APPARATUS USED IN CAPTURING FISH. 255 



four hundred to eight hundred. Bait of the proper kinds is placed upon 

 these, and the lines allowed to remain down through a part of a tide. 

 If set at half-tide, they are sometimes overhauled at intervals of half an 

 hour or an hour. When taken up for examination, the fisherman, com- 

 mencing at one end close to the buoy, lifts the main line to the surface 

 and carries it along over the boat upon one side, which is hauled along 

 under the line toward the other end. The fish found upon the hooks 

 are dropped into the boat by the man who pulls up the line, while a com- 

 panion, as the line passes over the boat, puts new bait, if necessary, 

 upon the hooks and drops them again into the water. In this way the 

 trawl is traversed from one end to the other, and, under favorable cir- 

 cumstances, as soon as the operation has been performed it can be again 

 repeated, the line being taken up in an opposite direction. The princi- 

 pal fish taken in this way on our coast are the cod, hake, haddock, and 

 skate, the pollock swimming too near the surface to be attracted by the 

 bait. 



In England a single trawl-line is usually forty fathoms in length, with 

 twenty-six hooks attached by snoods. As many of these lines are united 

 as is thought expedient, and these are shot across the tide as the vessel 

 sails along, so that the snoods may hang clear. There is usually an an- 

 chor at each end, at intervals of forty fathoms, to keep the line in posi- 

 tion at the bottom, as well as the buoys already referred to. 



The same process is used very largely on the Banks of Newfoundland 

 for taking cod, first introduced, I believe, by the French, and afterward 

 imitated by men of other nationalities.. 



Much complaint has been made by fishermen in Massachusetts Bay 

 and elsewhere of this mode of fishing, chiefly, however, on account of 

 the large catch j but there seems no good reason for believing that it 

 can exercise an injurious influence upon the supply of fishes, as none 

 appear to be taken by it during the spawning season. 



NETS. 



Next to the lines come the nets, moveble or fixed. The simplest form 

 of these is the seine, which, as is well known, consists of a webbing of 

 net-work, provided with corks or floats at the upper edge, and with leads 

 of greater or less weight at the lower, and used to inclose a certain area 

 of water, and by bringing the ends together either to a boat or on the 

 shore, to secure the fish that may happen to be in the inclosure, unable 

 or unwilling to escape. The seine varies in length from one sufficient to 

 take a few minnows to the shad-seine of a mile in length, hauled in by 

 a windlass worked by the power of horses or oxen, or by a steam-engine. 



Another equally simple form of net is the gill-net, which is generally 

 fastened at one or both ends, and so arrauged, by varying the weight 

 upon the lower edge, so that it shall float near the surface of the water, at 

 any intermediate depth, or near the bottom. When a net of this char- 

 acter is allowed to float with the tide, it becomes a drift-net. Both 

 forms are used very extensively on our coast, the drift-net perhaps more 

 frequently for taking salmon, mackerel, and herring. Shad are also 

 taken very largely in nets of this* construction ; blue-fish and Spanish 

 mackerel are more frequently captured in the fixed apparatus. 



The gill-net used on Lake Michigan, (Fig. 1,) according to Mr. Milner, to whom I am in- 

 debted for the figure and descriptive account, is made of imported linen gilling-twine or 

 thread, from No. 35 to as fine as No. 60. Its width is from fifty to eighty-oue inches when 

 stretched taut, having from twelve to eighteen meshes in the width. Each net is usually 

 from one hundred and eighty to two hundred aud seventy feet long. A light line, from 

 ,'20 to 40 thread seine-twine," is seized on along the outer edges of 'the net — the seaming. 



