INTERIM REPORT 75 



mill is there and freshets carry sawdust into the river. There are places below the 

 dam in salmon river where salmon could spawn but further up there are better. Trout 

 occur above the dam haK or three-quarters pounds weight, and at Park street bridge 

 sea trout were seen this summer at the head waters. 



G. W. Stewart said, that the spring fish which descend, come up in the fall to 

 spawn and after spawning remain all winter in still places and come down in the 

 spring. In Salmon river any boy can catch them with any kind of line or bait. The 

 fish are poor and unfit for food. About ten years ago I went purposely to catch .some 

 of them, they were said to be grayling. I have seen day after day, boys catching them 

 from early April to late in May. Coloured people take them largely. The spawning 

 places are very poor now, whereas befoi-e the dam they ascended to better grounds. I 

 found the stomach empty, they had not fed and the flesh was white. 



E. E. McNuTT said, that up to 25 or 30 years ago shad were plentiful. It was 

 the taking of the spawning shad has surely but gradually decreased them, the decline 

 began fifteen or twenty years since. They are so very scarce that it is hard to get a 

 shad, whereas formerly there was any quantity. At Folly the other day nine boats got 

 seven shad amongst them as their catch on one tide. 



George Leejiax stated as a dealer in fish he classed the fish taken in April and 

 Mayas diseased meat, and he would not sell it. They look like a good salmon soaked in 

 water, and are pale and white, the flesh having lost colour. They are spavsmed salmon. 

 The shad is a fish always in demand, and I have shipped them to Halifax, Pictou, 

 Antigonish and other places. I handle 1,000 to 2,000 or 3,000 shad in a season. I 

 got them the 27th and 2Sth of Jime. I got some summer shad from the bay. We get 

 spring shad also from St. John, fully two weeks ahead of the Massbown fish. These 

 big shad pounds weight are mother shad, and inside are of a bluish cast not nice 

 white flesh and fat like the shad caught in the bay. I handled them last spring and 

 previously a barrel now and then, while other dealers here handle three or four barrels 

 from Stewiaeke. Shortly after the gaspereau the last run of these shad come in. 

 They are both .sexes but the males are fewer. I distinguish them externally. I have 

 weighed the spawn shad and found three poimd in a nine pound shad, in others I 

 found two or two and a half pounds and so on. The ova are well-developed like the 

 smallest shot. In New York, the shad are three to five weeks ahead of here. Koe shad 

 sell well, but they are like calving cattle, imhealthy. There should be a law prohibiting 

 them. The bay shad are fat, plump and excellent. I think the shad fishery should be 

 closed altogether for four or five years and they would return I am sure. The greatest 

 evil has only been for a few years, it is only in the last ten or twelve years they have 

 caught river shad; thirty-five years ago right in the town between Bible Hill bridge 

 and Park street bridge, two men netted 39 or 49 shad in about ten minutes, a proof 

 of their plentifulness. 



Wm. Alley said that 27 years ago he bought from a boy a salmon. I asked ten 

 or fifteen citizens who saw it, ' Was it a spent salmon V A United States expert auth- 

 ority who saw it declared that it was a grayling. That is the name by which these 

 early descending fish are known here. 



Principal Campbell, Truro, said that stricter supervision had restored St, Mary's 

 river. Dams killed out the gaspereau and their removal has brought them back or 

 led to their restoration to plentifulnes.-. Netting is carried on completely across the 

 river, preventing the ascent of the fish. 



A. B. Fletcher, Trxjro. said that shad were very plentiful 50 years ago. The 

 people si>eared them on the flats near Folly and Masstown. Then drift nets began to 

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