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Part III. — Thirteenth Annual Report. 



hook, as has been sometimes proposed. While a larger hook would, 

 to some extent, decrease the quantity of immature round fishes caught, 

 and especially, as the above tables indicate, those caught by the pharynx 

 or gullet, and thus fatally injured ; any advantage in this way would not 

 be commensurate with the general decrease in the catch. In this respect 

 line-fishing is quite different from trawl-net fishing, in which variation 

 in the size of the mesh directly affects the size of the fish caught. 

 Besides, it has to be borne in mind that the immature fishes caught 

 by line are almost entirely round fishes, such as haddock and cod, whose 

 numbers do not appear to be diminishing. Of the 118 flatfishes (dabs) 

 captured in the course of these experiments, only one was below the 

 size at which sexual maturity is reached, although that size is only 

 six inches. 



