274 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Among the principal varieties of fish taken are herring, blue pike, 

 " pickerel," saugers, and whitefish. The last-named species is not 

 nearly so abundant in Dover Bay as it was ten or twelve years ago, but 

 it is claimed that the spring catch was much better in 1885 than it had 

 been for three or four years. 



The fishermen have large and well-appointed fish-houses where they 

 prepare their fish for market. A portion of the catch is sold fresh to 

 peddlers and the retail trade, and the rest is salted and shipped to the 

 Cleveland dealers. The fish for shipment are hauled by wagon to the 

 hamlets of Dover, West Dover, and North Dover, 1 to 2 miles distant 

 on the railroad. The fresh fish are shipped with ice in barrels contain- 

 ing 200 pounds each. Part of the herring catch goes to the smoke- 

 houses at Cleveland. 



Rocky River. — A little farther to the eastward and 7 miles west of 

 Cleveland is Rocky River, near the mouth of which boats of small size 

 find a good harbor. Two firms, one belonging at Rocky River and the 

 other at West Dover, own strings of pound-nets, numbering ten in all. 

 The products are all shipped to Cleveland, most of them fresh, but some 

 of the herring and blue pike are salted. The West Dover firm brought 

 out a new steamer in the fall of 1885 to engage in gill-net fishing from 

 Rocky River, Cleveland, and other points. ♦ 



The city of Cleveland. — There are no fisheries between Rocky River 

 and the Cuyahoga River, at the mouth of which the important city of 

 Cleveland is situated. The river furnishes a good harbor, admitting all 

 lake craft, and the commerce by water is large. The population of 

 Cleveland is about 225,000, and the chief industries are manufacturing, 

 coal and lumber dealing, oil refining, and the usual city trade. Com- 

 pared with the other business of the place the fisheries are unimportant. 



Fisheries of the city. — Cleveland is practically the dividing line between 

 the pound-net and gill-net fisheries of Lake Erie. The pound-net fishery 

 is predominant in that part of the lake west of Cleveland, while the gill- 

 net is the principal form of apparatus in the eastern section of the lake. 

 There are no pound-nets between Rocky River and Euclid, near the 

 boundary of Lake County. The fishing from Cleveland is with gill-nets 

 and lines. The best authorities state that gill nets were first used here 

 in 1877. Three steamers and three sail-boats owned at Cleveland are em- 

 ployed in the gill-net fisheries. They fish in spriug and fall with nets 

 214 to 330 feet long, 5 feet deep, and 3 to 3J inches in the mesh ; and 

 their catch is principally blue pike, herring, and perch. Blue pike are 

 exceedingly abundant in the bay, but very few whitefish are taken. 

 Over fifteen hundred gill-nets in all are fished by these six crews. 



Beside the fishermen living at Cleveland the year round, several 

 steamers and about a dozen sail-boats from other ports fish from there 

 in spring for blue pike. 



There is a good deal of fishing with hook and line through the ice 

 in winter by all classes, but especially by the poorer people, many of 



