THE MACKEREL HOOK FISHERY. 275 
The southern mackerel fishery was undoubtedly first prosecuted by vessels from Cape Ann 
at least we have been unable to obtain reliable accounts of any fishermen from other ports engaging 
in this fishery at an earlier date. 
“Capt. John Parsons, of Rockport,” writes Mr. A. Howard Clark, “says that he was one of 
the first to go south after mackerel from that port. He went in 1817 in the schooner Defiance, of 
35 tons. They went as far south as Cape May, and caught 60 barrels of mackerel, all of which 
were taken by drailing. They had outriggers for towing their lines, aud the lead sinkers weighed 
from 4 to 6 pounds.” 
An item in the Cape Ann Advertiser of May 20, 1859, says: 
“The practice of going south for mackerel has almost died out of late years, and this year 
there are but three or four vessels in the business. Some of the vessels which go in quest of bait 
take mackereling apparatus with them.” 
“The practice of going south for mackerel in spring,” writes Mr. Earll, “was first begun in 
Maine by a Georgetown vessel, the Queen of the West, Capt. Francis Low, in May, 1851. She 
was gone but a short time (four to six weeks), and returned with a full fare, after which she pro- 
ceeded to the bay. The next year the schooner Arcola, Capt. Warren Low, of Georgetown, joined 
the Queen of the West on her southern spring trip, and in 1853 three went. Booth Bay sent none 
south until 1867, when the Cynosure went, and Southport sent her first vessel south in 1868. In 
1879 five or six went from this section.” 
a 
3.—THE MACKEREL HOOK-FISHERY. 
The mackerel fishery at the time of its highest development, from 1820 to 1870, was carried 
on almost exclusively by the use of small hooks with heavily weighted shanks, known as “ mack- 
erel jigs.” For many years there were from six hundred to nine hundred vessels, chiefly from 
Cape Cod and northward, en gaged in this fishery, and in the year 1831 the total amount of mack- 
erel salted in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts was 450,000 barrels. 
As will be seen by an examination of the diagram showing the yield of the mackerel fishery 
from 1804 to 1881, elsewhere published in this report, the quantity of fish taken from year to year 
has bebn extremely variable, but has at no other time approached the enormous quantity on record 
for the years 1831 and 1881. 
The jig has now been almost entirely superseded by the purse-seine, and this radical change 
in the method of catching mackerel has caused the desertion by the mackerel fleet of the Gulf of 
Saint Lawrence, and the practical futility—to benefit our fishermen—of the fishery clauses of the 
Treaty of Washington. All attempts, with a very few exceptions, to use the purse-seine in the 
Gulf of Saint Lawrence have been failures. 
In 1880 the schooner Alice, of Swan’s Island, caught 700 barrels by the use of a purse-seine in 
the gulf, but not 10 per cent. of the other vessels which visited this region, then or within the four 
or five previous years, paid their expenses. 
The mackerel hook fishery is of the past, and this chapter must be regarded, in large part, as 
historical. It is by no means impossible, however, in years to come, that the old method of fishing, 
which had many undoubted advantages over that at present employed, will be revived. 
