312 KNUT DAHL. 



relate separately to moveable and fixed fishing engines as 

 well as to the fishing in the rivers and in the sea. 



Of moveable fishing gear for the purpose of catching salmon 

 and sea trout in our country, only driftnets, groundnets and 

 seines are used. 



The driftnets are only employed for the purposes of catching 

 salmon, and accordingly the r mesh must be very large, even 

 larger than the minimum size at present allowed by law. 

 Reduction of the mesh is thus, in regard to these nets, quite 

 immaterial. 



As regards groundnets a reduction of the mesh is for the 

 same reason immaterial, provided the purpose of the nets is the 

 catching of salmon. A reduction of the mesh, however, would 

 render them adapted to the catching of trout, and reduce their 

 efficiency for salmon. They would not be able to catch salmon 

 of a smaller size than those caught in the present mesh, as such 

 salmon practically do not exist in our waters. As the nets are 

 intended for "meshing" the fish, their mesh could never with 

 any advantage be made so small as to imperil the size of 

 trout, which demand the protection of the law. 



If finally we consider the seines, we find that in the sea 

 they are employed almost exclusively for the purpose of catching 

 trout. In the rivers or in the neighbourhood of river-mouths 

 their present object is the catching af salmon. 



In the seines used in the sea salmon are rarely found. 

 In the thousands of hauls which I have made or seen other 

 fishermen make in the sea, with seines of a smaller mesh 

 than the legal one, not a single salmon has been caught. 

 Nor do any of the fishermen who for a part of the year get 

 their hving by this half illegitimate fishing for sea-trout, profess 

 to catch salmon, but as rare exceptions. They state unanimously 

 that a few grilse of 2 — 3 kilo weight may occur as rareties 

 in a summers catch. The occasions upon which large salmon 



