INTERIM REPORT 37 



It would be a blessing. Shad helped to keep the people in the country ten years ago 

 there w-ere forty or fifty boats even sixty in the bay, but now not more than fifteen 

 can be seen. Walton Beach was laid up with boats from the opposite shore. Every- 

 body had salt shad for winter. One summer ilike ilcCullough, my son, fished and got 

 a lot of shad, as well as King Clark, and they made $7 or $S per day peddling them 

 through the country. 



Eighth Sitting. 



The School House, 



East Xoel, August 8, 1908. 



The Commissioners (Professor Prince and Mr. S. F. Morrison) opened the sitting 

 in the usual formal manner and evidence was taken as follows : — 



J. GiLiiouR MACLELLA^", XoEL, said he had known the shad fishery for over sixty 

 years and long ago they were plentiful. But his grandmother before him spoke of their 

 abundance when she first came to iN^oel. She told of a weir set from one bank of the 

 marsh to the other and it was filled to the top level of the brush wall. They were large 

 shad, eighty would fill a barrel, that was 125 years ago. Th-e weir was brush woven 

 over stakes opposite a mud flat in shoal water and left dry as the tide went out. There 

 was a little net fishing, about 34 bunches to a boat, especially at Bass river on the 

 pposite shore, but only 20 bundl-es to the boat on this shore. The mesh was 5 inches 

 and no small were taken but none very large. The weirs took small fish and many 

 ■J to 6 inches long were used for manure, but these would have passed through thie\ 

 nets. Shad w-ent up the creeks in June or July. The summer shad came to feed. 1 

 suppose a shad such as I have seen taken in May in a weir would be a spawner. The 

 price was 4 cents each, or $4 to $5 per hundred. Thus there is a great loss of revenue 

 to the i)eople and inconvenience due to a lack of an esteemed food supply. Of course 

 there were years of plenty, and other years few shad, but never real scarcity, always 

 really plenty. 



Jacob Milier, Shad Creek,, said that as a boy he saw big catches. Once in ISTl 

 or 1ST2 he saw 25,000 in a weir at Scott's Bay, Kings county, and another year lat-er 

 he saw 32,000. Every year the ice carried the weir away in spring (April or May). 

 For eight years it was not in because it caught so few fish and did not pay for fivtj 

 or six years before that. The weir took shad, gaspereau, herring, cod, a few bass and 

 rarely a salmon. I've known one or two early shad taken in it. They were very large 

 ones. I think that the decline is due to sawdust, as I lived when a boy on the K«nnet- 

 cook river, and many trout were in the small brooks, but in the river itself polluter! 

 with sawdust there was no trout, the taking of spawn shad up the river where they 

 spawn is a cause of decline. Shad feed on sage chewed up. Sage brings them up and 

 at South Maitland we'd get the shad with forks as they came out of the cr-eeks where 

 they went to feed in the latter part of June. I favour two remedies, (1) keep the 

 water clear of sawdust; (2) stop the killing of spawning fish in the rivers where they 

 go to breed. 



SiLvius MosHEB, East Noel, said he had experience of weirs and gill nets. He 

 hr.J a share in the Old Point weir which stopped fishing 9 or 10 years ago. It took 

 shad in April and ilay. Cod, gaspereau and herring were got early. Bass 10 to 15 or 

 •20 pounds weight (10 pounds average) were got in the fall, a good many of them. 



