THE SALMON IN LAKE ONTARIO. 473 



not returning until they have become adult. In rivers where Grilse are found, the Salmon always 

 precede them in their ascent, for they do not enter fresh water until toward the end of summer. 



Wlio can wonder at the ang-ler's entbusiasm over "a Salmon fresh run in love and glory from 

 the sea?" Hear Christopher North's praise of a perfect fish : " She has literally no head ; but her 

 snout is in her shoulders. That is the beauty of a fish, high and round shoulders, short waisted, 

 no loins, but all body and not long of terminating — the shorter still the better — in a tail sharp and 

 pointed as Diana's, when she is crescent in the sky." Mr. Kilbourne's painting in Scribner's 

 "Game Fishes of North America" represents a thirty-pound fish drawn to a scale of one-fourth. 

 The largest on record was one of eighty-three pounds, brought to London in 1821; the Scotch 

 fish rarely exceed twenty-five pounds. Perley speaks of a sixty-pounder taken long ago in the 

 Eestigouche; in 1852 many of forty, and one of forty-seven, pounds were caught in the Casca- 

 pediac. Mr. Frederick Curtis' score for York River, Canada, July 7, 1871, shows nine fish 

 ranging from seventeen to thirty-four and averaging twenty-six and a quarter pounds. Another, 

 for the same locality, July, 1876, shows one hundred and ten fish, averaging more than twenty-two 

 pounds. This was by Mr. Thomas Reynolds, who caught in the same river a fish of forty-seven 

 pounds, the largest ever killed in Gasp6 with a fly. In the Penobscot forty-pounders have occa- 

 sionally been taken, but not more than one out of a thousand weighs thirty, and the common 

 size is from ten to twelve pounds. A fish two feet long would weigh about six pounds ; one of 

 thirty inches, nine or ten; one of three feet, sixteen ta seventeen; and one four feet long, nearly 

 fifty. A score of twenty-two days' fishing, with four rods, in the Godbout, in June and July, 1865, 

 foots up four hundred and seventy-eight fish, averaging nine and three-quarters pounds.' 



Salmon in Lake Ontario. — The following notes by Mr. Kumlien on Salmon in Lake On- 

 tario possess much interest: "At Oswego they were formerly very abundant and very important; 

 they used to go up the river (Oswego) to the falls. In the last eighteen years they have gradually 

 decreased till now they are caught only as stragglers. Forty have been speared by one man in 

 a day. Navigation and various kinds of mill refuse have driven them away. A few years after 

 the dams were built they ye? came in abundance, and tons of them were speared from the dams, 

 but they have gradually grown less till now only an occasional straggler is caught. 



"At Port Ontario," Mr. Harrington says, "in 1879 only a very few were caught in the seines. 

 For the last three or four years have been scarce in the river. I think it is because the mills and fac- 

 tories — especially the book-board mill at Pulaski — throw the refuse into the river. They have not 

 been plenty in the river as far up as Pulaski since 1875. It is currently reported that considerable 

 numbers were caught in the river five or six years ago, and disposed of on the sly. They seem 

 to have turned their course from this river. Of late years a few weighing eighteen to twenty 

 pounds have been taken ; we used to consider twelve pounds an average. Some weighing thirty 

 pounds have been taken." 



"At Pulaski, Mr. J. A. Mathewson & Bro. (Mathewson has fished here the last fifty-five years) 

 report as follows on the salmon fisheries: "In October, 1836, two men took two hundred and thirty 

 Salmon between 8 p. m. and 12, with spears and fire-jacks, and after 12 till morning two other men 

 in the same skiff took two hundred odd, the average weight of the entire lot being fourteen and 

 three-quarters pounds. We have had fifteen hundred fresh Salmon in the fish-house at one time. 

 When a freshet occured in Junfe a few would always come up, and sometimes a few early in the spring. 

 Any time from June till winter when there was a freshet they were sure to come. The principal 

 time, however, was in fall, during September, October, and November. Twelve skiffs in one night 



'NoRius: American Augler, p. 117. 



