lyTERIM REPORT 103 



APPEXDIX :N'o. 2. 



Statement from Fishery Overseer J. W. Davisos, Bass River, X.S. 



to Profiissor E. E. Prince, S. F. Morrison and S. Melanson, Commissioners appointed 

 by the Gorernment of Canada to investigate the matter of the Shad Fisheries 

 of the Bail of Fiindii. 



Gentlemen, — I thought it might not be out of place for me. as Overseer of Fish- 

 eries for this part of the couuty of Colchester, to give you some of my views with 

 reference to the very important work which has been entrusted to you by the govern- 

 ment of Canada. My knowledge of the subject is practical rather than theoretical, 

 but if I can say an.vthing to help you to come to a satisfactory conclusion with regard 

 to this most essential matter I shall be greatly pleased to do so. 



1st. Re the history of the shad fishery in this part of the province of Nova 

 Scotia. Our first knowledge of the subject comes to us entirely from verbal reports, as 

 there is no person now living old enough to remember when shad fishing began here. 

 However, our fathers and grandfathers have told us that the first settlers procured 

 shad for their own use in holes and crevices in the sand bars, near the head of Cobe- 

 qnid bay, at Folly village and ilasstown, where they had been left by the ebb tide. 

 This was about one and one-half centuries ago, so that I have no doubt the history of 

 the shad fishery extends back to the time of the earliest settlers in this part of the 

 country (over one hundred years ago), the people contrived a method of capturing 

 shad particularly suited to a new country, which at that time was all grown tip with 

 woods, viz., by brush weirs, a method still in use, but how much improved I do not 

 know. However, there has been a very essential change in the location of the weirs, 

 which at that time were set very near the beach, or rather, I might say, near high 

 water mark of the tide. Now we find that we cannot catch fish without going 

 almost a mile and in some places two miles. 



For a number of .vears the above was the onl.v method used to catch fish here, 

 but in the year IS-tS ilr. Hallida.v. an Englishman, came to Economy for the purpose, 

 of fishing, which business he prosecuted with success for a nimiber of years by means 

 of boats, carrying gill nets with which he drifted for shad. In the meantime, the 

 natives of Econom.v adopted this method of fishing and tlie.v too were successful, so 

 that the number of Ibat fishermen went on increasing until there were a great many 

 engaged in the business, and the boats began to carry longer nets until from nets 

 150 fathoms in length a boat would carry a net 300 and sometimes even 400 fathoms 

 long. The number of weirs also increased until instead of 3 or i weirs there were 

 over two dozen, yet the average catch of the boat fishermen did not seem to be lessened 

 by the catch of the weirs so that great numbers of shad were taken from the bay. The 

 most prosperous time in the history of the shad fishery was between 1860 and 1880. 

 Of the first ten years of that jieriod we have no record, as there was no overseer nor 

 any person whose duty it was to give statistical information until after the confedera- 

 tion of the provinces in 1867, and there was no person appointed to obtain full statis- 

 tics until I was made overseer of this district about the year ISTO. However, I was 

 practically engaged in net fishing between the years 1858 and 1880, and was in full 

 touch with everything concerning the interests of the fishermen of this bay. It was 

 when the decline of the fisheries began that I gave up the business. This decline was 

 gradual and rather slow at first, but for the last ten years fishing has ceased to be a 

 real industr.v here, although a few boats are still in the bay fishing ostensibly for shad, 

 tut in realit.v getting principally salmon. When shad fishing was at its best, the 



