 

 son we get cod and later about J\me 25 we get shad, also quite a few bass, some thirty 

 pounds weight. We get a halibut rarely, one a year and small in size. We are near 

 Gaspereau river and a few barrels of gaspereau, three or four. Perhaps ten or twelve 

 salmon in a season. Our shad are fat with small roe, about 5 inches long and 1 inch 

 in width. The September shad are the best, but have dropped off in recent years. We 

 have got 500 or 600 at a tide, very fat and the roes 5 inch long and 2 inch wide. Ours 

 are fat fish with very small head. One should be sent with a sample of the roe or 

 spawn to the United States as I think that they must spawn somewhere in January 

 or February. The marking of shad and recording their liberation and recapture would 

 be a sure way of telling where they spawn. 



O. D. Harris said that roe shad occurred April 15 or thereabout. In Xorth Caro- 

 lina, roe shad were high in price, viz., 75 cents even for a male or milt shad and $1 

 for a roe or female shad. I saw at Middleton, shad which had not spawned by May 

 8 and on May 10, I saw thirteen shad which had been caught in the Annapolis river, 

 two were males and the rest were female or roe shad. They were in Charlton's market. 



Dr. George Johxsok, LL.D.. F.S.S., &c., ex-Dominion statistican. said Kings 

 county produced in 1860, according to the census of that date, 1.22S barrels of shad 

 whereas in 1906, it produced only 194 barrels valued at $4,000. In Scott's bay when 

 I was a boy the takes of shad were surprisingly large; but many causes may have 



