Smelt and Caplin cast on Shore, 245 



Enormous numbers of smelt are caught on the seaboard 

 in midwinter, mostly to feed pigs, the flesh of which be- 

 comes tainted by the cucumber flavour of this fish. As will be 

 shown in the sequel, like herrings and others which congregate 

 in dense shoals, the vast mass may occasionally become the 

 sport of the waves, and, like the caplin (seldom seen so far 

 south as New Brunswick), is sometimes cast in vast quantities 

 on the rugged coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland.* 



The sea-going smelt, after depositing its spawn, disappears, 

 and is said to return to the sea about midsummer, when 

 the land-locked fish repair to the profound depths *of the 

 lakes ; and it is assuredly remarkable to observe how quickly 

 they all vanish from streams and rivers that had been 

 literally swarming with them. Indeed, like the white fish, 

 they readily devour worm-bait in spring, whereas afterwards 

 nothing induces them to touch it — for the reason, probably, 

 that the excessive demand in the one case being beyond the 

 resources of the locality, induces the fishes to eat what they 

 might refuse when food is plentiful. 



There would appear to be two species of WHITE FISHES 

 {coregoni) in the salt and fresh waters of New Brunswick, 

 but their characters have not been carefully marked out. 

 Every spring, with the breaking-up of the ice, there appears 

 on the St. John a salmonoid to which the settlers give 

 the name of gizzard fish. It has the squarely truncated 

 snout and upper jaw overlapping the lower, and to all 



* Referring to the former on the shores of Anticosti, Mr. Rowan 

 remarks in the Field, May, 1869: "In the month of June the caplin 

 come in shore to spawn, followed by all the hungry monsters of the deep. 

 Each tide leaves thousands of these little fish high and dry on the beach. 

 After a storm I have seen cartloads of dead caplin on one little strip of 

 beach, and I have fished up enough live ones out of the water with one 

 scoop of my kettle to do for breakfast. They are the best bait for cod 

 fish." Moreover, the caplin forms a staple article of food of the salmon 

 and other fishes along the northern shores of the St. Lawrence. — Watt 

 Canadian Naturalist, vol. vi., p. ill. 



