44 SHAD FISHEIfT COMMIssloX 



salmon net is set. Our large shad run 9 pounds vreigbt; all are sinawn shad and occa- 

 sionally all run large. I have caught them coming back, a few ' spent ' ones, but they 

 are no good, they are poor and thin and so weak that eels chase and take them. Eete 

 are extremely thick. Tou can't leave a salmon in your net or an eel will take it,, com- 

 mencing to eat it at the giUs and devouring the guts. Often an eel drops out of a 

 salmon when you take it out of the net, leaving only the backbone and tail. Some 

 eels are as thick as your wrist. T have fished for nearly iO years and gaspereau are 

 larger now than formerly, and some use a 3-inch mesh, the best being 2J, none less 

 than 2J-inch mesh. Shad were more plentiful when I began, and fishermen came from 

 other places and got work here and fished shad, some are farmers, and I heard of people 

 cuKjing and camping. Gaspereau come down poor, thin and scattered about July 1. 

 The last of April the sea bass are fished first down at Maitland and they follow them 

 up for a week as they go down at once after spawning. They are taken in a 6 or 6J- 

 iiich salmon twine, 30 fathoms and often set from hank to bank. Shad makes no fight, 

 ;i-' fuss, but bass fight. Bass come when apple trees are in blossom. I have got 

 some accidentally in my 5-inch salmon net. Shad won't go through a 6-inch 

 mesh. At first only three to sis boats fished, but now twenty-five to thirty. Only 

 two or three boats fished at Shubenacadie , but they increased below greatly. As 

 to catches of shad, I have got nine one evening when fishing for other fish as 

 I never paid much attention to shad because they go past to clear water at Milford, the 

 Woodworth boys got 100 in a night and Frame did the same at this side of Milford. 

 The shad go up this river to spa^vn and for no other purpose, and I have always 

 thought that the decrease down the bay below was due to the taking of these spawn- 

 ing shad. Sawdust does harm to shad and the river is more full of it than ever be- 

 fore. I'd like to see shad plenty again. Enforce a law stopping the killing or spawn- 

 ing shad. I often have heard people say that it should not be allowed and I think so 

 myself. Salmon have changed in size, they are larger and look different. They arc 

 darker colour, stubbier and heavier built. I ought to us€ a larger mesh than usually 

 used now as I have lost a great many because they were too large to mesh properly. 

 The men set nets from bank to bank and from top to bottom all along the woods near 

 the Dutch settlements, and some have sunk nets of wire and make big money. They 

 don't depend upon it for a living. From the last of April to the last of May there arc- 

 no shad and gaspereau nets being small mesh would not take early shad. Gaspereau 

 are not as plenty as formerly but a great many were got last year below, eight mile? 

 down on the bars. They lay there at low tide and can't get up till next high tide. 

 Our shad here were never important commercially but bay shad were shipped up here 

 and were of value. Spawning striped bass roll and throw themselves out of the water, 

 making the river all in a foam. We call it tumbling. The bass are all crowded to- 

 gether. Every year they come all at the same time. They ' tumble ' in the daytime in 

 muddy water where it is salt when the tide is in and fresh when the tide is out, then 

 they go back straight to the sea and we see nothing more of them. Salmon fishing 

 here is stopped by freshets and I think they then go up, but some think the fish then 

 are sent down. We don't see the officer much. He is a farmer and often too sick to 

 patrol. Ho must be about 65 years old and has asthma. On Saturday nights he is 

 sometimes around, and has been officer for three or four years. 



John McPhee, Shubenacadie, stated that he had fished off and on for thirteen or 

 fourteen years, but has lived here more years than that and remembers the fisheries 

 forty years back. There was no trouble getting shad, trout, or "fealmon then. Gas- 

 pereau nets got sea trout one pound weight occasionally, but none taken for two 

 years. He lived about Milford and fished every summer there, beginning with gas- 

 pereau in April, then salmon later say July 1, and often in June. In gaspereau nets 

 shad are often caught by the gills. Shad are a week later than gaspereau, say the last of 

 April, or if gaspereau are about the 10th to the 20th of April the shad are a week 

 after that. The shad are big, ' whoppers,' all females, indeed I don't remember a male 



