ISTERIil REPORT 67 



compensate the dozen or so who have gear that would be useless. A few thousand dol- 

 lars would make that all right. Be heroic in the matter is the suggestion I would 

 make to you gentlemen of the commission. 



Rupert Fulton recalled, added that some men neglected their farms to fish shad. 

 iNfy father had a quartet share in a weir. The price of shad was $10 per barrel. I 

 offered to take them to Boston and sell them. Buyers came to me as thick as at Bass 

 river and $14 was offered me. I sold them quick and got a cheque on the State Baulc 

 for $1,400, and I got it in half sovereigns. 



There was handed in a memorandum addressed to the commission on the matters 

 connected with the shad fishery under investigation (by Fishery Overseer J. W. 

 Davidson) Appendix No. 2. 



Seventeenth Sitting. 



Custom House, Canso, N.S., August 22, 1908. 

 After the usual preliminaries evidence was then taken as follows : — 



Captaix John Wells, Fish Merchant, White Polnt, said that a few shad came 

 in when the July herring came in years ago. Quite a few shad were got. During the 

 last eight or ten years there had been no July herring and it has been a rare thing to 

 get a shad. I have put up as many as 600 barrels of July herring and many others 

 did the same; but it has been difficult to get CO barrels during the last eight or ten 

 years. The shad got entangled in the herring nets so they must have been plenty cr 

 none could have been got accidentally in that way, the mesh being 2| inches. They 

 were set three or four miles off land, on the top of the water. Later we moved the nets 

 in and sunk them to the bottom in ten or twelve fathoms of water. The herring were 

 fat and settle on the bottom so that we would get for four weeks on a stretch one or 

 two barrels to a net in a night. We got quite a catch of large herring 10 or 12 inches 

 long and a few larger. Out of 25 barrels I got two barrels of large, 10 of small and 

 3 barrels of smaller, No. 2's. I cleaned any shad taken and there was no spawn in 

 them I think, but am not sure. They were 20 inches long and eight or ten years ago 

 we got quite a few of them. They were not fat enough to fry in their own fat and wa 

 used pork when frying them. They don't come in just as the salmon don't come in on 

 this southern (Guysboro') shore. Fifteen years ago we'd catch lots of salmon in our 

 traps, but now we don't get them. I have not heard of one salmon in a trap this year,, 

 and our locations are former salmon net locations. For three years I have fitted out 

 boats with mackerel nets, 4-inch mesh, hung on the head and on the foot the same way, 

 hung on the mooring, and have taken up une-third. When we set nets as we do, it forms 

 a bay or semi-circle of light twine. Five or six miles off shore they took two salmon, 

 20 and 26 pounds weight this year. No set nets have been used for salmon for four 

 vears. The herring which later strike our Nova Scotia shore here, first school in April 



