720 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 
to 10,000 yearly), and another weir, on the eastern side of the bay, took but a half-hogshead tub 
full. A drift-net fisherman took but 20 shad. It was thought that shad-fishing was at an end; 
but the next year the shad were found to be increasing in numbers, and in a few years they were 
again plenty. The year 1831 was one of the best years ever known in Merrymeeting Bay; a seine 
at Beef Rock, on the east side of Swan Island, took 30,000 shad.* To what causes to attribute these 
fluctuations we are unable to say, but they must of necessity have been natural causes. From 1830 
to 1836 there were inspected in the three towns of Bowdoinham, Dresden and Woolwich 6,079 bar- 
tels of shad, an average of 868 barrels yearly. Inspection of packed and exported shad was 
compulsory, and it is safe to say that these figures represent seven-eighths of the shad caught. 
We may therefore estimate the catch in those towns at about 1,000 barrels, or 100,000 shad, yearly. 
There were at that time only 2 weirs in Merrymeeting Bay, and a few in Eastern River, all 
shoal-water weirs. The most of the fishing was done with drift-nets in the small rivers, like the 
Cathancezand Eastern, and with 4 or 5 seines. In 1867 in the same district the catch of 40 
deep-water weirs, several seines, and an unknown number of drift-nets was about 180,000. In® 
1880, 44 weirs, 2 seines, and some 60 drift-nets, covering nearly the same district, took about 
105,000 shad. It appears, then, that the product of the Merrymeeting Bay shad fisheries is as great 
now as in 1830-1836; but this catch has been accomplished by the use of a great number of far 
more efficient implements. + The seine-weirs were introduced in 1851 and 1852, and soon almost 
entirely replaced the shoal-water weirs. In other parts of the river, where their construction 
was impossible, the catch of shad has fallen off remarkably since 1830, and the entire fishery of the 
districts above Augusta was of course extinguished in 1841, when the Augusta dam was finally 
closed. 
Alewives.—All the weirs take alewives along with shad and salmon, and at the present day 
none of consequence are taken in any other way, the use of drift-nets having been discontinued 
since 1867, and the fish no longer ascending to places where they.can be taken with dip-nets. 
As with shad, the most productive weirs are those of the Merrymeeting Bay district, especially in 
Eastern River and the main river on the east of Swan Island, where 7 weirs took, in 1880, 147,820 
alewives, an average of over 20,000 per weir. In the bay, north of Abagadassett Point, 15 weirs 
averaged 12,500; south of Abagadassett Point, including the Androscoggin, Cathance, &c., 22 
weirs averaged but little more than 5,300 alewives; between the bay and the city of Bath, 14 
weirs averaged about 7,500; below Bath, in the main river and branches, 29 weirs averaged but 
1,862 alewives. Thus the catch of alewives increased with distance from the sea in the main river, 
but fell off in the Androscoggin arm of the bay. The total catch in 1880 is estimated at 675,000. 
Only 20 barrels (part of the catch of Eastern River) were salted, and 600,000 were smoked. 
Perhaps the earliest mention to be found of the alewives of the Kennebec is in a letter of the 
French priest Rasle, writing from the village of Norridgewock in 1723: “At a particular season 
of the year,” says he, referring to the customs of the natives, “they repair to a river not far dis- 
tant, where during one month the fish ascend in such numbers that a person could fill 50,000 bar- 
rels in a day, if he could endure the labor. They are a kind of large herring, very agreeable to 
the taste when fresh. Crowding one upon another to the depth of a foot, they are drawn out as 
if they were water. The Indians dry them for eight or ten days, and live on them during all the 
time that they are planting their fields.” 
* Statement of Mr. John Brown. 
+Mr. Brown’s weir produced in the ten years ending in 1835 an average of 5,961 shad yearly ; in the twelve years 
from 1837 to 1843 (1844 being omitted from the record) the average was 3,120 per year, a little more than half the 
former yield. 
