AMBROSE ON ST. MAEGAEET'S BAY FISHING GROUNDS. 7i 



has of late years nev^er struck in very plentifully, and in the 

 needy time of spring, when with their winter stores spent, oui" 

 fishermen with hungry eyes watch these swarming millions 

 sweeping past their shores, I have often stood on the cliffs at 

 Peggy's Cove and Dover and thought that some sort of net, with 

 widely stretched arms and a net-work floor, might be moored off 

 by our people in calm weather. Into this the fish might un- 

 warily enter, like the wild animals of Africa, into a gradually 

 contracting enclosure, where a dexterous manoeuvre on the part 

 of the watchers suddenly shuts them in. In consequence of 

 running open-mouthed at this season, the fish will not mesh in 

 a net. 



The second run of mackerel strike in about the middle of 

 June or first of July, still running eastwardly. They are No. 

 3's, and trim the shore when the wind is southerly. June and 

 July are their spawning months, and it is not unlikely that their 

 old spawning grounds are the smooth bottoms along these shores, 

 whence, like the herring, they may have been driven by the 

 sweeping of the seines. But as the wanderings of fish are large- 

 ly influenced by the movements of food, and as the food of one 

 sort seek for an entirely different food for themselves, it may be 

 discovered that causes little suspected may in a remote but sure 

 way influence the run of our sea fish. It may eventually appear 

 that it is not the salmon, the cod, the hake, the haddock and the 

 pollack alone that are suffering diminution, or are kept from 

 their old haunts by the damming of our streams. It is not, in 

 the end, profitable to disturb the arrangements of a beneficent 

 and all-wise Providence. 



The third run of mackerel takes place about the first of Au- 

 gust. These have no spawn in them and are running westward- 

 ly. It is the opinion of many that these are not returning from 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence but from sea, and it may be that a 

 portion of the immense schools passing eastwardly in spring 

 strikes off to some favourite bank outside, to deposit the spawn. 

 Or there may be a sort that never go as far east or west as the 

 others, but winter along our shores, for mackerel have been 

 brought up from the muddy bottoms of some of our outer coves 

 by persons spearing for eels through holes in the ice. Or again^ 



