36 FISH CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
Gut of Canso, and laid his course up George’s Bay at that time 
of year, will perchance find a seafog making on a favoring 
wind, and as the foggy atmosphere grows dense and envelopes 
him, the warning blare of fish-horns sounds ominously through 
the murk ; the lookout on the jib-boom discovers here and there 
a fishing-boat tending trawls, or possibly a schooner at anchor 
which his own craft has barely missed as she slips by with that 
gentle ripple under forefoot which indicates a vessel under casy 
way. 
This is the flrst opening of the fishing season. 
Trawls, or bull-tows, are common at the entrances to the gulf, 
but open boats of from twenty to twenty-five feet often go out 
full thirty miles to sea, where the chances of a catch are better, 
and there encounter storms which larger vessels could not 
weather. Trawls have been objected to as unnecessarily destruc- 
tive to breeding-cod; but it having been ascertained that cod 
deposit their eggs in the high seas as well as off shore, it becomes 
a matter of little consequence whether the breeders are caught 
with trawls or the ordinary hook and line. Most of the north- 
shore fishermen, from Cape Gaspe to Newport, who carry on the 
banks as well as the inshore fishing, use trawls. Everywhere 
else the fish are caught with hook and line. . 
As the fishing season advances and, May gives place to June, 
the great mass of the fishing-fleet have arrived upon the coast, 
and are strung all along from Whale Head, Mecattina, and Bloue 
Sablon, on the Gulf, through Belle Isle, to its eastern entrance, | 
bearing eastward and northward. It is a glorious sight, and 
very much like a regatta, to see the white-winged craft, single, 
in braces, and in clusters, sometimes two hundred in all, wholly 
becalmed on a silent sea, or overhauling each other with a stiff 
breeze blowing from the westward. 
But fish do not always make their appearance in June. There 
is no stipulation in the bargain as to when they shall strike in. 
If bait is absent, there will be no codfish; and the absence of 
bait depends very much upon the temperature of the water. If 
the ice remains late upon the coast, the caplin keep in deep 
water, where it is,warmer. Besides, stormy weather keeps all — 
