OFF THE EA.ST COA.ST OF SCOTLA.KD. 87 



although, good as bait for other fishes, and which appear to be 

 the forerunners of the summer fish, as they grow better, larger, 

 and fatter as the season advances, until they are in perfection 

 about July and August, spawning about the end of the latter 

 month or early in September, after which they disappear until 

 the succeeding January (Eeid, MSS.). If we turn to the Herring 

 Fishery Report of 1878, we are informed that " it is a very 

 remarkable circumstance that the yield of the fishery at Wick 

 began to decline at the very period at which the produce of the 

 Aberdeenshire fisheries began to increase " (Ixiii). Here it would 

 be as well to consider whether any change was during this 

 period instituted in the working of the Wick fisheries which 

 might account for the migration of the fish elsewhere. Mitchell, 

 who wrote in 1864, remarked on the herring appearing off Wick, 

 the Moray Firth, and Aberdeenshire in June ; but he observed 

 they are at first so small that the nets cannot catch them *, but 

 they begin to be of sufficient size in July (at this time the mesh 

 of the nets was not less than one inch between knot and 

 knot) f. 



In the fourteen years from 1849 to 1862, one thousand and 

 three boats were annually employed in fishing at Wick, with an 

 average catch per boat of one hundred and thirty -three barrels. 

 During that period no winter fishing was carried on : it now com- 

 menced, and in the fourteen years from 1863 to 1876 eight 

 hundred and eighty-five boats were annually similarly employed, 

 and the average catch per boat was one hundred and eight 

 barrels. The witnesses condemned the decrease which had 

 taken place in the size of the mesh of the nets, and in the 

 change of shooting nets before sunset having become more 

 common ; whilst it was noticed that the Wick Chamber of 

 Commerce for some years gave a premium to the fisherman who 



* In 1809 an Act of Parliament was passed regulating the mesh of the 

 herring-net at not less than one inch between knot and knot ; England and 

 France concluded a convention with these provisions in 1839, which was 

 abrogated in 1862, whilst in 1868 the regulation itself was repealed. 



t M. de Caux observes that for the purpose of capturing herrings the mesh 

 of the nets since 1864 has diminished off the Norfolk coast to forty or forty- 

 four to the yard ; ten to twenty years ago five sixths of the catch were full fish, 

 but for the last ten years the proportion has not been above two fifths, due to 

 the change in the mesh of the net ; these immature herrings will take the salt, 

 but they will not keep. 



